Chapter 20 #3
He drops his head back. “She kicked my ass, and maybe that’s why I fell in love with her. I was so used to women falling at my feet, and she made me kneel at hers.”
I smile as I watch him talk. “A woman after my own heart.”
“You two would have ruled the fucking world.” His smile fades slightly, and he looks at the television, the movie still playing on mute.
“The last thing she said to me was, ‘We get to meet her.’ She squeezed my hand, and she was exhausted, but she smiled and said that. ‘We get to meet her.’ And then … she never did.”
“She died giving birth to Amy?”
He nods slowly. “I stood in that hospital hallway, and the doctor said she was gone and … the first thing I thought was that I had to call her and ask her what to do. She was the first person I wanted to speak to, but … I couldn’t.
I lost my world and gained an entirely new one in hours.
I wanted to fucking rage at everything. I was so angry, and I had no one to blame, but I did have someone who needed me.
I had my Amy. A reason to keep going. Even when I wanted to just let the hate eat away at me, I couldn’t.
My little girl saved my life.” He seems distant, so far beyond my reach that even when I take his hand, I wonder if the contact is created in my mind.
“And then she had a headache. We’d been out all day, and she was tired, and she had a headache.
” He shakes his head, his eyes shining. “I didn’t notice the rash.
I didn’t know …” He rests his head back.
“And then my baby was gone. And … it felt like there was a space where my heart should be.”
My throat feels like it closes, and there’s nothing I can say. There are no words that can follow that, so I move closer, resting into his side, my head on his shoulder.
We’re quiet for a while, and between us is grief. Thick, impenetrable grief. The kind of pain you don’t wish on a soul, the kind of agony that only time will take pieces of, and it’s never quick enough.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
He nods. “Me too.”
Hand in hand, pain in pain, we sit. Colt runs his thumb across my knuckles, and the movie keeps playing, and then I finally speak.
“It’s my son’s birthday soon,” I say, focusing on our joined hands.
“He was born January fourteenth, three years ago, at 10.17 p.m. He died five hours later.” Died.
Gone. Forever. My throat feels like it heats and fills with sand at the words.
“And sometimes I pretend he’s still here.
Before I open my eyes in the morning, I pretend he’s going to run into the room, or that he’s asleep beside me. ”
It’s a cruel, imaginary world, but on the longest days, it helps me get out of bed.
Colt squeezes my hand. “I make Amy breakfast.”
My eyes are glassy, but I smile. “What breakfast?”
“Pancakes with fruit,” he says. “I used to cut the strawberries into love hearts, and she’d eat them last because she said they were too pretty.”
“Sometimes I look at schools,” I admit. “I wonder which one Theo would like, or if he’d even like school at all. I imagine picking him up, and asking him about his day, and surprising him with last-minute trips to Disney.”
Colt grins. “Mickey Mouse hats and churros.”
“Yes!” I laugh, leaning against him, our hands still tangled together.
“And maybe he’d have a brother. Or a sister.
And we’d buy every photograph from every rollercoaster, and I’d save them all, and embarrass them when they were teenagers by showing all their friends.
And we don’t have to worry about our lives being dangerous because we’ve left it behind. ”
Colt exhales. “No guns. No looking over our shoulders. No wondering if the sirens are for us. Legitimate businesses.”
“I’ve always wanted a real café. I like making coffee art. You know, those little drawings on foam? I’m kinda good at it, too.”
“Then maybe our first Luxe and Harland deal could be totally legitimate. We get that café. You make coffee. I watch you make said coffee.” He rests his head on mine as I smile. “And all we worry about is bills, and flour deliveries, and if we should open on Sundays.”
I frown. “Why wouldn’t we open on Sundays?”
“Because we could sleep in.”
“But so many people don’t work Sundays. We’d be losing out on business.”
“See? We’re already worrying about it.”
I angle my head to look up at him. “That’s true. I’ll win, though. I always win.”
“Of course, Del.”
I tut at his tone and return my head to his shoulder.
We sit in our silence. In a life that can never be, with children we miss more than life, and memories that never were. Tears blur my vision, and the weight of the last year tumbles over me when I wish it wouldn’t. Wyatt. Ethan. Harley. My marriage. This life I’ve chosen.
And the truth spills free. “I might be here for a long time.”
Colt is quiet because maybe he knew. Maybe he saw something in me that I couldn’t hide. “The conversation with Ranger last night didn’t go well?”
“I didn’t speak to him,” I say, sighing softly. “I called Cal, instead. He was out walking Wesson, so I video called him.”
Did I chicken out of calling my own husband? Yep. But I knew what his reaction would be, and I was too tired and beaten up to listen to lectures and demands. And at least I got to see Wesson.
“So … you didn’t speak to Ranger at all?” he asks.
I angle my head to look up at him. “Nope. I’m a coward.”
He searches my face. “Want me to call him?”
I tut. “Shut up.”
“Seriously. Or we could just send him a selfie. That’d be message fucking received.”
I laugh and rest my head back on his shoulder.
“You know what’s annoying?” I say. “You’re hard not to like.”
“So are you. I have a weird urge to thank you.”
I watch Belle tending to the Beast’s wounds and say, “Same.”
But we don’t say it. We don’t say thank you or bring the night to a close. We sit quietly, and the words that don’t need to be said float around us.
Thank you for not leaving me.
Thank you for letting me talk about them.
I don’t think I hate you anymore. Maybe I never did.
“Should we watch Casablanca?” he asks.
In a hotel with endless movie choices, we watch a movie older than the both of us. Colt mouths along with the words, and I make fun of him, and I laugh when he tells me about the first time he watched it and his mom cried at the end, and he couldn’t understand it.
“I get it now,” he says. “It’s so fucking sad. If this movie was made today, they’d end up together.”
“They don’t end up together?” I squeak, sitting up to face him.
He mouths wordlessly at me. “Yes?”
I swat his arm. “Colt, you just ruined the whole movie!” He quickly covers my eyes, plunging me into darkness. I huff. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to erase your memory.”
“Good. While you’re there, erase me meeting you.”
He laughs loudly. “You don’t mean that even a little bit.”
I grin. “Nope.”
He removes his hand, dark eyes sparkling in the dim light of the hotel room.
And something happens. More than nothing, but less than something.
A flicker that I can’t name, and I’d be too scared to even try.
The television light casts shadows across the side of Colt’s face, and somewhere in my chest, something buried beneath grief and reality stirs.
It shifts aside the dirt of loss, the stones of life, the harsh truths that told me happiness is fragments.
I allow it to flood me, to fill me, to draw me into a moment I shouldn’t share with him.
Because he isn’t my husband.
He isn’t even a man I should be with.
He’s an enemy.
He was.
A man not on the opposite side of a battlefield, but in the center, trying to stop the war in the first place.
He moves his hand to the side of my neck, his thumb resting gently on my pulse as it thunders under my skin. He searches my eyes and my skin flushes, warmth rapidly cascading across my body with every second we touch. Colt’s gaze drops to my lips and my heart lurches.
“You should go,” I breathe.
Colt nods but doesn’t move. “I should.”
Someone needs to stop this. This isn’t who we are or who we can ever be. This isn’t even what I want.
Is it?
I pull away and stand, taking a step back. The skin he’d been touching cools rapidly. “Thank you for tonight.”
Colt drops his hand. “Sure. Sorry I ruined the … the movie.” He heads for the door, and I follow. I open it with a shaky hand, and he stands on the threshold. “Good night.”
“Yep.”
He walks away and I close the door, leaning back against it and closing my eyes.
That was almost so bad. So, so bad. What the hell was I thinking? It’s one thing to spend the evening with Colt; it’s another to invite him back and—
“Great job, Denver,” I whisper, running my hands down my face. “Create more problems for yourself.”
Pressing my back to the wall, I search for the strength to ignore what my body is calling out for.
It’s been four weeks without sex when I’m used to it daily.
Sometimes multiple times a day. I’m horny, and lonely, and sad, and confused, and a crush is totally normal.
Colt isn’t exactly bad to look at, and he’s saved me, protected me, made me laugh, taken me ice-skating, held my hand—
“Stop it,” I hiss at myself. “Jerk off and go to bed.” My phone rings and I answer it so fast I’m surprised I don’t knock myself out. “Yes?”
Silence. I check the screen. It’s the mystery caller.
“Patricia? Please don’t hang up.” Mercifully, she doesn’t. But she doesn’t speak, either. I straighten up off the wall. “Are you Dr. Heller’s wife?”
She takes in a breath. “How do you know?”
“I had someone check,” I say gently. “Why have you been calling me?”
“I …” She pauses, and the line is painfully silent. “My husband died a few months ago.”
I sit on the couch. “I’m sorry.”
“He … he was sick for a while. We knew it was coming. He was a good man, you know? He was a good man.”
I’m unsure why she’s calling me or telling me this, but the pain in her voice is enough to keep me listening. “I’m sure he was.”
“He … he did … he did something terrible, Denver. And I don’t know how to fix it. I’m scared to fix it.”
Is that why she’s calling? She thinks I can help her?
“Is there something I can do?”
A small sob escapes her, and I realize I’m gripping the couch cushion. My knuckles are bleached white. “He wrote me a letter. A confession. A …”
My voice is quiet. “What did the letter say?”
“He said he was sorry, that he didn’t have a choice but to lie about the baby, that he was protecting me from …
him.” My ability to speak gets lost in a realization that can’t possibly be true.
My mind is being cruel. My imagination is torturing me.
I focus on the floor. On the carpet. On patterns I’ve never noticed until now.
They blur and mix and fade, and sound becomes distant.
“He told you your baby died, Denver, but he didn’t. ”