Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
AUbrEY
For one suspended moment, I can only stare at him.
The apartment is warm behind us, filled with the soft glow of the Christmas tree and the faint scent of the dinner he made, but Dean looks like he has been standing outside in the cold for hours.
His skin is pale beneath the warm entryway light. His breathing comes in uneven pulls, each one lifting his chest against mine before shuddering out again.
Even with both of my hands pressed to his face, I can feel the tremors running through him.
I have seen Dean irritated.
I have seen him exhausted, overwhelmed, and so far out of his depth with Liana that he looked ready to start interviewing pediatricians at two in the morning.
I have seen him worried.
This is not worry. This is terror.
Raw, unguarded terror that has stripped away every trace of the man who can command a boardroom with one look.
“I thought you were dead.”
The words settle between us, too awful and too heavy to absorb all at once.
My heart twists painfully.
“Dean.”
I do not know what else to say.
I wish I could rewind the afternoon. I would buy a charger from the first store I entered. I would borrow someone’s phone. I would abandon half my shopping list and come home the second the crowds became impossible.
But I cannot change any of it now.
All I can do is stand here while he stares at me with fear still living in his eyes.
“I’m so sorry.” My voice comes out thin and unsteady. “I should have found a way to call you. I knew my battery was getting low, but I kept thinking I was almost finished. Every line was longer than the last, and then I lost track of how late it had gotten.”
His fingers tighten around my wrists. “I’m not angry.”
“I know.”
He looks toward the clock on the wall as though he cannot help himself. It reads 7:23.
“I knew there were reasonable explanations,” he says. “I told myself every one of them.” His gaze returns to me. “It didn’t matter.”
Something about the way he says it frightens me more than if he had yelled. There is no accusation in his voice. No demand that I explain myself better—only confusion. As if he does not understand what happened inside him any more than I do.
I slide my hands from his face to his shoulders. His body remains rigid beneath my palms.
“Come sit down,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking.”
His jaw tightens. “I said I’m fine.” The words are automatic, spoken in the firm, controlled tone he uses whenever someone gets too close to something he would rather not examine.
I do not let him retreat behind it.
“No, you aren’t.”
His eyes close for a second. The fight seems to leave him all at once, his shoulders dropping beneath my hands.
Behind us, Liana makes a small sound from the playpen.
Dean’s eyes open immediately. “I left her in there.”
“She’s okay.”
“I shouldn’t have put her down when I was—”
“She’s safe.”
I turn enough to look into the living room.
Liana is sitting among her toys, one soft block clutched in both hands. She watches us with wide, curious eyes, but shows no sign of distress.
I slip my fingers through Dean’s. “Come on.”
This time, he lets me lead him.
We move into the living room slowly, stepping around the shopping bags I abandoned near the front door. Red tissue paper lies scattered across the floor, and one of the gifts I bought for his father has fallen halfway out of its bag. The sight of it makes guilt cut through me again.
I was so pleased with myself when I left the last store.
I imagined coming home, showing Dean everything I’d bought, and eating dinner beside him while we laughed about how out of control I was.
Instead, I find the dinner untouched and the man I love barely holding himself together.
Dean lowers himself onto the edge of the sofa. I sit beside him, close enough that our thighs touch, but he leans forward immediately and braces his elbows on his knees.
His hands hang between them. They are still trembling.
He notices me looking and curls them into fists.
I place one hand over his back. The muscles beneath his sweater are tight enough to ache beneath my palm.
For several minutes, neither of us speaks.
The apartment settles around us. Christmas music continues playing at a low volume, absurdly cheerful against the silence. The tree lights blink red, gold, and white across the floor. Somewhere below us, a car horn sounds, followed by another.
Dean’s entire world seems to have shifted anyway.
I rub my hand slowly between his shoulder blades, trying to offer comfort without crowding him. I do not know what he needs. I am not even sure he knows.
Eventually, I ask the question that has been sitting in the back of my mind for weeks. “Why does this keep happening?”
His back stiffens beneath my palm.
I wish I could take the question back the moment it leaves me, not because I do not need the answer, but because I see how deeply it lands.
“I’m not asking because I’m angry,” I say quickly. “I just need to understand.”
Dean stares at the floor.
I continue, “This has happened more than once. When I didn’t answer running late with Liana. Tonight.”
I move my hand from his back to his arm, wrapping my fingers around his forearm. “You don’t just get worried. You panic.”
His throat moves as he swallows.
“Dean, what are you afraid is going to happen?”
For several seconds, I think he will refuse to answer.
He has that look again, the distant one he gets whenever he is searching for a way out of a conversation. His gaze drifts toward the windows. His jaw works once, then stills.
When he finally speaks, his voice is so quiet that I have to lean closer to hear him.
“Do you know how my mother died?”
I blink. The question catches me completely off guard.
“I know she died when you were a teenager.”
He nods once. “That’s all?”
“Yes.”
I think back through everything I have heard over the years.
Our families have known one another for as long as I can remember, but Dean’s mother died when I was so little.
By the time I was old enough to understand who she had been, her death belonged to the past. Something sad the adults never discussed in detail.
“No one ever told me how,” I say.
Dean lowers his head. “She was killed in a car accident.”
My heart sinks. “Oh, Dean.”
“She was coming home from work.”
The way he says it makes something cold move through me.
He does not sound like a thirty-four-year-old man telling me about an event that happened nineteen years ago. He sounds younger.
“She worked at a hospital,” he continues. “Most nights, she was home by six. Sometimes later, if she got held up, but she always called.”
His fingers uncurl slowly, only to clasp together a second later.
“That night, she didn’t.”
I stop rubbing his arm. Not because I want to, but because every part of me has gone still.
“Dad made dinner. I remember there was a casserole dish in the center of the table, and the top started drying out because it sat there so long.”
His gaze remains fixed on his hands.
“At first, neither of us was worried. She was twenty minutes late. Then thirty.” The words become more measured, as though he has to force each one past something closing in his throat.
His breathing changes. “Dad called the hospital. They told him she had left on time.”
I watch his hands begin to shake again.
“He called her cell. No answer. He called again. Then he started walking through the house.” Dean releases a breath that sounds almost like a laugh, except there is no humor in it.
“He kept pretending he was doing things. Checking dinner. Looking for something in a drawer. Going to the window.” His mouth tightens.
“But he was pacing.” Dean’s eyes close. “He walked from the kitchen to the front window and back again. Over and over.”
I can see it as he speaks.
A younger Dean sitting in a house filled with food that no one wants to eat. His father moving from room to room.
The empty driveway beyond the glass. Every set of approaching headlights offering hope for one second before passing.
“I asked if we should eat,” he says. “Dad told me no. He said she would be home soon.” His voice cracks on the final word.
I move closer without thinking. My knee presses against his, and I slide my hand down until our fingers meet. Dean grips mine so hard that it almost hurts.
“He kept calling her.” Each word is rougher now. “Every time it went to voicemail, he got more frantic. But he kept telling me it was probably traffic.”
Dean’s head lowers further.
“I believed him because he was my dad. He was supposed to know.”
My eyes burn as I picture Steven as I know him now—warm, patient, always ready with some quiet reassurance for his son—and then I imagine him younger, terrified, trying to hide it from a teenage boy.
“What happened?” I whisper, although I already know.
Dean’s entire body tightens. “The police came.”
The room seems to shrink around us. He is no longer looking at the floor. He is looking through it, his focus fixed on something far beyond the apartment.
“There were two of them. I remember one of them took off his hat before Dad opened the door.”
A shiver passes through Dean.
“I knew.” His grip on my hand turns desperate. “I knew before they said anything.”
I lift our joined hands and press them against my chest.
Dean does not seem to notice. “I remember thinking maybe she forgot her keys,” he says. “That’s what I thought when I heard the knock.”
A tear slips down my cheek. I do not wipe it away.
“But she didn’t forget her keys.” His chest rises sharply. “A drunk driver crossed the center line.” The words tear through him. “She died before they got her to the hospital.”
“Dean.”
I reach for him with my free hand, but he pulls away just enough to stand. The movement is sudden and unsteady.
He takes two steps toward the windows, then stops as though he forgot why he moved at all.
I remain on the couch for only a second before following him.
His back is to me as he braces his hands against the windowsill.
The city stretches endlessly below us, but I know he is not seeing any of it.