Chapter 34
Karan
Istand statued in the snow, knuckles bruised from banging on the car window, throat hoarse from the panicked shouting, and the only thing roaring in my mind is that I have no idea what the fuck just happened.
When I turn to face the cabin, the faces of my family stare back at me through the large glass window overlooking the sea and the mountains.
Have they seen everything?
I head back inside in a daze, my scrambled brain unable to process what has happened.
Why am I not panicking? Why am I so calm as I come back inside? How am I not completely falling apart at the seams?
“Beta,” my father says as he greets me when I walk back inside.
Everyone else—my uncle, my aunts, my cousins, my mother, and even my sons—stays at a distance, waiting to see how I’m going to react. Identical looks of worries paint all of their faces, except my boys, who seem completely lost.
Oh, how I’ve failed them.
“Are you all right?” my father asks, placing himself right in front of me so that I can’t move forward in my continued daze.
“No.” The word comes out without emotion.
“Come here, Beta.” Dad clasps my shoulder with one hand and ushers me forward. “Martine, watch the boys for a minute, why don’t you?”
“Of course,” my mother utters in a voice that nearly breaks.
I let Dad direct me up the stairs without a single argument. When he gives my shoulder a light press to sit me down on my bed, I follow along and stare at the hardwood floor below me.
“What happened out there?” Dad asks once he takes a seat next to me, his gaze burning a hole through me, the weight of his expectation bearing down on me like a mountain.
I don’t answer. My mind swirls like a storm.
Rachel.
I am not losing my Rachel.
I can’t say it out loud. Can’t manifest it into reality.
“Karan. Talk to me, Beta.”
I know my father is rubbing my back and shoulder, but I can hardly feel it. It’s only a superficial sensation, like I’m outside my body looking in.
I can still talk to her. Of course I can. There’s no way this tiny mistake—as much as I realize it may have hurt her—is going to sign the death warrant of everything we are.
I vehemently refuse.
“Karan. Come on. I only want to help.” I’ve never heard my father sound so dejected, so desperate. “We all know something’s wrong between you and Rachel. If it wasn’t obvious in the way she was cold to you before Christmas, it became a near certainty when the two of you went to that getaway.”
“Maybe we only wanted some time away from all of his,” I finally say, gesturing all around us.
“You don’t mean that. You love your family.”
Instant guilt claws at my throat.
“I do, Dad.”
“So, it was more than just a lover’s getaway.”
I pause, my hands beginning to tremble as panic continues choking me.
“I can’t lose her, Dad.”
I still haven’t spoken the truth out loud. Haven’t admitted how deep this goes. It’s still not too late for me to fight for her.
Dad sighs, a deep, full-body breath that seems to rattle him. “You know that no matter what happens, we’ll all be here for you, right?”
He wraps an arm around my shoulders—or, at least, he tries to, but struggles to reach all the way around due to my sheer size. Mom always said I got my height and build from her father.
“Maybe I don’t tell you enough, but I love you, Karan. And you have to believe me when I say that your mother and I love Rachel with all of our hearts. If something goes wrong, we’ll be heartbroken—maybe not as much as you, of course not—but still heartbroken. But…”
He peers into me, the strength of his gaze forcing me to look into his hazel eyes.
“No matter what, you’ll always be our son. There’s nothing more important to us than you, Karan. And so we’ll always be on your side. You won’t ever be alone.”
My chest caves in. I slam right back into my body and immediately wish I hadn’t. My heart is going a thousand miles an hour, ramming against my sternum like it wants out completely. Nausea has taken hold of my stomach, and my limbs feel weakened, impotent.
Everything hurts, and all I want to do is collapse in on myself, but I can’t.
Something about what my father said just doesn’t sit quite right with me.
There’s nothing more important to us than you, Karan.
What son wouldn’t be overjoyed to hear something like that? Who wouldn’t feel validated and cherished?
Apparently me, because all it does is send me into a complete spiral.
All my life, my father has drilled into me that I must cherish my parents above all else, and I’ve done it for years. Decades. Never complaining, always answering when they called.
It was easier for me to complete my duties from afar when we lived six hours away. Only when they moved closer did I realize the price I paid to truly live up to that expectation.
I’m expected to put them first. Yet, as their son, they put me first.
It’s not adding up.
Because who, then, will put my sons first?
The answer comes as clear as day in my brain:
Rachel.
But that’s not enough. Though I don’t doubt the potency of Rachel’s love and care, having been the recipient of that myself for fourteen years, they deserve so much more. They deserve for their father to put them first, too.
Maybe, just maybe, I should have thought of them and put them first, instead of constantly chasing whatever vision and wishes my parents held for my career.
The excuse I keep using seems laughable from where I’m standing, Rachel’s fury making sense to me in a way it never really has before.
Everything I’ve claimed to do to make my sons’ futures better has been nothing but a thin veil for my own feelings of inadequacy, fed by the pressures my parents have been placing on my back.
But I was ready to change it all. I was ready to step down at work and only work my regular hours. I was ready to make an effort and finally put Rachel and the boys first.
I was fucking ready.
There’s no way this single misstep is going to cost me my wife. Not when I finally see more clearly than I ever have before.
I won’t allow it.
A bone-deep wave of exhaustion sweeps through my body at all of the realizations lighting up in my head at the same time. Suddenly, staying awake becomes unbearable.
I take a short instant to weigh my options. I can’t really run after Rachel, no matter how much I want to. Although I could borrow a car from someone in my family, I have no way of knowing where she’s headed.
The only thing I do know is that she has to come back. If not for me, for Cayce and Corey. No matter how angry she is at me, she’s not going to simply abandon them with me and escape.
My other option is to rest and hope that by the time she comes back, I’m in fighting order. Because I am not going down without a fight.
“I’m going to nap, if that’s okay,” I tell my father, scooting a few inches away from him to make it clear that this conversation is over. “I’m so exhausted I can’t think straight.”
“Of course.” The corners of his lips lift in a small, worried smile as he stands. “Take the time you need, Beta. We’ll be downstairs when you’re ready.”
I nod in understanding, then let myself fall against my pillow.
The sleep may be restful to my body, but it certainly isn’t restful to my mind. I’m pushed and pulled through a series of nightmares that torment my already fragile mind.
I can’t hang on to the details of these dreams before they slip from my fingers and move on to another dream. All I can recall is constantly seeing Rachel look up at me with all that burning hurt and anger in her eyes.
That look stabs me like a knife, over and over again…
Until I’m ripped from my slumber by a piercing scream.