Chapter 7 #2
Such a simple phrase, but it landed like a lead balloon. Life was too short—Levi had proven that. Too short for what, though? For second chances? For forgiveness? For admitting that waking up in Teddy’s arms was the first time I’d felt whole in two years?
“You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it,” she continued, like a shark who’d scented blood in the water. “All those years together, three beautiful children who would love nothing more than to see their parents—”
“Two,” I corrected quietly, the word catching in my throat. “We have two children.”
The line went silent for a heartbeat too long. The kind of quiet that came when people realized they’d stepped on the landmine everyone else was tiptoeing around.
“Oh, honey.” Her voice cracked. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” I said softly, gripping the counter edge until my knuckles went white.
Because if I let her apologize, if I let her say his name, I’d lose it.
And falling apart over the phone with my former mother-in-law while standing in my ex-husband’s cabin and wearing his clothes was not on my Christmas bingo card. “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t. Nothing about it was okay. Not the way grief could still ambush me in the middle of a perfectly normal conversation. Not the way everyone—including me—kept forgetting to subtract one when counting our children.
But that was the script we all followed now—pretending the wound had healed when really, we’d just gotten better at not acknowledging the gaping hole in our family.
“We just want you both to be happy,” Paul rumbled, clearly trying to rescue his wife from the conversational quicksand she’d stepped into. “Both of you. That’s all we’ve ever wanted.”
Happy.
Such a simple word for such a complicated thing.
I’d forgotten what it even looked like, let alone how to achieve it.
Was I happy all alone in our old house in Lubbock with its brand-new furniture and rooms I couldn’t walk into?
Was Teddy happy in his empty cabin with its half-decorated Christmas tree and bare walls?
I pressed my free hand to my sternum, trying to ease the ache that had taken up permanent residence there.
“I should probably go check on Teddy,” I lied, desperate to end the conversation before it veered into territory I couldn’t navigate.
“Make sure he hasn’t gotten himself buried in a snowdrift. ”
Paul cleared his throat. “That boy never stopped loving you, Kelsey. Not for a goddamn minute. Don’t give up on him.”
The tattoo on his chest begged to differ, but I wasn’t about to drop that bombshell on them.
“And we love you,” Lucy fervently added. “Always have, always will. You’re family, baby girl. No matter what.”
My throat closed completely. I managed something that might have been “love you too” before ending the call with a shaky exhale.
They still considered me family. After everything—after I’d failed to keep their son happy, failed to save their grandson, failed at the one job that had ever truly mattered to me—they still claimed me as theirs.
Lucy was wrong about one thing, though. I’d gotten very good at being alone. I’d had years of practice. What I wasn’t good at was being around my ex-husband without wanting things I couldn’t have. Remembering things I needed to forget. Feeling things I had no business feeling.
I stared at the mug on the counter. “World’s Okayest Hunter.” Not world’s best, not world’s worst. Just okayest. If that wasn’t a metaphor for where we were now, I didn’t know what was.
Snow had begun to fall again, the fat flakes adding to the apocalyptic accumulation from last night. The drive hadn’t been shoveled, which meant that Teddy had likely walked to wherever he’d gone.
An image of the tattoo on his chest flashed through my mind, and anger trickled in, replacing the hurt.
I’d practically thrown myself at him last night, and he’d responded by tucking me in like a child and disappearing as soon as the sun was up.
Message received, loud and clear.
I thought of the name tattooed on his chest, wondering if he was with the mysterious H. The thought of him walking through waist-deep drifts to spend a lazy morning in bed with his girlfriend sent anger flooding through my veins.
I needed to keep my brain occupied, or the next stop was either doomscrolling social media for signs of another woman or dissolving into a puddle of tears on his couch for believing, even for a second, that he would be any different now than when we split.
But busy was my superpower. Busy had gotten me through the aftermath, the funerals, the empty rooms. Busy could handle a storm and an empty house and an ex-husband who might have been screwing his way through Summit Ridge or—at the very least—ghosting me while he figured out what to do with the emotional Chernobyl I’d left on his couch last night.
So, I started cleaning.
Not because it needed doing—Teddy’s cabin was nearly sterile, a minimalist’s wet dream—but because I needed something to control.
Our clothes from yesterday sat in a damp heap near the fireplace where he’d left them.
I doused my bloody, dry-clean-only sweater with hydrogen peroxide and hoped for the best, while the rest of our things went into the wash.
The machine hummed to life, and I escaped back to the kitchen before I started crying over the sight of his jeans tumbling around the washer with mine again.
After washing the three measly dishes in the sink, I decided the situation called for breakfast casserole. Because nothing said “I’m completely fine with you leaving me all alone after the most confusing night of my post-divorce life” like pork sausage and enough cheese to clog some arteries.
I pulled the carton of eggs from the fridge, the overpriced organic ones I’d risked my life for, along with some bell peppers, sausage, and cheese. I moved through the motions without conscious thoughts, having made the casserole so many times that I could probably do it in a coma.
It was Teddy’s favorite, the one he requested every Christmas morning until it became tradition.
Even that last horrible Christmas, when we could barely look at each other across the table, I’d made it.
Addie had eaten two servings while staring blankly at the empty chair.
Sky had pushed hers around her plate and rattled on about her classes, pretending everything was normal.
And Teddy and I had choked down every bite in complete and utter silence.
Now here I was, making it again in his kitchen, wearing his shirt. And he was, as usual, gone.
The definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. By that measure, I should have been committed years ago.
The casserole went into the oven, with the timer set for fifty minutes. Fifty minutes to figure out what the hell I was doing, why I was still in my ex-husband’s cabin, why his mother’s words kept echoing in my head.
People who love each other the way you two do find their way back.
Except sometimes love wasn’t enough. Sometimes love was the heaviest thing you carried, the weight that pulled you beneath the surface when you were already treading water.
We’d loved each other through fertility treatments and pregnancies, through sleepless nights and teenage rebellions, through a thousand small disasters and one enormous one.
But that last one had broken something fundamental, turned love into something that hurt to look at directly.
I wiped down counters that didn’t need it, arranged dish towels that were already perfectly hung.
This was what I did now—played at being useful, at being needed, even when no one was asking.
It was easier than admitting that I didn’t know who I was when I wasn’t taking care of someone.
Two years of therapy, and I still couldn’t quite figure out how to exist without defaulting to caretaker mode.
The washing machine buzzed, and I transferred everything to the dryer before catching sight of my reflection in the tempered glass on his gun cabinet.
I looked like something from some post-apocalyptic TV series—bandaged head, tangled hair, wearing a shirt that was too big. I needed a shower. Needed to wash off the accident, the night, the lingering feeling of his arms around me. Needed to stop playing house in a life that wasn’t mine anymore.