Chapter 43 #3
Once I got back to the hill, my phone started buzzing again.
The texts from her made me want to toss my phone into the gravel and run it over with my truck.
She wanted to talk it out, but I couldn’t listen to her explain why she didn’t choose me.
But then she calls me and keeps saying yet.
Asking if I’m just not ready to talk yet and I have to pull the phone away from my ear to regain my composure before I had to let her go. Let her leave.
One minute she was under my body with me buried inside of her, telling me she loved me. Then the next, she was going back to what she worked so hard to get away from.
Finding out Dollie was my grandmother was painful in its own right, but I had gained something with that revelation.
This? In an instant, I had lost the two best things that had ever happened to me.
My life hadn’t just tilted, it had been thrown on its back, the wind completely knocked from its lungs and left gasping for air, and sense, and well, Hannah.
There wasn’t, and would never be, anyone else for me, but I guess there was always going to be someone else for her.
For weeks I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t understand.
I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t answer her texts or calls.
I couldn’t let her explain that she didn’t love me enough to stay.
I knew it. I just couldn’t bear to hear the words from the same lips that kissed mine and confessed their love to me.
When she and Winnie came and found me at the farmer’s market, I almost begged her to stay.
Almost dropped to my knees at her feet and begged.
Winnie was wearing her Cubs shirt and Hannah was wearing an expression that broke my heart, but I couldn’t make sense of why.
She was the one leaving. Not me. She was the one who decided to go back after everything.
I gave her the flowers I had saved just in case she did show up. The goodbye flowers. The last thing I could give her, and I just prayed if she wouldn’t accept my love, then she could at least take these.
But later when Hannah’s panicked eyes landed on me from across the street, I needed to go to her.
“Where is she?” I asked Gwen when I ran over.
“Lauren? She—”
I shook my head. “No. Hannah. Is she okay? Where is she? She looked—”
“She went with Rhett and Lauren to the hospital. Lauren is bleeding.”
“Tanner is my mom’s boyfriend.” I heard Winnie’s little voice tell Jackie and everyone went quiet. Jackie, Mayben and Gwen, all stared at me. “And they make out.”
Fuck. I wish we still did.
“I’m going to her,” I told Gwen. “Are you guys okay with Winnie?”
“They’re going to Marnmouth.” Jackie called out after me as I was already striding away.
I found her alone in the waiting room with those damn flowers I gave her.
I contemplated whisking her away and tucking her back into my bed and telling Ethan to eat shit.
But instead of saying anything, I just pulled her back into her place in my arms. Her curves fitting into their places against my body.
We sat there together for hours, pretending like weren’t completely brokenhearted. Pretend like we were just two friends catching up after a few busy weeks. All the while, she had clung to those damn flowers, plucking at the petals and picking at the stems.
Once Rhett gave us the update, I drove Hannah home and I couldn’t sit in the same car with her for a second longer.
I couldn’t smell her perfume, or her hair.
I couldn’t see her hands resting in her lap and not pull them into mine.
My self-restraint was quickly dissipating, so I left her sitting there in her seat.
I found my mom, Taylor and Bailey finishing taking down the flower stand. Most of the other vendors were long gone, and from the look of it so were all of my flowers.
“How is she?” Mom asked.
I bobbed my head. “Good. Yeah, she’s okay. They’re keeping her for the night. Baby is okay.
“I have your dad at home making a casserole to drop off to them tomorrow,” she said. “But I meant Hannah. How is she? She looked rather devastated after that cold shoulder you gave her at the stand.”
My eyes darted from the empty flower buckets up to my mother who had that look in her eye. The one she would give me when I wasn’t giving her the whole truth.
“She’s fine.” I lied.
“So, things are over?”
I shrugged. “Just the one who got away, I guess.”
“Just?” Taylor scoffed, and I had almost forgotten he was still there. “I’ve known you for way too long man. And the look on her face when she came looking for you that night? Whatever you had wasn’t just anything.”
“Yeah, well. Just because someone is the love of your life, it doesn’t mean you’re theirs.”
Mom shook her head. “You had that girl in tears when you sent her away with those flowers. You’re an idiot if you think she doesn’t love you too.”
“I was an idiot to think I ever stood a chance.” I hefted the folding tables and sign and walked them to the bed of my truck.
When I opened my door, I found the carnations I gave her. The entire time she held them in the hospital, I wanted to take them back and throw them away. I didn’t want to say goodbye. I didn’t want my love to be unrequited. I just wanted her.
I stared at the yellow flowers and dragged the back of my hand across my cheek, catching the tears that fell. In a moment, I had picked them up tossed them as hard as I could at the inside of the windshield. The yellow petals seemed to explode against the glass.
My mom approached as I sat there staring at the crumpled remnants of the bouquet. She slid into the passenger seat and reached over for my hand like she always has.
“Tanner Irwin.” She sighed and rubbed her thumb across my knuckles. “What mess have you gotten your heart into?”
“I love her Momma,” I choked out. “I am so in love with her but she’s still going back to him.
After everything, I’m losing her. I’m losing Win and it’s actually killing me.
I can’t sleep. I haven’t shaved in weeks.
I haven’t washed my sheets because they smell like her.
It’s her, Mom. She’s the love of my life, but what if I’m not hers?
What if I have to go the rest of my life without her then have to watch her settle for a fraction of what she deserves from afar? ”
My mom sat with my words for a minute. Her hand never pausing or hesitating. Just steady and smooth movements against my scarred skin.
“I don’t know her the way you know her, but I do know a doleful woman when I see one.
She is grieving the loss of the life she thought she was signing up for.
Now, she’s here, seeing her sister get what she always dreamed of.
If Hannah is anything like me, and I think she is, she is trying to keep her head on her shoulders.
Keep it together for those she loves and she’s trying to do the right thing. Make the right choice.”
“And going back to him is the right choice? How can that be the right thing? How can a person who cheated on her for years be the right choice? How can she not see that she deserves so much more than what that man can give her. Hell, more than what I can even give her?”
“Because. She isn’t thinking about herself.
I have a feeling she’s never going to make the easy choice.
But she will make the choice she thinks is the safest, and sometimes what you know, feels like the safest option.
In fact, I think you know all about that.
You almost married yourself right into it if it weren’t for Riley being a conniving little bi—”
“Mom.”
“Right. Sorry. But I’m right. And you may need to look within yourself for some answers before you can blame Hannah for choosing what she knows.
” She brought my hand to her cheek for a moment, then kissed my knuckles.
“I don’t think it’s over yet for you two and if you give up on her now, then I’ll ground you into the next decade.
” She gave my cheek a few pats then slipped out of the truck.
After Rhett and Lauren’s rehearsal, I watched as Bailey Hamilton approached Hannah from across the diner and I knew that it wasn’t going to be good.
I tried to make it across the restaurant to intercept him, but I approach them right as Baily is telling her that I called her hot.
I smacked him upside the head, but he rubbed it with a smirk.
“I did not say hot,” I said. As If I would ever degrade her with such a simple word.
“Oh right. What did you say? The love of your life? The one that got away?”
For fuck’s sake. I would make sure he had extra shit to deal with on the farm on Monday. Literally.
I was nearly running out the door after Hannah, calling out to her when she whipped around with a look I have never seen on her before. And she ripped me a new one. She was heartbroken and confused and hurt and I wanted to squeeze her. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted her.
“You’re the one leaving, Hannah!” My voice was unrecognizable to both of us.
“And look how hard you’re fighting me on that.” She shook her head as tears brimmed her eyes. “I’m not pregnant by the way. So, you’re in the clear. You’re getting the clean break you wanted.”
Suddenly my vision had zoomed in, seeing her in crystal clear flashes before it retreated, leaving her blurry and driving away. She wasn’t pregnant, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, she wasn’t pregnant and I couldn’t move.
“Tan.” Rhett clapped me on my back, and I think the hit restarted my heart. I blinked at the now empty road then at my childhood best friend. “You alright man?”
I shook my head, unable to speak. But what words were there. She wasn’t pregnant and my heart was shattered.