Me: Oh my God, I love it! Hope y’all are having fun. Give my kids big hugs and kisses for me. I’ll FaceTime them in the morning.
Setting my phone face down on the nightstand, I stood and started through the house that somehow felt so big and so empty now that I was really alone—without kids coming back after a few hours at school or a husband coming back after work.
And who knew when he would.
He’d said he was moving out that night, but that was before he knew the kids were leaving with my parents. We also hadn’t talked about what this week would look like for us with the kids being gone.
But I’d still expected him to show.
Or maybe hoped he would while desperately needing him to stay away from me. I wasn’t sure. I’d been a mess.
But my world had fallen apart, and I’d vainly tried to keep it from my kids. To have small breakdowns in the moments the older two were at school or they were all asleep. Then to realize another was on the way? Something that should’ve been celebrated but instead needed to be kept hidden during the most damaging time of my life. Add on a completely booked bed and breakfast just as I let Beau back into our lives, and it was no wonder I’d been such a disaster.
My steps slowed as I neared the bottom of the stairs when I realized the house looked the way it always did at this time of evening—just as the sun was going past the horizon. The lights in the house were on even though the thick-slatted blinds were still open to let in every last bit of natural light.
Except I’d gone upstairs hours before, and the lights had all been off.
And the music had still been playing . . .
I forced myself to walk slowly toward the kitchen when my soul wanted to run and my heart wanted to guard itself against the man waiting somewhere in that house.
But when I stepped through the archway, Beau wasn’t there.
My eyes swept the kitchen as I continued through it, falling on his keys and urging my feet faster until I came to an abrupt stop just as I started rounding the corner into the great room.
Soul reaching out faster than my heart could build up walls when I saw him lying in the spot we used to occupy when we were still creating our dreams, long before we ever owned the house. Arms folded tightly over his chest and looking so tense, even in sleep.
My stare pulled to the side when his phone vibrated on the hardwood floor, his screen lighting up with one of his assistant coach’s names.
I hurried across the floor, trying to keep my steps silent, and bent to scoop up the phone before tiptoeing back to my spot where the great room bled into the kitchen as I answered, “Hey, Kevin.”
Silence filled the call for a moment before he hesitantly asked, “Who is this?”
My brows pulled tightly together as I glanced at the screen of the phone to make sure I’d seen the correct name. “Savannah,” I said slowly. “I’ve known you since I taught your daughters’ dance classes.”
“Right, of course,” he mumbled, clearing his throat.
“Beau fell asleep,” I said when he didn’t go on, feeling awkward and embarrassed, and not sure why. “But I’ll give him a message for you.”
“No,” he said quickly. “It can wait ’til I see him tomorrow. You have a good night now.”
“You su—” I lowered the phone when the background noise of the call abruptly disappeared, trying to figure out what happened and why he’d been acting so strange.
As soon as I started my silent walk back to Beau, I looked up to find those midnight eyes open and locked on me.
“Hi,” I said lamely, the word nothing more than a breath. “Your phone was ringing—it was Kevin.”
He lifted his chin in acknowledgment, his voice all gravel when he asked, “What’d he say?”
“Nothing. Well, I’m not sure . . . it was weird. He said it could wait until tomorrow.”
Beau sat up and dragged a hand through his hair and then roughed a palm over his jaw before resting his forearms on his knees. Every movement slow and very clearly a tell that he was gathering his strength.
“We need to talk,” he finally said.
My head nodded, these fast, faint movements. “I know.”
His stare lifted to meet mine and his head shifted. The movement was so subtle, but it shouted that I was wrong in that way of his. Everything so big and commanding with the smallest of movements.
“We need to talk,” he repeated as he pushed to his feet. “Where do you wanna be?”
Nowhere.
With the way he was looking at me and preparing himself, I had a horrible feeling that my world was about to be ripped apart again. And I’d just managed to get to a point where I felt ready to work through what I already knew. I wasn’t sure I could handle something else on top of it all.
“Savannah,” he urged gently.
“I don’t, um . . .” I shook my head fiercely and forced myself to straighten. To stand tall and strong for at least a little while.
Or at least pretend.
I could go back to my imploded world later.
Turning, I headed for the large kitchen table and sat in my favorite chair, letting those walls build faster and faster as I struggled to hide every pain and fear behind them.
Beau stopped behind one of the chairs, hand on the back of it, and hesitated before pulling it out. “Do you want coffee or anything?”
“No, I’d rather you just say whatever you’re clearly afraid to tell me.”
He sank into the chair, his breath coming out in a giant rush as he folded his arms only to unfold them. Dragging his hands over his legs and clasping them together as he leaned forward.
Everything so telling and so contradictory.
The way he was working his jaw and the panic in his eyes. His restless movements. It was all anger and fear clashing together, and it had a pit of unease opening up in my stomach as I waited for what I would find out next.
“It’s going around town that I’m cheating on you,” he said after a moment, something like wrath flashing through his terror. “Currently.”
“With Madison?” I asked through clenched teeth, unable to relax my body as I waited for the shoe to drop.
He gave another slant of his head. “Stephanie Webb.”
It felt like I shut down after that.
I heard Beau explain what happened that afternoon with him, Stephanie, and Kevin, and how it escalated with the school. I heard him describe the scene at Hunter’s, and Emberly’s side of the story. The nonstop calls and texts he’d been getting. I even vaguely registered it was the cause of all the messages waiting for me when I woke up. But I just couldn’t connect to him or what he was saying or anything really because I felt numb.
If it was a delayed reaction to Emberly’s no-moving exercise, I didn’t appreciate it. If it was a result of my world imploding, I hated it. Or maybe it was just that I really couldn’t handle any more.
“Savannah.” Beau’s voice twisted around my name when I stood and began walking away, but I just held up a hand, needing to get away from there.
To think.
Breathe.
“I need a minute.”
I wandered through the house, feeling as if I didn’t know where I was going and like I didn’t want to be there. Like I needed to get away. But leaving the house when that kind of gossip was spreading through town would only fuel it.
When Beau found me a while later, I was in our bathroom, curled up in the dry tub, still wearing nothing more than his shirt. It hadn’t occurred to me until right then that I probably should’ve put something else on.
And the thought of covering up in front of him at all tore at my chest because I’d never felt exposed in front of Beau before then.
He stopped at the end of our long vanity and leaned up against it so he was facing me. Arms folded loosely over his chest and long legs stretched out in front of him. A picture so familiar that it made me ache.
We’d had so many conversations there, just like that, after a long
day once the kids were asleep.
Me, soaking in the tub. Him, sitting beside it or leaning against the counter. Making my heart race and looking like my version of a dream even still, all these years later.
All that unyielding passion hidden behind clenched fists and intense looks. The rough laughs, rare smiles, and flashing dimples that were reserved for me. All wrapped up in the deepest blue eyes and jet-black hair and a toned body that promised comfort and security and threatened the cruelest revenges.
But this was different.
The silence that had followed Beau into the bathroom was filled with pain and regret and unknowns. The unstable connection between us was something we’d never encountered before. From the raw fear in his eyes, he was afraid of making the wrong move.
“Are you?” I finally asked a couple minutes after he joined me. When a crease formed between his brows, I clarified, “Having an affair with Stephanie—”
“Is that a joke?” he asked, words soft and filled with offense. “Savannah, you’re my goddamn world. No, I’m not cheating on you.”
“Have you?”
“No.” His head listed and his jaw strained as if realizing he’d answered too soon. “Other than that one night with Madison—which I can barely remember—no.”
I twisted in the tub to better face him, mind racing as I thought back to what Hunter had told me and tried to put it with what Beau was saying. “So, you did know it was Madison that night.”
“No,” he said firmly. “I remember tripping onto the bed you were in. I remember struggling to even get to a point where you and I were doing anything because we were that wasted. I remember repeatedly blacking out before my body basically gave the fuck out. Then you said you were gonna be sick.” He gestured off to the side. “The next morning, that was what I remembered: You had gotten sick. The only way I figured out it was Madison and not you was because you’d apparently been downstairs the entire night while Madison was upstairs, and she’d been convinced Hunter had come to bed when he hadn’t.”
My head dipped slowly as his story painted the missing side of Madison’s.
And it made my stomach lurch as it filled my head with images of them all over again.
“Even if there’d never been you,” he began softly, “I would’ve never done that to my brother. But you? Fuck, Savannah, I was dying after that. It ruined us.”
My stare snapped to his, confusion swirling through me as I pushed past the images clawing at my mind in an attempt to understand what he was saying. “What do you mean?”
“The months after. When you thought I didn’t want you, or something.”
My eyes widened with surprise and shock. “What?”
“The night of their graduation,” he explained, watching me like he was waiting for me to remember. “There was a party at my parents’ house. I was up in my room, and you came to find me. You said I’d been different. You thought you weren’t my world anymore—thought I didn’t want you. That I only wanted you to continue taking away my anger.”
I blinked slowly as I struggled to remember what he was talking about, a whisper of a memory coming to the surface. “I don’t . . .” My head shook. “I don’t remember that. I mean, I sort of do. I remember that conversation now that you say it, but at the same time, I don’t.”
Beau gave me a look like he couldn’t figure out how I didn’t remember. “I’d been crumpling under what happened that night with Madison, and you knew it even though you didn’t know why. I thought—Jesus, Savannah, I thought I was gonna lose you that night, and I just knew I couldn’t keep going on like that. I’d gone downstairs to get us something to eat, and Madison was right there. Alone. So, I pulled her into a room and told her that I was gonna tell you what happened.”
“And that’s when she said she’d leave,” I whispered in understanding.
“It’s one of the biggest mistakes of my life,” he said in agreement nearly a minute later, words soft and full of shame. “I knew it was a mistake when I got back up to the room and saw you.” His stare fell to the floor, his head shaking subtly. “When I woke up the next morning, I knew I needed to call her and stop her from leaving. And that’s when my mom came charging in.”
I sucked in a quick gasp and murmured, “Oh, I do remember that.”
“She didn’t leave my side the entire morning, making me clean up the house for having you in my room. I missed Madison coming and talking to Hunter, and when I got to my phone, she’d already disconnected that number. But, Savannah, I tried to get her back. For you, for Hunter . . . I tried.”
My eyes rolled. “Beau, she just came back, so I remember exactly how pissed off you were when she did. I remember how rude you were to her.”
“Because she came back now,” he said roughly. “Thirteen years later, when just her being here threatened us.” He gestured to the space between us as if to prove his fears had already become a reality. “But when she first left and reached out to you, I was the one who kept suggesting you should tell Hunter where she was. I was the one who helped him get out there when he ran out of money because I was sure he could bring her back. And when he didn’t, I had to go through the terrifying process of getting her new number out of your phone while you were asleep in my arms. But when I called the next day, she’d already disconnected that number too. I still called her every month for two years like she might suddenly answer one day. I tried to bring her back for you,” he ground out. “I tried to get all this shit off my chest for so goddamn long.”
Memories swirled and clashed with what he was telling me and what I’d learned these past weeks and months.
I didn’t remember Beau’s part in it, but I didn’t doubt it.
Beau had never left my side during that time. Beau had never left my side ever.
I watched as he struggled to rein it all in. As his body trembled and a half-dozen emotions ripped across his face.
Even though he seemed to be surrounded in his fear, his shoulders were more at ease than they’d been before. As if finally saying the words had lifted a thirteen-year-old weight.
“Why two years?” I asked, caught on those last few sentences. “Not that I knew you were calling her, but what made you stop after two years?”
“You,” he said immediately. “I was still destroying us, just slower than before, and I knew it was because there was so much I was keeping from you. Because I was the reason you’d been a shell of yourself for years.” One of his shoulders lifted. “The day you told me I had to stop fighting, I called her and got the same automated message. But I knew if I didn’t let go of it all, I was gonna keep dragging us down, so I texted her even though I knew she wouldn’t get it. Told her how I was ruining us and that I hated her for leaving and what her leaving did to me. That we should’ve told y’all back then because there was no way to tell you when years had already passed. That I hoped she never came back.” His stare found mine. “But then when I woke up that night in the back and found you asleep beside me, I did tell you. I told you everything because I needed to say it once, even if you didn’t hear it.”
Oh.
I wondered what would’ve happened if I’d woken to his confession that night. If we would be here now, married. Or if we’d be living different lives, separate and miserable.
And I realized at the thought that I believed him. Every word.
I’d always known since I was a little girl that Beau would give me the truth, no matter what. And even knowing the secrets and deception he’d kept for so long, I could hear the honesty in his painful admission.
“I’ve been wondering what else I didn’t know—what else you’ve hidden from me over the years.”
“Nothing.” The word was nothing less than a vow as it scraped up his throat.
“I’ve felt so stupid and naïve and wondered how I could’ve been so blind. Wondered if I knew you at all. But you’re explaining it in ways like I’d known without knowing what was happening.”
“You did,” he said,
the two words sounding heavy. “Savannah, there were times I thought I was gonna lose you because of what I was doing to us. Like when you got wasted and kept saying everything about our wedding was wrong, and I spent the entire night in a holding cell, wondering if we were even getting married anymore.”
“When—oh,” I mumbled as everything started clicking into place. “Your last fight.” I pointed toward the open doorway. “Before the other week.”
“Right.”
I thought for a while, trying to figure out the best way to describe something I wasn’t sure I fully understood.
“I don’t remember those times,” I finally said. “But at the same time, I remember pieces now that you’re telling me. I think it might be in part to how emotionally heavy those nights and mornings were . . . Madison leaving and waiting for you to figure out if you could control your anger . . . but I also know that isn’t it. Or, not all of it anyway,” I added with a little shrug.
“Beau, if you told me I was wrong—that you did want me, that I was still your world—then I believed that. I took a day to process what had been happening and my worries, replaced them with the truths you’d told me, and I let it go,” I said, lifting one of my hands before letting it fall because it’d always been as simple as that with him. “I mean, I can hold on to things and keep grudges, you know that. Philip Rowe is a prime example. But not with you.
“The only reason I’ve remembered or held on to the fact that if you fought again, we would be over, was because it was a stand I made for me and our future and because you continued to make that promise to me throughout our marriage. But I didn’t even remember the events leading up to it, only that you’d gotten to a point where I felt like I couldn’t stop you anymore. And up until a few minutes ago, I’ve thought that this”—I gestured between us—“was the first time something had come between us. Which is stupid,” I whispered, rolling my eyes as I rambled on. “Of course something would’ve come between us before now because we’ve been together forever. People don’t have perfect relationships. But I don’t linger on the imperfections.” I pressed a hand to my chest. “I truly move on from whatever it is, Beau. Always. And maybe that’s why I’m so afraid now because I don’t know how to do that with what’s happened.”
Fire Page 31
