Broken Open

by Lauren Dane

  “Perfect.” Di smiled Nat’s way. “Their mother did a good job teaching them manners.”

  Nat nodded. “She did. There are two more—they’re equally polite.”

  Tuesday got behind the drums and sat on a stool she’d had since she was fourteen or so and gave a few practice runs. That’s when she looked up to find Ezra watching her.

  Even in her parents’ garage, jamming to make her mom happy, he was a rock star. It was like something happened to him when he slung a guitar on.

  Paddy winked her way, grinning and already having a good time.

  Di got herself behind her mic. “Let’s hope the neighbors don’t call the cops.” She nearly giggled and Tuesday was so glad Ezra was there.

  “It’s not rock and roll if they don’t,” Ezra said seriously and then grinned at Di, who liked that attention a whole lot.

  “You’re very right. Do you all know ‘Hold On’?”

  “Yes. Boys and Girls is one of my favorite albums.” Ezra turned to Tuesday. “You know it?”

  She nodded.

  “Count us in then, beauty.” One corner of his mouth hitched up and she ducked her head.

  Tuesday started the drumbeat and then Ezra followed with those first guitar notes and her father’s bass line came in as her mother started singing.

  Her niece and nephews danced around and her brothers teased her a little when their mother wasn’t looking. They’d got out of the jam session and she’d never hear the end of that.

  But it was fun, playing music with Ezra and Paddy and her parents, too. The drum parts were easy enough for her to play and not sound too terrible. Her mother had a great singing voice and she loved being the center of attention. Ezra and Paddy both flirted with her just right and Tuesday loved them both for it.

  By the time they’d finished the song she’d been glad they’d done it. Her mother was glowing and because she was, her father was mellow.

  They managed to escape just before midnight after hugs and promises to be back for breakfast in the morning before they headed back home to Hood River.

  * * *

  “WHAT WAS HE LIKE?” Ezra asked from his place next to her in bed. She knew he meant Eric.

  “He was tall and lean. Easygoing. Everyone liked him. He had absolutely no rhythm and hated fried food. Who hates fried food?” She laughed.

  “Did you know you loved him right away?”

  “I’ve thought about this a lot. So much that to be totally honest I’m not entirely sure at this point if I’m remembering right. I liked what I saw and things were very intense very fast. All of college was like that. There was so much happening all the time.”

  “But you married him right after graduation so you must have been in love by that point.”

  “Yes, absolutely. We had our bumps and fits and starts, but we had a future, a direction. We shared the same values. Had similar goals.”

  “Why are you changing your name then?”

  She sucked in a breath. “Well, it all started when I found out about his affair just a few months out from our wedding.”

  She told him about finding the letter and confronting Eric about it. About the affair and getting past it.

  “So like a month before the wedding I said I wanted a new start and a new name. I’d been planning on keeping Easton, but I suggested we combine our names and make a new one. Eastwood was born and it has fit me a long time.”

  “Not anymore?”

  “Back when I took on Eastwood as a name, I did it for a new start. A clean slate. Taking good energy and using it to start on the next leg of my journey. I feel like it’s the same right now. I’m not Eric’s wife anymore. I’m choosing to close a door on an important chapter in my life that is closed. Taking Easton again feels like a new coat of paint in some ways.”

  “All right. That makes sense.”

  “What brought that on?”

  “A picture of you two on the wall at your parents’ house. You were a beautiful bride.”

  “Thanks. I totally was.”

  They both laughed.

  “I’m sorry he cheated on you.”

  “Me, too. But he was twenty years old when that happened. Fourteen years ago now. He stuck his dick in someone else and that sucked. But he didn’t love her. I could tell from the letter and then how he reacted. At that time I could get past something that had happened two years before and that as much as I could parcel out, had never happened again. If he’d have felt something for her things would have been different.”

  “You never regretted giving him a second chance?”

  “The morning of the day he died I’d slept at the hospice. He’d been increasingly weak. They’d given up by that point. We knew it was coming. I remember it felt like trying to hold water in my palm. His life ran out between my fingers and there was nothing I could do. He was weak and refusing to eat but since they’d shifted to more of a comfort-the-end-of-life reaction instead of working to cure, they hadn’t pushed. So he was weak and I had to accept he was dying when five months before that we’d talked about trying to get pregnant. And I looked at him in the bed, a shell of the healthy, vibrant man he was. He turned to me and he said I had been the best memory of his life and that being married to me was something that carried him past the pain to accept death. He’d had me, and love, while he was alive and he’d take the memory of that into whatever was next.

  “No matter what, that moment, knowing I’d given him some comfort at the very end means I’ll never regret that second chance. Because if it made him less afraid to let go and discard a body that brought him only pain, it was worth it. That’s what love is, Ezra.” She said the last bit through tears as the memories hit her again. But it was different with the telling this time. It hurt less and she believed it when she said to Ezra that she didn’t regret that second chance.

  “People make mistakes. They can be stupid and thoughtless and yet you can love them anyway. Because being human means making mistakes. And being in love means maybe sometimes you can forgive something utterly unforgivable.”

  He pulled her close. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  She hugged him. “It’s okay. I can look back and not have any regrets. If you get sick and don’t go to the doctor, though, prepare for a full-stage freak-out. I am hard-core serious about that. Also, if you fucked some rando, I’d burn your house to the ground. After I made sure your animals were safe, of course. Just so you understand where you and I are.”

  “So you’d give me less of a chance?”

  “I don’t think I could get past the idea of you with anyone else now that you’ve been mine.” Which filled her with guilt. “You think you could just write it off if I slept with someone else?”

  He rolled on top of her. “But you could with him?”

  “He was different. I was different. I couldn’t get the image out of my head. You’re mine, Ezra. And if you can’t promise that you won’t be fucking other people, we can’t be together. And if I slept with someone else? Hmm?”

  He kissed her so hard she forgot what they’d been talking about for a few minutes.

  “You’re mine, Tuesday. I don’t share. Neither do I have any inclination to seek any other bed but the one I’m in right now.”

  It had been the most definitive declaration he’d ever given her. He branded her with it.

  Claimed her.

  He kissed her again. Slow. Teasing. “I’m a shitty bet—you know that, right?”

  She snorted. “Stop. Are you hinting that you need a compliment? Do you need me to say how much I think about you on a daily basis?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “I think about you all day long. I think about you in the morning when I wake up. I’m in bed and you’re not there. I wonder what you’re doing. Think about you in your boxer shorts as you move around your house. You’re talking to the cats because they’re bouncing off the walls that you’re finally awake and paying attention to them after daring to be unconscious for eig
ht hours. Later, as I get to work, I think about you on horseback. You look really good in the saddle. All super at ease on a giant animal you ride over your lands. In my fantasies I might Viking you up a little, but just go with me here.”

  He laughed. “A Viking?”

  “Yes. You’re so big and brawny. And you definitely know your pillaging and conquering.”

  He leaned down to nip her bottom lip.

  “Sorry, that Viking thing was a total tangent. Maybe we can revisit it at some point in the future. Like say, while you’re dressed as a Viking. We can work out the details later on.”

  “Roger that. Will you dress as a wench?”

  God, he made her happy. Just so full of happy it felt as if she might burst. “Is that your thing?”

  “I might have entertained the vision of you in a white shirt, shoulders bared, cleavage high, serving me things. Maybe.”

  She laughed, hugging him.

  “What did you do? Before me?” he asked.

  She could have played coy and asked him what he meant. But she knew. “When Eric died I sort of...I don’t know...it was like parts of me froze or withered away. It took me three years before I could even entertain the idea of having sex again. It came back eventually.”

  She loved sex and once that need had come back, she’d eventually allowed it into her life. So casual dating to get to decent sex for a few weeks before she broke things off and moved on. Four or six months later she’d do it again.

  “Mainly I’d see someone for a few weeks. We’d meet in hotels, have sex. I’d shower at my gym and go home. After a while it petered out and we both moved on. I never fucked in anyone’s house. I never learned their kids’ names or what their favorite color was. It took nearly five years before I could consider having real feelings for anyone again.”

  That hung between them awhile.

  Then he brushed his lips over hers. Over each one of her closed eyelids.

  “Mmm. Do you know what it does to me that you respond so openly and honestly?” He kissed along her jaw. “You tear me apart just by being you.”

  There was something magical about that moment. So much energy had built up. All the what-could-be hung in the air. But like every important moment, it could go wrong, too, and she knew they both understood that.

  “I do?”

  “You really do.”

  “What did you do? Before I came along? Wait. I’m not sure I actually want to know.”

  “Before you, I waited until I needed to fuck or I’d blow up and then I’d go to see a woman I knew well enough to fuck and didn’t care that I was the Ezra Hurley. But when I kissed you that first time you dug in. Your taste shoved out everything else.

  “There was you. All lush curves and strong lines. I wanted a taste and then you kissed me back and there was nothing else I wanted.”

  She held on tight, breathing him in. “Thank goodness. Other than the woman in Portland, even before the drugs you never had anyone?”

  “I never had the time. And then I don’t think I ever met the right person. Or maybe I wasn’t the right person. Then I was definitely not the right person. Since then I’ve spent my time trying to get everything else in my life back on track.”

  Tuesday understood that. “Which seems pretty fair when you think about it. The only way I could keep going each day was to break stuff into small parts. Take that piece, deal with it and move to the next thing. Sometimes it was just brushing my teeth. But you get over it. You realize scar tissue is tough and it hurts a little less as the days and weeks and months go by.”

  * * *

  WHAT IF YOU had to look at your mistakes every day? What if he felt like he’d done so much harm to his family through his addiction that he’d never get past it?

  It haunted him.

  And maybe, he felt he deserved to be haunted.

  It stood between them and he honestly didn’t feel like he could truly open himself up until he learned how to live with it or how to get around it.

  He needed to add her name change and all this stuff she’d revealed to the list of things to deal with and think about.

  He knew for sure he wasn’t worth that sort of intensity of emotion, but what did that matter? Did it at all?

  She deserved better than he could ever give her. Deserved more than a guy who was afraid of actually being in love with her because it felt too much like something he hadn’t done in five years.

  Even when maybe it didn’t.

  He rolled again, settling her against his side, her head on his biceps, and put it away. There’d be time later but right now he wanted her to feel better. “Are you all right? You looked a little stressed at the end tonight.”

  “It’s just family. You know? I love them. They’re always there for me. But they can get to me in ways no one else possibly could. They want the best for me. GJ feels like he’s in charge of all the siblings. He’s a dingus, but it’s from his heart. He just can’t see why I make the choices I do. And sometimes he comes off as totally dismissive of my accomplishments. It’s always the same. Which is actually sort of comforting. For a while no one got in my business for any other reason but cancer, dying, death and then how I was recovering, or not, from that. It felt like I was reduced to a place where all I was was someone to fix, you know?”

  “Can’t imagine the answers to those questions varied too much. Not for a while. I mean, I assume you were happy before he got sick, given the way you talk.”

  “I loved him. I was happy. He was good for me. I was good for him. We had a good life and then he got sick and died and then I lost my way. Or maybe I just sort of chose a different way for those eighteen months. Whatever. I’m good now. ”

  She was quiet but he knew she was working something out and so he waited, enjoying the weight of her against him and the scent of sex still in the air.

  “Who I am will always be part of what I had with Eric. But I realized after you and I started up that I can have those memories and still enjoy this. But I don’t know how you feel. You said once you didn’t think it was weird. Do you want to know about it or not at all? Do I make you feel bad when I talk about my life before?”

  “It’s not the fact that you loved someone before I came along. I can deal with that. But I can’t compete with a ghost.”

  “You don’t have to. It isn’t a competition.”

  He snorted. “Of course it is. He’ll always be frozen in time for you. He’ll always be better than me because he never had the chance to fuck up and I’m a dick for thinking that.”

  “You’re not a dick. But he’s not better than you.”

  There was a catch in her voice as she pushed from the bed to stand.

  “What is it, Tuesday?” He turned on the bedside light before piling pillows at his back.

  She was agitated, clearly upset about something more than her argument with her brother or any of the feelings stuff they’d just exposed.

  “You don’t have to compete because he never made me feel what you do.”

  They both went still as the words echoed between them and then soaked into Ezra’s brain.

  “I was with Eric for a little over nine years. We had a great sex life. He and I fit well. But you? You touch me and everything else fades into the background. You fill me with so much raw yearning I can barely breathe. When it’s you and me, skin to skin, it’s raw and beautiful and all encompassing. It nearly hurts, you make me feel so good. That scares me and it makes me feel guilty. Like I’m betraying him. And I don’t care. I want you more than any guilt I might feel. I’ve never wanted anything or anyone the way I want you.”

  It was exactly that combination of words he’d been waiting to hear. He hadn’t known it until she’d said them and he’d heard them. He had been struggling with how to feel about this man she’d loved, exactly as he’d told her.

  The longer he’d known her and the more he’d allowed himself to feel about her, the more he’d wanted to mark her in some sense. To feel like what they had
was special and good and that she wouldn’t trade it. Was that petty? If Eric had been alive he would feel that way about his wife, right? So why should Ezra feel bad that he finally believed she’d choose him.

  He wasn’t a man who could live in the shadow of another. But she’d just told him that wasn’t the case. He was relieved. And a little uncertain he deserved it.

  “How can this be a betrayal of a man who died over four years before we met? And if he was as good of a guy as you say, do you really think he’d be down with you existing by stringing together a few visits to hotel rooms here and there just to keep from losing your shit? Is that what you want instead? Never belonging to anyone so you never have to risk feeling again? Because Eric doesn’t care. He’s dead. You aren’t. It’s a waste of the life you’re blessed with to choose an empty existence over something that makes you feel, because what you and I have is different than what you had with someone else. Big deal. Ezra and Tuesday should be different.”

  She stood there, just a few feet away and for the first time since they’d started sleeping together he didn’t wonder if she was wishing on some level that he was another man.

  And then she came to him, sliding in between the sheets.

  “Okay,” she said quietly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “YES, YES, YES. That one.” Kelly looked Tuesday up and down. “That looks gorgeous on you.”

  She’d come to Portland to one of Kelly’s boutiques to find a new dress for her gallery launch in just a few days.

  Tuesday looked over her shoulder at the mirror behind her. The dress had pretty much no back at all, leaving a lot of exposed skin to the waist. “This back, though, I don’t know if I can carry it off.”

  Kelly rolled her eyes. “That dress has been hanging in the display for a month. Five women have tried it on when I’ve been in. Not one looked right in it.”

  The bodice was fitted in bronze metallic and led to a skirt of feathers in a fiery hue that worked perfectly with the bodice.

  Feathers.

  She’d come in to try a few little black dresses and Kelly had brought out one funky dress for every classic LBD she presented to Tuesday in the dressing room.