“But the braces came off. The oxygen went away. Why didn’t you come back?” He saw a lie form on her tongue, and couldn’t stand the thought of it reaching his ears. “The truth, Jo.”
The fast bit of bourbon she swallowed might have been for courage because her shoulders straightened and her frame tightened. “Like I said, at first, it was just for convenience. Then, when I could have moved back in, I…didn’t.”
“Do you miss it at all?” His question was low, almost fearful.
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. An ironic curl tilted the right side of her lips. “Sex? I guess. Actually, no, not really. In the beginning, sex was the last thing on my mind. I was just trying to get through one day at a time.” A tiny shrug moved her shoulder. “After that, I guess I got used to not thinking about it.”
“I think about it,” he murmured.
“No shit.” Her laugh was too loud, too high. The bourbon had loosened her tongue damned well and his hackles rose.
“What’s that mean?”
“You sigh and get this sad puppy dog look when you want sex but don’t want to ask for it, like this.” Rounding her eyes, she stuck her bottom lip out in a way he never had. It irritated him.
“I do not.”
“Yeah, you do. And you usually find some reason to touch me then, rub my back or whatever you think it might take to get me in the mood.”
“I’ve gotten the not in the mood message for months now.” He tossed back a healthy swallow. “I don’t pout and I haven’t touched you, either. I got fucking frostbite the last time I tried.”
Fire crackled in her glassy eyes. “You mean your birthday? Hell, Wade, I was in the middle of midterm grading and Sadie was cutting her first teeth. I was lucky if I got three hours sleep a night. Sex was below a root canal and jury duty on my To-Do list.”
Frustrated and with his pride wounded, he jumped off the couch and checked the woodstove, staring into orange glow. The heat tightened his skin but he couldn’t face her. “I won’t apologize for wanting to make love to my wife.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
Movement turned his head. She sat up and shoved her cup onto the tiny side table. First, she rubbed her eyes then pulled the elastic from her hair. She ran her fingers over her scalp then smoothed the fly-away bits. At one time, he’d have ran his own fingers through her hair. His hand fisted with the need to feel the silky weight against his palm.
He didn’t move.
Because he was a coward.
Because he couldn’t handle it if she pulled away from him one more time.
Instead, he closed the stove door and swallowed more bourbon. The fire’s pops and hisses sucked all the sound out of the room. A steady beat throbbed against his temple as his pulse raced.
“I miss more than the sex, Josie. I miss it all, the closeness, the smiles, the teasing. I feel like I’ve been living with a strange carbon copy of the woman I married. She looks the same, sounds the same, smells the same but she isn’t the same at all.”
“You’re not the same, either.”
Facing her, he braced for the hit he feared was coming. “How am I so different?”
Lips he desperately wanted to taste again parted then snapped shut. He squeezed the cup to prevent throwing it out of utter frustration. She held something back, something she had almost said a couple times but she always caught herself in time. Damn it, he wasn’t playing fucking games. He asked for the truth and he was going to get it, even if it cut so deep, it peeled the skin right off his bones.
“You’re turning into a cold bitch, you know that?”
Her chin snapped up, shock dropping her jaw. Screwing up his nerve, he plowed ahead, as coldly and cruelly as he could. Maybe if he hit her hard, she’d do the same and spill whatever secret she held so damn tight.
“I used to love coming home because I knew you’d been there waiting on me. Now I almost dread it because it’s going to be just another night with you cleaning house while I stare at TV. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should just divorce because we’re not really married. You’re just going through the motions.”
“While you sit on your ass and leave everything up me.” The lines in her forearms went taut as her hands fisted.
That’s it. Come on, darlin’. Get pissed and let me have it. Yell. Curse. Scream. I don’t care. Just let me in. Tell me what’s really wrong here.
“What do you want me to do, Jo? You won’t let me help. If I run a load of laundry, you rewash it. Every time I try to feed Sadie or bathe her, you jump in like I’m going to break her. I’ve gotten slapped down every time I tried.”
“It’s not like you tried that hard.”
“No, I didn’t. You do just fine without me, don’t you? You don’t need me around and, half the time, you don’t want me around. I’m almost sorry I didn’t die in the accident. That would have made your life so much easier, wouldn’t it?”
“You son of a bitch.” Quiet, nearly whispered, her voice hissed. Her entire body trembled. Loose hair shimmied along her shoulders and her lower lip quivered.
Keep going, Jo. Get mad, so mad you can’t stop whatever you’re dying to say. Just let it explode and burn us both, burn everything away so we can rebuild.
Two steps brought him over her, towering and menacing. He deliberately fixed his mouth into a sneer. “Maybe we’d both be better apart. I lived alone for years and can do it again if I have to. Jesus knows you can do it. You have been doing it. It makes you feel noble or some shit. You like being a martyr, the stoic little woman holding everything together.”
“Just shut up!” Her socked feet hit floor and she surged to her feet. Barely a foot separated them and she took more, shoving him back a step. “Somebody has to keep the house from falling down around our ears. Someone has to raise Sadie. Someone has to responsible and it sure as hell isn’t you.”
“You don’t want it to be me.” Chest heaving, he flung words like a dart, aiming for a bull’s eye. “What are you afraid of? That I’ll screw up or that I’ll do it better than you?”
Her glorious brown eyes, ones that could snap like lightning or soften to warm caramel, pierced him like lasers. “Oh please, you couldn’t do shit without me. What’s Sadie’s dosage of baby Tylenol? When was her last doctor’s appointment? How many teeth does she have now?”
He couldn’t answer any of those. But he knew that his daughter loved it when he played Tickle Monster with her and read her the Sleepy Bunny book. That she smelled like innocence and dreams when she fell asleep on his shoulder and had a laugh like church bells. That she liked cold apple slices, warm milk and playing Peek-a-boo with her favorite pink blanket. He also knew that Josie was coming apart. Finally.
Face flushed, she whipped away from him and wrapped her arms around her waist. Her footsteps echoed off the floor but it wasn’t near as loud as his own pulse roaring in his ears.
“I’m the one who gets her dressed in the morning, who takes her daycare, who crams five meetings into one day so I can pick her up on time. I get her dinner, I bathe her, I brush her teeth, I comb her hair. Me. I do it all.”
A bright sheen in her eyes could have been tears but he knew they weren’t from sadness. Josie was furious and holding nothing back. She advanced on him, one finger pointed at his chest like a dagger.
“You play with her. That’s it. Play. Life is more than playing. It’s work. It’s a lifetime of thinking about her first every day. It’s doing laundry after she goes to sleep so she has clean clothes but doesn’t miss out on a bedtime story. It’s making do with four hours of sleep so you can finish your lesson plans, so you can spend every moment she’s awake focused on her. It’s being responsible in every single thing you do because you need to be there for her. You can’t be selfish for one damn minute because she needs you.”
“I’m not selfish.”
A cruel laugh barked from her. “You’re so wrapped up in yourself you couldn’t even get to the hospital. Your wife was in labor and
you went through a God damned stop sign. I needed you and you fucking wrecked your truck!”
Horror plunged into her like a knife. All the anger seeped away and an aching hollow yawned wide in her belly. She’d never admitted that to herself, not really. But it had festered inside her like a cancer, slowing chewing away at her. She blamed him for his accident and had carried that grudge into every breathing moment of their lives.
Her shaking hand crept to her mouth. Dear God, what did I just do?
Wade gaped, shell-shocked and silent. All the blood left his face. His shoulders sagged, curling into his frame like an abused dog preparing for another kick. When he looked at her, the raw agony and shame in eyes scalded her.
“Wade—”
One jerk of his chin silenced her. He swallowed over and over, as if he couldn’t quite get the ugly truth down. Running a palm down his face, he slumped into the chair. “You do blame me…more than I realized.”
“Wade, listen to me.” Hurrying to him, she fell to her knees in front of him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.” He wouldn’t look at her. Something inside him had grown cold and given his words an eerie echo. His chest lifted with a bracing inhale. “That’s probably the most honest you’ve ever been with me. And you’re right. The accident was my fault. I can’t blame anyone else.”
“It was an accident.”
“A stupid one, a careless one. One I caused.”
“You didn’t plan on wrecking.” Remembered fear cascaded back with a chill. She’d nearly lost him. “My God, you almost died.”
Too many things crashed inside of her. It was as if she’d been a concrete slab before but had cracked under the truth and now stood with absolutely no strength, perilously close to toppling. She clutched at his knee, needing to feel the solid frame she’d clung to for so long, the one she hadn’t been able to cling to when she’d needed it. If he pulled away, it would crush her. He didn’t but he also didn’t look at her.
“I’m sorry.” Her words were weak and shaky.
“No, you’re just finally being honest.” Focused on some tiny invisible point on the floor, he seemed farther away than he ever had. “I let you down. You needed me and I wasn’t there. My wife and my child were depending on me and I wasn’t there. You did everything and I did nothing.”
“You were fighting to live.”
“And I killed us in the mean time.”
Lifting his head, he looked straight into her face. Sincerity carved into his brow and held his mouth in that rakish tilt she’d loved from the night she met him.
“It’s a shitty cliché and doesn’t take anything away but I’d give anything to change what happened. I can’t. I did it. I was speeding and scared to death I was going to lose you both so I wasn’t paying attention.”
She knew that fear, had guzzled the sour nausea that she might lose both her husband and her daughter. She hadn’t lost either but she had lost something in that turmoil. She’d lost them.
“I needed you.”
The whisper burned her lips but there was nothing more to hide behind. Salt stung her eyes. Her deepest, darkest and most intense self was laid bare. She’d always trusted him and had to trust him again. Trust him not to inflict any more hurt.
“And I was so mad at you. Then I felt guilty. How damned selfish could I be? They didn’t know if you would live and was throwing a temper tantrum because I wanted to you to be there for me? I just shut it out. If I thought about it, about that petty self-centered need, I’d go crazy. So I blocked it out. I blocked you out. Because if I slowed down and thought about how close you came to… It scared me.”
Rough skin scrapped the back of her fingers as he covered her hand on his thigh. “Me, too. It was too much, you know? Sadie, the accident, everything. I kept thinking if I couldn’t walk, how was I going to be a contractor? How would I support my family? I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I was in so much pain, it took over everything…but down in my gut, I knew it was my own fault. I was angry at myself for being stupid, at my legs for being useless, at you for not being there. I had to let you handle the other stuff because I had nothing left at that point.”
“Neither did I.” Her soft admission drew his eyes, comprehension flickering in his eyes. “I had a C-section. I hurt. But I didn’t have time to deal with that. The NICU is a great place but she is my daughter, I needed to be there for her. I had to learn to do all that medical stuff, how to be a new mom, how to function without my husband. It took everything I had to just survive.”
That was the bottom line. They’d both been at their weakest and had to climb out by themselves. They hadn’t been able to lean on the other, draw strength from the love neither denied still existed. When they desperately needed to cry on each other’s shoulders, to let go of the stress for just a minute and let the other support them, they were alone.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault. No one deliberately set those things in motion. It was fate, twisted bastard that he was. He preached, ‘Love is all you need’ but he lied. Sometimes, you need more.
A wry half-smile twisted Wade’s mouth. “Well, darlin’, I think we’re fucked. This isn’t a problem we can solve in a few days. It’s going to take time and effort, and probably a professional.”
She nodded slowly. “Question is, professional what? Lawyers or counselors?”
His hand was still on top of hers. She turned her wrist, threading her fingers with his. A cautious look narrowed his eyes before he squeezed back. “Jo, final play in the game, okay?”
Her confusion must have showed because he sat straighter.
“The truth. I didn’t do it intentionally but I did leave you alone to deal with something no parent, no mother, should ever have to deal with. You were so strong I lied to myself that everything was fine. It wasn’t. And you left me alone to deal with my shit. I wasn’t fine with that, either. We both screwed up.”
The bones in her knuckles cried out but she refused to wince as he squeezed. She could feel his fear, how brave he was trying to be and the faith he was clinging to in the warmth of his hand.
“No matter how much I want to, I don’t know if we can make this right. Maybe we hurt each other too much. If therapy or whatever would make a difference, I’ll do it, I swear. But I don’t know if there’s anything still there. So if you still want a divorce, I won’t fight you.”
She blinked, unprepared for him to concede. Did she truly want to legally separate, to split their daughter’s time between two parents, two homes, two worlds? Could they work through all the exposed hurts and pains they’d uncovered?
The urge to run had gripped her days ago. Now the urge skidded to a stop and dug in its heels. When she’d been eleven, she’d had her heart set on a concert tickets to see the Raging Tulips. Although just a little-known cover band, she was nonetheless smitten with the lead singer and his ratty long-haired, tattooed badassery. Her parents had made her earn the money herself. She’d worked all summer, babysitting, pulling weeds, stocking shelves in the library where her mother worked, and horded her pennies like a miser.
By the time she’d saved up enough for the outrageous price, the Raging Tulips had disbanded. She had mourned, briefly, but while lining up Little House series books on the library shelf, she’d met Becky Monticello. The two became best friends and her little cache of dollars had financed many movie nights, ice creams feasts and nail polish parties. She’d traded some silly musical infatuation for a life-long friendship with the woman she still called Sadie’s godmother. One of the best lessons she’d ever learned was that sometimes, if you were lucky, something wonderful comes out of what you thought was catastrophe.
Rising up on her knees, she put both elbows on his thighs and let a small smile leak to her mouth. “Look at what we went through and we survived it. Okay, we still have some healing to do but I think this time, if we face it together, we can kick these problems in the ass.”
A slow smile began at the corner of this l
ip then spread until it carved deep grooves along his mouth. “Doesn’t stand a chance if we’re both in on this fight.”
“Nope.” Laying her hand against his cheek, she blinked away tears that didn’t burn any longer. Her voice cracked. “I love you, Wade.”
His mouth moved with her name but she heard nothing. He took her lips before she registered he was moving. Hot, fierce and with a power that quaked her bones, his body crashed into hers and pulled her close. Deep in her marrow, the cat sprawled contently in the sunshine and started to purr.
For better or worse. We faced the worst. It’s time for the best.
The familiar scent of Wade filled her lungs as she sucked in a breath, dragging him into her soul. His mouth nipped at hers, tongue slicking to every crevice and licking along her lower lip. One strong hand palmed her ass, tugging her up until she draped across his chest. His arm went around her, cradling her close. The unfamiliar chest made her spine go rigid.
Wrenching her mouth from his, she shoved at his shoulders. “Wade, stop.”
As much as she hated to admit it, she scrambled away from him like a scared kitten. Her plastic cup sat forgotten. She scooped it up and sucked down the last half swallow. Not enough liquid courage. She grabbed the bottle and shakily tipped more bourbon into her cup.
“Josie?” He rose from the chair, every line of his body tight with caution. “What was that? Did I hurt you?”
“No.” It wasn’t him. But it was. Brain tumbling, she rubbed her forehead then tossed a too-large drink in her mouth. It had been smooth enough before but now it was tinged with silly fears and burned down to her stomach.
He cupped her elbow. “Talk to me.”
Shame flooded her face with a heat no fire or alcohol could muster. She folded onto the couch, curling her legs up and fisting the cup tight to her chest. “It’s been so long. Things are different.”
“Different in what way?”
The wariness in his eyes, so much dimmer than the joy of a moment ago, grated against her like steel wool. This was her issue, not his. “Physically.”
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