Why did she have to remember the good times? It was so much easier to hold onto the hurt and the bitterness. But standing in the middle of Home Depot, for a brief moment, the hurt and the anger were gone and it was just him and just her.
It would be so easy to pretend that today was just another day. That they were on a normal lunch break and things hadn’t gone to hell between them.
“What?” she whispered.
His expression softened. His lips parted and his throat moved as he swallowed. “Nothing. Just watching you go through Home Depot on a mission.” One side of his mouth twisted upward. “You’ve done really well while I’ve been gone.”
It was a bitter pill to swallow, hearing him compliment her on an independence that had become necessary because of his own actions. A sharp bite of resentment took the place of the pleasure she’d felt a moment ago. “I’ve had to,” was all she said.
He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. He dragged his hand through his hair roughly. “I know.” He pushed his glasses higher. “I should have been here for you a lot more than I was.”
The words were an admission, not quite of guilt, but of something else. A tentative step in a new direction.
Either way, it felt like they were on the same side for the first time in a long, long time.
She didn’t quite know what to say. He’d ruined more than their marriage. He’d shattered her trust. And trust, like porcelain, was not easily repaired. Even when it was pieced back together, the cracks still showed. She was so used to fighting.
Instead, she chose the middle ground.
“Thank you for saying that,” she said, for once opting to keep the fragile peace between them.
Some dark emotion danced behind his glasses and for a brief moment, she was tempted, so tempted to reach for them and drag them off. To look into the eyes of the man standing in front of her with no barrier between them—to find the man she had married.
For a moment, she saw him. Dark, stoic, and sexy. The man who aroused the deepest love in her. It terrified her how the intensity of that love could be so easily resurrected.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to say it.” He swallowed and rubbed the back of his neck. There was so much more they needed to say. But Laura couldn’t go down that road with him right now. She took a single step backward, retreating now to save her heart from breaking again.
They walked in silence toward the front of the store. For once the silence was not filled with acrimony and bitter memories.
He walked her to her car.
“Do you think you’ll have to work late?”
“Depends. I usually don’t. Why?”
“Just wondering.” Heat sparked deep inside her, her blood warming at the first interaction between them that wasn’t laced with anger and sadness and hurt. It unsettled her. “I’ll see you tonight.”
This was not steady footing. This was not a place she knew. “Sure.”
She watched him walk into the sports bar, where Carponti had promised to wait for him. There was something aching and familiar about watching him go, but for once it was not filled with pain.
This was something new dawning between them.
And it terrified her. Because she had once loved this man more than anything else and she’d lost him.
She couldn’t go down this road again with him.
Because she didn’t think she could survive losing him again.
Chapter Eight
Trent sat. Outside the house he and Laura had bought years before, he sat and stared at the tiny orange bottle of pills in his hand. Emily had said take as needed. He was afraid a pill would zone him out but he was more terrified of his own reactions without it.
He was going home for the first time in forever. He couldn’t screw this up. But the pressure was back on his lungs and he sat there until the door closed and Laura turned on the outside light. The scar over his heart ached.
He looked up as Laura ushered the kids into the house. There was curiosity in her eyes but no judgment.
Damn it, he was not going to live like this. He took a deep breath, then killed the truck and headed into the house they’d bought before the war had broken him and he’d broken his marriage.
They’d closed on the house the day after Laura had found out she was pregnant with Ethan. She’d miscarried a few months before and the new pregnancy terrified them both. It had made both of them see the house in a new light. That night, on an air mattress in their new living room, he’d simply held her, knowing her fear was as real as his.
The house today was so different from the house they’d bought all those years ago. It was the same four walls but it was the little things that Laura had done that made it a home. A wall was decorated with pictures of the kids, some black and white, some snapshots. He listened to the noise of them in the kitchen as he looked at the new pictures. Ethan’s first day of kindergarten. Emma in front of the giraffe at the Waco Zoo.
He stopped, though, in front of one picture that made his heart hurt. It was a black and white snapshot of him. He hadn’t known she’d taken it. He was sitting on the swing in the backyard, with Emma on his lap, her cheek resting against his chest.
She’d snapped him in a moment when he’d rested his head against his little girl’s cheek. He’d forgotten about that day until this moment. Seeing it now was proof that he hadn’t always been closed off and distant. That at some point he’d been a good, present father.
If he’d done it before, he could do it again. Right?
“Daddy!” Emma rushed him and he unconsciously stiffened for the impact before she skidded to a halt a foot away. “Fluffy is glad you’re home.”
Emma held up the fat brown hamster, straining her little arms until he crouched down to her level. The hamster’s fluff spilled over the edge of Emma’s hand. “Hi, Fluffy. You haven’t escaped recently?”
“Last week was the last time she got out. She can open the cage,” Emma said seriously.
“Hamsters can’t open their cages,” Trent said.
Laura leaned out of the kitchen. “She’s either figured out how to open the cage or someone forgets to close it.”
“I do not, Mommy!” Emma said fiercely.
Trent laughed and stroked his index finger along the hamster’s back. It flinched and if he didn’t know better, he could have sworn it was trying to bite him. “Cute. Antisocial hamster.”
Emma took off, streaking toward her brother’s room.
He watched her go, still crouched down. He rubbed his hand over his mouth. He’d laughed. For the first time in as long as he remembered, he’d laughed with one of his kids. Dear God, how screwed up was his life that something as simple as a laugh was a monumental event?
He straightened and tried to latch on to the fleeting, unfamiliar sensation.
Trent padded toward the kitchen, soaking in the details that had changed. He hadn’t noticed that she’d painted the walls a pale golden yellow. It was a nice subdued color that made the house feel warm and inviting. For whatever reason, being here tonight felt fresh and good even if he did feel like a piece out of place. It was less than it might have been, though.
He didn’t know what he should be doing right now. He didn’t know what Laura did, what she needed help with. He didn’t even know what questions to ask.
He was a stranger in his own home. It was his own fault, but still. He didn’t know how to fit and he was afraid to ask her. Afraid to ruin the tentative truce between them and bring the harsh reality of the court-martial, their divorce and everything else, between them.
He stopped just out of sight. He could see her in the kitchen. She had two lunch boxes open on the counter, baggies next to them. Steam rose out of a pot of water on the stove. She was in constant motion but it was motion with a purpose. She had a system.
Watching her then, the scar over his heart ached. He didn’t know when the thing inside him had broken, just that it had. And that break had pushed him away, back t
oward the war. He’d thought she’d be okay without him.
He’d thought he was protecting her from what the war had done to him.
War wasn’t some glorified camping trip. It was violent. It was dirty.
And Trent had lived and breathed in that violence and that dirt for so long, he didn’t know how to enjoy the feeling of simply standing in his house. He rubbed the scar absently. He remembered the first time she’d seen it.
She’d cried. He remembered he’d stripped off his shirt and stood there, her fingers dancing up his ribs. She’d tried to touch it but he’d stopped her.
He’d never let her. He never realized that until right then. He’d always turned her hands elsewhere when they’d made love.
He wondered what that said about him. He turned away, taking his bag into the master bathroom. He had no illusions that he would sleep in Laura’s bed tonight but short of sharing a bathroom with the kids, he wasn’t really loaded with other options for personal hygiene. He figured she wouldn’t mind sharing the bathroom even if she wouldn’t invite him into their bed.
He had no right to ask her for that, no matter how much he missed her. It went beyond sex into something more. Something that might break through the emptiness inside him.
He dropped his bag inside the closet then stripped off his uniform jacket before heading to the kitchen to see if he could make himself useful.
* * *
Laura knew what she risked tonight but that didn’t make walking through that front door any easier with him at her back. She’d agreed to put on the happy face for the hearing. She’d agreed to let him come home, to pretend that everything between them was wonderful and fine. But she hadn’t been prepared for the strength of her own emotions when he stepped across the threshold of their home.
Suddenly the disarray she’d grown used to stood out in stark relief. Did Trent notice the socks and shoes scattered by the door? Or the Star Wars toys lined up in mock combat on the fireplace? Was he thinking about how she’d let the place go because there were tire marks on the baseboards?
The kids’ clutter had naturally overtaken their modest home, creeping into the corners, on top of the couch and between the cushions. The carpet was worn in places where Ethan rode his bike through the house. The wide open living room was used daily as a staging area for Star Wars battles and pillow fights. The old couch was long past needing to be replaced but Laura refused to buy new furniture until the kids were old enough not to spill food and drinks on it every other weekend.
Plus, she kind of loved that couch. It was one of the first things she and Trent had bought together as a couple. It was older than both kids and they’d spent many a night cuddling on it together.
She glanced at him as he disappeared into their bedroom, wondering how this was impacting him. He hadn’t noticed her scrutiny, nor did he seem to care about the mess. He was more focused on studying the kids like they were two little aliens. Strangers who belonged to someone else.
She stopped suddenly. They were strangers. She’d been home with them when they learned how to walk, when they said their first words. She’d lived through all of it. He’d only heard about it. The things she knew about them on an instinctive level he simply didn’t, and that knowledge could not be gained in a few minutes or days or even weeks.
She needed to be patient with him.
But he was here. The least she could do was allow his children to welcome him home, no matter how awkward it might be. The kids, at least, would not have to pretend they were happy to have him here. Still, that welcome came with a cost. She knew what she was risking. So why did it feel so overwhelming, like she was teetering on the edge of out of control?
She focused on the things she could control. She had to cook dinner, get the kids bathed and in bed, pack their lunches, and then get ready for the next day. There was never enough time to get it all done, but she was used to doing it on her own.
She moved through the kitchen as though today was any other day, doing everything in her power to shut down the maelstrom of emotions that threatened to break her. Trent was really home, really walking toward her from their bedroom.
And they both were trying to pretend that the word “divorce” wasn’t standing in the room with them as he searched for and found a beer in the fridge and twisted off the cap.
Trent stood uselessly by as the kids attempted to steal cheese sticks from the refrigerator. “No more snacks. It’s almost dinner,” Laura said, shooing them out of the kitchen.
A few minutes later, Ethan tore through the living room on his skates and nearly crashed into the TV. Emma squealed as she chased him, demanding a turn. The fight faded as they raced into the garage.
“You let him skate in the house?” Trent asked.
Laura tipped her chin at him. She sucked in a deep breath, biting back the harsh retort that was on the tip of her tongue. He was only asking a question, not criticizing her. “It lets him burn off some energy. He doesn’t sleep well if he doesn’t play. A lot.”
“Mom-my! Ethan’s climbing the bookshelves again.” Emma’s singsong voice rang out from the living room.
“That was fast,” Trent mumbled. “He must have gotten those skates off in record time.”
Laura raised her voice so it would carry through the house. “Ethan! If I tell you one more time to get down…”
Frustration started to twine its way around her. Trent was home. He could be the bad guy for once. It would do him some good, too. Maybe help him fit back into their lives rather than just standing there looking lost and out of place and ripping her heart apart.
“Will you go make sure Ethan isn’t climbing?”
Trent stared at her for a long moment. Silence hung between them as he simply watched her, his eyes partially hidden behind the glare of his glasses. It felt like an eternity before he turned and walked into the living room.
“Holy crap, Ethan, get down!”
He sounded so startled that she set down the cutting board she’d just pulled out and rushed to see him pluck Ethan from about midway up the bookshelves.
“Put him in timeout,” she said simply, handing their son off.
“What’s that involve?” Trent asked as Ethan howled in protest.
“Fireplace. Five minutes. Timer starts when he stops crying.”
Ethan apparently decided that tonight would be the night he would break the sound barrier. On any other night, Ethan would have stopped with a sniffle and been done with it. He threw himself off the fireplace onto the floor, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Normally, she would let him go until he wore himself down. She glanced over at Trent. The muscles in his neck were bunched, his fists tight by his sides. He was breathing hard and looking at Ethan like he was a monster.
“Is this normal?” he asked harshly.
“No,” she said gently, “not usually.”
He looked over at her like she’d grown two heads. “What’s the special occasion?”
“This isn’t normal—you’re home,” she said warily and saw him flinch. She reached out, placing her hand on his upper arm. “I’m not saying it to be mean. But it’s true. Their entire routine is being thrown off by having their daddy home.”
“Lovely.”
Laura took a deep breath, then scooped Ethan up off the floor. “You don’t get to stop listening just because Daddy’s home,” she said to her son as she carried the screaming banshee to his bedroom. “When you decide you want to act like a big boy, you can come out.”
That set him off on a whole new tantrum, dialed all the way up to eleven. She closed the door behind her as he kicked and screamed on his bed.
The kitchen was a disaster, too. The water for the spaghetti had boiled over, steaming off the hot stove. Trent yanked his hand away. “Here,” she said, handing him a dish towel. “Don’t burn yourself.”
He shot her an inscrutable look, then lifted the pot so she could wipe the stove before turning down the heat. He moved out of her
way as she stirred the pasta and heated the sauce. She wondered if he was going to like it. It was a recipe she’d found from Food Network and she usually made a massive pot once every few months then froze it.
She tried not to see Trent studying the pieces of the dishwasher and felt a creeping sense of failure that she hadn’t managed to fix it as easily as she’d hoped. Embarrassment crept up her neck that she had to keep moving parts around to make room for dinner. “Hopefully, I’ll have it fixed soon,” she mumbled.
She tore open the top of the pasta box and dumped it into the barely boiling water, trying not to be self-conscious. Trent said nothing. He stood near the sink, nursing a beer, looking out of place and uncomfortable.
She wished she hadn’t noticed. Wished she hadn’t seen the strain in the hard set of his back when Ethan had kicked off into his tantrum. Tantrums were part of life with kids.
But he wouldn’t know that because he hadn’t been there. A wave of sadness washed over her. There was nothing she could say to make this easier. Nothing to do to turn the screaming in the other room off.
She simply prepared dinner with a stranger in her kitchen and tried to pretend everything was normal when it felt like nothing would be normal again.
* * *
“Hey?”
Laura’s voice interrupted the violent introspection thrashing around in his brain. He looked up at her from where he’d been studying the beer in his hand. Some tendrils of hair clung to her temples now from the steam. Her cheeks were flushed.
God, but he wanted to see her cheeks flush from his touch instead of something as mundane as cooking dinner. Would he ever have a chance to touch her again? To feel her body move with his?
He cleared his throat, redirecting his thoughts away from the bedroom. “Yeah?”
“Can you go tell the kids dinner is ready?”
He frowned slightly. “Think Ethan will talk to me?”
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