Page 90 of This Time Around
We really did.My thumb tapped the screen while I debated.
We could do this now or later.There really was no point in him returning to Kansas.I could call Max and he would schedule someone to ship all of his leftover clothes back to him.
But that meant never seeing him again.
A slow pressure built in my chest, tightening my lungs until it hurt to breathe.
I didn’t want to say goodbye to him.I also didn’t know how to let him in enough to trust him, not when he’d still leave eventually.
It was smartest to cut ties now, before I fell too deep.
“Damn it.”I dropped my phone into my lap and gripped my hair.“None of this was supposed to happen.Now what do I do?”
My gaze caught on the photo of Joseph and I on the nightstand next to the bed.It had been his side of the bed, his favorite photo of us.Taken on our third anniversary, it wasn’t anything special except we’d been dressed for the wedding of Gloria Whitman’s granddaughter.My yellow and white dress had a loose skirt and the wind blew it up around my knees.In the photo, my back was to Joseph, but his hand was at my stomach.His other hand had been holding down my dress from a gust of wind and I’d smiled at him over my shoulder.
It wasn’t posed, and we were both laughing, me thinking he was ridiculous, him looking like I was the only thing he ever saw.
Which ended up being the ultimate lie.
I reached over and picked up the photo.Before I could stop myself, I threw it across the room.It dented the wall opposite my bed and thumped to the floor.
It didn’t even break.At least clean up would be easy.As my hand fell into my lap, my ring sparkled and I growled at the damn beautiful diamond I’d promised never to remove.
I yanked it off my finger and threw it too, completely unsatisfied as it landed to the carpet without a whisper of a sound.
“I hate you.Why would you do that?”I whispered the lie into the air.Like I had done every time I’d said it since Joseph died, I didn’t get the answer I needed.Not a single I’m sorry.Not a single explanation.Not a single thing to settle the turmoil he’d created and left when he took off out of the house, pissed off I’d found out, pissed off at me because I didn’t give him time to explain before kicking him out for the night.Which even then I’d known was a mistake.Where else was he going to go except to Jenni’s?
He didn’t though.He called Ryan.He went to his house and he told him everything and then he’d called me on the way home, left a message because I was still too pissed and hurt and angry to talk to him.
He told me he loved me.He told me we’d talk when he got home.
Then he lost control on an icy road and I never saw him or talked to him again.
My phone rang in my lap, jumping me out of that horrific night.Ryan showing up at my house, me so confused because Joseph wasn’t with him.Jordan following right behind and why would he be at my house so late unless he’d heard and came to kick Joseph’s ass?
The phone rang again.Cooper’s name glared at me from the black screen, his name in blinding white letters.
I answered it.At least this time, I’d get closure.
“Hello?”I asked, my throat bone dry.
“What’s wrong?”Cooper immediately asked.Sometimes it felt like he read me better than I could.It wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
“Nothing.I’m tired.Why are you calling?”I leaned back in my bed and pulled the covers up my lap.As soon as I did this, I’d cry myself to sleep and figure out another way to start over.
A gentle sigh came through the phone.“You saw photos.Or you’ve heard I was with Camilla tonight.It’s not what you think, Rebecca.”
“I know.”I plucked at a ball of lint on my vibrant-colored quilt.My mother had a friend of hers, Cathy, make it for Joseph and I as a wedding gift.She was so talented she won blue ribbons in the state fair every year for her original designs.
The quilt was beautiful.Some days, I considered burning it.
“She signed the papers,” Cooper said.“That’s all the dinner was for at the restaurant.Well, it wasn’t even dinner really—”
Determination had thickened his voice, but he didn’t need to beg me to believe him.“Brooke has your name on Google Alert,” I said, and huffed, my cheeks burned at the admission we’d essentially been stalking him, or that she had.“And don’t ask why.We were at dinner tonight at the resort and saw the pictures of you at dinner with her and then leaving.”
“Then you know it’s over.”
His marriage was over.Instead of filling me with relief like I thought it should, because now at least I wasn’t on the same level as Jenni, wanting a married man, it did the opposite.A marriage ending was rarely something to celebrate.“I’m sorry.How are you doing?”
