At all.
Our bedroom had gone through a series of metamorphoses over the years.This latest found me bathed in soft lighting and surrounded in a nest of muted greens and blues, the colors of the lake I loved so much.
But nothing could soothe me in that moment.Aaron had never, in the twenty-five years we’d been married, not come home.
Oh, God.
My blood pounded in my ears.
Something’s wrong.
Two phone calls within 6 months of each other proved things could change in the blink of an eye.
I whipped the covers off and swung my legs out of bed.“Aaron?”
My bare feet skimmed across the wood floors and pounded down the stairs, a high-pitched whimper breaching my lips as I raced through the family room looking for him.
What if something happened to him?
The breath whooshed from my lungs.
What if he didn’t come home for another reason?
I shuddered.
The what ifs and the maybes threatening my sanity.
It wasn’t the first time I’d considered that possibility in the past six months.Aaron had changed.More than anything else, he’d changed toward me.
What would I do without him?
My hands tunneled through my hair and fisted as I spun around calling out his name.“Aaron!”
Maybe he was working out.
I stumbled to the basement door, screeching to a stop as I passed the couch piled high with extra blankets.Collapsing nearly in half, I braced my hands on my thighs and released one panicked breath after another.
Caged behind my ribs, my heart did its level best to escape.Stomach churning, I pressed my palm to my throat and swallowed the bile that burned the back of my tongue.
Standing, I forced my shoulders down.“He’s okay,” I breathed as relief slowly gave way to a quiet fury.
And it stayed quiet.
As I went through my morning routine of dressing, making coffee, and downing my usual orange juice, vitamins, and bagel, I did what I always had and tamped my feelings down so I could go about my day as normal.
In the past few months, Aaron had often left for work before I got up, but he’d never not slept in our bed.
If it wasn’t for the fact he worked with his stepfather, I might think he was stepping out on me.
My blood ran cold at the thought.
Would Max tell me?Would Aaron care if Max knew?If his mom knew?Wren would be horrified if Aaron did that.But would she hide it from me?
Half of me wanted to walk down to his office and see just what was so goddamned all-encompassing.The other half, beaten down by the events of the past 18 months, urged me to bury my head in the sand.
That half won.
There was only so much a woman could take.
