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“I can’t. I won’t.”
Her eyes went glossy, her lower lip quivering. I knew I was seconds away from saying what had been on the tip of my tongue for too long. “I can’t do this,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’m going home. I need… I need time, okay? Please don’t contact me?—”
“Stop,” I whispered. “Don’t leave.”
“You’re just going to hurt me if you make me stay. You know how I feel. I can’t sit here and watch you try to fake something you clearly can’t. You’re only making it worse.” She sniffled, her face stoic. My chest ached like a fire had broken out in it, and all I wanted to do was go to her, hold her in a way that I hadn’t in over a month. “I fucked up. I know that. But if I have any hope of making it through this then I need to keep my distance or it’s only going to get worse, Hunter. I thought… I thought there was something between us but apparently there wasn’t. Every fucking insistence otherwise from you just drives the knife in deeper?—”
“There was.” I stepped around the side of the counter, just a little bit closer to her, allowing myself to be vulnerable.
“There wasn’t!” she snapped. Her anger kicked back in, and before I could blink, her hands were on my chest, t me backward. I barely moved. “You didn’t answer me when I asked if it was real. You knew what you were doing to me!”
“I love you.” The words came too easily, and by the time I realized I’d said them, she’d already taken a step back. “I panicked. I didn’t know what to say. But that, that’s what I should have said. That’s what I wanted to say, Charlotte. I love you.”
She blinked back the tears that had formed in her eyes, her face scrunching in confusion. “No, you don’t.”
“I do. I did then and I do now. Maybe I have from the first day I met you. I don’t fucking know.” I couldn’t bite my tongue, not even if I wanted to. I’d held onto those words for too long, stayed silent when I should have spoken up, and all it had done was ruin things over and over. “I love you, Charlotte. I genuinely want to try.”
One shaking hand covered her mouth, her eyes flicking wildly between mine. She stood there in silence, the air thick with confusion, hesitation, and longing.
Lottie’s phone lit up on the counter next to her abandoned bowl of mostly eaten gumbo before her ringtone chimed. The name Sarah flashed across the screen—Brody’s nurse.
She moved, rushing toward the phone with wild eyes. Within a second it was against her ear, her thumbnail between her teeth, her eyes locked on something behind me. Something was wrong. I could tell from the way her breath caught, how her lower lip trembled, the way her body froze.
The gumbo threatened to come back up.
“I’ll be there in ten,” she breathed.
Slowly, her hand lowered the phone, hitting the end call button. Her eyes met mine, wild and full of confusion, panic, fear, and need. “I can drive you,” I offered.
Her head shook, knocking a tear free. “It’s okay. I can drive myself.”
Chapter 34
Lottie
If I was capable of feeling anything, it might have been distress. But in the three days since Dad had died, I hadn’t been able to feel at all. I’d hardly been able to think or eat or move. I’d cried every second up until he took his last breath, his hand in mine and his monitor beeping until it didn’t, and the second it stopped, so did the tears.
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t sit around and do nothing. I had things to handle, an estate to settle, a funeral to plan. I didn’t want to do any of it, but then again, no one ever does. I wondered if this was how Dad felt when Mom died, but I imagined losing a partner was a much different kind of pain from losing a parent.
The woman in front of me, in her obnoxious pastel pink suit and icy white hair, droned on about flower arrangements, slideshows, and the importance of picking the perfect plot. Dana nodded along to every word she said, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around any of it. I caught the important tidbits but the rest was just white noise. I almost wished it was Hunter with me instead of Dana. At least then I could say that my husband would handle everything.
I glanced down at the ring on my left hand, sparkling and gaudy in all the wrong ways. It didn’t feel like it was mine. It was just a prop.
I answered as many questions as I could with one-word replies. Would you like roses? Sure. Do you have some digital copies of photos of your father? Somewhere. Is your mother buried here? No.
Dad had Mom cremated. She lived at home on the mantle, but Dad had specifically written in his will that he wished to be buried. I hadn’t quite figured out if we’d bury him with her ashes yet.
After handing over the suit that I’d forced Dana to pick out for Dad, we agreed to meet again when I was better prepared to answer questions and left having made little progress in the funeral planning. Dana dragged me to the closest coffee shop. It was warm, comfortable and small, a local family business that served as both a cafe and a bookstore.
“Why don’t you look around while we wait?” Dana suggested, her hand gently touching my shoulder.
I shook my head. It just didn’t interest me. Nothing did.
We took our coffees to go and walked through the brisk air back toward the car. I wished I hadn’t left it in the parking lot of the funeral home. There wasn’t a single part of me that wanted to look at that place or remember that I’d have to be there again in the near future. I wanted to pretend that none of it was happening and go home, but home wasn’t any better—the hospital bed he’d died in was still sitting in the living room and the distinct lack of his presence was everywhere.
“It’s going to be okay,” Dana said quietly. Her hand wrapped around my shoulder from the passenger seat, giving it a little squeeze. “Do you want me to handle the rest of the funeral arrangements? You’ll just need to handle the reading of the will and finalize the funeral paperwork.”
I knew she was offering out of kindness. But I couldn’t help but feel that part of it was due to pity. “Maybe,” I said.
