AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His chest heaves with a sigh. “I guess that about completes it.”
I can’t argue that.
“Rose wouldn’t have minded, though.”
“About what?”
“The boots. She’d tell you to wear them because they look good on you.”
“Then I probably would have liked her.”
“She was the best of us.” Thoughtful silence. “Always was. I think that’s why this family broke her. Her soul couldn’t handle it. She didn’t belong.”
My heart breaks at the thought, and I purposefully don’t speak. There’s nothing to add.
“Part of why I don’t come home...too many bad memories here. It’s easier to stay away.”
That, I understand too. Avoiding and escaping, indulging, are just some of my many talents, as well. Though it looks different for me; he indulges in women and alcohol. My escapism is simpler—TV shows, movies, and food. Holing myself in. Turtling, as Stephen calls it.
Not that I haven’t also ‘indulged’ with Jake. It’s just not my MO to find comfort between a man’s legs.
Those are just some of the many reasons Jake and I wouldn’t fit well together in the real world, why our demons wouldn’t play well with each other. We both run and numb so we don’t have to deal. It would only be a matter of time before he realizes he can’t be with one woman, that I’m not enough to keep his demons at bay, and he leaves me high and dry. Though my demons and I would be long gone before he ever had that chance. I leave so I don’t get left. It’s what I do. Because my brother left me.
Because I can’t even be enough for an unborn baby.
I close my eyes tighter, then gather the courage to look up at him. When I do, his face is already relaxed with sleep and part of me is thankful for that. I feel that ever familiar wall being wedged between us again, through no fault of his own. Not intentionally. And I delicately roll off him so I can gather my thoughts.
Our time here has been…interesting. Fun. Unnerving. And I still have more digging to do.
Our time away from here will be crazy and distracting.
Distancing.
We’ll go back to coping the only ways we know how.
So, it’s time to allow the wall to slip back into place. I need to prepare my heart for that again. For the possibility that this will be all we’ll ever be. That I’ll never have closure for what we could have been under different circumstances, if he wasn’t who he is, and I wasn’t who I am, if what had happened had never happened. If his family hadn’t done the things they’d done, and I hadn’t written the article I’d written…
…if our brokenness and hang-ups weren’t the devastating poison to our all-consuming love before it even had a chance to begin.
I liein bed for a good hour, thinking. Sobering. Just long enough to know he’s in a deep sleep and my getting out of bed couldn’t possibly wake him. He didn’t have as many drinks tonight as he did last night, so I make sure and carefully slide over the mattress, inch my inch. Hold my breath until my feet meet the floor and I’m safely off and into a crouch.
Before I walk, I give my swimming head a moment to settle.
I guess I’m not as sober as I thought.
I wait a good, long minute to make sure he doesn’t sense my warmth has left him, and to make sure I can walk without falling over, and then I carefully pull on some leggings and a sweatshirt and shuffle into the hallway again.
The house is eerily quiet, no footsteps or voices or rustling around, so I creep into the office across the way and continue my quest for the keys.
As I make my way to the bookshelf again, a lumpy mound of metal on the corner of the desk catches my eye.
No…
No way.
No waywould it be this easy.
I reach out with my fingertips and brush them over the keys to make sure they’re real. That they’re not some crazy figment of my desperate imagination. Oh my God. Ruby left them here. In plain sight.
