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“Don’t you mean you have to tell me what that means? This entire time, you’ve been calling the shots. Is that honestly going to change?” I set my feet apart and crossed my arms over my chest. The anger I was so ready to desert was creeping in at the sight of the seriousness in her eyes.
“I don’t want to argue. I just…we aren’t together. And maybe that’s for the best,” she answered, as if it were that easy.
“The best for you?”
She shook her head. “The best forhim.”
I glanced at the sleeping baby, ready to shield him from the fragments of the blast about to occur. The first heartbreak he would ever witness would be his father’s. “How is us being apart better for him? Shouldn’t we be a family?” I look away from him and at the woman before me. The one I’d known in another life, one full of promises. Promises I couldn’t keep back then.
And maybe it was time to let her leave. And hope she came back to me the way I always did her.
But damn it, I didn’t want her to go.
“You can honestly move forward with me without any anger? Without any grudges? Because I’m not sure I can, Dexter. And Dylan doesn’t deserve that. He deserves to know happiness.” Noa sat up even more as she said these words, as though saying them made her feel stronger, and I didn’t want to take that newfound strength from her.
I opened my mouth and shut it, thinking it best not to say what I wanted to. She could be angry that I left. But my anger certainly felt more justified.
Instead, I offered a peace treaty. “I never asked Rachel to marry me.”
She smiled and shrugged. “Does it even matter anymore?”
It did. It did to me.
Dexter
Anna’s headstone is tiny.It reads words that make me ache with sadness.
Anna Cruz-Andrews
January 11, 2008 - January 11, 2008
I held you for your whole life. I’ll love you past mine.
And I hated Noa.I hated her for every moment she ever stole from me. For making me think I could’ve saved her.
For turning me into the angry person I was, crying over a child I’d never know—a child I’d never get to love.
She stole memories from me.
And now I hated her.
Dexter
Noa was releaseda few days later, and though I followed her home to make sure she didn’t need anything, after a while it was evident I didn’t belong there. Dylan was safe and taken care of, and while I promised to head back the next day, I wanted nothing more than to climb into bed with her—to fall asleep as my son did and wake up when he did. It bothered me that she’d have to deal with his feeding and changing alone. It bothered me that she didn’t want me there, holding her as she slept. She didn’t want me there to help her at all.
When I voiced my concerns, she shook her head, telling me it was okay.
So, life went on.
I went back to work. I pretended I was happy, and though Tammy grilled me for updates on Dylan and Noa, I brushed her off in a way I hadn’t before.
My alarm clock went off, but I’d been up for hours, and when I reached over to shut it off, I realized how quiet my house was. It didn’t always bother me. Not until I realized what noise it could’ve been filled with. Noa’s voice, Dylan’s cries, and Phoebe’s laughter. That’s what my perfect world could’ve sounded like.
I got in the shower and tried not to think about it as I scrubbed my skin and washed the hair I’d have to pull back today. It was getting too long to wear down. The absence of the hot water when I turned the shower off had me reaching for my towel quickly.
I wiped the fog from the mirror, my eyes immediately drawn to the words on my skin. My mind was already Noa’s, but now she owned my body, and she’d always own my soul.
Every time I saw the tattoo, it was like a portal straight to Memory Land where Noa was the ruler—the sweetest hell.
