Page 17 of Chasing the Other Woman

“Sam.”

“You need someone in the truck with you. It’s just not me anymore. It’s her.”

Tell her, you idiot. Tell her that there are mornings you wake up gasping and reaching for her because you’re afraid she’s gone. Tell her that knowing she’s back there at command and not out on the road is sometimes the only thing that makes the fear go away. Tell her that nearly everyday you can still hear her crying in that tiny hospital room and that everything you’ve done since then is to make sure she never has to hurt like that again.

I open my mouth to say all of that.

What comes out instead is, “This isn’t how this was supposed to be.”

She laughs and it’s another first, because I’ve never heard a laugh like that from Sam. It’s the kind of laugh someone makes when every bit of humor in their life has died.

“Funny. I’ve been thinking the very same thing.”

She turns, opening the door. This is it, Brooks. This is where you have one last chance to fix it.

“Where are you going?” I ask instead because if there’s one thing I’m determined to prove tonight, it’s that I’m the biggest fool that ever lived.

“Petra’s.”

“Don’t drive tonight. Just…wait.”

“I’ve been waiting for two years, Brooks,” she says, and she sounds so utterly resigned that something in my heart just…gives. “I can’t keep waiting for you to decide that I’m worth fighting for.”

“That’s not⁠—“

“Enjoy your life with Luci.”

And then she’s out the door.

It’s still raining. That’s the useless thought I have as I watch the love of my life walk toward her SUV and disappear inside.

I stand there, useless and lost, as the headlights flip on and the engine starts. My insides are shouting, screaming at me to do anything. Throw myself on top of the hood. Run out and beg her to give me another chance.

But all I do is stand there and watch.

None of this was how it was supposed to go. None of it. I meant for her to be safe. To never go through that hurt again. Even if she had to find comfort in another man. Even if she never understood, she would be safe.

And now, I’m watching the tail lights pull away from the home where we once planned to have family dinners. The home where we one time consumed three bags of Halloween candy because we had absolutely no trick-or-treaters and then made love in the living room floor with the candy papers crinkling beneath us.

That woman is disappearing down the road, her taillights becoming faint until the dark swallows them completely.

“Sammy Girl,” I say, as if she can hear me.

You stupid fool.

I close the door and lean against it, going over every ignorant decision I’ve made today.

And they all come down to one thing: I held on so tight that eventually, she slipped through my fingers.

And I have no idea how I’m ever going to get her back.

Five

SAM

Petra Harbor inherited The Funnel Cloud from her uncle. Before we were old enough to drink, we were in that seedy bar watching people at least twenty years older than us make bad decisions. It gained a reputation in Muncie, TX as a place where weather chasers congregated after the chase, which was all I needed to make it my favorite place in the world.

It’s the very place I met Brooks Carlisle when I was twenty-two and still under the impression that I’d experienced true love thanks to a boy by the name of Mark Sutton. Mark had been eighteen, and I’d been seventeen, and his form of romance was impressing me with his ability to buy beer underage and play guitar badly. I’d gladly handed him my virginity in the back room of his sister’s house, certain that our first time would simply be the worst and he’d get better at it eventually.