Page 52 of Chasing the Other Woman

His relief dies.

"I'll deal with you when I can look at you without wanting to break something."

Tony nods, pale. "Yeah. Okay."

He turns to leave, then stops. "Brooks?"

I don't answer.

"I'm sorry."

I say nothing because, as much as I know my part in this whole charade, I don't accept his apology. Maybe I never will.

Tony walks away across the wet lot.

I stand outside my motel room wanting to simply bang my head against the door because I'm certain the hurt would be less than what I'm feeling surging through my chest at the moment.

Until tonight, some selfish part of me has still been thinking in terms of getting her back. Say the right thing. Explain the right way. Find the one sentence that makes her look at me like she used to.

Petra was right.

Love is not the issue.

I have to tell Sam the truth about the baby. I have to tell her I never blamed her. I have to tell her I blamed myself and still turned that blame into a cage around her life.

I have to give back what I took.

The field. The work. The trust. The right to decide where she belongs.

And if she takes all of it back and still wants nothing to do with me, then I'll stand there and let her choose that too.

I unlock the door, but I don't go inside right away.

Out beyond the motel, Muncie sits aching and hurt from a storm that blew through. Somewhere across this little spit of a town, Sam's somewhere. Maybe awake. Hopefully asleep.

I pull out her ring and close my fist gently around it.

I spent two years making choices because I was afraid of losing her.

Now I have to stop thinking about what I want to keep.

I have to start thinking about what Sam deserves to have back.

Thirteen

SAM

I don't remember the last night I had a full night's sleep. Life in Muncie had begun with running from the hurt with Brooks and has commenced into putting the town back together after the storm.

By noon, The Funnel Cloud has become command central again, mostly because Petra has coffee, a working generator, and the ability to scare grown men into washing their hands before touching the sandwich trays. The SAM rig sits behind the bar, doors open, screens glowing whenever we can keep the connection steady. Every time I climb inside it, those three letters hit me right in the chest.

SAM.

My name, built into a machine designed to keep people alive.

I still don’t know what to do with that.

So I do what I understand. I work.