My hand, already in my jeans pocket, fingers the earrings I have in there. For some insane reason, I’ve been carrying them around with me since the day James saw them on the bar. Maybe it makes me feel closer to her having them so close to me. Or maybe I’m just fucking weird. For whatever reason,
when I get undressed at night, I place them on the nightstand, then put them in my pocket the next morning.
I pull them from my pocket and show them to her.
“Oh,” she says. She doesn’t ask why I have them in my pocket, and I don’t offer the information. “Thank you.”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment and makes no move to take the earrings from me. She simply looks down at the pictures. I grind my teeth, holding back the urge to snatch them from her hands and stuff them back in the drawer. I know exactly what she’s looking at, I just don’t know what she’s thinking.
“She’s beautiful,” she says softly, rubbing her finger over one of the pictures. “They both were.” She looks up at me and sadness lines her face.
My gaze drops to the photo. It’s the one I was holding outside the other day. I swallow thickly, trying to push my emotions back. I don’t say a word as I stand there and watch her look at the next one. It’s like I’m frozen on the spot, even as my mind screams at me to take them from her and hide them. I still love my lost family, but I’m ashamed of what happened to them. What I did to them.
The next photo is of Clara and me standing in front of the fireplace. She was six months pregnant. I was holding the sonogram we had done earlier that day that finally showed us the sex of our baby against her rounded belly. The first couple times she was being stubborn and not showing her goods to the doctor, but that time we got lucky. At the bottom of the picture, Clara had printed the words Our First Family Photo.
The last image is the sonogram itself. It’s not often I bring the photos out anymore—it’s too painful to look at them—so to see them now and tomorrow being what it is, makes me feel like one giant pincushion with thousands of needles being pushed into it.
Her head finally lifts, and there’s tears glistening in her eyes. After blinking a few times, she turns and gently sets the pictures back in the drawer and closes it. I pull in a few deep breaths while she has her back turned.
When she does turn back around, I say the first thing that comes to mind. “You should leave.”
I regret the words as soon as I say them, but I don’t take them back. I need to be alone. My reprieve has come to an end, and she and the kids need to leave before I completely lose it. I feel the threads of my control snapping, and I don’t want them to see me like that.
The pain that crosses her face has the ache in my chest escalating. I hate myself for putting it there.
She nods, then looks down at her hands. After a moment, she walks toward me. I want to reach out to her and apologize as she passes me, but I don’t. If I do, I know I won’t let her go, and she needs to.
I follow her, but stay at the mouth of the hallway as she tells the kids to gather their things. Daniel grumbles and looks sad. I look at Kelsey, and the expression on her face says it all: Disappointment and despair. Between Gwen’s and the kids’ reactions, I want to stab myself in the chest. It’ll likely hurt less than the pain I’m feeling now.
Gwen gives me a sad smile as she and the kids walk to the door. I walk behind them and step out onto the porch. After Daniel says goodbye and Kelsey looks at me blankly, Gwen tells them to go to the car.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snoop,” she says, hurt evident in her voice.
“I know.” I stuff my hands in my pockets to keep from touching her. “I just….” I clear my throat and look out across the yard. “I need to be alone.”
She lifts her hand like she’s going to reach out to me, and I hold my breath, both hoping she doesn’t and silently begging her to. Making her decision, she drops her hand.
“Thank you for letting the kids and me stay for a bit. They really enjoyed spending time with you.”
She nods and tries to smile, but it falls away too quickly to be real. I wonder if she enjoyed it as well, or if she regrets coming. I know I’m giving her mixed signals, and I feel like shit doing that to her, but I’m so fucked-up right now, I have no idea what I’m doing. I want to grab on to her and never let her go. I want to cherish her kids and love them like they should be loved. I want to care for Gwen like she deserves. I want to be the man they need, but I’m so damn scared of failing. I so afraid my past won’t allow me to be the person they should have.
Looking over to the car and seeing the kids occupied, I do what I know I shouldn’t, but am unable to stop myself. I step closer to Gwen and cup the side of her face. Her skin’s so soft compared to mine, and I wish I could feel it against me all the time.
I dip my head and very gently lay my lips across hers. I hear her breath hitch as she holds still, letting me do what I both want and need. I don’t take the kiss far, giving us both just enough. My lips slide across hers and she tastes like vanilla, just as I remembered from yesterday. We open our mouths at the same time, and I meet her tongue with mine.
The kiss is soft and gentle, and I pull back before it can go any further. I hurt from the loss, and from the look on her face, she does too.
Without another word from either of us, she turns and walks down the steps to the truck, and I’m once again left watching what could have been drive away. My hands slide inside my pockets and brush against the earrings I never gave back to her.
I drive down the small embankment and park my truck at what is the location of all my heartache. I turn the truck off, and with a pain so sharp it feels like I’m being stabbed to death, look at the two crosses hammered into the ground. It wasn’t my doing. I’m not sure who did it, but they’ve been there for a while. I see them every time I go to town, but it never hurts so much to see them as when I’m this close. I try to avoid them as much as possible, but there’s no avoiding them on this day.
Taking a deep breath, I reach over and grab the bottle of Jameson and get out of the truck. It’s ironic, because normally this time of year the water is pretty low; however, the year that Clara and Rayne died, we’d had an unseasonably warm and rainy winter, so the water was pretty high. Had it not been….
I wipe the thought away, because there’s no fucking sense in thinking about what-ifs. It won’t change a damn thing.
I sit down and lean against the pillar. Before I can stop them, my eyes land on the spot where everything was taken from me. Every year, on the day they died, I come out here and spend the night, using only my jacket and alcohol to keep me warm.
Memory after memory flood my mind, and I try to chase them away with the Jameson. It never works, no matter how much I drink, and that’s why I always end up plastered. Their ghosts haunt me the most when I’m here. This is my penance for not saving them. It’s what I deserve, and the very least I can do is suffer for them.