The Wolf and His Wife (Wolf 2)

“Your GPS shows you leaving Florence but going in the opposite direction of the house. Where are you going?”

I didn’t care to answer him. “I know you’re busy, Maverick. I’ll just talk to you later.” Now I couldn’t disguise my tears, and they escaped in my voice, carrying my devastation on my vocal cords.

“Sheep.” He stopped me from hanging up on him with just his voice. “I’m sorry I was an ass, alright? I’ve just got a lot on my plate right now.”

“That’s fine. I’ll let you go—”

“Don’t you fucking hang up on me.”

I drove farther into the countryside, the flowers in the passenger seat.

“Talk to me, Sheep. What’s going on?”

“It’s my father’s birthday… I was going to the cemetery to visit. I thought maybe…never mind. I know you have more important things to do, so I’ll talk to you later.” Before he could yell at me through the speakers, I hung up.

I kept driving and didn’t hear the phone ring.

The fight was over.

When I approached the gates, he called me again.

If he called me just to scream at me for hanging up on him, I’d crash this nice car into a tree just to piss him off. “What?”

He took a long pause. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, alright?”

That wasn’t what I expected him to say. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to.”

“Maverick, it sounds like you’re busy. I’m sure you have things to do.”

“You’re more important. You’re always more important…and I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear.”

When he arrived fifteen minutes later, I got out of my car with my flowers in hand. I’d cleaned up my makeup as best as I could in the car, but the puffiness of my eyes couldn’t be hidden. The mascara had dissolved into my skin and gave it a blue tint that made me look particularly pale. That morning, I’d thought my makeup and hair had turned out perfect…but now I looked like a train wreck.

Maverick looked exactly the same as usual, masculine, fit, and strong. With his brown eyes glued to my face, he walked toward me, dressed in a black t-shirt with matching jeans. His shiny watch was on his wrist, and his jeans fit his muscular legs perfectly. Apology was in his gaze, like he knew he’d fucked up.

I was embarrassed that I’d called him in the first place, that I’d allowed a man to understand how much I needed him. If it were anyone else, I would keep my pride and never shed a tear. When Dante dumped me, I didn’t have a reaction. Even when Dante was mine, I never asked him for anything. He came to the hospital to comfort me, but he did that entirely on his own. I was a proud woman who refused to admit any kind of weakness. But since the beginning, it’d been different with Maverick. I relied on him like a wife relied on her husband.

He came to my side, and his arm immediately wrapped around my waist. He took the flowers from my hand and pulled me in for a gentle kiss on the lips. It was the first time he’d greeted me like I actually meant something to him, the first time he’d held me like his wife under the sun.

He pulled away then guided me to my father’s resting place.

He placed the flowers on the grave, directly under my father’s name. Then he came to my side and wrapped his arm around my waist once more, becoming my rock the way he was last time. He squeezed me into his side and stayed quiet, not re-opening the conversation we’d had in the car.

I stared at my father’s name and felt new tears emerge. “He was only fifty-seven…” He’d died so young, far too soon. Maybe if he’d seen a doctor sooner, things would have been different. Maybe he wanted it to be this way because he knew he didn’t have any other options. My hand covered my mouth to stifle my tears when they became too much. I’d already grieved at his funeral and in the weeks afterward. Now, it started all over again, like a scab that had been picked at until it bled. “He would be fifty-eight today.”

Maverick’s hand squeezed my waist, holding me close to him as the tears streamed down my cheeks. He kept his silence, letting me cry and express my pain.

My mother’s name was next to my father’s, and sometimes I couldn’t believe that she’d been gone for so long. Five years came and went. I hoped they were together in heaven, their spirits playing in the clouds.

I stood there for thirty minutes, and not once did Maverick say a word or drop his comfort. He was there for me just the way he was before. If he had somewhere to be, he didn’t admit it. It seemed like he had all day to stand there beside me.