“I understand,” she managed to say.
“Before I filed for divorce, I had a fight with Ashley. I tried to stay as calm as possible. But I had simply said, ‘If you don’t settle down, I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but it ain’t gonna be pretty.’ I didn’t mean that as a threat to her or anyone. I meant like I was gonna leave her. But she took it seriously and called the cops on me and reported me for suicidal attempts. I was taken up north to Bridgerton Hospital. I went willingly, trying to appease her, and was stuck there for a week. That was one brick in the wall that made me wanna file for divorce. All I wanted was to be left with my kids and to have someone listen to me.”
He paused and as the tears finally fell, so did those shackles that kept him for so long. “Someone like you.”
No longer could Evie refrain. She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles. Instead of letting their hands hang back at rest, she kept them clutched to her chest and looked at him like her life depended on it, because his lifedid.
He chuckled sheepishly and shifted his stance. “You can imagine what went on in the town after that. Everything I did was wrong.” His head was downturned, and she watched his handsome face tighten. He sniffled.
Silence.
More silence.
Apparently, he was finished.
Evie let his hands go, stroked his face andlooked up to him. “Caleb,” she said with a breath of feminine care. As their eyes met, Caleb was losing the battle of controlling his feelings. Evie’s expression pulled every fiber of emotions to the surface, and he was struggling to hold on. He jerked, and then he fully let go and cried.
Evie held him immediately and pulled his face to her shoulder to cradle him as best as her shorter height could allow. “It’s okay. Nothing is your fault,” she soothingly whispered.
A knotting was felt in his body, and he squeezed his arms around her so hard he could’ve broken her back. Evie embraced it as best as she could despite her breath being difficult to take. Louder she heard his cries, and slowly they turned into screams that were quieted by his face into her neck.
His fingers dug into her. He gasped.
She wanted to assure him everything was okay, but she refrained from talking. She didn’t dare to interrupt it. After a minute, they turned into blood-curdling screams, and her eyes winced in sadness for him. The nape of her neck was wet with his tears, and he pressed his face harder into her.
Let him cry.
Although he never mentioned it, she gathered he lost a friend and probably had survivor’s guilt. Something dreadful happened overseas. Maybe one day she would know, but maybe she would never know. And she was okay with that.
After a few more minutes, she reached up to use her sweater’s sleeve to dry his pretty eyes. She whispered, “I don’t care what they say about you, because you’re the only peace I’ve ever known.”
Caleb let it go. He placed his past within her palms then and there. It was no longer his to hold on to. He had to let it go.
She welcomed it.
He cried hard into her cheek then, squeezing her soft body with his strong arms.
“It’s okay. I’m here for you. You’re safe,” she whispered with her eyes closed and her arms tight around him. His fingers pressed into every place they touched.
Evie lifted her hands to his upper back to calm him. It was a beautiful thing to feel his tall and muscled body give out the way it did,fracturing into tiny pebbles of pain that her hands would hold. No matter how many pebbles fell into her palms, the load would never make her falter.
He sniffed a bit, “Thank you. But I have to also say, I leave for deployment soon, and I’ll be gone for almost eight months.”
“And I will be here when you come home.”
“Everyone says that.”
She assured, “But some keep their promises. You’re not a difficult man to love, Caleb. I’ve been around men who are truly abusive, and that’s not you. And what happened with your friend, it’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. I know that doesn’t make it better, but it’s the truth. Go on your deployment, work your twelve-hour shifts here at home, spend hours in your garage working on your truck or yard or horses or whatever. I truly don’t care. Because that’s what I always found attractive about you. You do things I can’t, and you know things I’ve wanted to know but don’t. But above all else…”
He looked at her anxiously.
She smiled up to him. “I’m proud of you.”
Chapter Nineteen
The truck was warm with heat and basking love as they all were together, taking the kids to school the next morning. All was peaceful in the stillness of the moment. Evie turned around and looked at Olivia sleeping with a teddy bear on her lap, too tired to really care that she was on her way to school. Zack had respectfully kept his tablet off and looked out the window. She looked at him and saw him entrenched in his thoughts. She was still brimming with elation and gladness from the early morning situation with Caleb, and so she wanted to help his son, too. “You okay, buddy?”
“Yeah,” Zack answered slowly.
