We’d been a lot of things together—young, reckless, passionate, broken—but better? That was debatable. Unless better meant perfecting the art of mutual destruction.
“Seems to me,” Lucy’s voice took on the thoughtful quality that usually preceded something I didn’t want to hear, “that you two oughta simplify things then. Life’s too short, sweetheart. Trust me, at our age, Paul and I know that better than most.”
“Speak for yourself, Luce,” he grumbled. “I’m at my peak.”
“Honey, Carter was still president when you were at your peak,” she teased.
Their gentle sparring continued, but I barely heard it.
Life’s too short.
Such a simple phrase, but it landed like a lead balloon. Life was too short—Levi had proven that. Too short for what, though? For second chances? For forgiveness? For admitting that waking up in Teddy’s arms was the first time I’d felt whole in two years?
“You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it,” she continued, like a shark who’d scented blood in the water. “All those years together, three beautiful children who would love nothing more than to see their parents?—”
“Two,” I corrected quietly, the word catching in my throat. “We have two children.”
The line went silent for a heartbeat too long. The kind of quiet that came when people realized they’d stepped on the landmine everyone else was tiptoeing around.
“Oh, honey.” Her voice cracked. “I didn’t mean?—”
“I know,” I said softly, gripping the counter edge until my knuckles went white. Because if I let her apologize, if I let her say his name, I’d lose it. And falling apart over the phone with my former mother-in-law while standing in my ex-husband’s cabin and wearing his clothes was not on my Christmas bingo card. “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t. Nothing about it was okay. Not the way grief could still ambush me in the middle of a perfectly normal conversation. Notthe way everyone—including me—kept forgetting to subtract one when counting our children.
But that was the script we all followed now—pretending the wound had healed when really, we’d just gotten better at not acknowledging the gaping hole in our family.
“We just want you both to be happy,” Paul rumbled, clearly trying to rescue his wife from the conversational quicksand she’d stepped into. “Both of you. That’s all we’ve ever wanted.”
Happy.
Such a simple word for such a complicated thing. I’d forgotten what it even looked like, let alone how to achieve it. Was I happy all alone in our old house in Lubbock with its brand-new furniture and rooms I couldn’t walk into? Was Teddy happy in his empty cabin with its half-decorated Christmas tree and bare walls?
I pressed my free hand to my sternum, trying to ease the ache that had taken up permanent residence there. “I should probably go check on Teddy,” I lied, desperate to end the conversation before it veered into territory I couldn’t navigate. “Make sure he hasn’t gotten himself buried in a snowdrift.”
Paul cleared his throat. “That boy never stopped loving you, Kelsey. Not for a goddamn minute. Don’t give up on him.”
The tattoo on his chest begged to differ, but I wasn’t about to drop that bombshell on them.
“And we love you,” Lucy fervently added. “Always have, always will. You’re family, baby girl. No matter what.”
My throat closed completely. I managed something that might have been “love you too” before ending the call with a shaky exhale.
They still considered me family. After everything—after I’d failed to keep their son happy, failed to save their grandson, failed at the one job that had ever truly mattered to me—they still claimed me as theirs.
Lucy was wrong about one thing, though. I’d gotten very good at being alone. I’d had years of practice. What I wasn’t good at was being around my ex-husband without wanting things I couldn’t have. Remembering things I needed to forget. Feeling things I had no business feeling.
I stared at the mug on the counter. “World’s Okayest Hunter.” Notworld’s best, not world’s worst. Just okayest. If that wasn’t a metaphor for where we were now, I didn’t know what was.
Snow had begun to fall again, the fat flakes adding to the apocalyptic accumulation from last night. The drive hadn’t been shoveled, which meant that Teddy had likely walked to wherever he’d gone.
An image of the tattoo on his chest flashed through my mind, and anger trickled in, replacing the hurt.
I’d practically thrown myself at him last night, and he’d responded by tucking me in like a child and disappearing as soon as the sun was up.
Message received, loud and clear.
I thought of the name tattooed on his chest, wondering if he was with the mysterious H. The thought of him walking through waist-deep drifts to spend a lazy morning in bed with his girlfriend sent anger flooding through my veins.
