“I’m sorry,” she said, quieter this time. “I know I should be stronger.”
“Who the fuck told you that?”
She laughed again, sharp and ugly. “You did. It’s the only reason you married me, remember? ‘Strong enough to handle your brand of crazy.’”
I’d said that a lifetime ago. Thought it was a compliment. “Yeah, well, I was an idiot,” I muttered.
“Yeah, you are,” she agreed with a sniff.
“You got it backward,” I said, my voice rough. “About what I said yesterday…”
She blinked up at me in confusion, still crying but quieter now.
“You’re not a reminder of what I lost.” I had to look away, focus on the window where snow kept falling, because looking at her while I said what needed to be said might kill me. “You’re a reminder that I can still lose things. That there’s still something left that matters enough to be terrified of losing.”
My throat closed, but I forced the words out anyway. She deserved to hear them. Deserved to know the truth, even if it made me sound like a pathetic bastard who’d failed in every way that mattered.
“We lost Levi,” I said, pulling my lip between my teeth to keep it from shaking. “Couldn’t save him. Couldn’t fix it. Didn’t see the signs right in front of me.”
Kelsey’s hand came up to my cheek, but I couldn’t look at her yet. Needed to get it all out while I still had the balls to say it.
“I lost you. Watched you disappear into a version of yourself I didn’t recognize. And instead of fighting for you, I just let you go. Signed those papers like they didn’t mean I was signing away the only good thing I had left.”
“But—”
“Then I lost myself trying to figure out how to live in a world where you weren’t mine.” My voice cracked, and I finally looked at her, let her see everything I’d been hiding.
“How’s that working out?” she asked.
I huffed out a laugh. “Real shitty, actually, since I’m still buying your damn shampoo and body wash so I can pretend for five minutes that you’re still here.”
I gripped her face between my palms, probably too tight, but I needed her to understand this next part. Really understand it.
“When I found you in that car, I thought—” My voice broke completely, and I had to stop, swallow hard before trying again. “I thought that was it… that you were gone. And I couldn’t—I couldn’t survive losing you, Kels. I’d eat a bullet before I’d go through it.”
She flinched, and I hated myself for saying it out loud, but it was the truth. Losing her would have been the end of me.
“I know it’s fucked up. Know it’s not fair to you. But I can’t—don’t know how to turn it off. Don’t know how to stop caring about you. I’m not real good at the whole moving on thing, baby. Never have been.”
Kelsey made a sound like she’d been hit in the gut, then pressed herself against me so hard it drove the breath from my lungs. Her arms went around the back of my neck, holding on like she was trying to crawl inside my skin.
“I don’t want to fight anymore,” she whispered against my throat. “I don’t want to be angry. I want—” She pulled back to look at me, tears still streaming down her cheeks. But there was something softer in her eyes now. “Can we just call a truce? For Christmas? Can we try to make the best of this completely insane situation?”
A truce. Like we were warring countries instead of two people who’d once shared everything—dreams, fears, a bed, kids, thirty years of history that couldn’t be erased no matter how hard we’d tried.
Outside, the snow continued falling, sealing us in together. Maybe that was what it would take—being forced into the same space with nowhere to run, no club to retreat to, no gym for her to disappear into. Just us and all the wreckage we’d left behind.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice rough. “We can do that.”
She sagged against me in relief, and I tightened my arms around her, breathing in a scent that meant home to me in a way nothing else did.
My stomach chose that exact moment to growl loudenough to wake the dead, ripping through the emotional heaviness like a chainsaw.
Kelsey pulled back, a startled laugh escaping through the tears. “Was that you, or did a bear find its way inside?”
“Definitely a bear, although I wouldn’t say no to an early dinner,” I said, nodding to the spread covering every available surface, “seeing as you made enough to feed half of Colorado.”
She wiped her face with the back of her hand, already shifting back into Martha Stewart mode. “Sit. I’ll fix you a plate.”
