“I cherish our memories, and I’ll never regret our time together, but marriage was never in my plans back then. Not until I fell in love with you. My family had to come first. After Dad died, they became my responsibility. To this day, they still are. I never thought I was meant to be a husband. I guess you proved me wrong there, didn’t you? We were damn good together while it lasted.”
I cleared my throat, allowing the dormant emotions to push their way to the surface. “I’m selling your car, Autumn. Every time I look at it, all I can think about is the crash. Of grasping your hand as the light in your eyes faded away. The ink on ourlicense was barely dry, you know? Hell, the accident happened on the way to the fucking airport for our honeymoon.”
My forehead rested on the cool stone. “These days, I’m so fucking confused. I’ve met someone who can’t even be considered a someone yet. It has to be nothing more than a desperate attempt to hold on to something I never thought I wanted. But then again, what if this could be a new beginning? Stupid, right?”A heavy sigh left me,and I shook my head.“Here I am at fucking forty, waxing poetic about new beginnings.”
I stood, brushing the damn dirt from my knees and replacing the lilies in the vase that had long since withered.
“I can almost hear your voice telling me to suck it up, buttercup, and grab life by the balls, holding onto every scrap of happiness I can find. But what does that say about me? If I can know exactly what you’ll say but not remember how you smell. Or the tone of your voice. I’m just so tired, baby. Tired of being so fucking lonely.”
There was nothing more to say—there never was. Nothing would change the fact that her body was in the ground and my thoughts about Summer had gone from antagonistic to fucking nuclear.
Why the fuck had I thought it was a good idea to do this the morning before I took Summer on a date? My only job today should have been showering and shaving. Not trying to justify some unknown feeling to my deceased wife after spending the night with another woman.
This was a mistake. A big, fat, fucking epic disaster. What good did being here do other than force me to relive Autumn’s death? Maybe I was in some sort of sex-induced walking coma, still blinded by how responsive Summer was and how she felt surrounding me?
Thinking about those two women within the same breath was a sign of my slowly slipping sanity or delusions of someone finally seeing what I’d always wanted hidden.
I shook my head and sighed before bending down to scratch Malibu behind her ears. She pressed her body against my thigh, and I smiled as she yawned, tilting her head toward the sky. I did the same and tugged off my hat, running my arm over my brow.
At least she didn’t expect anything but cuddles, but I wouldn’t say no to my four-legged-girl suddenly developing superpowers that could turn the clock back twelve hours so I could spend more time cuddling with Malibu…or Summer.
I rolled my eyes at the stupidity of my thoughts. “Come on, Princess. Let’s go home. We have a date, remember? Think I should do a double Windsor knot or stick with slacks and a sport coat?”
I tried for casual indifference, but Malibu was way smarter than me and could always pick up on my mood. She barked, shaking her head, and then stopping to scratch behind her left ear.
“We don’t have time for the park now, girl. But there are treats in the truck.”
Her recognition of the “T” word had her forgetting my forced good mood and made me laugh as she ran around me in circles, barking madly. Perhaps Summer would be as impressed later with my choice of cuisine for our date.
One of our clients owned a fancy French restaurant downtown and reserved us a table for seven this evening. After TriVolt upgraded their dining room with individual light fixtures for each table, I never thought it would be the kind of place I’d have dinner. Not that I had anything against French food—except for that ridiculously priced caviar plate—I just preferred eating food I could pronounce.
I did the same thing with Malibu. If I couldn’t pronounce the ingredients, I didn’t buy the food. Maybe that’s why she had her own shelf in the fridge.
The bag of venison jerky I kept in the car for her got significantly lighter on the way home. She happily gobbled up several pieces before I rolled the windows down and tapped my fingers against the steering wheel to the classic rock tune on the radio, feeling lighter than I had before visiting Autumn—even if the guilt remained.
Chapter 26
“It’s a littlelate to be installing that walk-in shower in my bathroom, so I assume Summer wasn’t jerking my chain when she said you were taking her out.”
Cam moved away from the screen door and motioned me inside, side-eyeing me like a protective father waiting for some pre-pubescent boy to take his only daughter out for the first time. My only solace was that he had no clue I’d been there last night. Chances were, I wouldn’t be breathing if he knew what the two of us had gotten up to.
My eyes darted around the front hall, landing on a pile of travel brochures, and I picked up one that focused on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
“We’re still waiting on the showerhead and light fixtures to be delivered,” I said, meeting his eyes and laying the brochure back down before putting my hands into my pockets. “Then we’ll handle it for you, sir.”
“Good. That remodel you did in the spare bathroom upstairs looks good.”
“Thanks. It’s the least we could do after that pipe burst and gave Summer frostbite.”
“Yeah. I heard about that damn pipe for a week afterward. She’s still upstairs, fixing her hair or changing her outfit. Sounds like she’s wearing steel-toe boots, though, with the way I’ve heard her clopping around up there for the last hour.”
“My fault. I’m a little early.”
“Eager, are ya?”
“Um. Well.” I stuttered through an answer, not meeting his eyes. “Yeah, I guess I am,” I said, hoping honestly was the right way to go here, because it was the truth. Even though we’d done a couple of steps out of order, this was something I’d been thinking about for longer than I cared to admit.
“Interesting.”
