He tries to argue for a second, insisting he's got it, but I use the cushion to nudge him in the ass and get him moving again. He waits for me when he reaches the landing, offering me the lead. Which I suppose makes sense since it's technically my room we're headed to.
Under any other circumstances, I'd be happy to take the spot, would insist on it even, but not tonight. "Go ahead. You know the way as well as I do."
His eyes lock on mine as though he's trying to study my thoughts. "You go," he maintains, taking another step aside to widen the path for me. "I'll follow you."
But I don't move so much as an inch. "Why does it matter who goes first?"
"It matters because I can either be your buffer or I can have your back," he says, voice dropping lower to keep from waking the kids.
"So be my freaking buffer," I hiss.
"No."
I fight the urge to stomp my foot. I refuse to succumb to a two-year-old’s coping mechanisms no matter how tempting it is. "If you're not going to help me, why are you still here?"
He leans in, until his nose is mere inches from mine. "Iwillhelp you. As soon as you let me."
I glare at him in response and he sighs.
"Liz," he says my name like a plea. "I would gladly be your buffer if I knew that I could be your buffer every night after this one. But I can't. Which means, tomorrow night, you'll have to come up here alone. And I can't accept that. Can't accept knowing you faced this on your own, when I should have had your back. So let me have your back, Liz."
My ire dies a quiet death.
"This side of you is making me very uncomfortable," I grumble as I walk around him, careful not to let our oversized cushions collide. "I know we agreed not to be assholes for the sake of the kids, but we never said we were going to care."
"You started it," he huffs behind me, "when you offered me the couch."
"My mistake," I say, reaching for the handle when I get to the door. "Won't happen again." Distracted by our conversation, I walk in before I can register what I'm doing. I make it two steps in, before it hits me.
"Shit," the word expels on a breath, the sight before me like a punch to the gut. I stumble back a step. Right into Jovi.
Two large hands come to rest at my waist as my back lands flush against his chest. In all the years I've known him, he and I have never embraced. Never stood this close. Never touched this much. Despite my brain insisting I should jerk away, that I should bolt outof his reach, my body's instinct is to stay. To be held. Just for a moment.
So I do. I let Jovi provide the support he promised, for a few seconds, until I catch my breath.
As if in tune with the wave of my emotions, Jovi's hands ease from my waist as the surge of grief begins to ebb, one palm coming to the small of my back as I take a deep breath and step forward. His touch follows me as I move, fingertips pressing gently as I take the next two steps into the center of the room.
"Trent always said she held a ball of chaos in her calm," Jovi says, as we take in the disaster before us.
A trail of clothes winds from the closet to the bed to the en suite bath, marks every step my sister took in this room the night she died. The hair dryer, still plugged in, hangs over the back of a chair she dragged over from her desk to sit in front of the full-length mirror in the corner.
The contents of her make up bag have been dumped onto the bed and sit among the dips and valleys of their down comforter. Which has not been neatly spread across the king-sized bed but lies misshapen in a strange twist down the middle.
One of the pillows is placed on the floor in front of the mirror, where Lena sat to do her makeup. Using the chair she dragged there not for sitting in, but as a side table holding a comb, a collection of pins and two bottles of hair tinctures. And, of course, as a hanging rack for the hair dryer.
Two pairs of shoes sit in haphazard piles near the door, indicating the last of her decisions before she left the room. Black stilettos and strappy silver sandals lost. Which means she chose the teal peep toes. She always did.
The only sign Trent also got dressed in this room is the rumpled towel left behind on the bench at the foot of the bed. And the only reason I know it was his contribution to the disaster here, is because wet towels were Lena's one pet peeve. Not because of the added clutter, but because of the smell.
But the musty funk isn't the only scent still lingering in here. There are faint citrus traces of Lena's perfume which she applied religiously. Because the scent delighted her. And, of course, the underlying notes of horse and hay are present, hinting of a hamper in need of emptying.
"It's like they were just here," Jovi whispers, his raspy voice breaking on the last word.
I force down the lump in my throat, warring with the same thoughts and the unwanted emotions they churn up.
"I knew it would be hard coming in here," I almost choke on the words trying to get them out. "But I didn't expect it to be like this."
I was worried about facing the pictures. The family portraits I took of them last summer, custom-framed and hanging on the wall above their bed in a perfect row of four large squares. The bride and groom shot from their wedding day that Lena kept on her night stand. The photo of her pregnant with Remmi Trent kept on his. The countless casual candids she pinned into the frame of her large mirror.
