“She won’t tell me. Says she’ll only meet with you,” Bruce explains. “She’s staying at the Driftwood Motel until Monday.”
“Just a second.”
I dart back into the trailer, grab my wallet and keys and when I come back outside I grab his arm and start to walk us both over to my truck. “We’re going now?”
“Yes,” I say and open the passenger door and shove him toward it. He gets the point and climbs inside as I jog around to the driver’s side. “I need to get this over with.”
As we drive away, I call Winnie. It goes straight to voicemail probably because she’s still on the phone with her ex. That makes my dark mood darker but I try not to show it when I leave a message. “Hey, Win. Listen, I had an emergency. Nothing serious, just a thing I have to take care of. I’ll explain when I get back.”
This is not how I wanted tonight to go. Fuck, this isn’t how I want any night to go. But I’ll fix it. I just need to get that damn necklace and see Winnie and I can fix it.
19
Winnie
I miss you.”
It’s the fifth time in twenty minutes he’s said it, and I feel the same thing I’ve felt every other time—nothing. The Winnie who was with Ty, who put up with so much for so long, kind of doesn’t exist anymore.
“You don’t miss me,” I say back and try not to sigh. “You miss the familiarity. The comfort, but you don’t miss me.”
“How can you say that?’
“Well, first of all because you and I fought like cats and dogs in the last couple of years,” I remind him and keep pacing the dining room, careful not to trip on any of the boxes of kitchen stuff piled up everywhere. “And you cheated on me so, like, if you thought you were going to miss me, you probably shouldn’t have done that.”
“It was a mistake,” he says and now that lonely, sad tone of his voice is getting harder and angrier. Good. He has been drinking; I can tell by the slight slur to his words. “You said you forgave me. You stole years of my life by lying about that.”
“I’ve told you, I wasn’t lying on purpose.” I know that still sounds lame but it’s the truth. “I tried to forgive you.”
“All you tried to do was be there for your family,” he snaps back. “You didn’t care that it took you away from me. You didn’t care that I was going to be lonely or what it would do to our relationship.”
“I cared about the fact that my dad was dying,” I say, pain and anger bubbling over. “And if you loved me the way I deserved, you’d have cared about that too instead of cheating on me.”
“Well thanks for making me remember why we’re done,” he says. “I can’t believe I wasted a fucking decade on you.”
Before I can answer, he hangs up. Good. I don’t care who gets the last word as long as it’s the last. I don’t want to talk to him again. God, was he ever really in love with me? Was I ever in love with him? The way I felt about him was different than how I feel about Holden now. With Ty, I always felt like I was trying to win him or woo him. I never felt secure about his feelings for me. I was an insecure nineteen-year-old when we met, and I was just so grateful someone I thought was charming and cute seemed to think the same about me.
With Holden, I don’t feel like I’m chasing him or that I have to work hard to keep him interested. He’s interested, whether I like it or not. I smile at that thought and start through the cottage toward the porch and front door. Holden has seen me at my absolute worst and he’s been there, as a friend and then when I was ready, a lover. I feel like we are more solid in a few weeks than Ty and I ever were at any point during our ten years together. Which is why I am going out there and I’m going to ask him about the guy Dixie saw him with. Because the Winnie who is falling in love with Holden is different from the one who dated Ty. I confront problems now, I don’t try to ignore them into oblivion.
I step out onto the porch and see the lights on in the trailer. I open the screen door and head down the stairs toward the trailer but when I swing open the door, there’s no one inside.
“Holden?” I call out his name as I walk to the tiny bedroom and then over to glance in the bathroom. Nothing. He’s not here. I walk back over to the kitchen area and stare at the half-washed dishes. As I lean against the counter and lift my phone to text him, I see I have a voicemail. Right. Someone called when I was talking to Ty, but I ignored it assuming it was one of my sisters or something. But the number it’s showing is Holden’s so I quickly retrieve the message.
I stand there in the middle of his empty trailer listening to it three times in a row. Emergency? What the fuck is going on? Why does he sound annoyed and cold? My brain starts to spin out of control with possible situations that would have him leave without actually talking to me. I decide to call him but it goes straight to voicemail.
Was it Bradie and Duke? Did their car breakdown again or something? I check the time. It’s only nine thirty. Not too late to call Bradie, so I do. When she answers, I ask her if Holden is with her.
“No. I left him with you at the house.”
She sounds oddly cold too. “Oh. Okay, well I was in the cottage on the phone and when I came out, he was gone. He left a voicemail about an emergency or something so I thought maybe—”
“Were you on the phone with your boyfriend?” Bradie cuts in. “The guy who called you when you were clearing dishes?”
“What? I…he’s my ex. How did you—”
“The number that popped up on your phone when you were in the trailer said ‘Boyfriend,’” Bradie explains. “Which you should probably fix if you’re dating my brother. Are you dating my brother?”
“I don’t know,” I admit because I don’t. “I mean we’re involved, and I really like him.”
