I wanted to argue. Wanted to swear I was going to do all of it. Every appointment. Every week. The map, the contingencies, the whole run. I wanted to make her every promise she’d just told me not to make. And I wanted to do it all with her by my side.
But that was exactly what she was asking me not to do.
I looked at her. Her reading glasses were pushed up on her head — same place she always left them.You never put those away.The kind of small nothing-observation I’d made a hundred times when we were together. The kind of thing I’d say tonight if any of this had gone the way I’d planned.
I let it go. I made myself say the harder thing. “Yeah.” A breath. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
She waited.
“I hear you. I’ll do it for me. The work is mine. I’m not going to do it to win you back, because you’re right — the second I had you back I’d stop, and we’d be right back here. I’ll do it because Ican’t stand who I am right now, and because I should have done it the morning after Danny died.”
She didn’t speak.
“But.” I held her eyes. “When I’m done — when I’ve actually done the work, when I’m somebody you can look at without thinking of all the doors I closed — I’m coming for you, Bea. Foryou. Not pushing. Not now. But that’s where I’m walking. You’re it for me. You always have been. End game.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I’m going to go,” I said. “Get some sleep, Bea.”
I stepped back toward the door. Hand on the knob. Then I stopped and looked at her one more time. “Lock this behind me. And for fuck’s sake, Bea — don’t open the door without looking next time. I don’t care who you think it is. You check first.”
She nodded.
I stepped out into the hall and pulled the door closed behind me. Then I stood there. Listened to the deadbolt turn. Listened to the chain slide into place. Then I walked down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the cold air to my truck.
I hadn’t cheated. That was gone now, cleared away clean. The cheating had been a story I’d been able to carry. This was harder. This was just the truth.
I pulled into the clubhouse lot and killed the engine. Sat in the dark.
Don’t carry this alone,Mrs. Curtis had said to me at her kitchen table, the morning after I’d finally made myself go to Danny’s grave.Danny wouldn’t want that.
I’d nodded. I’d thanked her. And then I’d gone right back to carrying it alone, because that was the only way I knew how to carry anything.
I’d thought I’d hit rock bottom already. Three times. The first was waking up in that chair in my own room with no memory of the night before, certain I’d cheated on the only good womanI’d ever loved. The second was the day they put Danny in the ground. The third was the morning I’d dialed Larkin’s number after I finally realized I couldn’t drink my way out of this.
I’d been wrong all three times.
This. Sitting in this truck, in this lot, knowing how I’d hurt Bea. This was rock bottom.
Chapter 27
?
— Holden —
Dr. Peter Larkin’s office was nothing like Bea’s. Where Bea favored warm neutrals and soft lighting, Pete had gone for dark wood and leather, the aesthetic of a man who’d spent thirty years working with first responders and veterans. His walls were lined with certifications and photographs—groups of firefighters, police officers, military units he’d counseled over the decades.
I sat across from him in a leather chair that creaked when I settled into it. The room smelled like old books and something faintly chemical — wood polish, maybe. Nothing soft about it. Nothing that saidsafe. Just solid and functional, the way a workspace looks when the person using it has stopped worrying about comfort.
“Start from the beginning,” he said. “Whatever made you pick up the phone. Take it from there.” He paused. “Pete, by the way. Nobody who sits in that chair calls me Dr. Larkin for long.”
I told him. All of it. I kept Bea’s name out of it — she was in the same line of work, and I didn’t know whether Pete knew her, and it wasn’t my call to drop her into the room without her knowing. So she was justthe womanthe whole way through.
Pete listened without interrupting. He didn’t write anything down. Just watched me, hands folded, and let me talk until there was nothing left. By the end my hands were braced on my knees,shoulders low, the leather chair creaking under the shift of my weight.
When I finished he was quiet for a long moment.
“That’s a lot to carry,” he finally said.
