“What about you? Won’t you catch me?” I croaked, fear splicing through my chest at the crestfallen look in his eyes.
“We’ve got to stop doing this,” he whispered. “You’ve held onto me so tightly that it’s twisted and distorted our time together. You have to let me go. When you do, I promise things will get better.”
“Let you go? How can I let you go, Raleigh? You’re my husband!” I pleaded, the desperate tone in my voice sparking a memory of another clear spring day. One where I was called back to the farmhouse unexpectedly. One where I met with two uniformed police officers.
“Where’s your ring, Tucker?”
I regret toinform you…
“On my finger where it’s always been since you put it there.”
… there’s been an accident…
“Is it?”
… drunk driver going eighty miles an hour…
“Of course it is.”
…. killed instantly on impact…
“Check again, my love.”
… so sorry for your loss…
My hand shook as I lifted it, struggling at first to even make out the appendage through my blurring vision. Where was my ring? But somehow, I knew. Slowly, my hand drifted to my chest, clutching at the band strung through a chain around my neck when my fingers brushed against it. Jackson’s chain.
Raleigh’s hand left my face to rest over mine holding my necklace, and when I looked up at him, his smile was small and sorrowful.
“How am I supposed to let you go when all I do is miss you?” I choked out, unable to stop the hot tears streaming down my cheeks.
“You’ll figure it out. I know you will because you have to, Tucker. We all need you to figure it out.”
“I don’t know how,” I sobbed, leaning into him to bury my face against his chest.
His strong arms wrapped around me, enveloping me in a cocoon of warmth as I cried out against every ounce of misery and heartache I had imprinted on my soul. How the fuck could I ever let this man go? He was my everything. A soft kiss was placed against my hair before Raleigh’s low timbre came again. “I’m never far, and you’ll always have a piece of me. But I have to go now. You’ve got to let me go.”
“No!” My fingers dug into the fabric of his shirt, desperately trying to hold him here with me. “No!”
Then he was gone.
My body lurched forward, the wail tearing from my throat excruciating as it left me. The hot tracks of tears were already coursingdown my cheeks, and it took me a second to orient myself, the darkness surrounding me feeling like I’d landed in a pit of hell. But slowly the fuzzy outlines of my bedroom furniture came into focus as my chest heaved.
Beside me, a body fumbled in the sheets as they struggled to right themselves after being woken from a dead sleep. For a split second, hope flared hot and bright in my chest that the man I lost was next to me. That he came back for me because he knew I wasn’t strong enough to ever let go.
But it was green-brown eyes that blinked wildly up at me instead of bright blue, and the voice scratchy from sleep sounded nothing like Raleigh’s.
“Fuck, Tucker, are you okay? Baby, what’s wrong?”
Another sob racked me, my body curling in on itself as I buried my face in my hands against the overwhelming emotions plowing through me. I felt the bed dip as Jackson shifted himself toward me, and then he was rubbing my back and arms. Every brush of his hands felt wrong, and I pushed at him to stop.
“What’s going on?” he tried again, his tone soothing, but I could still hear the undercurrent of fear slipping into every syllable.
“He’s gone…” I managed around my stuttering breaths as my chest heaved.
“Who, baby? Who?”
“Raleigh!” My voice broke as I screamed his name, not sure if I was crying out for the man I buried or answering the man I had in bed with me.
