Page 38 of Love Me Again

Josie did not know how to contend with this strange, new piece of information. It upended some piece of the shaky foundation she’d been walking around on since Boone left.

Dad had put that idea in Boone’s head? It felt like a betrayal, and it shouldn’t. At all. He’d been looking out for her. He certainly hadn’t told Boone to leave her. And his ‘warning’ had been six months before Boone was hurt.

“So, there I was, realizing I’d done just what he warned me against doing. In the moment, the only way I could think to make it right was to not be your problem anymore.”

Josie stood there feeling like a shell of herself. Like everything she felt and knew and was had leaked out, and there was nothing left but a husk. It wasn’t that she had been completely in the dark about why Boone had left. She’d known it was about his injury—maybe she’d thought it was more about his ego than saving her the trouble, but it was all kind of the same thing.

And her father had been the one to put that idea in his head? She couldn’t absorb it.

“I think… I need you to leave now.” The words came out raspy and pained. She turned away from him, not trusting anything inside of herself right now. She felt like too many jagged, broken pieces and she should have known Boone would only break them into smaller ones.

“Jo.”

She shook her head, wrapped her arms around her. “I can’t do this with you. If you don’t leave now, I will.”

She couldn’t look at him, but she heard his footsteps retreat, the door open and close. She held herself stiff and still for long, ticking minutes.

Then collapsed on the couch and cried.

Boone considered whiskey in the barn again. He’d gone out with the leftovers thinking they could have an honest conversation and he could make things better. Maybe not fix everything he’d fucked up, but ease into the start of that.

Instead, in typical Boone fashion, he’d made everything worse.

Yeah, some oblivion would be better than the crushing pain in his chest.

But Christmas lights glowed on the house, and Mom and Molly would know that if he came back late or drunk that whatever interaction he’d had with Josie hadn’t gone well.

For a moment he stood in the freezing, dark, snowy night and wondered why… Why did it matter if they knew? What would he lose if he they knew he’d failed—again? At least he’d be too drunk to care.

He had no answers for those questions. Sure, Shane might get that disapproving look, and Mom might be sad, and Molly might get all snippy with him, but that was already his life. Being home meant he elicited all those responses.

Because everyone already knew his failures. Especially now that Josie was here. Maybe they didn’t know every mistake, but they knew the big ones.

And nothing changed. He still had a place here. His brothers harassed him, sure, but he harassed them right back. Mom might look sad, but she never gave him the silent treatment.

They all already pitied him because of the injuries, so what was a little more pity about striking out with his wife?

He hadn’t even talked to her about the Christmas tree thing. He started walking for the house, shaking his head. On top of that, he’d said things he shouldn’t have.

He never meant to tell her about Paul’s warning. He didn’t want her to misunderstand it. It had been a father trying to protect his daughter. He thought she understood that, but he worried that in her current beat down state she might not.

Which would be his fault.

He let out a slow breath. Most of his life, he’d let one mistake compound into another. Disappoint one person? Might as well seek out a few more people to disappoint. It had become such a habit, he hadn’t even realized he was doing it half the time.

He still felt that knee-jerk reaction, that little whisper. Get drunk. Disappoint everyone so disappointing Josie didn’t even rank.

But over the past few months, he’d stopped listening to that voice, stopped giving into it. It had been a very gradual change, but it was a change. One that allowed him to walk toward the house rather than the bottle of whiskey.

He eased the front door open, slipped inside. The downstairs was mostly quiet and dark, which meant hopefully everyone had gone up to their respective rooms for the night.

He couldn’t quite toe off his boots standing up, so he had to lower himself onto the bench by the door. For a minute, he just sat there in a bunch of different kinds of pain. “Fuck,” he muttered.

“Is your leg going to hurt you forever?”

Boone jolted at the sudden voice. He glanced over at the hallway between the kitchen and the stairs. Micah stood there, his question lacking any kind of tact hanging in the air between them.

“Maybe,” Boone replied honestly. Because he’d already had surgeries. Why should he believe this next one was really going to fix anything? Why should he even go through with it? “What the hell are you doing anyway? Sneaking cookies?”