Hurricane Hearts

by Nina Levine

  20

  WINTER

  Focusing on the words coming out of Max’s mouth was near impossible. Birdie’s confession made sure of that. I’d spent the last twenty minutes trying like fuck to listen to him and put her out of my mind, but that was never going to happen. At the best of times, Birdie was hard to shift from my thoughts; at the worst of times, thoughts of her were unrelenting.

  “Have you heard a word I’ve said, Matt?” Max asked, his biting tone forcing my attention to him. “Or have I just wasted all this time sitting here sharing my shit with you?”

  I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Fuck, sorry.”

  His eyes narrowed at me. “What’s going on with you? Something’s off.”

  I nodded and exhaled a long breath. “Yeah, Birdie and I have some stuff to deal with, but we’re not here to discuss that. You and I need to—”

  He drank the last of his coffee and pushed his mug away. “Maybe you need to go deal with that so you’ve got a clear head for this.” His voice was hard. Harder than I’d ever heard from him.

  “Let’s just keep focused on the will.”

  “Let’s fucking not.”

  If it had been any day other than today—the day Birdie had thrown a grenade into the middle of our relationship—I would have cheered Max’s anger on. I would have encouraged it because of what it signified. But today, my own inner turmoil got in the way of that, and I responded to his anger with my own.

  “What the fuck?” I demanded. “Why the fuck are you coming at me? I’m not the one causing you grief, brother.”

  “Yeah, you are. You’ve stirred everything up between Mel and me—”

  “Shit that needed to be stirred, Max.”

  “Not this fucking week it didn’t.” He pushed his back against the chair again, crossed his arms angrily, and shook his head while muttering, “Not when our father just fucking died. I don’t have it in me to deal with all of this at once. And if you’d been listening, you’d fucking know that.”

  Max wasn’t one to swear like this. And he was right; I hadn’t been listening. Not well enough to know what he was talking about now.

  In an effort to calm him down, I said, “Okay, so I wasn’t paying attention. I heard something about your debt and that being the main problem between you two. What debt do you have?”

  His anger didn’t disappear, but he did rein it in enough to continue the conversation. “Mel has a shopping addiction, hence the car and the lounge and the TV amongst a whole heap of other crap we don’t need. It’s been getting worse over the last six months, and as much as I try to help her figure it out and put a stop to it, nothing I say or do helps. If anything, it just makes everything worse between us.”

  “That’s why she’s been desperate for me to agree to sell Mum’s house.”

  He nodded. “Yeah.” Glancing down, he stalled for a beat before meeting my gaze again. “There’s more.” He hesitated for another moment in which he looked anything but comfortable with this conversation. “Fuck, Matt, she’s been talking with a guy online for a few months.”

  My brows pulled in. “What, as in cheating on you?”

  “No. Yes.” He unfolded his arms and blew out a harsh breath. “Fuck, I don’t know what you’d call it. All I know is she’s not happy with me and she’s been messaging this guy on Facebook, staying up half the fucking night talking to him while I’ve been busting my balls trying to pay off her fucking credit cards. She’s not sleeping with him, but it sure as hell feels like she’s cheating on me.”

  My dislike of Melissa roared to life, punching through every cell of my body. The shit she’d caused for my family, especially between Max and me, all came rushing back. “Fuck, brother, I’d fucking call that cheating. And I’d walk the fuck away from her if I were you.”

  “Says the guy who’s back with the woman who destroyed him years ago and who’s still having issues with that same woman.” A mask of bitterness fell over his face. “If it were Birdie who’d done this to you, would you walk away? Because I fucking doubt it.” He stabbed his finger in the air at me. “So don’t sit there and judge my marriage and tell me you’d do something we both know you wouldn’t.”

  “I’m not judging you, but I’ve never hidden the fact I’m not a fan of Melissa. I hate what she’s done to us. To our family. And yeah, there’s a lot I’d put up with from Birdie, but if she ever treated me the way Melissa treats you, I would put my fucking foot down and refuse to stand for it.”

  “And you call that not judging? You’re a hypocrite and this is a conversation I should have known we could never have.” He shoved his chair back and stood. “I thought for once you might be able to come down off your high horse and just let me talk. Let me share my problems without trying to tell me how to run my life. Turns out I was wrong.”

  Any other day, I’d have done my damnedest to give him what he needed, but not today. Today, I was riddled with too many emotions to see straight. “So, what, you’re just going to accept whatever she does? Let her continue treating you like shit?”

  The daggers he sent my way let me know it would take a lot for us to come back from this mess of a conversation. “I don’t believe in divorce, Matt. I don’t fucking subscribe to the idea that marriage is something we can just walk away from when shit isn’t going our way.”

  “You know I don’t either, but fuck, I also don’t believe in being walked all over and treated the way you have been.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, his eyes churning with a volatile mix of anger and resentment. “I’m fighting like fuck to keep my marriage and my life from falling apart. When you have kids, you’ll understand that a whole lot better. If you can’t support me, don’t bother even being in my life. I’m done with trying to live up to your expectations.”

  My chest squeezed with pain as I watched him walk away. How the fuck had we come to this? My brother and I had been through a lot of difficult times in our life, but this was a whole new level of difficult. He’d never once spoken to me the way he just had, and he’d never told me to step out of his life if I couldn’t support his choices. How the hell could I do that, though, if I didn’t believe his wife was a woman worth fighting for?

  I had no starting point for how to navigate our way out of this corner we’d backed ourselves into.

  Fuck.

  I stalked out of the café and walked down the mall towards the river, trying like fuck to rid my mind and body of everything I was feeling. The last time I recalled being this tightly wound was when Birdie left me years ago. This was different, though. Then, I hadn’t known exactly why I felt the way I did. She hadn’t given me a reason I could latch onto. This time, she had, and the level of anger I felt over it was unlike any I’d ever experienced. Add to that this stuff going on with Max, and I was in new fucking territory.

  I was wired.

  I wanted to fucking punch something. Anything.

  I’d told Birdie to wait for me. That I’d return so we could continue our conversation. I couldn’t do that. Not in this state. Not with my skin crawling with this kind of energy. So instead of going back to her, I found a pub. Possibly a worse idea, but fuck, at this point, it was the best option I had, because fighting this out with Birdie while I was like this could destroy us.

  21

  BIRDIE

  Winter had been gone all day.

  I checked my watch for what felt like the thousandth time.

  5:18 p.m.

  I wasn’t sure whether to be concerned or not. This was unlike him. When Winter said he’d do something, he did it. I couldn’t recall a time when he hadn’t. Not even when we’d fought in the past. And we’d had some god-awful fights. But he had never gone off grid like this.

  I’d tried to call him a few times and sent a text, but his phone was either switched off or dead. I figured it was switched off. I didn’t blame him. But at the same time, I was going crazy with worry and doubt.

  Winter had said he wasn’t done, but then he’d look
ed at me like he never had before. Like he wanted to be anywhere but with me. And now that he’d had hours to think about everything I’d told him, I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d changed his mind.

  My phone rang and I snatched it up, desperately hoping it was him while also dreading it. I feared the words from his mouth, “I’m not coming back,” but I needed to hear his voice.

  “Have you heard from him yet?” Cleo.

  “No. Nothing. Not a text, not a call. I’ve really screwed this up, Cleo.” My unsteady voice and anxiety annoyed even me. You caused this, Birdie. Now you have to pay the price.

  “Well, yeah, you screwed shit up a long time ago, but this isn’t something we didn’t know.” I loved my best friend’s blunt honesty. Really. “But you’ve done the right thing now by telling him. You need to stay strong, babe, and have faith in your man. Winter loves you in a way I don’t see often; I think he’ll forgive you.”

  “I’m not so sure.” I’d been a fool years ago when I’d thought I could solve our problems by getting pregnant. All I’d ended up doing was ruining us and causing the man I loved a whole lot of hurt, which was the last thing I ever wanted to do.

  “Birdie,” Cleo started, but I didn’t hear anything after that because the door to the hotel room opened and Winter entered.

  With my heart racing, I said quietly, “I have to go,” and ended the call. I dropped the phone on the bed and moved to him without realising I’d taken the steps. “What happened to your face?”

  His jaw clenched. “I had a disagreement with someone.” His tone was clipped and I knew that was all the information I would get as to why his face was bruised and swollen.

  Taking a step back, I offered, “I’ll call down to see if they have an ice pack.”

  “I don’t need one.” Again, clipped. And I caught a whiff of whisky.

  My heart dived into my stomach.

  “Winter, you do—”

  “I don’t.” He walked to the bed, sat, and removed his boots.

  I watched him silently while my tummy cramped, my heart gasped for air, and my mind tangled with a million thoughts that all clamoured to be spoken.

  When he’d taken his boots off, he looked up at me. He didn’t say a word, completely throwing me off while his eyes bored into mine.

  My breaths came faster. Shallower.

  The seconds ticked by.

  My head roared with anxiety.

  What is he thinking?

  I tried to wait for him, but when my nerves had me like they did, words always tumbled from my mouth all over the damn place.

  “Winter—”

  That was all I got out this time, though, because as soon as his name left my lips, he stood and said, “I need a shower.”

  The sound of the bathroom door closing, not with a slam but with definite force, drew all my insecurities to the surface. It had been a long time since I’d handed my heart over to anyone and given them the ability to rip it from my chest and shatter it. But that’s exactly what Winter had given me, too, and I’d hacked his from his chest and shredded it. That killed me more than anything.

  I could take his anger.

  I could take his silence.

  I could take whatever words he hurled at me.

  But I struggled to live with myself over his pain.

  I spent the ten minutes he was in the shower talking myself off the ledge of leaving. A part of me still believed Winter was better off without me. If I wasn’t in the picture, he could find someone else to love and have a family with. However, his response to what I’d done had left me with some small hope that we could somehow fix this.

  He’d told me he wasn’t done.

  He’d come back to the hotel.

  And while his anger was a living, breathing thing, he hadn’t told me to leave or given me any indication he intended to leave.

  Ten minutes of back-and-forth inner conflict felt like the longest ten minutes of my life. When I heard him turn the shower off, I was done with waiting. I couldn’t keep myself from him another second.

  I opened the bathroom door and with my heart beating faster than it ever had, I took the step to bring me closer to him.

  “Birdie,” he cautioned, issuing a warning I refused to acknowledge.

  “Winter, we need to talk.”

  He stood in front of the mirror, steam filling the air, but not so much that I couldn’t see him watching me. His masculine energy blazed between us with such ferocity I faltered. Maybe I should have given him more time. Waited for him to come to me. But I’d made this choice, so I stuck with it and hoped it would help move us forward.

  When his face twisted with anger, I flinched, but I didn’t leave. I needed to let him experience that anger and I needed to take it all. Our relationship wouldn’t survive if he didn’t feel it all and let it all out.

  Gripping the edge of the vanity with both hands, he glued his eyes to mine in the mirror. “What do you want to talk about first? The fact you took matters into your own hands? The fact you lost a baby I didn’t even know we’d made? The fact you lost the ability to have children? The fact you walked away from me without giving me the chance to tell you I’d live with your choice and still love you? Or the fact we wasted five fucking years?”

  When I didn’t respond except to recoil at his fury, he smacked his hands down on the vanity and threw out, “Yeah, I don’t want to talk about any of that either.” With that, he stalked out of the bathroom.

  My body trembled at the intensity of his emotions and as much as I didn’t want to follow him, I’d started this and I had to see it through. I waited a minute and took some long, deep breaths before joining him in the room.

  He’d dressed in jeans and a clean black T-shirt, and was putting his boots back on. I knew he heard me enter, because how could he not, but he didn’t look at me or speak to me. He simply continued lacing his boots.

  Ignoring the fact he appeared to be leaving, I said, “We can start at the beginning. Discuss why I felt it necessary to do what I did.” I sounded a lot more confident than I felt. On the inside, I was shaking more than I was on the outside.

  Winter’s head snapped up. “Nothing necessitates a woman getting herself pregnant without first discussing it with her partner. But hell, if you wanna start there, knock yourself out.”

  I swallowed hard. This was a side of Winter I hadn’t seen much of. He scared me a little when he was like this. “You’re right. I should not have done what I did. I own that and I’ll regret that decision for the rest of my life.”

  “I’ll regret that decision for the rest of my life, too.” His tone was pure ice.

  “I needed you here, Winter. We needed you here. I didn’t think we’d survive if you went back to Afghanistan. But I also didn’t think you’d be the one to figure that out.”

  He stood and came my way, almost towering over me he came so close. His features were tormented, his nostrils flaring as he demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me you thought we were failing? And that you needed me here. If I’d known, I—”

  My own anger burst to life, and unable to control it, I lashed out at what he’d said, “I did tell you! Over and over, I told you how much I was struggling and how much it was affecting us, but you either didn’t hear me or didn’t want to hear me.”

  “I heard you, Birdie, but fuck, I was needed in Afghanistan. And I did eventually leave to come home to you. I chose you. But when I got home, you’d already checked out.”

  “And that right there was the main problem we had, Winter. You always thought everyone else needed you more than I did. When you came home each time, you weren’t really here with me. Your mind wasn’t—”

  “Jesus, my mind was screwed up over that fucking war. I was doing my best to give you what I thought you needed.”

  My soul screamed with pain at his words, because deep down, I knew he was being honest. That fucking war had screwed him up, and he did do his best to be here for me, but he could never give me what I needed whil
e his mind was so messed up. Hell, he couldn’t even give himself what he needed. War had screwed us both up, and five years later, we were still picking up the pieces, trying to bandage ourselves back together.

  I stopped arguing and took a deep breath. Nodding, I said, “I know you were.”

  While I tried to calm my anger, Winter was too far gone to contain his. “So you figured throwing a baby into the mix would solve all that?” His tone was mean. Hurtful. But then, he was hurt and this was his way of expressing that.

  “I hoped it would.” My voice broke as my emotions strangled me. “I was a mess back then. Confused about us, about our future, about your job. And I made a bad decision that I wish I could take back.”

  His eyes were so hard I felt like he could drill his anger into me with them. “Yeah, you did. But the thing you did that I regret the most was that you left without telling me. I spent months trying to get to the bottom of that, and not once did you even come close to giving me the truth. I would have listened, Birdie. Would have worked through it with you. Instead, we lost all this time together.” He raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head. “Fuck!”

  Before I had a chance to say anything more, he reached for his wallet and shoved it into his pocket.

  When he swiped the room key off the table, I said, “Where are you going?”

  “Out.”

  “Winter, you’ve already been drinking and you’ve already gotten into a fight. I don’t think—”

  His furious gaze landed on me again. “Don’t wait up for me.”

  He was gone in a gush of wild energy, and I was left staring after him, questioning whether we had any chance at salvaging this wreck I’d made.

  22

  WINTER