When Life Happened

by Jewel E. Ann

  “I have enough money to buy my own fucking ticket.” She tried to keep from crying.

  Levi pounded the keys for a few more seconds. “Done. You fly out at four-thirty-five tomorrow afternoon—first class.” He shut his computer again and ran his hands through his disheveled hair, resting his elbows on the desk.

  “I love you,” she said in a small voice.

  He kept his head down, hands fisted in his hair.

  “I love you,” she said again. Gus was right. Love required nurturing. Parker didn’t care. She would nurture the living hell out of the love she had for the man sitting before her.

  Levi nodded a bit as if that’s all the acknowledgment she needed.

  “I love you.”

  He looked up, frustration etched on his face.

  “I love you.” She had a point to make and nothing would keep her from making it.

  “I heard you.”

  “I love you.”

  “What are you doing?” He sighed, releasing more frustration.

  “I love you.” She stepped toward him.

  “Parker …”

  The pain in his eyes scared her. She wanted to turn and run, but she didn’t. “I love you.” She pulled up the skirt to her dress just enough to straddle his lap.

  He swallowed, diverting his eyes to the other side of the room. His hands moved to the arms of the chair.

  “Look at me.”

  After a few seconds, he looked at her.

  “I love you.”

  “Haley was pregnant.” He waited for Parker to react.

  She didn’t.

  “Those regrets from my past? This is at the top. I never told my friends because they didn’t ask. They didn’t ask how her dad found out we’d had sex. They didn’t ask where I was the day her dad made me take her to the doctor to terminate the pregnancy. She asked me if I wanted her to keep the baby. I said yes. Then she asked me if I loved her.” Levi cleared his throat, eyes red with emotion.

  Parker knew the answer. She knew the outcome. It was all over his face. “I love you.”

  He shook his head. “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “I love you.”

  “Stop it.” He gripped the arms of the chair.

  “I love you.”

  “I killed my child because I didn’t love its mother!”

  Parker blinked sending tears down her cheeks. “I love you.”

  “Jesus, Parker! What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to forgive yourself, and then I want you to love me back.”

  Gasping for his next breath, or maybe a shred of control, Levi narrowed his eyes and a blink later he grabbed her face and kissed her with the passion of someone drowning and grasping for that one lifeline.

  He yanked up her dress, even more, probing his tongue into her mouth with an urgency like it pissed him off he couldn’t kiss her any deeper. Keeping his mouth attached to hers, he pushed his computer aside sending a stack of papers onto the floor. Then he lifted her onto his desk. He fumbled for the tie to her halter top dress as she grabbed for the button and zipper to his shorts.

  As soon as her dress fell below her breasts, he gripped them, kneading them until she arched her back, breaking their kiss. “Levi …”

  She released him from his briefs and stroked him. He hissed in a breath, leaving one hand on her breast. His other hand grabbed the crotch to her panties and pulled it to the side as she guided his erection to that very spot.

  “Stop.” He pulled back a fraction. His hand on her breast moved to the back of her neck, and he rested his forehead on hers. “I love you back,” he whispered through ragged breaths. “I love you back so fucking much I’m certain it’s the only thing I have ever done in my life that’s one hundred percent selfless. But this isn’t us. I don’t want to have pissed-off-at-the-world sex with you.”

  “Levi …” She panted, holding tight to his cock. “I kinda need this to happen.”

  He nodded, still leaning into her forehead with his. “Agreed.” He laughed a little. “But it’s I-love-you sex. I-need-you sex. My-whole-fucking-world-revolves-around-you sex.”

  “Agreed.” Parker grinned and stroked him a few times, attempting to bring him closer.

  “But, babe …” Levi grabbed her hips and slid her off the desk to her feet. The pain in his eyes transformed into something feral. “It’s still desk sex.” He turned her toward the desk, pressing his hand on her back until she bent forward resting her cheek against the smooth wood. Her hands gripped the edge next to her head.

  “Levi …” she whispered breathlessly as her heart pounded in anticipation.

  “Shhh …” He eased off her panties, ghosting his lips along the back of her legs and over the curve of her ass.

  “Fuck!” Her muscles clenched. “Did you just bite my ass again?”

  He chuckled while his tongue glided over the spot. As he stood, he lifted her right leg and plunged into her. Bending over her back, he whispered in her ear, “My whole … fucking … world.”

  In a matter of seconds, Levi took something ugly and heartbreaking and turned it into something beautiful and soul-shattering.

  Parker didn’t love him for his perfections; she loved him for his flaws that begged for a second chance—that vulnerable part of his soul searching for its place in the world. She wanted to be that place.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Rags chewed on his favorite elk antler while Parker packed for her trip home.

  “How long are you staying?” Levi gazed out their bedroom window, hands in his pockets.

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to be back by the interview, so not longer than a week. You were supposed to go with me.”

  He turned. “I was?”

  “Yes.” She pulled several shirts from their hangers in the closet. “My parents need to meet you so they don’t think you’ve abducted their daughter.”

  “You didn’t ask me.”

  She shrugged, coming out of the closet. “I was going to ask you, then last night happened, and I thought you didn’t want me here, and in that moment part of me didn’t want to be here, so that’s when I said something about going home. Before I knew it, you had my flight booked.”

  His eyebrows pulled together. “I meet with a client and their contractor tomorrow, but I could fly out after that. I’d love to meet your family.”

  “Yeah?” She glanced up from her perfectly organized suitcase.

  “Of course. I’ll see if my parents will take Rags for few days.”

  “Will that bother your mom? He’s sort of a reminder of …”

  Levi twisted his lips, observing Rags rolling on the antler for some weird reason. “I don’t know. It’s been over six weeks. The last time I talked to her, she seemed to be doing better. I’m not sure she’ll ever be the same again. I mean … it’s just been in the past few weeks that I’ve started to put things into perspective. Remembering things that were going on with them before they died. It’s just still hard to wrap my head around everything that has happened over the past few months.”

  Parker’s hands stilled, and she slowly looked up from her suitcase. “Past few months? What does that mean?”

  He shook his head a few times. “Sabrina and I talked on the phone quite a bit. I knew she wasn’t herself. We’ve never kept stuff from each other, but I knew she wasn’t telling me something. Finally, she broke down one day and said she’d been having an affair.”

  Parker’s world began to vanish along with the oxygen in the room.

  “I was so mad at her. Gus wasn’t just my brother-in-law, we were friends. He was the real deal—a hard worker, kind, honest, family-oriented, and he loved Sabrina. God … did he love her.”

  Slowly, Parker began to crumble inside, but she had to keep every single emotion hidden. It felt beyond unbearable.

  “I don’t know what happened to her. Maybe it was her new job or the guy she met, but … I didn’t even recognize her. Everything she di
d seemed so desperate. I told her to tell Gus, to either save her marriage or let him go, but …”

  Parker walked back to the closet, blinking away the tears, fighting to keep hold of her slipping composure. She didn’t need any more clothes, but she continued to take things out of the drawer and off hangers.

  “She was afraid and embarrassed to tell him. And just so you know, I’m not defending her actions—the cheating. I know how you feel about that.” He walked toward the closet.

  She kept her back to him. There was no escape. There was no longer any reason to not tell Levi about her and Gus. Parker knew she could lose him, but she refused to hold him with a lie.

  He feared losing her with the truth. She feared losing him to a lie. The irony made her nauseous.

  “Sabrina called me a few weeks before their accident. She said things were terrible between her and Gus, but that there was a ‘silver lining.’”

  “Hmm?” A hum was all Parker could give him without breaking down.

  “She thought Gus had found his own distraction.”

  Parker froze.

  “I called bullshit. Not Gus. The guy looked at my sister like the rest of the world didn’t exist. The way I look at you.”

  One blink and the pain ran in endless trails down her cheeks. Her lips parted as she attempted to breathe instead of sob under the crushing weight on her chest.

  “I stood over her grave, grieving the loss of my sister, yet part of me was still angry for what she did to Gus. How could she be so stupid to cheat on him and then think another woman existed that he could possibly want more than her?”

  The end. They were over. He would never forgive her. If he still held resentment toward his deceased sister for what she did, he would never forgive Parker for the things she had done and the things she never told him. That was fine. She’d never forgive herself either.

  Hugging the clothes to her chest, cheeks drowning in tears, heart buried in regret … she slowly turned.

  Levi’s face tensed into instant worry. He took a step toward her and then he stopped.

  When life happened, it did it in a heartbeat. That space between time. A first inhale, a last exhale. The dawn of realization, the eve of what was and never again would be. That’s what Parker saw on Levi’s face.

  Parker waited for him to reach for his chest and pull the knife out while she stood there with blood on her hands, unmoving, at a loss for a single word, and feeling Piper’s shoes on her feet. There was no way of imagining that mile in someone else’s shoes. That understanding only came from lacing them up and taking the journey.

  “Of course,” he whispered, closing his eyes.

  She knew Piper’s shoes. She also knew Levi’s shoes. So she said nothing. There was nothing Parker could say that would change anything. As much as she wanted to grovel, explain what really happened and beg for forgiveness as Piper had done, she knew it would only make things worse. It would only shove the knife in deeper.

  Levi pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “What have you done?”

  Silence. That was her parting gift to him. It was a greater apology than any words could ever have been. Silence acknowledged her guilt and respected his right—his need—to be angry. No one had respected Parker’s right to be angry, and that only multiplied her toxic emotions.

  When he dropped his hands and met her teary, red eyes, it hurt as much as the news that Gus had died. Love and life were every bit as painful as death.

  He turned. She swallowed back a sob. Shoulders slumped, head down, he walked to the bed, pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, dropped it on her suitcase, and then snapped his fingers so that Rags followed him out of the room.

  Dropping to her knees, Parker continued to hug her clothes as she buckled over and started the all-too-familiar grieving process.

  *

  A one-way ticket home. That’s what Levi deposited on Parker’s suitcase before he took Rags and left.

  She finished packing—everything. Ordered an Uber. Got on a plane. And flew home.

  A second Uber took her from the airport in Des Moines to home.

  Home. Where was that? Twelve hours earlier she would have said Levi’s arms. As she lugged her suitcase through the thick August humidity into the old farmhouse, she knew the creaky floor beneath her feet was home. It always would be.

  “Parker!” Her mom weaved her way to the kitchen through the scattered cardboard boxes. “Why didn’t you tell us you were coming home today?” Janey hugged her.

  “I wanted to surprise you.” Her enthusiasm died beneath the rubble of her broken heart, leaving lifeless words drifting from a hollow soul.

  “We’re packing up for the big move. Most of their stuff is in storage, but I told Piper she could have Grandma’s china since you didn’t show any interest in it. And it was just collecting dust in the attic.”

  Parker nodded, not really knowing what she was nodding about.

  “Welcome, home.” Piper, with her hand on her belly, handed Caleb the shipping tape. “Where’s Levi?”

  “Uh …” She closed her eyes for a brief moment. Nothing seemed real. Voices were echoes in a dream where her worst nightmare crossed the line into reality.

  “Dear, are you okay?” Janey brushed her hand along Parker’s arm.

  Her eyes shifted from her mom to Caleb and then Piper, and that’s where they stayed. Piper held her gaze, the smile on her face faded into something sad and sympathetic, something only a twin could feel without having to ask any more questions.

  “Just tired. I’m going to unpack.”

  “Need me to carry your suitcase up?” Caleb asked.

  It was kind of him. Too kind. Parker didn’t deserve anyone’s kindness.

  Parker shook her head.

  “Unpack? Does this mean you’re staying? Did you answer Piper’s question? Where is Levi?”

  Parker raced against her tears without actually running. She didn’t want her mom to see them, nor did she want her mom to ask any more questions.

  “He couldn’t come. I’ll explain later.” Climbing the stairs, she held her breath and every emotion that waited behind hit, desperate to escape.

  She dropped her suitcase and purse on the floor and dove into the bed, burying her face into the pillow to silence her grief. A million what-ifs pleaded their case.

  What if Levi knew the whole truth?

  What if she told him they never had sex?

  What if she explained the condoms?

  What if she told him Gus was going to leave Sabrina no matter what?

  What if she could explain why she didn’t tell him everything?

  What if she would have told him everything that night in the barn?

  She choked back her sobs, holding still as the bed dipped. Piper lay next to her with her baby belly nudging Parker.

  “That’s a lot of pain to bear by yourself. Why don’t you let me take a little before it completely breaks you?” Piper whispered.

  Parker sobbed harder. She didn’t deserve that. Not from Piper. Parker had judged her unfairly. She ruined her wedding. She held an eternal grudge. And then she did the one thing she swore she would never do—she became the cheater.

  The liar.

  Despicable.

  “Levi isn’t coming,” Piper whispered. Not a question. She just knew.

  Parker shook her head.

  “His loss.” Her sister stroked her hair, the way Parker had done to Stephanie after the funeral.

  “Mine…” Parker’s voice broke between sobs “ …i-it’s m-my l-l-oss.”

  Piper kissed the back of Parker’s head. “I love you.”

  Parker turned to her reflection. Piper had the pregnancy glow and it looked so good on her. “I love you too.” She sniffled. “But now I hate me.” More sobs worked their way out.

  “Oh, Parker …” Piper wiped Parker’s tears from her cheeks with her thumb as Parker pinched her eyes shut.

  “I’m a t-terrible h-human.”

  �
��No,” Piper whispered. “If you want that statement to be true, then you need to remove the adjective.”

  *

  After crying herself to sleep, Parker woke up in the middle of the night.

  Crowded.

  Hot.

  And trapped. Piper sleeping on one side and her mom on the other side of her.

  At that moment, she knew even if she never saw Levi again, she would be okay. She had people. The kind that loved her without judgment. The kind she could trust with her deepest secrets.

  “I had an affair with Gus Westman.”

  Both bodies next to her stirred. She knew they were awake but neither said a word.

  “We never had sex. And his wife was having an affair too, but it doesn’t change anything. I fell in love with a married man, and he fell in love with me. It was wrong. I didn’t tell Levi, and that was wrong too. No one will ever believe me, but I did it to not tarnish his memories of them. It was harder to keep it a secret than it would have been to tell him. It’s been painful, confusing, embarrassing, and humbling. So very humbling. But I hope it’s not what I’ve always thought cheating was…” she wiped a stray tear that rolled down the side of her face “ …unforgivable.”

  Piper took one of Parker’s hands, and Janey took the other. Parker squeezed them, a silent thank you, an unbreakable bond. A love that would last forever.

  *

  The following morning, the three women had breakfast at the farmhouse without Caleb and Bart. More tears were shed, apologies were given, and forgiveness was granted. Parker had to mend what she could and let go of the things in her life that were beyond repair. Letting go was a hard lesson.

  “So what are you going to do for a job now?” Janey asked as she refilled their coffee mugs and juice glasses.

  “I don’t know. I’ll find something. I know you want me to stay here but—”

  Janey rested her hand on Parker’s. “But you’re an adult with dreams, and you need your freedom.”

  Parker raised her brows, glancing at Piper who shrugged with a grin behind her juice glass.

  “Did aliens abduct our mom?”

  “No.” Their mom sat back in her chair. Something resembling a mix between love and worry warred along her face. “I want to be your lifeline, not your anchor.”