by Misti Murphy
“No, it hasn’t for a while, has it?” she agrees. “But then you haven’t been living. Not until now. You’ve spent the last eight years avoiding life. Pretending that if you keep to yourself and never want anything that you can’t get hurt. Surrounding yourself with facts and statistics so that you can feel like it’s okay that you don’t want to try. Shielding yourself with a bogus curse and telling yourself that you’re making the right decision to hide from anything that might make you feel.”
“That’s not true,” I croak. But it is. I feel everything now and it’s crushing me. Killing me as surely as if my own emotions are the curse that I’ve been so afraid of. Breaking me...
“It is. And it has to stop. Nox is so good for you. He adores you. You have no idea how destroyed he is right now, but his main priority is you.” She smiles a watery smile that makes her eyes tear up. She dashes them away with her fingertips. “I had to kick him out of the room because he was a complete mess. That’s real, Beck. Emotions and feelings and just kind of hoping the good outweighs the bad. Throwing ourselves into the fray no matter what it might cost, or how much it could hurt. That’s living. Not what you’re doing.”
“I can’t. Not when it’s making me do stupid things like put my own life at risk. Or Nox’s.”
“Stop it. You were given a second chance. Do you realize that? I know the statistics too. Five percent of people who go through what you did survive. It’s nothing.” She jumps off the bed and collects her bag from the dresser, shoving containers and tubes back into it. “Most people in your position would want to grab life by the balls. You want to hide in your goddamn shell. I hate you for not being willing to do that for yourself, you know that? I don’t understand how you can waste it.” She strides toward the door.
“Liv?”
“What?” She hesitates, her hand hovering over the handle, but she doesn’t look at me.
“You wanted me to be with Nox, didn’t you?”
“I hoped he could get through to you, yes. But I’m not sure anyone can.”
“You said you would do anything if you thought it would make a difference,” I say. “Isn’t that what you keep telling me?”
“Yes.” She sighs.
“Did you pay him not to sign the papers? To try to make me fall for him?”
“No one can make you fall in love with them, Beck. You either do, or you don’t. But we did make a deal,” she admits. “If you stayed. We were going to tell you. He wanted to tell you. It might have been his motivation in the beginning, but that’s not why he’s with you. He knew telling you would probably send you running and that he would get nothing. He still wanted to tell you.”
“You’ll give it to him. Whatever it was,” I tell her. She swallows and her lips part, but I press on. “I don’t want to know the details. He’s lost so much because of me. Because you decided to interfere. He didn’t deserve to be pulled into this. Please make this right for him.”
“All right.” She exhales. “What about you? What are you going to do?”
“I have to talk to Nox. Get him to sign the papers.”
“I can’t believe that’s what you really want.”
“It is.” I can’t lie to myself. Not with any conviction. I’ll never get over Nox Casey. I’ll carry him with me always, everywhere I go and in everything I do. My heart is already breaking, and it will shatter. No amount of science can explain how much the idea of leaving someone behind hurts. But I can live with that. Go back to spending my time alone. Pretend that I’m happy. Like I did for so long. Because anything is better than the silencing of a heartbeat. His or mine. And I can’t take the chance.
Liv opens the door and sails through it as I sit up and scoop Hollander into my arms. My heart slams to a stop. Something inside me curls up and dies as I snuggle my face against his neck. Oh no, please no.
“Hollander,” I whisper into his fur. “Don’t do this.”
I’m used to his loud purr, his constant pawing, and head butting. But he’s so still and soft, flopped across my lap. My throats clogs and my hands shake as I pet him, waiting for him to move. But he isn’t, and he won’t. And it kills me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Until death do us part
NOX
“I’m sorry. She knows,” Liv says, shutting the bedroom door behind her and stalking through the living area toward the cabin door.
Climbing off the couch, I watch her open the door and head outside. Glance at the bedroom door. I have to explain to her. Have to tell her why that stupid deal doesn’t even matter anymore.
Beck’s cross-legged on the bed, Hollander in her lap. She’s curled over him, her hair a waterfall that partially covers them both and she’s sobbing like her heart’s breaking. I take a deep breath and try to still the panic that’s coursing through my veins. I’m losing her. For money. For a stupid building that doesn’t mean anything. “Angel, please...”
She lifts her head. Her hands, wrapped in bandages to protect her palms, are moving over Hollander’s fur in a flighty haphazard manner. I screw up my brow. Surprising that he doesn’t push her hand away. Tears drip down her cheeks and along her jaw and onto his fur. She’s so quiet. They both are.
“I wanted to tell you.” I move closer to the bed. Have to make her understand that this isn’t about money. It hasn’t been for weeks now.
“He’s...” She sobs. Her shoulders shudder, and she pulls in a breath as she glances at my boy stretched across her lap.
Pain flickers in my chest as I take in what I’m seeing. Take in the way Hollander’s belly isn’t rising and falling. Hold my breath while I wait for him to move. Any minute now he will move, and everything will be fine, right? Of course it will. Because this isn’t his time. He’s hardy as hell.
“Hollander?” I croak, crouching beside the bed when he doesn’t move. “Come on, bud. Stop playing.”
Beck sobs harder. Great big gulping sounds. “I can’t.”
He and I, we’ve been together so long. Can barely remember a time where he wasn’t with me. I reach out and run my hand through his fur. He’s still warm. My eyes burn so much. I can’t breathe. “Bud?”
“I can’t do this,” Beck whispers. “I can’t.”
“Let me take him.” I reach out to take Hollander from her lap, but she doesn’t relinquish him.
“You don’t understand.” She sniffles. “I can’t do this.”
“It’s okay.” I squeeze her calf. “It’s not...” a sign, or the curse, or anything to do with her fears. “He was old, Angel. He lived a long life. Years longer than he was supposed to.” Not long enough. “It was just his time to go.”
“No. You don’t know...” She’s so pale, her eyes red rimmed and puffy. Her lashes stick to each other like they’re glued. Her voice is barely a whisper. “I-I—” She glances down at Hollander. “Died.”
“I don’t understand.” It doesn’t make sense. She’s here. She’s alive.
“When I was hit by the car, my heart beat was disrupted. I went into arrest. I died. They performed CPR in the ambulance. Shocked me.” She shivers. “It took them three minutes and thirty-six seconds to get my heart beating again. I wasn’t supposed to be here.” She finally looks at me. “I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be part of the story I told you. Another McClain that didn’t make it.”
My beautiful wife might have been gone from this world long before I met her. Can’t fathom it. Can’t bear the ache that fills my chest. “You were given a second chance. That’s all that matters.” I clasp her face between my hands and press my forehead to hers. “You’re here. With me. Where you’re supposed to be.”
“How can you say that when everything is falling apart?” she asks. “How can you think I should stay when you’ve lost so much?”
“Because you hold me together. You’re the only reason I’m not falling apart. Because with you I can see a different future than the one I’ve grasped at for so long. I need you, Beck. I can’t do it without yo
u. I can’t lose you.”
“I can’t lose you either,” she whispers. “But don’t you see that’s why I can’t stay?” She pulls away from me. Sobs as she glances at Hollander. “I’ll walk away from you a thousand times just to know that you’re okay. But if...” Her lips trembles, her eyes beg me to understand. “I can’t lose you. I can’t be here knowing you aren’t. And I can’t stare death in the face again.”
“Maybe...” I grasp at straws. Anything to get her to change her mind. “Maybe because you died you don’t have to have all these worries. Stay. We’ll work it out. I promise.”
“Until death do us part?” she whispers.
“Exactly.”
“I can’t.” She goes back to stroking Hollander.
I can’t stand the silence. I reach out and take him from her arms, cradle him for a moment before I lay him down on the blanket. “We all die eventually, Beck. Everyone does. But I want to spend every day that I do have with you.”
“Please, Nox,” she begs as she climbs to her feet and glances around at the space we’ve shared as husband and wife. Sliding her feet into a pair of flats, she wipes her face with her hands and walks through the living room to the kitchen. Picks up her handbag and the papers on the counter and brings them to me. “Sign the papers.”
“No.” I fold my arms across my chest and tuck my hands into my side. There’s no fucking way I’ll sign them. I promised her I wouldn’t let go. I told her I would never sign them. She’s not seeing clearly. She’s scared, and she needs me to be strong, so I’ll hold on with both hands until she can see past her fears and the events of today. “You’ll change your mind. You’ll realize you’re being dramatic. We’ll—”
“I’m leaving,” she says. “Let me go.”
“I don’t—”
“I’m going to have my attorney contact you anyway.” Her wide gaze is trained on me. She doesn’t blink, doesn’t flinch. Her voice is flat. “It’s easier if you sign. Less costly. Less painful for both of us. Quicker. If you sign no one else has to die.”
“That’s not what happened. It’s not the curse. That’s bullshit, Beck,” I try to reason with her. “This isn’t because we’re together. You don’t have to do this.”
“Stop being so stubborn,” she says. “There’s no point. I’m going to go through with this whether you sign or not.”
“That’s what you really want?” I’m rocked on my feet. There’s an earthquake in my soul. Shock. Pain will come later. Engulf me. I can feel it through the numbness that wraps itself around me. “You want to give up on us?”
“I want—” she pushes the papers at my chest “—to go back to how things were before I met you.”
Fuck it. I can’t win. Not this time. Hell, I’ve never come out on top, have I? Even when I thought I was on top of the world, it was all a rouse, and it all came crashing down, didn’t it? Just like this. She’s right, we were doomed from the beginning. I snatch the papers from her and march past her to the kitchen counter. Lay them down and locate a pen. Barely breathe as I scrawl my name on them. She warned me when we started this that she could take everything from me. I just didn’t know the only thing she could take that would matter was her. Can’t look at her as I drop the pen on top of the forms and stalk into the bedroom to pick up Hollander.
I can’t be here while she packs. Can’t stand to watch her leave. I wrap the cat in the blanket and carry him out of the cabin. Grab a shovel from the shed. Take him down to the orange grove. He’s spent so much time surveying the valley. He’ll be happy here. Lying him down under one of the trees I drive the shovel into the dirt. Don’t know how I’m going to get through this.
So maybe she was right after all.
Maybe we were cursed from the beginning.
Because there’s no surviving Beck McClain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
If at first you don’t succeed...
Seek therapy
BECK
“The thing is, emotions are what drives us.” The woman across from me in the overstuffed armchair leans forward and places the notepad she’s been writing in for the past forty-five minutes on the chunky white table between us.
What I wouldn’t give to know what she’s written about me. But then again I expect I’d open it up to see ‘she’s crazy’ scrawled across the page a couple hundred times. And after I told her I tried to run into a burning building and then left the one man I have ever loved because of a curse, I wouldn’t be surprised.
She shifts position, smoothing her expensive navy suit skirt over her knees while she crosses her legs. “Sometimes that’s a good thing because it keeps us safe, or we find opportunities where others might not. Other times our emotions come from past issues that we haven’t dealt with and acting on them might not be in our best interest.”
She takes a breath, and I clasp my bandaged hands together in my lap until my fingers start to turn as white as the gauze. I glance at the potted fern that’s too green and too neat, like she takes a pair of scissors to it after every difficult client. I’m probably one of those clients. And I know what she’s going to say. I let my emotions get the better of me, and all it’s caused is heartbreak.
After the fire and finding Hollander like that I thought leaving Nox was the only thing I could do. God, I miss that cat. And Nox. Every day. Every minute. Every single breath I take.
I didn’t expect it to be like this. I thought I could shut off my feelings for him. Go back to the way I used to be when I was logical about everything. But I can’t. I don’t sleep. I barely eat. There’s a giant hole in my heart now that I don’t know how to fill without him. Everything reminds me of what I had and chose to let go of. Because I thought it would be better this way. God, I didn’t have a clue.
Dash made a dish with Tofu last night, and I spent the next three hours crying into his shoulder because it reminded me of Nox.
She leans across the table and hands me a tissue. “You’ve been through a very traumatic situation, Beckett. That experience has colored the way you function in the world. You told me in our first session that you’re a fan of logic. Statistics and scientific facts. And that you believe in curses.”
“That’s correct.”
She offers me a sympathetic smile as I blot my eyes. “Do you think that could be because that was the only way you could cope with what happened to you? Often after a traumatic experience, especially when there’s a death, it’s easier to shut off our emotions than deal with them. Easier to find something to blame for what happened to us, no matter how far-fetched it might seem, than to accept that there’s no reason for what happened to us. Do you think that’s what you were doing?”
“Maybe.” I turn my gaze to the big glass windows and the street below. There are no orange trees here. Nothing but pavement and asphalt and luxury cars. It’s all too sterile. “But now I can’t stop feeling. Everything.” I imagine that I’m talking to Nox. That we’re sitting on his couch and he’s stroking my hair away from my face. I thought knowing that he was okay without me would make leaving him worthwhile, but that isn’t what this feels like. “It hurts so damn much.”
“It’s a process,” she says. “It’s not one that you can hope to avoid long term. You get to work through the steps in your own time and your own way, but you still have to work through them. When you suppress your emotions you can’t heal, so when something like...” she checks her notes again, “...the events of the past few months forces you to face your emotions head on, it isn’t unexpected that old emotions would resurface too. That those emotions would act as a driving force in your decision to leave your husband. Do you think that might be the case?”
“Did I leave Nox because I was terrified of losing him?” Or of being lost myself?
I bite my thumbnail and go back to staring at the fern. “Yes. I couldn’t let anything happen to him.”
“You also told me that your best friend...” she glances down at the notepad on her lap again, “...Liv made a deal wit
h your husband that had a substantial impact on your relationship. That you weren’t sure of his feelings.”
“That’s right.” After what Liv told me about how she’d pushed him into not signing the papers, how could I be certain that any of what happened between us was true? But the way he looked at me when I told him to sign the papers that last time, and the way he wouldn’t look at me after he did keeps replaying in my mind and breaking my heart over and over. It certainly seemed real.
“Have you come to any decision on that?”
“This again?” Dash wanders into the kitchen with his coffee mug in one hand and his glasses clutched in the other while he uses the back of that hand to rub his bleary eyes.
He’s probably sick of me by now. I’ve been crashing on his couch for almost a month.
The pen in my hand hovers above the paper, my fingers beginning to cramp. A few more splotches of ink have landed on the paper.
“Every single morning you’ve sat there for an hour, trying to put your signature on that thing.” He taps the corner of the form while he pours coffee. “Either you want a divorce, or you don’t. Either you love him, or you don’t. Coffee?”
I nod, and he pours another cup that he places in front of me. “So which is it?”
“It’s not that simple.” I run my fingers over Nox’s signature. It’s the closest I can get to him and it spreads the tiniest amount of warmth to my stupid broken heart. He’d signed the forms and given me my freedom, but I hadn’t signed them and taken it. With a groan I drop my head on the form. It’s crinkled and the ink is smudged. I’m not even sure I can file this copy anymore. There’s no way I can ask for his signature again. It would kill me.
“Well, I think you’ve run out of time anyway.” Dash picks up the mail. Starts sorting through it. “Didn’t you want to be divorced before your two-year anniversary? You’ve got less than two weeks so I’m going to suggest that’s out the window.”