“Morning, sleepyhead.” I greet Mackenzie with a kiss when she wanders out of the bedroom looking like she’s still half-asleep. Her hair is a mess, and she has an indent on her cheek from the pillow. She’s always beautiful to me, but there is nothing better than seeing her first thing in the morning wearing my T-shirt because she spent the night in my arms.
“Morning.”
She squints her eyes at me, then at the coffeepot in my hand, which makes me smile.
Getting her a mug, I pour her a cup and hand it to her. I lean back against the counter and watch her wander around the kitchen, fixing the coffee to her liking.
“What’s the plan for the day?” she asks once she’s finished and taken her first sip from her cup.
“I have to work in a couple hours.”
“Oh.” She pouts before taking another sip of her coffee.
“Sorry, gorgeous.”
“It’s okay. Maybe I’ll see if Libby wants to go see a movie with me.”
She leans back against the counter across from where I’m standing. Her eyes heat as they slide up my abs and my chest.
I start to take a step toward her, but then I see her eyes stop on the bullet wounds on my shoulder. My whole body tenses because I know what’s coming.
“You’ve never told me how you got those,” she says quietly.
My hand tightens around the mug in my grasp.
“It was during a bust,” I say. Then I ask, “What movie do you want to see?”
“Why don’t you like talking about it?”
“Because I don’t.” I jerk a hand through my hair, and she flinches. “Sorry. Look, it’s—”
“It’s not a big deal.” She cuts me off with a shrug, but I know that it is a big deal because I can see the hurt in her expression. “I should go.”
She drops her still-full cup in the sink before she starts back toward the bedroom.
Grabbing her hand, I stop her before she can make it. Then I spin her around to face me. “I’m sorry. It was a long time ago, and I don’t like talking about it.”
“Why haven’t you unpacked?” she asks, pointing at the boxes in the living room. I frown.
“What?”
“You still haven’t unpacked. This place looks like it’s not even lived in. There is nothing here that says an actual person lives here. A person with friends and family. A person who has a life and adventures. Why is that?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug, looking at the stack of boxes that holds my old life in them.
“You don’t know, or you just don’t want to tell me or talk to me about it?” she asks.
I see her chin wobble.
“I didn’t say that, baby . . .” I soften my voice.
She shakes her head. “I know you didn’t, but you also didn’t have to. Anytime that I have touched that scar on your shoulder, you’ve closed down on me. Every time I’ve asked you what happened to you before you moved here, you’ve avoided answering. You tell me that you want to get married, but you won’t even talk to me about things that are important. The things that have made you the person that you are today.”
“None of that matters. All that matters is us. The person I am when I’m with you. The person that I am now.”
“To you it doesn’t matter, but to me it does.” She pokes herself in the chest. “Whatever happened to you affects us. It affects you.”
I jerk my hand thought my hair as my stomach clenches.
“My mom and dad are best friends. They talk about everything. They know everything about each other. The good and the bad stuff.” Her jaw clenches. “I want that with the man I marry.”
“I can’t tell you about cases I’m working.”
“I’m not asking you to tell me about cases that you are working, or even the cases that you have worked. I’m asking you to talk to me. I know that there is a story behind those scars you wear. And I’m not just talking about the scars that I can see, Wesley. I’m talking about the ones you keep hidden in there.” She places her hand over my heart. “You say you want to marry me, but you don’t even want to talk to me. You don’t trust me with the things that are still hurting you.”
“I trust you!” I roar.
She closes her eyes and takes a step back. That one step may as well be as big as the Grand Canyon between us. I know I should stop, that I should take this opportunity to open up to her about my past, but I can’t. “Just drop it. None of that matters,” I tell her.
She takes another step away from me. Like an accident happening in slow motion, I see her slipping further and further away.
“Never mind. You’re not going to see things from my perspective. You are so determined to protect yourself that you’re blind.” She turns and heads for the bedroom.
“Where the fuck are you going?” I ask, following after her but stopping in the doorway.
“I need some time alone. I think you do, too,” she whispers, putting on a pair of sweats from the bag that she brought over weeks ago. She grabs a sweatshirt out of the same bag and pulls it over her head before going to the corner of the room for her sneakers.
“You’re running.” I let out a humorless laugh.
She looks at me, shaking her head. I notice tears filling her eyes as she takes a seat on the side of the bed to put on her shoes.
“I’m not running,” she finally says, lifting her head to look at me briefly.
“If you’re not running, then what do you call it?”
“I call it giving us both time to think,” she says quietly, dropping her gaze from mine.
“I call it being a coward,” I snarl.
She flinches.
“When things get a little complicated or when you hear something you don’t want to hear, you take off.”
“That’s not fair.” She rubs her hands down her thighs as she stands. Then she wipes the tears from under her eyes.
I ignore the pang of regret that hits me. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
She picks up her bag from the floor and places it over her shoulder.
“Fuck this. Just go,” I mutter, turning my back on her. I go into the bathroom and slam the door closed behind me. After turning on the water, I rest my hands on the basin and drop my head between my shoulders. I try to get my breath to even out. My heart feels about ready to pound out of my chest. Closing my eyes, I pull in a few deep breaths and let them out slowly. When I leave the bathroom a little while later, Mackenzie is gone.
She’s taken my heart with her, just like I knew she would.
Chapter 12
BROKEN
MAC
Lifting my cell phone off my lap, I look at the screen when it starts to buzz. I close my eyes when I see that it’s Wesley calling.
“Have you spoken to him yet?” Libby asks, taking a seat next to me on the couch.
I shake my head no as pain fills my chest.
“You really should talk to him.”
She rests her head on my shoulder and places a hand over my stomach, which makes me want to cry. Then again, I have been doing a lot of crying this last week. A lot of crying, a lot of puking, and a whole lot of sleeping. Being pregnant is way more exhausting than I thought it would be. And it’s not helping that things between Wesley and me are in such turmoil. We haven’t spoken in a week.
Not since the moment he turned his back on me and left me standing in his room, crying.
He’s called, left messages, and even stopped by more than once, but I can’t talk to him or see him yet. I need a little more time. I need to make myself stronger before I face him. The minute I see him, I’m going to want to run right back into his arms and pretend like everything is okay when it’s not. I didn’t lie when I told him I didn’t want to be with someone who couldn’t talk to me. And the idea of marrying him and living our life under the same roof while being psychological miles apart isn’t appealing at all. I want a partner—someone to share the good and bad with—and it hurts that he doesn’t see me as someon
e he can confide in.
Amazing chemistry alone isn’t going to get us through this issue, that’s for darn sure.
“I miss him,” I say after a moment while rubbing the small baby bump that seemed to have popped up overnight. It’s not huge or noticeable—unless I’m naked—but it is there. “I miss him, but I’m also really mad at him for not doing what I need him to do.” I swallow down over the gravel lodged in my throat.
“Sometimes men are idiots,” Libby says, sounding like she knows from experience. If I wasn’t so caught up in my own personal drama, I would ask her about it because I know there is a story behind that statement. “He loves you.”
“He might love me, but I want more than love. Maybe I’m being selfish, but I want all of him—not just the pieces that he’s choosing to show me, not just the pieces of him that he can tie up in a neat little package for me.”
“You’re right. You deserve to have all of that—but so does he. He deserves to have someone to share his burdens with,” she says.
Those stupid tears I’ve been trying to fight come back.
“Do you think I’m overreacting about this?” I ask after a few minutes of listening to the television play in the background.
“Do you?”
“No . . . ? But I’m also pregnant and overly emotional right now, so I’m not sure I’m the best judge.”
“Each woman has to decide for herself what she will and will not put up with in a relationship. If he won’t talk to you about things that you can see are causing him pain, is that something you can deal with?”
“It isn’t.” I close my eyes and rest my cheek on the top of her head.
It isn’t because I know that eventually, the pain he’s carrying around is going to manifest itself in another way, and I won’t watch him destroy himself—or put our child through seeing that firsthand, either. Pain has to be dealt with.
“When are you going to tell Mom and Dad about the baby?” she asks.
My muscles tighten and my stomach twists into a knot.
It doesn’t feel right to tell anyone about the baby when things with Wesley and me are so up in the air. I don’t want the announcement of being pregnant to be followed up with my telling everyone that Wesley and I won’t be raising it together. The idea of doing that makes me feel even more sick.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“You’ll know when you’re ready.” She sits up. “I have to head to Tony’s. Do you want me to bring you a slice of pizza home for dinner?” she asks.
My mouth waters at the offer, but not in a good way. Ugh. I can’t even stand the thought of pizza now, and I love pizza—or I did. Yesterday, when Libby came home in the middle of the night smelling like it, I had to run for the bathroom.
“No, thank you.” My face scrunches up.
“You haven’t been eating much. Maybe you should ask your doctor about prescribing you something for the nausea.”
“I’ll call tomorrow,” I agree.
She nods as she puts on her coat. “See you later.”
“Later.” I watch her shut the door, and then I lie down on the couch and feel sorry for myself while watching garbage TV. Eventually, I fall asleep.
WESLEY
After knocking, I take a step back and wait for someone to answer.
“Wesley! What are you doing here?” Katie asks, opening the door for me and then ushering me inside and out of the snowstorm that started about an hour ago.
Leaning down, I kiss her cheek. I’m half-surprised she doesn’t smack me upside my head. I deserve to be smacked, and I also deserve to have my ass kicked.
“I stopped by to see Aiden. Is he around?” I follow her down a long hallway that’s lined with photos of all three of the Reed girls.
“He’s out back, in the shop.” She stops at the glass double door in the kitchen and points to the backyard, across toward a large metal shed. “The snowblower is acting up, so he’s trying to fix it before we get too much snow.” She smiles. “Go on out, but make sure you stop back in before you leave. I made Mackenzie’s favorite cookies—you can take her some,” she says.
Pain rocks through me at the mention of her name, but so does a little bit of hope. Clearly, she still hasn’t told her parents about our fight, which means she hasn’t completely given up on me—or us—yet.
“Sure.” I open the door, then head across the snow-covered lawn toward the shop. I can see Aiden inside, bent over a wooden workbench.
“Don’t tell me you took my daughter to the courthouse and eloped,” Aiden says by way of greeting when he spots me.
I smile for the first time in days.
“If you did, I suggest you turn and start to run, because I will shoot your sorry ass.” He wipes his dirt- and oil-covered hands on a red towel before resting his hands on his hips.
“No, I didn’t marry her. But when I’m done talking to you, I still may find myself needing to run,” I say truthfully.
His brows pull together as he studies me with a fist on his hip and his feet spread wide. His size makes him an intimidating man, and so does his shaggy red beard. From his slightly defensive stance, I know I need to phrase what I’m about to say very carefully.
“What happened?” he asks, or rather growls.
Stepping into his shop, I take a seat in an old metal folding chair. I need to open up to someone, and I trust he’ll understand.
I tell him everything. I tell him my reasons for moving to New York, about getting Mackenzie pregnant, and then finally I tell him about losing her because I’m a hardheaded idiot. When I’m done talking, he doesn’t look happy, but I can tell that he doesn’t hate me, either.
“You screwed yourself, didn’t you?” he finally says.
I let out a long breath.
“Yeah.” I swallow, leaning back and crossing my boot-covered feet and my arms over my chest. “I fucked up and lost the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
It feels good to admit something that has been killing me since I forced Mackenzie to walk away from me.
“Is your heart still beating?” he asks.
I nod.
“Nothing is impossible unless you’re dead. You’re not dead, so you can still fix this.”
“So how do I do that? How do I get her back?”
“I think the question you need to ask is how you fix yourself. You have to do that before you can fix what happened between you two. You’ve been torturing yourself because of what happened. You need to deal with that first, before you try and talk to Mac.”
“You’re right.” I rub my hands against the stubble covering my jaw.
“Talk to someone about what happened. Be honest about how you feel, and then tell Mac. If I know my girl at all, I know she wanted to help you. You took that from her. Our girl may act like she’s hard, but she’s sensitive—she always has been,” he says.
I know he’s right, and that just adds to the guilt I’ve been feeling. I hate that I hurt her and that I didn’t give her what she needed. I didn’t open up to her, but that is all she was asking me to do.
“You’re right.”
“Now”—he leans back, crossing his arms over his chest—“let’s talk about you getting my daughter pregnant without her having a ring on her finger.”
“I—” I start to tell him that if I had my way, she would already have a ring on her finger, but he cuts me off.
“Save it. I don’t expect you to marry her right now. Actually, I’d prefer if you didn’t. What I want is for you to do right by her—and my grandchild.”
“I always will!” I state vehemently. Family is the most important thing to me.
“Good,” he says. His eyes and his voice both soften. “Now tell me—how is my grandbaby?”
“Healthy. I . . .” My lungs burn as I attempt to breathe through the sadness in my chest. I missed Mackenzie’s doctor’s appointment, but Libby sent me a text letting me know that everything was perfect. The doctors determined that Mackenzie was a
lready about nine weeks along, so she must have gotten pregnant the day she came to get her phone.
“It will be okay.” Aiden pats my shoulder, bringing me back from my thoughts. “You haven’t lost her, so stop acting like you have. Women are crazy creatures. There are times you two are going to fight and think this is it, this is the end of us. Then the next day, you’ll wake up with that dispute being nothing more than a memory. My daughter loves you, and I know you love her, so that right there will get you through everything.”
“Thanks.” I run my hand through my hair, then tuck my hands in the front pocket of my jeans. “I’m gonna head out before the roads get bad. They’re predicting that the storm will dump eight to ten inches between tonight and tomorrow.”
“I need to move to Florida.” Aiden shakes his head.
I start for the door, smiling, but he stops me.
“Wesley?”
“Yeah?” I turn to look at him.
“If you need to talk, I’m here.”
“Thanks.” My throat clogs with emotion.
He lifts his chin by way of farewell, and I lift mine in return, then head out the door.
“Wesley!” He calls to my back again when I’m halfway across the yard.
I turn around once more. “Yeah?”
“You tell Levi when you see him that we are gonna have a few words next time I see him, so it might be best he keeps his distance for a bit.”
“Will do.”
I grin when I turn around and head back inside. I pick up the cookies from Katie for Mac before I get back in my truck and head home. Part of me wants to drive right over to Mackenzie’s and tell her that I now understand what she was saying. That I get that she just wanted to help me. But I need to fight that urge until I take care of a few more things—even if it is killing me to stay away from her.
Cutting open the top of one of the packing boxes that I have ignored since I moved to New York, I take a breath. When you spend your whole life in one city and grow up with the same group of friends, good and bad memories tend to be connected to the objects you own. Dustin was part of most of the things I’ve kept locked away and unpacked so I wouldn’t have to face the pain of losing him all over again. I didn’t realize until I talked to a counselor who suggested I speak with his parents about that fact that I feel responsible for his death. The counselor said that talking with them might give me some closure, that hearing from them that they forgive me might set me on the road to healing.
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