“I wish I could, but you did. Saw her car, with my own eyes, smelled her perfume all over you, and saw the lipstick on your shirt and neck. If not hers, it was some other woman’s who was not me. None of it was good, Walk. All of it was heartbreaking which is why I really need you to go. I need space. You took yours yesterday and did what you did with it when the only thing I’d done to inflame your temper was ask to try one last thing in order to have a family with you. What you did, and didn’t do in that time actually deserves my ire and since you got to do whatever you wanted when you needed space away from me…” I left the rest open ended until I saw he wasn’t getting it. “You got your space free and clear, now I need mine. I need to sort myself; and I need to do it without you here.”
“Poppy, we’ve managed to work through everything so far. Don’t quit on me now,” he protested.
I laughed.
“Really, Walk? Working through everything now encompasses you getting pissed at me for wanting to try every available option before I give up on having a baby forever? Not just getting pissed, but getting so angry that you walked out during storm prep on a day we were forecast to get a whopper of a nor’easter, the same day a similar storm took my family from me six years past, and you didn’t give a goddamn. We all saw where your walk took you. It took you to the one woman who tried to ruin us in order to get you for herself in the very beginning of our relationship. Yeah, my cracking, dying heart last night really felt how we managed to work though everything when I was worried sick about you while you were busy cozying up to another woman enough to have just fucked hair and lipstick all over you when you finally showed up after receiving texts from your buddy. I won’t even get into the fact that you miraculously received his texts, but none of the ones I sent you.”
Walker pulled out his phone, and searched through it again looking completely puzzled. I held mine up with the string of texts I had sent him yesterday as proof. I watched his mouth drop open then as he glanced down at his phone and seemed to be putting two and two together.
“I won’t even ask who had access to your phone yesterday, Walk, considering you don’t even let me touch it.” He swallowed thickly then.
I huffed out the deep breath I managed to pull in and then I looked my confused and despondent husband in the eye. “You need to leave. I need for you to go. You need to go and try to remember why you allowed some woman – who wasn’t me – to be all over you at some point last night. Why some person obviously screened my calls for you, and you allowed that to happen to, because I know for a fact you never let anyone touch your phone. You need to figure out why you’re so against trying to have a baby with me. You need to figure out why it was so easy to forget the worst day of my life yesterday, and you need time to consider that you made last night the second worst night of my entire life. And I need time to decide if I can move beyond any, or all, of that.”
“Fuck!” He hissed out quietly.
“Fuck!” He yelled out the second time as he kicked off the floor and stood. Walker looked from me to Snake and back again. “Poppy, I have fucked up – a lot – but I have never, not for a single minute, stopped loving you. I need you to remember that.” I took in his steely gray eyes with the faintest hint of blue to them that could be warm and loving when they locked with mine while we made love or could be cold and fierce when he was angered by something. His hair that needed a cut a couple weeks ago, and since he didn’t get it had started curling a bit at the edges, was something else I would commit to memory with just my eyes, as I would never find myself running my fingers through it while we chatted in bed again.
The slight hint of stubble that graced his face and neck was something I had both loved and loathed over the years. Beard burn from stubble was always a hell of a lot worse than the time he’d grown out a full, well-trimmed beard. I had loved his beard. The guys had teased him about it, or some such, and he’d shaved it off never to grow it again. Who cared that I had liked it. Those large hands of his that went with his equally large framed body dragged through his hair in frustration as he catalogued me while I did the same. I would miss the comfort and safety I’d found inside those strong arms, beside that barrel of a chest, when I listened to his heart thump-thump, thump-thump, just beneath my ear as I leaned into him. I could hear the ghost of that sound now.
The ghost of that sound intermingled with a strangled version of my name from his lips as I turned and walked out of the living room and back into the kitchen where I didn’t have to watch him walk out of our front door for the last time. It pained me to admit this to myself, but even if he hadn’t had evidence of another woman on him when he came home last night, I had reached my breaking point. The fact that he was no longer interested in having a family with me – no matter how we had to go about that – and the fact that he had forgotten something so damn important to me, I had found the straw that always proverbially broke the camel’s back. Only this time, that straw was breaking my already battered heart.
Chapter 3
One thing became painfully clear over the course of the next two months, and that was the fact that I could not stay in Sierra High, Georgia one moment longer. I could not face the aftermath of what those two terrible stormy nights had taken from me. First my parents and sister, then my husband, all were casualties of one storm or other. In there own ways they were all gone to me now. My heart was in tatters and despite the fact that Walker’s last words to me had been, “Poppy, I have fucked up – a lot – but I have never, not for a single minute, stopped loving you. I need you to remember that.” He hadn’t really meant those words. He certainly hadn’t been living by them during our separation. I knew this because he hadn’t come for me. He hadn’t called, messaged, written a letter, or attempted to contact me in any way, shape, or form since the day I told him to leave. I also heard the talk in town about how he wasn’t exactly being chaste during our separation either. Apparently, he’d given each and every one of the club whores a workout they wouldn’t soon forget.
If that was love, I supposed I was better off without it. As expected, the friends I thought I once had were a rare sighting in these parts. They left me to my own devices and my own misery. The only person associated with the club who had been by to see me after the first month came and went was Snake. Every time he showed up his face seemed a little bleaker than the last time. My thoughts turned to him once more as I noticed his Harley creeping up the drive while I stuffed another piece of my old life into yet another box. Not unlike the emotions I’d boxed up and hidden deep, even from myself.
The door opened and the smile Snake had been wearing on his handsome face dropped off with his next step. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I asked without a hint of emotion to my words while I sealed the box I was working on with packing tape and watched as Snake took in everything around him. It had been a week since his last visit here and as he was beginning to understand a lot could change in a week.
His eyes bulged at the sight before him. Boxes, packed ones, were everywhere. There weren’t a lot of unpacked boxes left, because almost everything had been done. I’d worked the last day of my two week notice on the jobs I needed to give notice for the week before, and all of my other work was done remotely from home anyway so I’d had plenty of time to get shit done. Snake finished his scan of my empty – that is to say boxed up – house and he set panicked eyes back to mine just as quickly.
“Poppy, what the hell?” He asked again. “I was just here a week ago,” he started. I waved his statement off.
“I’ve had the time, and it’s time. I can’t…” I glanced around the house I had grown up in, the house I now owned because of tragedy, and the house where I had been alone and swallowed up by memories for two whole months without so much as an apology from my husband. “There are too many ghosts here for me now,” I stated simply.
He nodded his head sagely. “You find a place closer to town?” He asked as he swallowed thi
ckly, knowing full well I hadn’t, because if I had he would have heard about it by now through the wonderful southern grapevine. I just shook my head.
“Fuck, you two have the worst timing of any couple ever.” His statement was laced with a goodly amount of frustration. I moved the box I’d just sealed up aside and stared at Snake, trying to puzzle out what that meant. I didn’t have to make the attempt long, because Snake stalked over to me, kneeled down to my level, and lifted my chin with his fingers so that we were eye to eye and I wasn’t missing a thing. “He’s coming for you today. He had a plan, he’s worked on it, and he’s ready now.”
I laughed.
Snake tipped back on his heels, shocked by my outburst.
“His last words to me were supposedly filled with hope, promise, and the fact that he had always loved me, Snake.”
“I know, I was there for that,” he reminded me while his brow was still furrowed with question.
“Uh-huh, and then nothing. Those were literally his last words to me.” I stated simply as I moved slightly away from the man and pulled another folded box to me and started putting it together to hold the last of my things.
“Nothing?” Snake questioned as he watched me continue on with my chore.
“Nothing,” I confirmed.
“I’m not getting you, babe.”
I cast my gaze back in his direction then. “I mean, nothing. I haven’t seen him once since then. I didn’t hear from him once since then, not even to check on me, or to tell me that he was okay. Everyone else from the club stopped coming around or talking to me about a month back, and I figured it was because I was out completely now since I was no longer with Walker, but the conversations I overheard in the grocery store made that explanation a little more complicated.” He just stared at me and waited for me to fill him in on those conversations. “Seems none of the women wanted to come around me because they were uncomfortable after having seen the way Walk was tearing through the club whores left, right, and center over the previous month.” Snake’s wince let me know there was merit to those conversations I’d heard.
“Poppy, I think he should be the one to explain, but he was working out whether or not he should let you go to be happy and find someone who could give you the family you want easier, or whether to fight and try again to give you what you want even though he didn’t agree with how to do it.”
“And the answer to his dilemma was found in club whore pussy? We’re still married, Snake. I asked for time apart to sort my feelings, and his response was to ignore me, our problems, our vows, and fuck everything with tits.”
Snake dragged his hands down his face in frustration. “I didn’t say he went about his time constructively.”
“I haven’t touched another man since my high school boyfriend before Walker ever came to town,” I spoke on a sigh as I pulled the latest box closer to me. “We may have been separated, but we were still married, Snake. We were still under the vows of marriage, and I was still taking in his last words to me when he never came back, called, or did anything but let me find out from strangers, and former friends, that the reason he never came back, called, or anything was because he was too busy buried balls deep in other women. I have to say, as a way to show you love someone, that falls pretty damn flat.”
“He wasn’t with anyone the night of the storm. He’d passed out a bit on the ride home with Tanya. She pulled over, and made it look like what she made it look like to get under your skin. She admitted it to one of the girls.”
“And instead of coming to me with this news he makes it true by fucking everyone else?” I asked again not getting angry just stating the facts. I had already done angry when I first heard the rumors, and as a result I had a few less things to pack up since they were smashed beyond all hope of fixing them.
Snake shook his head. “He was angry that he was living in the clubhouse, because you threw him out based on her lies instead of believing him that he wouldn’t fuck around.”
“But then he did, and that was only a small part of the reason I threw him out, Snake. That night…” I felt the emotion I’d boxed up creeping back out at about the same time I heard another, familiar, set of pipes coming up the drive. “He broke me that night long before he showed up and I saw the evidence that had been planted on him,” I explained.
“I know, Pop, I know.” Snake finally muttered in a defeated tone. “Fuckin’ idiot still doesn’t realize what he was throwing away because of his pride,” the man stated plainly as he stood up from where he had been kneeling beside me on the floor. “You want me to stick around for this? I have a feeling things are gonna blow when he sees the state of the house,” Snake offered.
I just shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter anymore. Nothing does,” I told him, and he gave me a worried glance then as the front door opened, and the exuberant voice of Walker boomed out, “Poppy, baby, time to talk!” The words were coming out of his mouth as he pushed through the door. The exhilaration and exuberance left him as soon as the sight before him took hold.
“What in the fuck, Poppy?” He yelled then, anger turning his words red hot instead of glazed with the playful happy tone of moments before.
“Walker,” I muttered as I finished putting the last book in the box I’d been packing and started taping it up. Walker came over to me, snatched the tape, and threw it across the room.
“What are you doing? What in the fuck are you doing?” He was yelling, but more in a panicked tone than in anger at that point.
“Walker, have a seat, and…”
“On what?” He asked incredulously. “It’s all gone.” The last came out scratchy with emotion.
“It is,” I agreed, only I was talking about more than the furniture and personal items. “Everything that belonged to you, I hauled out to the shed and locked up. I was going to arrange a day for you to come pick it up. I wasn’t certain if you’d need to get a storage unit or if you already found a new place.”
“Found a new place? Poppy, I wasn’t even aware I should be looking for a new place,” he explained, words still choked with the tears that shimmered in his eyes.
“Really?” I asked. “You broke our marriage vows and you thought you were coming back here to me?” I asked in a serious, if quiet tone.
“I did what?” He snapped back while turning an accusatory glare Snake’s way.
“Don’t look at your friend like that. He didn’t tell me anything. I heard about it every time I had to go to town for groceries, to pay a bill, and while I was at work. It’s why the clubwomen stopped being friends with me. They weren’t comfortable talking to me while keeping your secret; only they were so keen to gossip about it in public that I heard it everywhere anyway. Heartbreak was bad enough to deal with. The loneliness of not having anyone, not one single person, care about me enough to check on me other than Snake since you’ve been gone was bad enough, but coupled with the humiliation that you were out there fucking every woman who would spread her legs for you…”
I shook my head as I felt my entire body starting to quiver with the pent up pain, anguish, and anger I thought I’d been boxing up along side my possessions. I stared straight into his eyes then. “When I said no one came to check on me, that included you. Not one single phone call, text, or appearance in two months while I had to hear about what you’d been up to daily, and you strolled in here expecting things to be the same and to just fall into the place you finally decided you wanted?”
He swallowed hard. “Poppy, I…” he started, looked at the floor, then back to me before he tried again. I saw the moment he decided to spare himself and let his frustration loose on me. “You didn’t believe me! You kicked me out because of some lie Tanya perpetrated again while I was passed out. I never slept with anyone, and you kicked me out for it. I was pissed.”
“I didn’t kick you out for that,” I told him, my words quiet to his angered booming ones.
“You…” he started before my words sunk in. “You what?”
> “I decided I needed space to think before you ever rolled into the drive with her. I was at the end of my rope, hanging precariously that morning when you walked out on a conversation that was important to me, before we could even have that conversation. Then you didn’t show for the cemetery. Then it stormed and you never called or cared that I would be worried considering a similar storm had taken my family on the same day years before. That night broke me in a way you will never understand, because I realized that no one who loved me – truly loved me still like he once had – would put me through that on that night of all nights. You could have rolled in with Snake instead that night, and the result would have been the same. I would have still needed space.”
“Poppy,” he started, in a calmer voice.
“Your last words to me were to remember that you had never stopped loving me, but you did stop. You stopped before you spoke them, and you made it clear you had stopped with what you did during our time apart. You weren’t showing me you still loved me over the past couple months. You were sleeping with other women. You weren’t doing whatever it took to come home, because you were too busy utilizing your bed in the clubhouse. You didn’t call, send messages, send letters, or come to me. You didn’t check on me, not once to make sure I was okay.”
“Snake kept me updated.”
I laughed.
“Snake kept you updated? Snake wasn’t trying to save our marriage. Hell, he acted more like a husband trying to make sure I was okay than you. He checked on me, made sure I was eating when I wasn’t. He made sure I was sleeping, when I wasn’t. He made sure I had ice cream stocked so that at least I could eat something while drowning in my own misery. That man – your friend – could have won me back with his behavior. Had you done any of those things yourself, you could have won me back. Instead, you continued to be a selfish bastard after me kicking you out for being a selfish bastard. You expected that being selfish and not giving a shit what was happening with me would win you my favor? You expected that I’d ever step foot in that clubhouse again knowing that you fucked every goddamn skank that walked through those doors? Just the thought that you would put me in a position to have to potentially run into one of the whores you were screwing while we were still married shows how little you cared. Did you really expect me to be sitting here waiting with breath held for you to come charging through the door once you got it all out of your system, even as you embarrassed and disrespected me?” I asked, legitimately wanting to know.
Redemption Weather Page 3