“I’d offer you some of the breathing exercises my therapist gave me, but those work about as well as hopes and dreams and unicorn tears.”
“I wouldn’t turn down some unicorn tears right about now. Or some Oxy.”
She whistles. “Me too. On both counts”
He opens his mouth to ask about that, but she clicks her tongue with a shake of her head. “Anyway, I’m sorry I tried to break your ribs in the cave.”
“That’s not how it was. You were having a panic attack. Mildly hypothermic. Can’t control that stuff.”
She sighs, slamming a drawer in frustration when it doesn’t hold what she’s looking for. “I know I’m difficult. Hard to handle. You wouldn’t be the first to say that and probably won’t be the last, so just let me apologize, okay? It might be the only one you get out of me.”
He forgets for a moment that he was about to offer his own apology about that unintentional cave boner and tries to focus on what she’s actually saying. “Which guy told you that? That you’re difficult?”
“Both, for different reasons, I guess. The first one made me this way, and the second one got upset that he couldn’t fix it. I made him feel inadequate. Finn would never admit to that, though, and shit, I’m doing it again. Talking about them.”
“I asked. What else do we have to do besides talk? Unless you’re sick of my voice already.”
“Not yet, but the day is still young.” She leans her hip against the counter. “Is this your way of saying you want to trade stories now?”
That’s not what he meant. Not how his brain works. He says what he means or keeps quiet, all that in-between hinting bullshit is useless far as he’s concerned, but maybe she knows full well that isn’t what he was getting at and just wants toexplain herself anyway, even though he’s tried to make it clear she doesn’t have to.
“Sure. Only if you want to,” he agrees, taking her lead.
“You pick this time? You know enough bits and pieces about me by now to have questions.”
“Tell me about the first husband.”
“Going right for the jugular, huh?”
“We don’t have to.”
“No. No, I said you could ask and I won’t go back on that.” She straightens up, steeling herself for a conversation she brought on. “It’s not a happy story, though.”
“Figured that much already.”
“What you said about your father being hard to love. That was Jack, too. I met him just out of high school. He was charming. Made me feel special. Then we got married and he developed an addiction to anything he could snort, which he forced me to share with him until I was the one begging for a hit, but that wasn’t even the worst of it. No, the worst was how violent he became when he was high. That led to a season pass to the ER until they started asking questions about my endless injuries. You can learn fun things like how to set fractured bones and relocate dislocations, all with a simple internet search, and that avoided most suspicion.”
She pauses, looking everywhere but at him, fingers tracing the label on the can she can’t open.
“Then I had Iris. It was a mistake. Bringing a baby into that was so unfair to her, and it only got worse. I didn’t do a damn thing about it until he started looking at her like he’d look at me right before he would get mad…I divorced him after that. Forced myself not to go back. I almost did so many times. So many. I was still so afraid that if I didn’t, it would only be worse when he found me.”
He knew it was bad but didn’t expect it to be this awful, yet she tells the story monotone and flat, as if letting in the smallest amount of emotion would simply open the floodgates. She’s as closed off about that part of her life as he’s been about some of the worst years of his. He can talk about it now, too, but he isn’t about tofeel it.
“It was brave of you to leave,” he tells her, softly.
“I wouldn’t have if I didn’t think he might hurt Iris one day. That’s what it took. But it was pointless anyway because he had a fancy lawyer and got custody just to spite me, while I got sent to rehab for the addiction he started. And then there are days when I wonder if she would still be alive if I had stayed. If that would have been the trade-off, or if we all might have died together that night, and that’s a rabbit hole that leads to nowhere useful.”
“The carbon monoxide?”
“Yeah. There was a leak. They went to sleep and never woke up.”
What does he even say to that? Theo regrets asking despite the fact that she practically led him there. It’s only wound her up tighter than a drum, her whole body tense and words clipped, and they aren’t close enough that he can be that guy who gathers her up and lets her cry into his shoulder.
That only happens if they’re about to die in a freezing cold cave. If this was supposed to be cathartic in some way, then it’s nothing but a failure, just like his response that fades in his throat.
“Anyway.” She turns back toward the drawers, pulling open the next one. “He’s why I am the way that I am. We can blame him for your almost cracked ribs. I panic pretty easily sometimes when I wake up confused. The cold didn’t help, but it didn’t start it either.”
“I don’t want you feeling bad about that, okay? I’m not worried about what happened. It’s over. No harm done. Ifsomeone grabbed me like I grabbed you, they’d catch a broken nose. I get it.”
