Page 52 of Easy On Me

Not that I could.

Tyler filled my head, the way she smiled at me, the way she fit in my arms, the way we fit together, the way I loved her. The way she wanted us to be easy.

We didn’t have any miles on us. Enough weeks to make up a few months. That was all.

Shit, that was not good. She had no reason to walk this out with me. Walking away would be easier.

I went home early and showered. I needed to be clean, to have all the mud off me, so I could have this conversation. I’d considered meeting her at work, getting to her as fast as I could, but that was wrong.

We needed to talk here, in the privacy of our home.

My brain choked while I dried off and tugged on gray sweats and a black t-shirt, trying to think ahead of Elizabeth and that you’ll be sorry. Everything she’d done to Hannah, lying about her, villainizing her, weaponizing her channel against her own sister.

How did I get out in front of that when I no longer understood how her mind worked? Maybe I never had. Maybe the parts I despised had been there from the beginning, and I’d just been dumb.

Maybe I’d already fucked up by waiting until end of day, but Daddy and Grandaddy, not to mention the Air Force, were pretty plain about panic – it wasn’t my friend.

Tyler’s car purred in the drive, and I closed my eyes, breathing in this last moment of our old life before I smashed it. Maybe the last moments of our marriage. Bile flooded my throat with acid. I gripped the edge of the counter, the worn Formica biting into my palms while I concentrated on not vomiting.

She hustled in the back door, dark hair swinging about her shoulders. A bright smile lit her face.

“Hey.” Dumping her purse on the kitchen table, she tiptoed up to kiss me. “You’re early.”

A hand at the small of her back, I kept her close to me a moment, breathing in the clean scent of her shampoo.

I was about to blow up everything.

There was nothing easy about this.

“Need to talk to you.” I swallowed, my mouth and throat coated with agony. “And it’s not good.”

She stilled. Her face closed up, and she stepped back, lost to me already. “Did you cheat?”

“What?” I wanted to be mad and chase that rabbit, buy myself a few more seconds with her. Even that – fighting, defending myself – would be better than what I had to do. “No.”

A pause hung while she stared at me, waiting.

“I’m not that guy,” I rasped. “You know that.”

After a moment, her shoulders relaxed.

“No.” Her voice was soft, guarded. “You’re not. I’m sorry.”

“Elizabeth tracked me down today.” Might as well get right into it, tell it like it was. I watched her go on that same Air Defense Warning Red I’d experienced in the field, body on alert, stiff and still. “She says she’s pregnant.”

Her face froze, smoothing over like a death mask, so I felt us and all we could be slip away.

“Paternity test rules out the last guy she was with.” Desperation scratched down my throat to grab my heart in the center of my chest and squeeze. “Told her I want a test.”

She stared at me, no emotion flickering in her eyes, over her face. Nothing. Like she felt absolutely nothing and was closed off to me, shuttered away. Her throat moved with a swallow before that nothingness hardened to resolve.

My stomach dropped.

Without a word, she turned and picked up her purse before walking out the door.

Panic exploded in my chest. My gut cramping, I scrambled after her, tripping over the back threshold, barely catching myself from going face-first onto the concrete. “Tyler.”

She was already climbing in her car when I cleared the steps, the cool concrete rough on my bare feet.