Page 77 of Chasing the Other Woman

I draw in a breath that scrapes all the way down. Because I should've told her two years ago.

“It had your blood on it.”

Her head turns.

I keep my eyes on the road. If I look at her, I might drive straight into the ditch.

“After the accident,” I say. “It was on the bracelet. On my hands. My shirt. Everywhere. I cleaned it when we got home from the hospital, but it didn’t matter. Every time I looked at it, I saw you in the back of Hershel’s truck. I saw you going in and out on me. I saw you bleeding.”

The radio pops with static. Someone behind us says something about inflow. Neither of us answers right away.

“I thought you were going to die,” I say. “And then we lost the baby, and I kept thinking about the road. About you telling me to go east. About me not listening. That bracelet got tangled up in all of it.”

Sam’s fingers curl around the edge of the tablet.

“I almost threw it in a lake,” I say.

Her breath catches.

“I stood there with it in my hand. Hershel was by the truck pretending he didn’t know what I was doing. I raised my arm and everything.” My voice drops flat. “Couldn’t do it.”

“Why not?”

The storm flashes faintly ahead of us, a dull pulse inside the clouds.

“Because before that day, it was you in a booth at The Funnel Cloud, looking at me like you hadn’t just given me the best thing I owned.” My thumb moves over the clasp. “It was cheap motels, busted cameras, and you fastening it because I kept fumbling on purpose. It was you saying it was something to keep you with me.”

She looks down at her lap.

“I couldn’t wear it,” I say. “But I couldn’t destroy it. So I put it away.”

Sam is silent long enough that I hear the rattle in the dashboard I still haven’t fixed.

“I didn’t know,” she says.

"Yeah. And that's on me. I should have told you."

“When you stopped wearing it, I thought…” She presses her lips together. “I thought it meant you didn’t want anything from before anymore. Us. The baby. Me. I thought you were putting pieces of me away.”

“Sam.”

“You never told me.”

"I was afraid to. I was afraid of a lot of things."

“You never told me anything.”

And that, right there, was the whole crux of the problem.

"I did a lot of things wrong," I say. "Didn't tell you things. Tried to protect you by hurting you. But one thing's never changed. I never stopped loving you."

Her eyes shine when she looks at me. “Honestly, that was another thing I didn't know."

Before I can answer, Hershel’s voice breaks through the radio. “Lead, you seeing that lowering at your eleven?”

Sam shifts instantly. Her spine straightens and her expression changes. Not colder. Sharper.

“I’ve got it,” she says, already leaning toward the windshield. “Brooks, slow five.”