Page 4 of Smoke

"You still live there?" she asked.

"Yeah." I watched her absorb the answer before she admitted she'd thought I might have moved. "It's a good house."

I hadn't kept it because I'd spent years sitting in the dark waiting for her to come back. I'd lived there. Replaced furniture, repainted rooms and had women there on occasion, although none stayed long enough to leave anything behind. I had a life after Beth, and I wasn't ashamed of that.

I'd simply never wanted to build another home with anybody, and that was different. She glanced toward the suitcase by Warren's stairs. "I'll drive myself."

"I'll follow."

Beth studied my face, maybe expecting me to push harder. The version of me she left might have. Back then I was certain that if the reason was good enough, the way I delivered it didn't matter. Time was long enough to admit how badly I'd fucked that up.

"Fine," she said. I carried her suitcase outside and followed her across Salvation. The town was quiet for late afternoon, heat shimmering above the road as we headed toward the north side where the houses spread out. I watched intersections and mirrors without having to think much about it.

The Army had taught me to look for things that didn't belong. Twelve years of checking roads, entrances and people who seemed a little too interested in where you were going had wired the habit in deep enough that switching it off would have taken more effort than leaving it running.

Nothing followed us, and Beth pulled into my drive and stayed behind the wheel for a while after shutting off the engine. I parked the bike beside the garage and waited, watching her look at the house she had once helped make ours.

It had changed since she left. I replaced the faded siding, built a covered section onto the back porch and got rid of the old truck she used to complain leaked oil over the drive. The flower pots she kept near the steps disappeared after I killed everything in them through a mixture of neglect and not having a fucking clue what any of it needed.

When she finally got out, she looked over the front of the house. "You painted it."

"The yellow was ugly."

"You chose the yellow."

"You gave me yellow or green."

A reluctant smile touched her mouth. "You hated the green."

"Exactly."

The smile hit somewhere low in my chest. I'd seen Beth angry today and scared too, despite how hard she tried to hide it. I'd watched her walk down a hospital corridor looking exhausted and beautiful enough to fuck with the distance I'd thought was settled. Seeing her smile in my driveway was worse because it belonged to memories that had nothing to do with the divorce.

I unlocked the door and carried her bag inside.

The house had changed more in there. The floral couch she loved and I pretended to hate was long gone, replaced with dark leather. I had turned the spare room into a place for club paperwork, moved the dining table and repainted most of the walls. My shit had spread into the spaces that used to hold hers because life did that when somebody left.

Not everything needed replacing simply because Beth had chosen it.

The blue-gray backsplash still ran behind the kitchen counters. The heavy oak table we bought when we couldn't afford it still carried the long scratch we made getting it through the doorway. The brass light fixture she once threatened to replace was still hanging above it because at some point I stopped seeing it.

Beth ran two fingers over the edge of the counter. "You kept the tile."

"It's good tile."

"You hated that tile."

"I hated how long you took to pick it."

That pulled another smile from her. Her gaze shifted toward the sink. "Do you remember the faucet?"

I did, and the memory made me laugh before I could stop it.

Beth had decided one Saturday that replacing a leaking kitchen faucet required no particular skill because she had watched two instructional videos online. She refused my offer to help, misunderstood which valve shut off the water and flooded half the cabinet before I reached the main supply. I'd found her soaked from the waist down, furious with the plumbing and even more furious that I couldn't keep a straight face.

"You told me you knew what you were doing," I said.

Beth defended herself by pointing out that she thought she did, then reminded me I'd deserved the kitchen ban because I couldn't stop laughing. She wasn't wrong.