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CARTER
I lay on my mother’s bed in the crappy hotel room she’d rented off the highway. Some of her clothes were there, a raincoat, a turtleneck. Cold weather clothes, left behind. Like me.
Why am I here? I thought, staring at the same cracks on the ceiling that I’d been staring at for five days. Today was my last day. Vanessa had paid out the week and that was it.
Five days waiting here and I knew what I’d known when I’d first arrived.
There would be no satisfaction from my mother. No explanations. No tearful apologies.
She’d left, taken her thirty silver coins, and she wasn’t coming back. But this time, she had to know that if she came back, I’d send her to the cops.
The rage billowed in me, but I’d already destroyed the lamp, broken the mirror. The TV would never work again. My cell phone was trashed.
There was nothing left for me to throw. Nothing left to keep me here.
It was over. Done. The secret was out and there was no more protecting anyone. All those secrets and lies, the distance I put between myself and anything I wanted to keep clean—it was all over.
The shell was gone and my skin flinched in the cool air.
But still I couldn’t walk out that yellowed door.
What do I have to go back to? I wondered. What did I want to go back to?
Before I’d smashed my phone there had been a dozen calls from Eric Lafayette, messages offering me a job—but I couldn’t work up the enthusiasm.
Zoe?
My heart spasmed fresh hurt. Fresh pain.
I missed her. I missed her more than my job. My condo. My life. I missed her like I missed my family. Like I missed being touched and loved. I missed her like I missed myself—the man I was without the secrets.
But what could I possibly say that would erase what I’d done? The words I’d used to slice her into pieces?
I cringed and sat up, hanging my head in my hands. This suddenly felt so familiar. This place—not the room or the cracks on the ceiling—but this place in my head.
Giving up something I wanted. Something I loved, because it was easier not to fight. Easier to numb the pain and let the distance take over.
My mother had put me in this place again, left me here all by myself, and I had the same choice to make.
Love or no love.
Alone or with someone. With a family.
When I thought about it like that, it seemed so clear.
“Oh God,” I muttered, scrubbing at my face. “I’m so stupid.”
My hands ached to touch Zoe. My arms hurt without her in them.
I stood, opened the yellowed door.
“Goodbye, Mom,” I breathed and shut the door behind me.
The lights were on in Zoe’s loft and my stomach dropped into my shoes. She was going to be so mad, I thought. Hurt. Maybe enough that she’d never forgive me.
And she was right, I thought, remembering what I’d said to her, like she meant nothing to me.
But I had to try.
I looked down at my wrinkled clothes. No doubt I smelled bad. I’d been living on fast food and beer for a week.
But somehow, the man under the smell was worse. I had no job, no career, and my mother had sold me out for what looked like a plane ticket to South America.
Even if Zoe wasn’t so mad she never wanted to see me again, it’s not as if I was bringing her my best game. The best version of myself. I didn’t even have flowers. What was some abject groveling without flowers?
I should go home. At least shower off the stink.
But God, every minute now felt like a year and I was all too aware of every second I’d wasted already.
“You going to stand out there all night?” a woman asked from the open doorway.
“No,” I said, and stepped toward the concrete step and safety glass door where I’d first tried to kiss Zoe. A Christmas elf was stuck to the door. Mocking me. “Thank you. I’m looking for Zo—”
It was Penny standing there, holding open the door like she expected me.
“Took you long enough,” she said, her lips a firm line. “If you didn’t surface here or at your condo tonight, I was under strict rules to call the cops.”
“I’ve been…” A hundred lies came to my lips, but I didn’t have the energy to build a new house of cards. “Scared.”
“You should be,” she said. “You hurt that girl pretty bad.”
My stomach flopped around like a dying fish and there was nothing I could say.
“This is a mistake, isn’t it?” I asked her, naked and vulnerable in a way I’d never been before.
Penny took a deep breath. “No,” she finally said. “Zoe’s tough, and once she loves you, well…” Now Penny looked chagrined, as if remembering all the hurtful things she’d said. “It takes a lot to change her mind. And frankly, once you love that girl—you’re hers. Forever.”
