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My body protests as I get up from the foldout bed. The only other time I slept on something that awful was when I moved out of my parent’s house and had to use an air mattress until I could afford a real one. It’s the best shower I’ve ever taken, and when I’m done, fully dressed and ready to face the day, I notice there’s a cast on my son’s arm.
A nurse is disconnecting his IV’s and talking animatedly to him. When she notices me, she talks to me instead. “The doctor decided he wants to try a cast before doing surgery. There will be some instructions, along with some preset doctor’s appointments listed in the discharge paperwork.”
“Daddy!” He looks over at me, eyes so much like my own staring back at me.
“Hey, buddy, are you doing okay?”
He nods enthusiastically. “I had popsicle for breakwast.”
“I’m sure your mom’s gonna love that,” I laugh. “Speaking of, is she ready to go, too?” I ask the nurse.
“She is. We’ll get you all the info you need, and then you can head on out.”
I pretend like I’m excited, but in reality I’m fucking terrified. Delia and I? We’ve obviously changed over the last two years, and I’m unsure if we’ll still be able to even be friends at this point.
But I’ve never been the type of person to shy away from anything hard. Instead, I do what I always do: I face the problem head-on and pray everything turns out the way it’s supposed to.
CHAPTERELEVEN
Delia
This isone of the most uncomfortable car rides I’ve ever been involved in. If it wasn’t for Gavin babbling mindlessly, it’d be in complete silence. Neither me nor Chance have said a word. As we head toward the house we bought three months into our marriage, I can’t believe how things have changed. I finally put voice to my thoughts.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “There was a fire and it came close to the house.”
“What do you mean, a fire?” I question, turning from where I’m looking out the window.
“A forest fire; it was pretty bad. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it. It made national news. The guys and I were part of the crews who fought it. About a hundred thousand acres burned. It changed the landscape and I’m worried there are parts that won’t ever come back the way it was before.”
When he says those words, he’s looking straight at me. Almost as if he’s saying he’s worried I won’t be the same as I was before. In my mind, that’s a good thing, though. I wasn’t nearly as strong then as I am now. It took me leaving him to find out who I was, and I couldn’t be the woman I am now without finding myself. “Maybe it’ll grow back stronger,” I snip. “There’s a chance it had to be broken in order to learn how to survive.”
His dark eyes are shooting sparks at me. “Or maybe the teamwork it took to extinguish the fire showed how strong we were,” he grits his teeth back at me.
Sighing, I lean my forehead against the window. “You’re never going to understand,” I whisper.
“Now isn’t the time,” he grits out as he grips the steering wheel. “But there will come a time, Delia, and I’m going to need you to explain it to me in detail. You broke me, and I do have a right to know what the fuck was going through your head, instead of reading it in his baby book.”
The color drains out of my face as I turn to stare at him. I can feel it. “You read his baby book?”
“What did you expect me to do? It was one of the things they pulled from the wreck and I had no idea if you were going to wake up. If you did wake up, I wasn’t sure if you’d remember what happened. Don’t act like I didn’t have the right! That’s my son back there, too.”
Rolling my lips together, I don’t say a word. This is what I was scared of when I came back, that he wouldn’t be able to listen to reason or forgive me. That my selfishness has ruined what could have been the rest of our lives. I knew when I left this could be what I came home to, but I hoped against everything I had that it wouldn’t be.
When we pull onto the street that has our house on it, I look around as if I’m seeing it with new eyes. Some of the houses that weren’t in the best shape have been nearly remodeled. Yards are immaculate with what appears to be fresh mulch and newly planted trees. As we get to where our house was, I gasp.
“Yeah, I painted it,” his voice is smug.
It’s an argument we’d had our whole first year of marriage. He hated the red brick, and so did I. There’d been a fundamental difference between us though. I’d wanted to paint it white, and he’d wanted to paint it a slate gray. “Guess you ended up getting your way in the end,” I sass over at him.
“Would’ve given it up if it would’ve kept you here,” he says quietly and raises an eyebrow as we park in the driveway.
I don’t have anything to say, and I’m sure whatever I might say won’t make a difference either way. “Is that all that’s changed?”
“Nope,” he answers before he goes around to the back of his SUV. “I painted some of the rooms, tore down a wall in the kitchen to make it open concept, and changed out the counters for marble; the kind you wanted,” he admits softly.
I stand there watching him get our son out of his car seat, and my chest pinches at what we’ve all missed. Although I’m the one who left, I’ve always been cognizant of the sacrifices I forced our family to make. There were moments I wanted to run back with my tail tucked between my legs. Nights when I was terrified, and it was second by second if I was going to be able to stay in the tiny apartment I’d barely been able to afford.
“Let’s head in, it’s too cool out here for Gavin,” Chance says, holding our son on his hip. “I’ll come back out and get y’all’s stuff.”
