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Shit. I snatch it up and answer it without checking.
It isn’t Tyler like my instincts whisper through my head. Instead, a tearful sob cuts through, breathy and feminine and it slices down into me a hundred ways that it shouldn’t.
That it hasn’t, not in years.
“I know you said you don’t want to hear from me, but…” Jessica sobs and hiccups and says, “It’s Tyler. Can you come?”
15
BRANDI
Travis isn’tthere when I wake in the middle of the night. Trailing downstairs, I go to his study, but he isn’t there, either. And his car… That’s gone, too.
My heart thumps hard against my ribs as an ice-cold sliver of uncertainty slips into my blood.
I sit there, waiting for an hour. Hoping I’ll get answers to whatever the hell is going on when Tyler gets home.
I try to stay awake but slip away into sleep before he returns. He’s there when I wake up again and a part of me wonders if I dreamed the whole thing. Pregnancy is making me crazy, so maybe I had, but the cold of the kitchen floor, of the mudroom as I’d walked through it to peer out into the night seems too real.
The memory makes my toes curl tight as we make our way to work together and I’m holding my stomach in a now-familiar and comforting way.
Sitting in his car, I stare at the building in front of me, way too aware of the man I married, the man I love more than seems possible, sitting next to me. The man who might somehow be slipping away and I don’t know why.
I need to talk to him. To share these thoughts with him because isn’t that what married people do?
Yes, but I worry he’ll think I am crazy if I do. Or pull even further away from me. The worst thing about that is it isn’t all the time, just here and there, and my whole body roller coasters with it, making me wish I had some crackers to snack on because I feel like I’m about to throw up.
He slides his hand over mine. Big and strong and warm and I come back to reality with a thump. “Hey.”
Yeah, I know I need to talk to him. Just all the thoughts and emotions inside will make me sound clingy and needy and all the things I’ve never been. I turn my hand in his and squeeze. “Another day, right?”
“That it is,” he says with a small laugh. And as I look up and over at him, the laughter and the smile fade. “You sure you’re okay, baby?”
“Yes.” I chicken out.
“You look tired. I can call in, tell them you’re sick—”
“No,” I say, frowning. “You don’t need to fight my battles for me, Trav. I can do it.”
Now he’s frowning, too and the cold from outside starts to creep in under my skin. “I’m your husband. We’re supposed to be a team. And I wasn’t aware you had battles.”
“I’m just tired. I’m not sleeping well.”
Is it my imagination or did his gaze slide a little from mine? Once more, my mind goes back to the empty bed of the night before. But I don’t ask.
“I hear you,” he mutters. Then he smiles with a small shrug and squeezes my hand again. “I worry about you and the baby.”
I get that, I do. But why do I think that’s not what he means? “Which means I should get in there.”
“Hey, Brandi?” He doesn’t let go of my hand as I reach for the car door with the other, and I turn back to him. “You’d let me know if something was up? If you needed to slow down?”
“I’m pregnant, not ninety. I’m not that far along, either.”
“You’re still pregnant. And the baby is growing and needs food and energy and you’re so little and… Well, fuck. I’m not saying you’re weak. You’re strong. It’s just a baby is coming, and I don’t want you to stress out or work when you’re too tired. That’s all.”
He is frowning heavily now and all the weirdness I have brewing starts to melt away at the expression. He’s watching me with concern, like a man who wants to protect his family… like he’s as lost as I am right now.
“I love you,” I whisper, leaning over and kissing his smoothly shaved cheek.
