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Because when I leave here, I’m going to feel hollow and empty. She’s filled my life with so much happiness.
“Brin?” I ask, rocking my hips up. Her eyes flutter open. “Maybe we can… I mean, I’m not that far away. Maybe we can work something out.”
Her face doesn’t show she even heard me at first, then a smile shines down on me like sunshine. She falls to my chest, her lips on mine, her hands on my cheeks. “I was thinking the same thing.”
I roll us over and slide in and out of her, my eyes never leaving hers. I’ve never been so happy. I have no idea of the logistics, but I can’t say goodbye to her. Can’t bear not knowing what’s going on in her life. We have to figure this out because she’s ruined me.
“I’m almost there,” she says, panting.
“Me too.” I increase the tempo, and she comes on a cry that I swallow with a kiss as I pour into her.
My head is in the crook of her neck when a wet drop lands on my temple. I quickly pick up my head to see tears falling down her cheeks. Shit. I thought we were in the clear.
Twenty-Six
Van
“Fuck, Brin, what’s wrong?” I ask, climbing up on the bed to rest my back on the headboard and holding her in my arms.
She shakes her head. “I never thought I could be this happy again.”
“You scared the shit out of me. I thought you were regretting this or what we said about figuring out how to be together.”
She shakes her head and wipes her tears. “I thought I was tough enough to say goodbye to you, but I’m not. When I was planning your birthday party, my cousins were all over me about how happy I seemed, and it really made me think. Then I thought about you leaving, and well, I couldn’t even fathom going on with my life as if you were never part of it. Sure, there’re memories, but those fade. I should know, I barely remember the day of Sawyer’s death.” She pulls back a bit and looks at me. “That’s something we haven’t talked about.”
I tighten my arms around her shoulders. “You don’t have to.”
“I really want to, but I don’t want to ruin your birthday.”
I smile. “Nothing can ruin tonight for me. I’m honored you trust me enough to share.”
She turns around and sits up on her knees to face me, her fingers fiddling with one another. I grab her hands and run my thumbs over them.
“He worked in investments and went out with a lot of clients who always had a lot of toys—personal planes, fancy penthouses in New York. But he also had clients from Alaska who had gotten rich on oil and didn’t do the luxury lifestyle, but still had expensive things like big fishing boats and four runners and snowmobiles, cabins in remote areas.”
“Sounds nice,” I say.
“Sometimes I got invited, but mostly it was guys’ trips, especially with his clients from Alaska. They’d hunt, fish, camp, go on excursions with tour companies. He needed to keep them happy, especially when their investments were trending the wrong way. Anyway, we’d been married just over a year when he told me he had to go on a big fishing trip with one of his clients.”
My stomach clenches because I know all too well how many “fishermen” we’ve saved from their own stupidity of not knowing the weather they’re going out in. You’d think as rich as they are, they’d hire actual fishermen, but their egos are always too big.
“It was like any other time. He was going to be gone for a few days and he said when he returned, he’d carve some time out for us to go away for our one-year anniversary.”
She stops speaking, and I continue to rub her hands.
“It was early one morning when there was a knock on my door. I figured it was one of my family members, but it was Sheriff Miller Jr. and another officer. They informed me there had been an accident and Sawyer had died. They asked if I could go with them to identify Sawyer’s body. I called my parents, who, of course, came with me. His body had been flown to Anchorage and was in the morgue there. It was all so surreal. I was in the back of my dad’s car, and my mom just kept asking me questions I didn’t have answers to. I never asked where they went or any specifics. He’d always just gone and returned.”
A few tears run down her cheeks, and I wipe them away. I bet one of my buddies was dispatched, or maybe it all happened too late for us to reach them and it was only a recovery, not a rescue. “Brin…”
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I was just this naive little wife who never asked questions and assumed he’d show up like he was supposed to.”
“You expected him to come home. And nine point nine times out of ten, that’s what happens. You can’t beat yourself up about that.”
She grants me a small tilt of her head. “I don’t even know what happened. The accident, how they got him, or if they ever saw him alive. No one really told me anything, and at the time, I didn’t ask because I was in such a state of shock.”
An eerie feeling creeps over me, like a sudden knowing deep in my gut as my heart hammers.
“What do you remember?” I ask, my voice shaking.
