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I wanted to smile at the way he was parroting my words from six years ago back at me. My mouth might’ve twitched. But I was still trying to hold my breath at the contact.
Something moved in Heath’s eyes as if he were realizing just now that he’d pressed his beautiful and hard body against mine. His grip loosened and he stepped back, clutching his glass of wine and handing me mine.
“Well,” I said, exhaling. “That particular steak was grass-fed, organic, and the kindest version of murder I could find. So I’ll bear cooking it.”
Heath looked at me. Then he smiled.
And then he chuckled.
He didn’t laugh.
Because I suspected he didn’t have that ability anymore either, but he chuckled, and it was real.
I smiled in the face of such beauty. It was real too.
“What?” I asked, sitting down as he served the plates on my small dining table.
I learned that it was impossible to try and help Heath, and he liked doing little things like these, so I let him.
He placed the food down in front of me and kissed my forehead before sitting. “Only you, my Sunshine, could talk about the kindest version of murder in regards to my steak,” he said, still smiling. “But, baby, I don’t want you to just bear cooking. Or just bear life with me.” He lost his smile now. “I want you to find joy in it again. I’ll do anything and everything I can. Anything. And right now I know that means understanding that bearing things is all you can do. Just want you to know I’m gonna be making sure that changes. I’ll be here to make sure that changes.”
I blinked at him. This was the most he’d said about the elephant in the room since I’d come home.
He was making promises.
All kinds.
Kinds that were too heavy for my delicate emotional state.
He squeezed my hand. “Your eggplant is getting cold,” he said, voice soft. “And considering on what that shit tastes like hot, I’m thinking you better eat it now.”
That was his version of telling me I didn’t have to respond. Deal.
So I ate.
And so did he.
And we both tried to ignore the big elephant in the room.
And we both failed.
* * *
Three Days Later
I had planned on telling Heath to leave the night of the steak. It had been a big thing. I even had a speech rehearsed
But I couldn’t do it.
Not after the meal when he topped off my glass and did the dishes while I read. Especially not when he bought the bottle, a tub of my favorite ice cream then turned on our new favorite show—yes, we had a favorite—pulling me into his embrace and settling us in.
No, I couldn’t do it then.
And then I’d fallen asleep.
And I couldn’t do it the next night.
Or the next.
It had to be tonight.
Because this was getting bad.
Because it was getting permanent. We had a show. We had a routine. Everything I’d wanted before. Nothing I could have now.
I was working on getting my life back together. Or at least fractured and chaotic like it had been before. Of course it would never be like it was before, but I could make it look that way. And when it looked that way, people would stop having to babysit me on rotations, stop having to hide the pain in their faces, just stop all of it. I needed to get my life back to its version of together so everyone around me would be okay with getting their lives together too.
Rosie and Lucy were having babies. They needed to be excited about that. Yelling at their husbands for trying to make them drink decaffeinated coffee and stop shooting people.
I spent three days preparing.
Making calls.
Making plans.
Procrastinating the one big thing I needed to be doing.
And I was forcing myself to do it today.
My stomach was roiling when Heath walked in the door, when his shoulders both sagged and tightened, when his eyes fastened on mine. When my soul relaxed, just the tiniest bit when he did.
“We need to talk,” I said before he could say “baby” in that soft, rough tone of his and melt my resolve.
He was instantly on guard.
Not that he wasn’t always.
But he was more so now. Because he was Heath and he saw most things in other people and everything in me.
Almost everything.
I was pacing.
I did that in moments of extreme loss, I was noticing. I’d done it when faced with losing Lucy. Now I was doing it preparing to lose Heath. The last part of myself.
He moved, watching me, and he stopped in front of me.
I stopped pacing and held my hand up as a barrier to stop him from coming closer.
In the past, he might’ve ignored that, yanked me into his arms anyway. Not that we’d had enough time together for me to form such opinions, but it seemed a very Heath thing to do.
