AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For the second time today, I feel like shit. Will is gone all too fast, and a huge chunk of my heart has been crushed under the weight of his tires. I fall against the door and sob into my forearm, wondering how I could have felt so alive and crushed in the same afternoon.
Inside, I glance in the mirror in the bathroom and look at my haggard self. A bath and a long winter nap is in order, but I have a damaged eleven-year-old who needs to be consoled, an ex who needs to be put in his place, and a business that needs to be salvaged.
I look upstairs and don’t see a shadow. I hear a sound in the living room, so I walk in to find Tyler seated by himself. His head is between his knees.
“Is Izzy down here?” I ask him.
“No. I left her upstairs. She hates me.”
“That makes two of us.”
He lifts his head, his expression distraught, not the pompous stance he had just fifteen minutes ago. “Lyss, I need to talk to you—”
“If I had a dime for all the people who needed to talk to me today, I’d have … fifty cents. Forget that. You can wait. Trust me when I say, I have a million things to shout at you, and none of them are kind. First, I need to talk to Izzy. She’s sick, and clearly, she’s upset.”
“This is all my fault.”
I stop in my tracks and laugh at his admission of guilt. “If you hadn’t played the family man two years too late, then she wouldn’t have thought we were getting back together.”
“I didn’t mean to give that impression.”
“Come on, Tyler. You can’t be that daft. You went from choosing another woman over our marriage to suddenly coming over for family dinners and playing happy daddy. Of course she was going to get the wrong impression. She’s a kid. She wants her parents back together, and you dangled it in front of her like a carrot to a horse. And what was that comment she made about you saying we were going to work things out?”
“I never said that!” He comes off defensive. “Crap, maybe I did. I meant I wanted to put our family back together. Fix the mistakes we made.”
“Wedidn’t make a mistake, Tyler. You’re the one who gave up on us.”
“You gave up on us first, Lyss. You gave up on me.”
“I didn’t give up on you. I gave up on myself.”
I wasn’t prepared for all of this honesty in one day, but since I’m opening up, I might as well let it all free—my emotion and my tears.Fuck it.
“I loved you, Ty. I loved you so much that I stayed in that house for far too long, probably hoping that you’d change your mind. Since I was fifteen, you were the only man I’d ever wanted. I went against my family to be with you. I gave my youth to be the wife and mother you wanted me to be. Every day I was with you, I might not have been the best wife, but I swear my heart belonged to you, Tyler Landish. So, don’t you ever say I gave up on us because in my darkest days, your love was the only thing that kept me going.”
His dark eyes soften. “I loved you too, Melissa. That’s why it was so hard to have you pull away.”
My chin is wet from tears that have started to fall down my cheeks. His words are like a vise squeezing around my neck. “Step back and take those words with you.”
His rubs his neck and looks around. “I’m an asshole.”
“You certainly are.” I wipe my face and take a breath of false composure. “It’s the past now. There’s no need to relive it.”
“Is it?”
My palm rises in defense of my heart. “I need to go see my daughter.”
Upstairs, I look in Izzy’s room. She’s not in there, nor is she in the bathroom. I look in my room, assuming she’s lying in my bed, which she often does when she’s sick. My bed is perfectly made, and my bathroom is empty. I look in Hunter’s room, then my father’s before heading back to Izzy’s. I look in her closet and even under her bed.
“Izzy?” I call over and over again.
Tyler calls from downstairs, “She’s not up there?”
“No. Did she come down when you were in the den?”
“I didn’t hear her. I’ll check the garage.”
I walk down the stairs and head to the basement. It’s an unfinished cellar with boxes from my move from the old house and a ping-pong table. She’s not here.
