Two Bar Mitzvahs (No Weddings #3)(69)

No matter what you believe, I love you more than I love anything in this world.

I will love you forever,

Cade



With a burning lump in my throat, I folded the note, her words ending up on the outside.

One side of the folded rectangle had an entire blank surface, so I wrote a word that summed up my feelings about the whole damned thing.

Grabbing my leather duffel, I shoved a couple of pairs of jeans and a handful of T-shirts into it. I looked around the room, but there wasn’t a f*cking thing I felt I needed. I grabbed only the bare necessities.

Passport. Tossed it in, along with my driver’s license and a single credit card.

I grabbed my checkbook and ripped out two checks, then signed the remaining blank ones. I zipped the bag shut and slung it over a shoulder, scooped up the unpaid bills, and dumped them onto the kitchen table with the checkbook on top. As an afterthought, I grabbed a yellow sticky note and scrawled Mase a message.

Had to bolt. There’s money to cover expenses for a while. I peeled off another square and stuck it below the first. Damn tiny things. Contractors have deposits. Should be on autopilot with remodel schedule. Joe will take care of it all. On a third note I wrote: Bike in airport lot by elevators. Extra key in bottom desk drawer.

I cut the kitchen light, casting the room into darkness again. How I felt on the inside.

A mind-numbing twenty minutes later, I stepped onto Hannah’s front porch. I didn’t ring her bell or knock. She only ever came and went through her front door, so I shoved a corner of the recycled note into the rubber molding surrounding her door.

That one word faced outward, reminding me of how I felt about this shit going down. She deserved her time, and I needed to finally listen. To push at this point risked me f*cking things up further. If that was even possible.

She had made a decision. And I was honoring the consequences. For now.

On her driveway, I sat on my bike. Stared at her door. The pull to stay and fight was tremendous. Didn’t matter though. Walking away for the time being was the right thing to do.

But the part of me screaming inside, the man who’d finally found the woman meant for him, and then lost her, stared at the folded note that showed the only word echoing through my head.

“No.”





28


A World Away


I stared at what had now become my escape hatch—a first-class airline ticket stub. The original two airline tickets meant for both Hannah and I to seek calm after all the chaos had been sadly exchanged. And the seating choice wasn’t because I wanted comfort. I sought separation. Isolation.

Sitting in my airline seat, I grabbed the headphones the flight attendant gave me and asked for a double scotch. The passenger who sat beside me put on headphones too. Good. I didn’t want to have to growl at him to enforce my do-not-disturb mood. I downed the scotch and closed my eyes.

After a connecting flight and hours of being passed out from lack of sleep, I arrived at a destination most people would go to for an amazing vacation. I looked at it as a soul-searching mission.

The staff at check-in must’ve sensed my detachment, because they efficiently did their jobs without much small talk. Inside of an hour later, my ass was planted on the beach. I stared at the horizon. Then I looked around. White sand stretched in either direction. Several palms curved their trunks over the beach before swooping up, green fronds pointing toward the sky.

This place would be as good as any to figure my shit out. I sat there, trying to open my mind. Nothing happened. But at least I was a safe distance away from Hannah. Half the world between us meant I couldn’t be a stalker and sit on her front doorstep, asking her to talk with me. Begging forgiveness.

Slow torturous days went by. Each the same. Me sitting on the beach. Walking the beach. I paced back and forth, creating a rut in the sand, as I searched my mind and heart for answers.

There were no revelations, though. Only memories of failure that constricted my chest, making it difficult to breathe. I had tried to handle it all, control the universe around me. But doing all that got me into this mess. After trying to do everything, I had nothing. Because I didn’t have Hannah. In thinking I had it together, yet being totally wrong, I barely knew what to trust in myself anymore.

Figuring out what I truly wanted would take sorting through what was really important in life. Yet I kept coming full circle. Hannah mattered most. But nothing else seemed to solidify on how it could all work together. What path to take.

I’d blown it on the whole balancing-work-and-life thing, very similar to what my dad had almost done with our family years ago. And I’d sworn to do it better. A fine job I did of that. It snuck up on me. My own ego had taken me down.

I blinked as a realization hit me. Done with trying to sort my shit out on my own, I jumped up off the beach and headed to the Four Seasons concierge.

A polite brunette wearing glasses glanced up at me as I approached. I looked at her name tag. “Adrienne, I need to use my cell phone. Can you help me make a call to the States?”

“Oui, monsieur. Our hotel offers technology to make your personal phone work here. Or I can assist you in connecting the call through our phone systems.”

“My cell phone would be great.”

“Would you like me to do it for you?”

I nodded. “Yes. Please.” My mind was already blown with too much thinking. I didn’t need to struggle with learning something new.