Written in the Scars(51)

“You should’ve given me a chance to come home. To help you. To . . . go through this with you.”

“I didn’t want you to come home because of a tragedy. I never want to be that girl, the one the guy stays with out of pity. If you didn’t want me . . .”

I grab her shoulders and look her squarely in the eye. “I have wanted you since the moment I saw you at your locker in eighth grade. From the moment I asked if you had any gum because I wanted to hear the voice of the girl that took my breath away. I’ve wanted you since that exact second, and I’ve never stopped.”

An image of what that must’ve looked like, what she must’ve felt like, what she must’ve gone through, rumbles through my mind. Abandoned by me, losing a child she didn’t even know she had.

If only I’d stayed.

A humiliation as deep as I’ve ever known swamps me. “I’m sorry,” I say as the unfamiliar feeling of tears dropping past my lashes begins. It’s like a dam—once it’s breached, it’s uncontrollable.

My body shakes against her as I cry for being a failure. I cry for the loss of a child I didn’t know existed, for not being there for my best friend at the one time of her life she needed me more than ever.

I cry for not paying attention at work, letting myself get lazy and not watching the beam that fell on me and smashing my leg. I cry for my weakness of needing the pills to feel better and not rehabbing it, working harder at it, and needing an easy way out.

I cry for all those things for a long time. Elin holds me, our roles reversed, as she, the victim, becomes the strong one. And that makes me feel even f*cking worse.

When I look at her again, she smiles in a way that shows what she would’ve looked like as a mother. It’s the way she looks when she talks about her students, about Dustin when he got into trouble, the way she looked when she called 911 when she found a baby deer struck by a car on the side of the road as a teenager.

“Now you know,” she whispers, rubbing her thumb against my lips.

“This is why you’ve been pushing me away?”

She nods as we reach for each other, the only other person that feels the pain we do, the only other person that can heal us from that very hurt.

The chill in the air dances across my bare skin and I shiver as my body comes down from the adrenaline.

“You ready to go?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“Ty?”

“Yeah?”

She reaches for me with a shaky hand. “Will you kiss me?”

In the midst of the fireflies, under the bright fall moon, I kiss my wife with everything I have.





TY


I take my eyes off the road just long enough to glance at her sleeping beside me, her head resting on my shoulder. I just look at her face and think back to what this little pit bull, as Cord calls her, has been through. Alone. It’s enough to break the strongest man.

My teeth ache from being ground against one another in order to keep from going crazy. I need to yell, need to vent, need to make something feel the pain I feel.

She stirs beside me as I pull into the driveway. Killing the engine, I sit and try to gather my thoughts.

The only sound is her faint breathing, and while I want to talk to her, apologize, try to find some comfort in her, I’m glad for the quiet. It’s like a bubble in the truck, she and I insulated from the world.

Elin loves me. And for that, I’m the luckiest f*cker on the face of the planet. And that she still loves me after all of this? It’s a blessing I can’t fathom, but one I won’t fail to acknowledge every day for the rest of my life.

Scooting my seat back to the farthest position, I pull her onto my lap. She curls up against me, her arms going around my neck and her head against my shoulder. I kiss her forehead before opening the door and carrying her towards the house.

“What’s going on?” she asks sleepily as I push the back door open, the squeaking waking her. “Where are we?”

“Home,” I say, kicking the door closed behind us.

“I can walk.”

“Shh,” I whisper, finding my way through the darkness like the back of my hand. “Let me carry you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know I don’t. I want to. Let me, please.”

“Okay,” she says softly, her cheek finding my chest again.

Padding down the hallway, I enter our bedroom. The moonlight streams through the window, giving me enough light to see our bed. The blue sheets are her favorite, the cream comforter in a messy heap at the bottom. She never makes the bed and seeing it like that, the same as always, makes me smile.

I lay her against the sheets. She smiles up at me, a soft, knowing smile, and kicks off her shoes and socks. “Grab your t-shirt off the dresser, please,” she asks, wiggling out of her jeans. I grab the shirt and turn back to face her and she’s sitting naked on the center of the bed.

I should say something—compliment her body or tell her how beautiful she looks, but with the truths of the night, it all seems wrong. I don’t know what to say. Maybe she’s right and there is nothing to say.

“Shirt?” she asks, holding out her hand.

Tossing her the shirt, she slips it over her head and slithers down in the blankets.

Her hair spilling against the sheets, she peers up at me. Propping herself up on her elbows, we stare at each other, a husband and a wife trying to find the steps to a dance that once came so naturally.