Coming Home(88)

As much as it killed him to do it, at first he complied. He didn’t text her back, figuring that after disrespecting her the night before, the least he could do was respect her wishes now. After all, she didn’t say it was over; she just said she wanted some distance for a while.

But the problem was, he didn’t know if he had a while to give her.

Which ironically brought him full circle, because that was exactly why he shouldn’t have started anything with her in the first place. It was as if the universe was sending him a reminder: Hey, *, you should have left her alone to begin with, but since you apparently have no self-control, I’m making the decision for you.

About an hour later, he finally decided to get up and go to work; he needed a distraction, and working in the garage was something that always succeeded in clearing his head.

But when Danny got to his front door, he noticed her jacket, still hanging where he had draped it the night before, and he stopped with his hand on the knob.

Did she realize she’d left it there? She hadn’t mentioned it in her text. But then again, her text wasn’t exactly conversational. Should he message her and tell her he had it? Or would she think he was just making a pathetic attempt at trying to speak to her? Although, how could it be a pathetic attempt if the jacket really was at his place?

Danny closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

He couldn’t do this—this overanalyzing every f*cking thing until his head was spinning. And he definitely couldn’t look at that jacket every time he walked in and out of his apartment for the next few weeks.

And just like that, his decision was made. There was an easy solution to both of those problems.

He was going to go to her. He would give her back the coat, and he would tell her everything. Not just why he did what he did last night.

Everything.

He was going to lay all his cards out on the table and deal with the consequences, and if her desire for a temporary break turned permanent, well then, wasn’t that what he had been expecting from the beginning? There was no point in prolonging the inevitable anymore.

So he looked up her address. And then he sat on his couch, staring at the floor with the piece of paper in his hand and a lump of foreboding in his stomach.

He’d never had to tell anyone what he was about to tell her. The people who were important to him already knew, and those who weren’t read about it or heard about it second or third or fourth hand. But he’d never had to say the words—and he knew that somehow, saying them to her was going to make it a thousand times harder.

He pushed off the couch and walked toward the front door, grabbing her coat and his keys before he made his way downstairs. After programming her address into his GPS, he turned the radio off and started driving.

Danny spent the first half of the drive practicing what he was going to say, playing with the words to try and soften their effect, but it was a senseless exercise; any way he said it, it was horrible. In fact, the more he heard it out loud, the more awful it became until finally he cranked the radio and drove the rest of the way listening to some insipid pop music countdown.

By the time he was walking up the small pathway to her front door, his anxiety had transitioned into a sense of urgency; he just wanted to get it over with and deal with the end result, whatever it might be.

Danny took a small breath before he knocked on her door. It was a minute before he heard the sound of someone approaching from the other side, and then there was silence. He knew she must be looking through the peephole to see who was outside, but he couldn’t bring himself to lift his eyes.

The silence wore on, and for a second he thought she wouldn’t open the door. But then he heard the deadbolt slide back before she pulled the door open slightly, and he raised his eyes to hers.