Rebound (Boomerang #2)(58)
“No, it’s . . . Sorry, this just caught me off guard.”
I straighten up and draw my hands away from hers. I don’t want to regret what I just said, but regret is waging a war against me. What have I done? I’m now a widower in her eyes, and I’m twenty-three. Too f*cking young to wear that shit comfortably, and I don’t want her pity, and—shit. What did I do?
But then there’s this incredible relief sweeping through me, too. I can talk about Chloe. I can finally talk about her. So I do.
“Chloe was . . . She was the first girl I ever loved. We met at school, at Princeton. I was a freshman, a computer nerd. I’d already sold a business by then, but I was still . . . I don’t know. I was young. Barely eighteen and unsure what the hell I wanted and who I was. Chloe was the opposite. A year older than me. An art student. Wild and creative. She attacked life. Embraced it. Every single f*cking day. She was like a human firework and she . . . she fascinated me.” I have to stop for a moment because my voice is hoarse and tight.
“The tattoo on my shoulder is from a sketch she drew. She loved birds. But just the flying kind. Not ostriches or turkeys or . . .” I feel like I’m rambling. I feel like I’ve been talking for an hour. I feel like I’m saying stupid things that sound so dumb but that mean everything to me, so I wrap it up. “So that’s who my wife was. That’s what she was like. That’s why I got the tattoo. Because I loved her and she loved birds and she drew it and she’s gone.”
It’s as much as I can manage right now. Even if I talked about Chloe for a week, it would never be enough to describe her anyway. You can’t bring a human being back to life with words. You just can’t.
Ali’s fingers have woven through mine. Her grip is fierce, like she’s trying to give me her strength. The relief I felt earlier grows more solid inside me, regret seeping away. This is good. It’s going to be good. I don’t want any secrets between us.
I know what she’s going to ask me next. It’s the logical question. How did she die? I wait for it. Question number two. It’s inevitable.
She lets go of my hands. I feel her undo the knot at the back of my head. The blindfold comes away. “Why is it hard for you to look me in the eye?” she asks.
I look away. I look at the fire. “You know why.”
“I don’t.”
“Ali, you do. Don’t make me say it.”
She falls quiet. Then she scoots closer, her legs between mine, her face inches away. “Adam, it’s okay,” she whispers.
And I feel like it is, for an instant, and that instant is long enough for me to open the door. “Because it f*cking scares me, Ali. You don’t know what I lost . . . Jesus, Quick.” I glance at her. “What are you trying to do to me?”
She takes my hands again, uncurling my fingers and winding them with hers. For a few seconds, I feel her stroke the pad of my thumb. I don’t know how she calms me when calm doesn’t seem like it’s in the realm of possibility anymore, but my racing heart slows down and I’m breathing again. Didn’t even realize I wasn’t, but now I am again. In and out. In and out until I don’t have to think about it anymore. Until I can answer her.
“Chloe used to tell me . . . she used to say that looking into my eyes, she felt like she could fly. That’s why it’s hard for me to do that. To go there.”
I want to tell Ali that she’s changed that. She’s changing that for me. But we’re talking about Chloe now and I can’t, so the thought just balloons into this feeling, like I can’t wait for the right time to let it out.
“One more, Adam,” she says gently. “Just one more.”
“Okay. Just . . . be Quick about it.”
Such a dumbass joke, but we laugh. I think we both needed it. A moment of relief.
But then we’re right back in when she says, “How did Chloe die?”
I’m ready this time. This is what I thought her second question would be so I’m prepared, and I know I’ll tell her everything—not what Rhett knows, that I was married once and my wife died. I’m going to bring her into the very center, with Grey. To the truth only Grey and I know.
“Chloe and I,” I hear myself say, needing to give her some background. “We did things a little unconventionally. We got married after we’d only been together half a year, in September, and it was a courtroom wedding for a couple of reasons. I come from money, and she didn’t. My parents wouldn’t have had a problem with that, but Chloe didn’t believe me. She didn’t want to face any judgment. She just wanted it to be us at first, and so did I. And we were nineteen and twenty, and you just don’t do that. Who gets married at that age nowadays? Anyway, we kept it to ourselves. We decided we’d do it then tell our families over the holidays. That way they wouldn’t be able to refuse us or talk us out of it.
“Christmas came around, and we were at my parents’ house, and it didn’t feel right to me. I don’t know why, but I wanted to hold onto her, have her just for myself for a little longer. I felt like we had this amazing secret and I didn’t want things to change. I told her we should wait until spring, but Chloe didn’t understand, and she could get volatile sometimes. Just really passionate. We’d been drinking because of the holidays, and we ended up fighting.