Leaving Eva (The Eva Series Book 1) (11 page)

Adam just knew that he needed to make her happy. He surprised even himself at times, with what he was capable of doing just for that smile. It was as though he could reach into himself and pull out something completely unexpected, just to make her laugh.

Adam was as inventive and creative as he needed to be, and his reward was when she smiled at him, her big brown eyes sparkling, her beautiful white teeth shining. He swore at one point that was all he needed in life. He could never explain why, he just knew that’s how it was for him.

But making her smile and laugh became increasing more difficult, and she stopped appreciating his efforts. So he stopped trying. She was still so beautiful to him, but he was angry with her.

“Where have you been?” he said stiffly when she got to the table.

“I’m sorry. I had a problem to deal with.” She was afraid to meet his glance so she looked down as she always did.
I should have texted him or called.

There is always a problem!
He thought bitterly.
“Let’s just order. I’m starving.”

She eyed his scotch in disapproval, but he didn’t care. He knew how much she hated alcohol, but he needed it. He took a big swig of it, making his enjoyment obvious as he did so.

After they ordered, they sat in an uncomfortable silence, neither of them willing or able to break the ice.

This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.
He thought angrily.
It’s supposed to be easier than this. Better than this. She doesn’t even care about me. Happy Fucking Anniversary.

The waiter was uncomfortable. Adam told him at the beginning that they were celebrating their anniversary, but he was confused. This didn’t seem like an anniversary dinner and he dreaded having to approach the table. The tension was so thick he could choke on it. He was so happy when they asked for the check and declined dessert. He thought he was home free, but the manager made him take out the complimentary special occasion dessert.

He didn’t want to.

He didn’t want to hurt his tip, but he was required to take it to every table with a special occasion. When he set it on the table, they were horrified. They wanted dinner to be over more than he did.

“Thanks,” they both muttered.

He had never been so uncomfortable in all of his twenty years of serving. He had seen many unhappy couples over the years, but this beautiful couple oozed nothing but misery. He was relieved when they finally got up and left, not speaking, not touching, and not even looking at one another.

And he was relieved when he saw that they left him a twenty-five percent tip.

Brynn was thankful that they drove separately to the restaurant. The ride home was quick, and she dreaded the inevitable.

“I sat and waited for you Brynn! You never called, you never texted. I was humiliated. It’s so typical of you to be so rude!” His beautiful blue eyes, usually so bright and sparkling, were downcast and sad, reflecting the storm that was passing over them.

He would not look at her, all of the rage gone now, and replaced by something more terrifying. Silence.

Brynn stared at him helplessly.
How did this happen to us?
He felt so distant from her though he stood two feet from where she was standing. He towered above her at over six feet and she stared up at him trying to gauge where he was now. His strong jawline was set stubbornly, and she realized that he was a different man than the one she had married so long ago.

She felt afraid, as she always did from her childhood. She felt herself bracing, her body rigid, anticipating the slap to come. Adam tried to reassure her time and time again that he would never lay a hand on her.

She still expects me to hit her!
He realized that was part of the growing distance between them that he couldn’t bridge. No matter how many times he told her that he would never hurt her, she always separated herself from him, just in case.

She realized as they argued about the dinner that she had not truly looked at him for a long time. Even in his anger, he was so classically handsome. She was not immune to him, and she saw how women looked at him.
How that little slut Annie from his office looks at him
. She knew that Adam was a catch and that women swooned when they saw him. She had done the same. His face was still boyish and handsome, his cheekbones high, his hair a dark chestnut brown. He was physically beautiful, but he was more than that.
He still makes me breathless
. She stopped looking at him for some reason.

Brynn loved his hair so wavy and thick, and thought about how she loved to take her hands and just bury them in it. She used to do it every chance she got whether absently while they lounged, or intensely when they made love. She loved the thickness of it between her fingers and it gave her comfort. Brynn melted when he moaned, almost purred while she played with his hair, which made her want to do it all the more. But that almost seemed like a lifetime ago.

They were so disconnected from each other now. Had it been two months, three months, six? She was so caught up in her work and with Rose.
When did we stop looking at one another?
She could feel him slipping away from her slowly like the tide, gone a little at a time until he was gone completely. She felt helpless.

Being late for dinner was her fault, completely her fault. She had no excuse, but a small part of her thought he might understand if she explained it. Perhaps he might even respect it, and appreciate that he had a wife who others sought out when they were in trouble. But she knew in her heart that he wouldn’t.

She hadn’t even bothered to call. This was a recurring issue in their lives, and she always chose those in need over him. He wasn’t helpless, and he didn’t need her.

Brynn didn’t know what to say. So she didn’t say anything.

He interpreted her silence as indifference.

He took a long sad look at her and finally turned around toward the door. In disbelief, she watched him walk out without as much as a backwards glance.

She waited for hours but he didn’t come back. She realized that what she always knew would happen, finally had.

He was gone for good and she was abandoned once more.

BRYNN WAS
INCREDIBLY LONELY.

For the first time in a long time, she was truly alone. After Adam left, he didn’t call or text or email. He just disappeared. She didn’t even know where he went.

After Adam left, she thought that if she just went back to life as usual, that she would come home and find him sitting there waiting for her. Instead, she came home one night after working at
Brynn’s
to find all of his things gone. The same week, she stopped getting his mail.

After that, Brynn rarely left the house in case he returned for something. She couldn’t bear the thought that he would come back and that she would miss him.

She wanted desperately to hear from him, but Adam remained silent. She didn’t try to contact him. If he was walking away then it was a clear sign that Adam no longer loved her and that he no longer wanted to be with her. Deep down Brynn couldn’t help but hold onto the hope that he would come home, profess his love, and say it was all a mistake.

After fifteen years of her life, she didn’t know how to be without him.

Brynn missed the sound and feel of another person in the house. The subtle click the light switches made turning on and off, the sound of the shower, the movement of the bed as he shifted through the night. She was alone in the stillness and she hated it.

She found herself in the bathroom staring at her face in the mirror several times throughout the morning and in the evenings. Brynn didn’t know why she was so drawn to her own reflection. Ever since she was a little girl, after the first time Thomas hit her, she had been pulled to the mirror where she would sometimes sit for an hour staring. It was as though she thought the mirror would tell her how she had become the person that was staring back at her. How had she become the woman that she no longer recognized?

She stared until nothing she was looking at made sense. She knew every pore and every line of her face, yet she had no answers.

Brynn took off her clothes.

Brynn felt free in her nakedness. Free to look at her scars. She did it all the time as a child, especially after a hard day when the shiny blade was her best friend. But Adam saved her from it all, and made her normal. And now, he was gone and she stood in front of the mirror staring like she had so many times years ago. Some were faded and only tiny unperceivable lines that Brynn could barely see. They were surrounded by countless others—some longer, some lighter, some more pronounced. She tried to count them once but gave up. There were so many.

Brynn remembered all of them. There was the one after she dropped and broke a plate from the dishwasher, the one when she was one minute late. There was the one when he thought she was meeting a boy from school, and the one she gave herself when she spilled his Wild Turkey as she carried it across the room. He had beaten her black and blue for spilling and being so “god damned clumsy.” That was a deep one, scarred by red because she kept picking at it to renew the blood.

Her scars defined her, and Brynn often stood admiring them for hours, concentrating hard to remember each one of them. She was a smart girl, and she kept them isolated to her stomach and her sides, so she wouldn’t have to hide them so much when she grew older.

Brynn knew that the mirror was her best friend, and her worst enemy. On some mornings Brynn’s face was so puffy from crying all night, she just couldn’t even see the girl who she had once been. The girl who had fallen in love with Adam, who laughed only with him, was now unrecognizable. He pulled something out of her that she didn’t know existed before she met him.
Joy? Happiness? Freedom?
She never laughed or smiled so much before he came into her life. Adam taught her to recognize when things were funny, and gave her permission to breathe and enjoy life. And now he was gone, and she didn’t know how to do that without him.

Before him, Brynn’s blade kept her sane.

Brynn no longer answered her phone, or left the house, or went to the restaurant. She ignored all of Rose’s phone calls, text messages, and emails. She could not deal with her neediness.

Unless she was crying, Brynn didn’t feel anything. She was dead inside and she remembered how her beloved razor had always made her feel something. She craved it. She needed it. She thought that the pain was getting to be too much, and that she just couldn’t take it anymore.

They worried about her at the restaurant. But Jane, the single mom she hired as the manager, was taking care of everything. She briefed Brynn via email and text, and assured her that everything was going to be okay, even though Brynn could barely bring herself to respond. Bertie and Stella kept the place clean and organized, and everyone worked hard to keep it together. They never realized before how much they relied on her. They missed her and couldn’t wait for her return.

They missed her energy and her smile, and how she always cared about them and how they were doing. They missed her generosity, and they missed how she pulled them together in their personal lives, as well as in anticipation for a busy shift. Jane was doing a good job, but it just wasn’t the same and they missed Brynn.

She was more than just their boss. She had become their friend.

When her visits into the restaurant became less frequent, Lucia came by and checked on her every couple of days. Her tiny baby bump was starting to show. She finally told her parents and they were standing by her, though she hadn’t decided what she was going to do. She desperately needed Brynn to snap out of it, so she could help her. Lucia needed her. But every time she saw her, she looked worse and worse, and she was worried, which she shared only with Jane. She didn’t want Bertie and Stella to be worked up about it. They were getting older, and she worried about them, too.

Brynn didn’t eat or sleep anymore. She lay awake in bed at night, her mind racing and replaying every moment of her life with Adam. She was taking mental snapshots and highlighting all of the things that went wrong that were her fault. She tortured herself to where she couldn’t lay in their bed any longer.

When she did, she laid on his side of the bed to see if she could still smell him in the sheets and she tried to remember what it was like to have him laying next to her. Brynn often laid pillows out on the bed, the length of her body and held them, pretending they were him just so she could sleep. Other nights she just wandered around the house from room to room, picturing him in them, and crying.

On the really bad nights, she would lay on the bathroom floor feeling the cool tile on her cheek. She would lie there for hours doing nothing until the sun came up. Some days Brynn made it out of the house, other days she made it to her car. Some days she just continued to lie on the floor. Try as she might, on those days she could not come up with one viable reason to get up.

Adam was no longer in her life, and she didn’t know how to function without him. He had provided her levity and laughter. Without him, there was no chance for anything other than misery.

Maybe I should get a dog. Adam wanted children. I wanted a dog.

Brynn was afraid to have children.

She was terrified to bring a child into the world.
How can I be a mother? There is no one to teach me how to be a good mother. There’s no way I’ll be one on my own.
She couldn’t see how that would work out for her or for the child.

Brynn knew that Rose wouldn’t be any help. She couldn’t even help her with her marriage. Rose didn’t have any romantic experience of her own, and Brynn knew that she shouldn’t have expected her to give her any worthwhile advice. But she needed Rose to be her mother just for one moment. She needed the roles to be reversed. Brynn realized, in many ways, she didn’t have the mother that she needed and it broke her heart.

Brynn didn’t even know if she had it in her to be a good mother.
I’ve never even held a baby before, what would I even do with one? Who would ever teach me?

Brynn knew that Adam would be a good father.
He’s good at everything he does.
But Brynn couldn’t even be a decent wife. Every time Adam brought up having a baby, Brynn shut down, and refused to discuss it, which frustrated him. She knew that she would have to eventually make a choice.

Now she sadly realized that it was no longer going to be an option.

In her solitude and mourning, Brynn cried for the children she would never have with Adam. She cried because she slept alone every night. She cried because he walked out the door on their anniversary. She had not heard from him for weeks, which turned into months.

She knew how stubborn and hurt he was. Adam had been angry with her before, but this was different. This was the last straw and Brynn knew it. He warned her in so many ways, she had just missed the signs.

Brynn needed to be completely alone to consort with her misery, and mourn her marriage. As a girl, she never imagined there would ever be a man like Adam in her life. Then Brynn met him and he made himself a necessity in her life. But then he left her, just as he promised he would never do. He abandoned her like her birth parents did, and Brynn knew that it had to be her fault.

She was alone now, and realized that she didn’t even know how to exist without Adam.