Lovely Trigger (45 page)

Tristan had seemed so ready to take on the subject when
he
was asking the questions, but something about my question seemed to have weakened him.
 

He moved to the table in his breakfast nook, felt for a chair, and sat down, looking at his hands.
 
“Yes, I remember.”

I moved to sit as well, but not facing him.
 
No, I turned my chair away, staring out the window.
 
This subject was hard enough to face, without having to face each other, as well.
 
“Do you remember the letter I sent with the papers?”
 

There was a very long pause, then some agitated movements behind me, as though he’d taken exception to his chair or the ground it was sitting on.
 

My stomach churned when he answered behind me, his tone just awful with pain and confusion, “What letter?”
 

My eyes squeezed shut.
 
I didn’t want to dig into the old wounds, but ignoring them had obviously never made all of the questions go away.
 
“When I sent Jerry to you with the divorce papers, there was a letter with them.
 
A very important letter.
 
For you.
 
Jerry swears to me that he handed both directly into your care.”

A longer silence passed with more agitated movements.
 

“What did it say?”
he finally asked in the most wretched voice.
 

I wished instantly I’d never brought it up, but I trudged on.
 
There was no going back now.
 
He’d been like a dog with a bone before I’d opened my big mouth about the letter.
 
There was no question he’d be even more relentless with still more questions in the mix.
 
“I’ll tell you.
 
First, though, I want to know what happened to it.
 
Were you alone when he came to see you?
 
He told me he didn’t see anyone else at the apartment.”
 

More silence, then the sound of something breaking in the kitchen.
 
Near the sink, likely a plate, I thought, but I didn’t look.
 

This was rough enough, just hearing what it was doing to him.
 

“Dean was at the apartment with me.
 
He came out of his room after Jerry left.
 
He’d heard Jerry’s voice, wanted to know what was going on.”
 

“The letter was tucked into the papers,” I explained, keeping my voice gentle.
 
I’d come to terms with this years ago.
 
No new fresh wounds for me here, just sore old ones.
 
Not so for Tristan.
 
Some of this was very new to him.
 
“Impossible to miss once you started going through them.
 
Is there any chance you set them down before…before you read them?”
 

More silence, more things breaking in the kitchen.
 
I could hear his heavy, ragged breaths catching as he moved.
 
He was not taking this well.
 

“I did.
 
I set them on the coffee table and went to pour some shots.
 
I didn’t want to read the papers without a drink.
 
I didn’t think I could handle them.”
 

There it was.
 
All of the puzzle pieces fit right into place.
 

“And Dean, I take it he was near the coffee table when you turned your back?”
   

More things broke in the kitchen.
 
And then his ragged breaths were directly behind me.
 
“What did that letter say, Danika?”
 

I took a few deep, steadying breaths.
 
“It was short.
 
An ultimatum.
 
Essentially, it said that if you went to rehab, I wouldn’t divorce you.”
   

I sat there for a long time, even after he’d left the room, my mind in dark places.
 

Regrets were such useless things, and even so, it seemed impossible to dislodge some of them.
 

So many mistakes on both our parts, and here we were, six years later, still dealing with the aftermath.
 

I loved him every bit as much as I ever had, and that love was more useless than it had ever been, even now, when I could get through to him.
 

I found him out back sitting on a lawn chair, staring into his pool.
 
He was bent forward, fists clenched.
 
He looked wound up so tight that he might just curl into a ball at any second.
 

I stroked his shoulder and he jerked like he’d been shocked.
 

I touched him again, and this time he seemed prepared for it.
 
“Come on.
 
Let’s go to bed.”

I led him by the hand up to his bedroom, and he let me.
 
I certainly couldn’t have moved him otherwise.
 

Slowly, tenderly, I stripped him and then he me.
 
I tugged him under the covers with me.
 
I hugged him tight, trying to ease the frigid remorse that was gripping him.
 
It had me in its grip as well, so I knew better than anyone how the touching helped.
 

We held each other for a very long time before he spoke, his voice rasping out, breaking on some of the words.
 
“I would have gone to rehab, even as fucked up as I was back then, if I had seen that, I would have gone.
 
I thought you were dead set on staying away.
 
I thought you were
so
done with me.
 
If I had read that letter,
everything
would be different.”
   

“It’s no use,” I told him gently.
 
“We have enough to contend with.
 
We don’t need to harbor these regrets, as well.
 
We’ve got to let it go.
 
The past is the past, and we cannot go back.”

Those words weren’t only for him.
 
I was still convincing myself, as well.
 

I pulled his face closer, and laid my lips very softly on the corner of his mouth.
 

He shut his eyes, and I turned his head just so, pressing my lips gently to the pulse in his neck.
 
I held them there for a prolonged moment, then pulled back, tilted his head down, and rubbed my lips against his forehead, then down, brushing against his stubbly cheek, his jaw.
 

He held still and let me, compliant, even passive, under my soothing hands, my forgiving lips.

He was shivering relentlessly, and I warmed him with my touch.
 
I warmed us both.
 

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

I was in his large foyer, about to leave for work the next morning, when he stopped me with a question.
 

He said it from behind me.
 
I’d left him soundly asleep and had hoped he’d stay that way for a few more hours.
 
It had been a rough night.
 
He needed it.
 

Also, I’d wanted to avoid
this
.
 

“Wh-what—“ his voice trembled, and I thought that perhaps he’d guessed the next part.
 
“What changed to make you want to work things out?”
 

The closest chair just seemed so far away.
 
Like a limp doll, I leaned against the closest wall, then sank down to the floor.
 

What could it hurt at this point to just tell him?
 
What more damage could it possibly do?
 
All of the damage had already been done.
 
Of course, it had.
 
Years ago.
 
No one knew that better than I did.
 

So why had I run so hard from telling him?
 

We’d been on borrowed time, and I’d wanted to borrow more.
 
Another minute.
 
Another day.
 
I wasn’t picky.
   

No.
 
Just greedy.
   

I looked up at him as I answered.
 
I could give him at least that much.
 
“I was pregnant.”
 

The words barely carried, and the journey seemed to take forever, but when they hit their mark, it was a solid blow.

He just sort of folded in on himself, his shoulder hitting the wall next to him.
 

I shuddered, looking away.
 

A gross miscalculation.
 
There was so very much left to damage here.

Our ragged breaths were the only sounds to be heard for long, painful minutes.
 

He came at me then in a way that I had not expected or prepared for.
 

“How could you keep that from me?
 
How could you
hide
that from me?”

Was that anger in his voice?
 

Outrage
?
 

I was outraged just to hear it, so my answer, when it came, was inflammatory.
 
“I wasn’t hiding it.
 
I didn’t need to hide it.
 
It was
no one’s
business but
mine
.”
 

He came at me then in a way that I had not expected or prepared for.
 

“How dare you!” he shouted, his voice booming as he pointed at me.
 
He didn’t come even one step closer to me, as though he couldn’t trust himself.
 
“You had no right!
 
No right
to keep that from me!”

I was shocked.
 
I was appalled.
 

Furious.
 

“No right?
 
I had
every
right!”
 

“That was my child too!
 
I had a right to know about its existence and of its loss.
 
You kept it from me.
 
That was wrong.
 
You know it was wrong.”
 
There was a fine tremor in his low, pain roughened voice and madness in his eyes.
 

I shook my head, over and over, eyes wide on his face, studying it in hopes that I’d find something I could understand there, because his words were not something I could stomach.
 
“You have the nerve to talk to me about
rights
?
 
Maybe once, for a brief moment, you had a
right,”
I bit out scathingly.
 
“And I did tell you.
 
I came to your apartment and told you to your face, and that is when you sent me home in a car with a rapist.
 
You lost
all
of your rights in that car, along with our child.”
 

I was shaking in rage, in remorse.
 
I hated myself for saying those things, even if they were true.

I made my trembling way to a trembling stand, turning to leave, but his words stopped me.
 

“Liar!
 
You’re a liar!” he shouted, voice shaking with fury.
 

I turned back, wondering what awful thing I was about to say or do, because I felt provoked beyond all reason.
 
“What did you just say?”
 

He crumpled where he stood, his knees hitting the floor hard, his hands pushing out in front of him to keep him upright.
 

It was incongruous, a man so huge, so powerful, brought so low with a few awful words.
   

He knelt, prostrate in front of me.
 
His pose was a direct contradiction to his tone.
   

“I called you a liar.”
 
The shaking in his voice turned to a quaver.
 
“You said you forgave me.
 
You told me that six years ago, and you’ve told me since, and that was a
lie
.
 
There is no forgiveness in the things you’re holding onto.
 
You don’t even have a concept of what that word means.
 
Tell me I’m wrong.”
 

I took a few steps closer, fists clenched hard.
 
Even in my fury, I could not help but want to comfort him in his pain.
 

It was a sickness, I thought.
 

“Forgiving is not forgetting.”
 

“You are doing more than remembering, and you know it.
 
I don’t remember that night.
 
To this day, the vital parts still escape me, but I want to know.
 
I
hate
myself for it.
 
Don’t you see that?
 
No matter how horrible, no matter how much it will damage me, I can’t move on, no more than you can, until I hear it all.”
 

I sat down on the ground, slowly lowered myself until I mirrored his defeated pose just a few feet away from him.
 
“I will tell you,” I conceded.
   

We stayed how we were, on the floor, heads bowed for a very long time, and I told him almost everything.

Almost
.

We huddled on the floor and cried together, though we did not move close enough to touch.
 
I couldn’t stand any contact while I gasped out the sordid details, the painful losses, and he, I thought, didn’t have the courage to seek to comfort me just then.

The sun was starting to rise, streaming into the window beside his front door, when we picked ourselves up, and made it to the kitchen table.
 
We sat, not close, not touching, not looking.