Always and Forever (20 page)

23.

PRESENT DAY

M
att gulped away a shudder that was making its way up his throat, blinked back tears. He never broke down around Lisa, and he’d sure as hell never cried to his dad, but it was getting damn hard to hold it all back these days. But his father had been there, experienced the same kind of darkness, only he’d had a son full of even more darkness to deal with at the same time, had had so much more to hold together. And his dad hadn’t had a choice, had lost his wife, whereas Matt’s had been saved.

He sat outside his house, one hand on Blue’s head as he clutched the phone. He dialed his dad, hanging his head for a bit as it started to ring, clearing his throat when his father’s husky voice came on the line.

“Matt?”

“Hey, Dad,” Matt said, coughing to try to pull himself together, not wanting his father to hear the crack in his voice, not again.

“Son, it’s after midnight. What’s going on? Is Lisa okay?”

Matt could imagine his dad sitting up in bed, bleary-eyed, with the bedside lamp on, phone pressed to his ear. He shouldn’t have woken him, but he had no one else to talk to. There was no way he was going to call one of his guy friends and break down, talk to them about something they couldn’t understand, and he’d already leaned on Kelly so much. Besides, the last thing she needed to worry about on top of her kids and their dog was that her sister’s husband couldn’t hold it together.

“Hey, son. Where are you?”

Matt waited a beat, swallowed as he stared out through the outdoor lights at the pretty yard that had taken him and Lisa so long to landscape on their own.

“I’m home. Alone.”

His dad didn’t say anything.

“Lisa and I are taking some time out.”

“I see. You okay about that?”

Matt nodded even though his dad couldn’t see him, got a handle on his emotions. He wasn’t okay, but that wasn’t why he was calling. He was calling to tell his dad what he’d wanted to say for so long but had just never found the words for. Just like he’d waited so long to tell his dad that he loved him, words that should be so simple but just weren’t.

“Every day, every single day, Dad, I think about you, about what I put you through. You never even got the chance to just grieve for Mom because I was such a shit, and I want to say that I’m sorry. I should have said it a long time ago, but this is me saying it now. I’m sorry, so goddamn sorry.”

Matt hated thinking back to the day his mom had died, seeing her body, chest no longer rising and falling, making him want to be sick. His beautiful mom who’d have done anything for him, who was always waiting for him after school, who was at every football game cheering him on, who never once complained and always smiled. The day she’d gone, a light had gone out in him, too. A switch had been flicked and he’d turned into the asshole kind of teenager who’d have horrified his mom, the kind of son he’d never have been if she’d been there to see it. He’d given his dad hell, and it wasn’t until he’d fallen for Lisa that all of that had changed, because he’d known she wouldn’t look twice at the kind of kid he was then. He’d pulled his shit together for her, and even though the guys had all made fun of him for how he’d changed for a girl, he’d known it was his chance. That if he blew it with Lisa he might never find anything worth changing for again, worth stepping up for. But he’d never opened up to her about it, never admitted his pain, deciding to bury it instead. Along with all the apologies he owed his dad.

“The past is the past. You don’t need to say sorry for anything,” his dad said. “You’re a good son—is that what you need me to say? Because you are, and you’ve more than made up for it over the years.”

“I just need you to listen to me, to hear me say how sorry I am. It’s the only thing that’ll stop me feeling like the worst son in the world.” Matt felt like he’d aged twenty years, like what had happened between him and Lisa had made him grow the hell up real fast.

“Tell me about Lisa. What happened?”

“I don’t know if I can keep going,” Matt confessed, swallowing hard over and over, trying to get rid of the lump of emotion stuck there wanting to choke him. “I don’t know if
she
wants us to keep going.”

“You can and you will,” his dad said firmly. “Now you tell me what’s happened, get it off your chest, then pull it together and go back to your wife.”

“She wanted time out, on her own,” Matt told him, finding it hard to believe that he was telling his dad this. “I’m not going back to her because she doesn’t want me to.”

“Okay. Well, that could be a good thing, couldn’t it?”

His dad had always been patient, but they’d never exactly had heart-to-hearts. They’d played ball, watched games on TV, chatted over beers as he’d gotten older, worked in the garden and on the house. But he’d never had to open up to him before, and it wasn’t easy. The only person who had ever truly seen the raw him was Lisa, and before that his mom when he was a teenager.

“It’s just . . .” He laughed, despite the pain he was feeling inside. “Shit’s getting real, Dad. There’s no other way to put it. I just can’t believe that Lisa doesn’t want to be with me anymore.”

“You’ll get through this.”

“I thought I was going to lose her to cancer. We got through that, but . . .” Matt coughed, pushing the emotion down. “I think I’ve lost her anyway.”

“Matt, when I lost your mom, I was all cried out. I was terrified of losing her, but when she finally passed, it was a relief to not see her suffering anymore.”

“I never saw you cry,” Matt admitted. “It was what made me so angry, thinking you didn’t care like I did.”

He listened to his dad breathe deep. “I should have let you see me break down, but I was trying so hard to be strong.”

Matt wished that his teenage self had had this conversation with his dad.

“The difference is that you and Lisa have a fighting chance. You can make this work if you both want it to; you just need to find a way to move past what happened.”

“Easier said than done,” Matt replied.

Matt didn’t want to bring up the past, didn’t want to dredge up memories that they’d long put behind them, but talking was helping. He’d pushed it all down for way too long, and he’d also never imagined he’d be going through the same thing as his dad, thirteen years later. Only he wasn’t, because his dad had had a child to deal with, and Matt only had himself. And a dog who’d probably mope at the door for the rest of his life if Lisa never came home.

“So what do I do now?” Matt asked, voice hoarse, every word like silk dragged over jagged rocks.

“You do what you need to do: yell at me if you want, curse the bloody world for the hand it’s dealt you, then you pick yourself up off the ground and figure out how the hell to make things right with your wife.” His dad paused. Matt could hear his breathing and it soothed him for some strange reason. “And when she lets you close again, you hold her and tell her how much you love her, tell her that you’ll be strong for her. You don’t blame her or pull away because you know how bad it’s going to hurt; you just listen and love her. She’s been to hell and back, and you have too, but right now I’m guessing she just needs you to step up and look after her like she’s looked after you all these years. Don’t go thinking you’ve got to keep it all in to be a man, because you don’t.”

“Okay,” Matt said. “Thanks, Dad. I needed to hear that, to have you just tell me what to do.” He didn’t think he’d ever heard his dad talk so much in his life before, let alone open up like that.

“It might not get any easier, son, not for a while. The only thing you think about is to keep on going, one foot in front of the other. But you’re lucky, because she made it. The tough part is finding a new way to move forward. That’s what she’s struggling with.”

His dad was right. They needed a new path, instead of trying to tread the old one. But every time he’d tried to bring that up, she’d clammed up and gotten angry.

“Sorry I woke you up,” Matt said. But it had helped. It had given him something, the strength to keep going, to just do what he was already doing.

“I love you, Matt,” his dad said. “I should have told you more often when you were growing up, but words didn’t always come so easy.”

Matt’s laugh was rough. “Yeah, and I wasn’t always that easy to love.”

They were both silent for a beat.

“Water under the bridge. You just keep your chin up and be ready to look after that beautiful wife of yours. And don’t give up,” his father told him. “There’s always hope, right until the end. Marriages aren’t supposed to be easy all the time.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Matt smiled. “I love you, too.”

After they said goodbye, Matt sat alone in the dark, head in his hands as he rocked forward, heels of his palms nudged tight into his eyes. His dad was right, but he still didn’t know how to reconnect with her to give himself a second chance.

In his heart, he knew the truth; he just wasn’t used to having to open up, to let his feelings be so raw when he usually managed to cruise through life. He didn’t just want Lisa to be his beginning: he wanted her until the end, and he wanted every damn bit in the middle, too. And he needed to tell her that.

Emotion wracked his body, threatened to suffocate him as it clawed at his throat, strangled every breath from him. Silently he suffered, gulping for air, fighting the pain.
Why?
Why did this have to happen to them? Why did his beautiful wife have to have so much taken from her? Why did they have to lose their little baby boy?
Why?

Matt wanted to yell, to scream a bloodcurdling cry that could be heard back in Napa. But he didn’t. Instead, he dropped to his knees and quietly sobbed until there was nothing left inside.

And then he slowly pulled his body up, squared his shoulders and wiped at his face. Matt walked back inside, blocked out every thought and walked down the hall.

He stopped outside the nursery door, held up his hand, thought about pushing it open but couldn’t. Not without Lisa. So he continued silently into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face in the near-dark, then finally turned, stopping in the doorway to stare at the bed where Lisa should have been asleep waiting for him. Only the bed was empty. For the first time in what felt like forever, there was no beautiful, warm body lying there in wait.

Matt stripped off and moved around to the other side of the bed, lifting the covers and sliding silently in. He missed her body, the warmth of her smile, the way she looked at him. He craved the scent of her shampoo, the softness of her skin.

He missed her. He missed his wife.

Lisa had meant everything to him, and he had no idea in hell how he was going to survive without her if she wouldn’t give him a second chance.

24.

I
t’s driving me crazy,” Matt confessed, twirling his beer bottle between his fingers. “I just . . . I can’t explain it. What’s it like not being with her after all this time.”

“I get it. You guys haven’t spent a night apart in forever,” Penny said.

“It’s not just that. It’s the fact I haven’t spoken to her; I don’t know what’s going on with her, what I can do.” Matt sat back, shook his head as he leaned into the seat on the porch of Kelly’s house. “I’ve been fighting in her corner for so long, and now I don’t even know where that corner is. What I can do to get her back.”

The girls came running past, dressed in princess costumes and giggling. He grinned and pulled a face, which sent them into even more giggles as they ran out into the yard toward their tree hut. He adored the girls, wished he could tell Lisa right now how much they missed her.
How much
he
missed her.
He was ready to step up and be the man she needed, if only she’d give him a chance.

“Look, just give her the space she needs,” Penny said, sitting down beside him. “She’s fine. I promise.”

“What if she doesn’t want me after being apart?” Matt said bluntly, finally getting it off his chest. “I will do anything for her. I just need to talk to her and show her that I’m ready to change.”

“She . . .” Lisa’s younger sister frowned at him and started over. “I’ll speak to her for you.”

“You will?”

“Yeah. This has gone on long enough.”

Matt nodded. “It’s all kinds of screwed up, us being apart when she’s hurting so bad. But maybe she was right that we needed time apart. It’s sure as hell showed me how miserable life is without her.” He took another pull of beer. “And what I need to do.”

“The three of us are stubborn,” Penny told him, patting his hand. “Add to that what she’s been through and how rough it’s been. She just needs some time. She’s holed up somewhere, and she’s fine, and Kelly’s doing a good job of keeping her busy, getting her talking. It’ll be killing her being apart from you, too.”

“But she won’t even take my calls. She’s completely blocked me.” Matt blew out a breath. “I’m not so sure she’s going to come back. It feels kind of final, like I’m not going to get that chance to convince her that we can make it.”

Penny stood and looked down at him. “Then fight dirty. Show her what she means to you; make her see without having to talk to you.”

“I’d be on her doorstep before morning if I thought she’d want to see me,” Matt muttered.

“Tell her how you feel—make her listen,” Penny said. “If you were ever going to be Mr. Romantic, now’s the time.”

“I’ve been leaving voicemail messages,” Matt admitted. “But I doubt she’s even listened to them. But I’ve been thinking about emailing, writing it down so that one day she’ll read them.”

“Then I’ll make sure she does,” she said confidently. “I’ll go call Kelly now.”

“Thanks,” Matt said. “I just don’t know what else to do.”

“Matty, you know she loves you, don’t you? Because she does,” Penny said softly. “We all love you, but you guys were made for each other, and if anyone can make it, you can. You just need to find a way past all the shit that’s been thrown your way.”

He nodded, took a deep breath. “That’s why I need her to hear me out before it’s too late, before she gives up on us.”

“You get us another beer, and I’ll call Kelly,” Penny said. “And you figure out what you’re going to say to make my sister fall head over heels back in love with you.”

Matt laughed. When he’d married Lisa, he’d gained two sisters. And while they loved ganging up on him sometimes, he wouldn’t give them up for anything, because they were as much his family as his dad was. And for a kid who’d grown up without siblings, it was good for him.

He pulled out his phone to email Lisa, trying to figure out what the hell to say. There was so much in his head, so many feelings he wished he had the words to express. Trouble was he’d never had to talk like that, never had to find the words to tell his wife because he’d always kind of taken for granted that she knew how he felt. He’d also never had to worry that they could break up before; until now. Now reality was fast setting in, and while she was in flight mode, he was fully engaged in fight mode.

She could avoid him all she wanted, but he wasn’t just giving up on what they had. Not when it came to Lisa. And as easy as it would have been to snarl and limp off to lick his wounds, this was his marriage. It was the one thing in life he couldn’t afford to be an asshole about, because he would only be hurting himself. He needed to open up to her, be honest, and make sure she knew how he really felt. No more burying everything; it was time to be real. He
needed
to step it up.

“Hey, Blue,” he said, reaching a hand down to his dog as he came bounding up the porch. “Those girls too much for you, huh?”

He rubbed his dog’s head as he used his other hand to scroll to his emails. This was it. He’d been closed off about his past, not open enough about his feelings, but now was the time to start. Before it was too late.