Away From You (Back To You Book 2) (17 page)

I hung my
head. “I can’t believe he’s going through this and I just left tonight.”

Catherine
scooted closer to me and put her hand on my knee. “You’ve been doing a really
good job being there for him so far, don’t beat yourself up for having enough
tonight.”

“Thanks.” I
smiled slightly at her and then at Brooks. “And thank you for telling me about
earlier.”

“No problem.
I told him he needs to talk to someone about what he’s going through, but he
really didn’t like that idea. Honestly, even if he won’t, maybe
you
should.”

Catherine
smiled at her husband. “It’s so true. I get a lot out of the sessions. It
really helps, even though at first I thought it was going to be a huge waste of
time.”

“What other
symptoms should I look out for?” I asked.

Brooks
wrinkled his brow in concentration. “I think they said something about not
enjoying stuff that you used to enjoy, angry outbursts, and something about
having trouble with close relationships.”

Catherine
nodded. “Yeah, that all sounds about right. But there’s so much that goes into
PTSD, don’t take our word for it. You should really look into it more and go
from there.”

“All of
those things sound like Matt right now, so I definitely will. Thank you again
for letting me
barge
in on you like this. I just
needed to talk to someone who might know what he was going through.”

“Don’t even
worry about it,” Catherine assured me. “I know we kind of got off on the wrong
foot, but I just want you to know that I’m here for you if you need anything.”

Brooks
chuckled and patted his wife on the shoulder. “See? Just like I keep telling
everyone, she only seems like a bitch at first, but once you get to know her
she’s not so bad.”

“Gee,
thanks.” Catherine said with a quirk of her brow.

Matt

Lacking the will to do much else, I
stared at the popcorn ceiling above my bed. When I was little, I used to try to
find faces in the rough texture to fall asleep. Now I was just doing it to
stall. It had been almost a month since the night Olivia had walked out after
our fight. Personally, I wouldn’t even call that a fight. We’d had much worse
since I’d gotten home. Either way, things between us had been nothing short of
icy since that night. Maybe it was because we’d had sex for the first –
and last – time since I’d gotten home and it wasn’t the same for her? I
knew it wasn’t the same for me. I remembered feeling disappointed that even
something as sacred as having sex with my wife could be touched by what
happened. Maybe she could sense that.

I could hear
her making breakfast downstairs, but I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed
and go join her. I doubted she was making any for me anyway. Why would she? I
heard footsteps on the stairs and sighed, closing my eyes. The door opened and
I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. I heard the door close again
so I took a peek around. She was gone.

It was her
day off and I should’ve been spending time with her. Instead, I hid in our room
pretending to be asleep. Nice. Maybe she came up here to see if I wanted
breakfast and I was being an asshole assuming that she wouldn’t make me
anything. Who was I kidding? Liv wouldn’t act like that, no matter what was
going on with us. She deserved so much better than me.

That last
thought reminded me of Spencer. Back when he and Ellie were first trying to
figure everything out, he always said stuff like that about her. He got all
down on himself and insisted that he wasn’t good enough for her. Every time he
did it, I told him that he needed to let her decide that for herself. Only she
knew who was right for her and who was good enough for her. I’d told him that
he had a ton to offer her and not to be so hard on himself. Everything seemed
to work out fine for them, but he hadn’t pulled the kind of shit that I was
pulling. Did I deserve Olivia if I was going to act like this? If she had the
option to choose, if we weren’t already married, would she choose to be with me
as I am now?

I shook my
head. Whatever. If she wanted to leave me, there was such a thing as divorce. I
wouldn’t fight her on it. What was the point? I heaved myself out of bed and
threw on some basketball shorts over my boxers. I could smell the bacon even
through the closed door and I wanted some food, after all. Time to stop acting
like a baby.

I walked
into the kitchen and she greeted me with a small smile. “Good morning.”

“Morning.”

“There’s
bacon under that paper towel,” she said, nodding to the covered plate on the
counter. “I didn’t make extra eggs because I didn’t know when you’d be down. I
can make you some now, if you want.”

She was
sitting at the island eating her bacon and eggs and reading a book on her iPad.
It annoyed me that she was volunteering to stop eating her own food to make me
some, as if my breakfast was more important than hers. I scrubbed my hands over
my face, urging myself to calm down. That was a nice thing for her to do, not
annoying at all.

“Matt?” She
asked, looking concerned.

“Sorry, uh,
I’ll make them. You just eat.”

I headed to
the stove and sprayed the pan that she’d left there. I got out the eggs and
cracked them into a bowl, stirring them and then pouring them into the skillet.
I concentrated on the task at hand, not sure what to say to her. I glanced over
my shoulder. She was reading her book again. Her hair was down and curled
around her shoulders. She always wore it up in a bun during the week to keep it
out of her way at school. On the weekends I noticed that she liked to actually
spend time on it. It looked really pretty. I toyed with the idea of telling her
so, but I felt awkward about it. I flipped my eggs around in the pan, saying
nothing.

“Do you have
anything planned for today?” Olivia asked.

I shook my
head. “No, you?”

“I’m going
to Ellie’s house to do some wedding stuff and make signs with her,” she
answered, cheerily.

“Signs for
what?”

“The guys
are coming home in like two weeks. They’re for homecoming.” Olivia reminded me.
Her tone suggested that I should have known. My bad.

“Oh, cool.”

“Are you
excited that Spencer will be back home?”

I raised a
brow. “Thrilled.”

Olivia
sighed. “Matt, c’mon. He’s like your best friend.”

“Yeah, so
were you. Look at how well that’s turned out. I’m sure it’ll be the same way
with him.” I surprised myself with my response. I hadn’t given any thought to
it before I said it, and I turned to see her reaction.

She looked
stunned. “Matt…”

“What?”

“I really
think we need to go talk to someone. Not just your individual sessions,
but
something where we can try to get back on track.
Please.”

I folded my
arms over my chest, spatula in hand. It wasn’t the first time she’d suggested
it in the last few weeks.

She tried
again. “Please? I really think it could help. Cat and Brooks said…”

 
I held up the spatula. “For the last
time, Cat and Brooks have nothing to do with us. He has no idea what I’m going
through. He may have been there, but he still doesn’t get it. He’s fucking
fine, and I’m not. So therapy may have been
helpful
for them, but what the hell did they even need help with if he was just
fucking fine?”

Olivia tilted
her head to the side with a sympathetic tilt to her full lips. “Babe. You don’t
know until you try. And I want us to be like best friends again, but I don’t
know what else to do to make that happen. I’ve been trying though. I hope you
can see that I’ve been trying.”

“I know you
have,” I admitted. I remembered my eggs and gave them a final stir before
turning off the stove and shaking them onto a plate with some bacon.

“Have you?”

“Have I
what, noticed? I just said I noticed.”

“No, Matt.
Have you been trying?”

Understanding,
I shrugged. “Probably not. I get it though. I get what’s happening here. I just
don’t know if…”

“If what?”
She asked, leaning forward.

“If there’s
anything we can do. Or should do.” I couldn’t face her. There were so many
conflicting thoughts going on in my mind. One minute I was pissed at her for
being so helpful and daring her to leave me, the next I was realizing how sweet
and perfect she was and vowing to do better for her. I couldn’t take the
rollercoaster anymore. I doubted she could take much more of it, either. Maybe
it was just time to move on. Maybe I needed to be alone. If I were alone, I
couldn’t hurt her.

“I don’t
even know what to say to that. You don’t think it’s worth it to try to fix
this? Should we let whatever’s happening between us keep eating away at our
marriage until there’s nothing left?”

I could hear
the pain in her voice. All of the things I couldn’t – or wouldn’t –
say swam around in my mind. The loudest voice said that maybe it was too late
to fix it because something had already eaten away at
me
. Maybe there was nothing left to give to her. But again, I
couldn’t say those things out loud. I knew the power that words had, and I’d
already done enough with mine. In fact, I bet I wasn’t done yet. Before this was
over, I bet I would do a lot worse.

“I’m gonna
go for a run.” I left the plate I’d just prepared right where it was, appetite
gone. I slipped on my Nikes by the door and grabbed my keys, phone, and
headphones off the counter next to her iPad.

“Of course
you are.” She sniffed. She looked up at me with what could only be described as
puppy-dog eyes, filled with tears.

There was a
black hole in my stomach, eating away at me. I made her cry. Again. Even the
absence of hurtful words could cause pain.

*

I was
reluctant to go to the homecoming for the rest of my unit, but I was pretty
much told that I had to go show support. I wasn’t cleared for duty yet, so I
couldn’t even be there as part of the working party. That left me standing with
Olivia and the other spouses waiting for their loved ones to come home.
Spencer’s dad, Mike, was there, too. Ellie was obviously a lot closer to him
than she used to be. I was glad that things were looking up for Spencer and his
dad. Things used to be rough, I knew.

Brooks wasn’t
cleared for the working party either, so he was with us, too. Not that we’d
even talked much in the month since I’d showed up at his house. But still, even
though he wasn’t having the same issues I was, he damn sure knew how it felt to
stand there and watch the ship pull in, knowing we should be on it. We were
supposed to only be in Afghanistan for another couple of weeks when the attack
happened. I remembered dreading getting back on that ship for the remainder of
the deployment. Now, after everything, I wished I’d just stayed on the carrier
the whole time. I’d be getting ready to disembark after an uneventful
deployment and my life wouldn’t be in shambles.

I cut Brooks
a glance, and he smiled sadly back at me. Yeah, he knew.

Olivia
looked gorgeous as usual. She’d been staying at her mom’s house a lot, which both
hurt me and helped me in a weird way. It was almost better to not have to put
on a face for anyone and just be on my own, but at the same time I hated the
feeling of the empty bed at night. Even though she was only gone every couple
of nights, those nights felt like they were our future. I hated it, but wasn’t
doing anything to stop it, either.

The crowd of
Marine families around us went wild as the first Marines came into view. It was
weird seeing a homecoming from this perspective. Despite my own drama, I could
feel the excitement and longing oozing out of everyone around me. The prospect
of seeing their spouses or children was an infectious form of pure happiness. I
smiled and clapped along with them. None of my problems seemed to matter in
that moment. So many people were having one of the best days of their lives.
Seeing a homecoming from their perspective humbled me.

Olivia
looked up at me and grinned. I could tell she was ridiculously happy for Ellie,
too. The poor girl looked like she was chomping at the bit to see her fiancé.
That must be what Olivia looked like whenever I came home. Or, at least, I
hoped she looked like that. There was no denying the love that Ellie felt for
Spencer. The look in her eyes showed it all. Would it even be possible for
Olivia to feel that way about me now?

Spencer
finally broke free from the mass of Marines and scooped Ellie up into a
picture-perfect embrace. The photographer that Ellie had hired for the occasion
was snapping photos of the reunion, but she could have been doing naked
headstands for all the couple noticed. Mike, Brooks, Cat, Olivia, and I all
stood around them smiling and waiting for our turn to greet Spencer. I suddenly
felt sick about it. How much did he know about what was going on with me? I
know I’d barely talked to him, but Olivia used to tell Ellie everything and
maybe Ellie had told him? I shocked myself for being embarrassed of my
behavior.