If I Break THE COMPLETE SERIES Bundle (170 page)

The whole drive back, I feel as if I’m holding my breath, and I don’t let it out until I’m in my room and on my bed. I cry because I feel like I hurt him, what I’d intended went too far, and I’ll never be able to look at him the same way again. When I left this room, I’d promised myself I’d have answers. What I didn’t think was that those answers would only bring more questions. I cry myself to sleep because I know I’ve made things a whole lot worse.

I
can’t pinpoint the moment my life became not enough, when it didn’t seem good enough, when I felt trapped. When I began hating myself for it, questioning every vital decision I’ve ever made. The worst part about feeling like this is knowing that something is wrong with me, that I can’t blame anyone else for the way I feel.

I’m forty-one years old. I have a great family: a beautiful wife who loves me, whom I love, who is the love of my life; a son who doesn’t cause trouble, does well in school, and is just a good kid. I have a thriving business that, even if it’s not bringing in buckets of money, keeps our monthly bills paid. We have a nice amount in the bank, and we can buy a few things that we want every now and then without living beyond our means. Life is nice, quiet. It’s everything I imagined it to be when I was younger and overwhelmed by my stepdad pushing me to join his business. Stepping onto the property my dad’s brother left me when he passed felt like home. I felt as though I had a purpose, and I could see spending the rest of my life here with Gwen, the love of my life. Everything has gone according to plan… almost.

My son, Christopher, is a blessing to us. He came into our lives when he was just five years old and Gwen and I were lost, devastated. My wife had always dreamed of having a house full of children. It was a simple dream—or so we thought. We never wondered why, before we were ready for kids, we never had any surprises even though we didn’t take any precautions to prevent pregnancy. After three years of being married, Gwen was ready to fill the farmhouse we’d made our home with children. When it didn’t happen, we became worried. We were both young, healthy, and happy. Those should have been the only requirements.

We learned that wasn’t the case on that trip to the doctor. His news broke my wife. She was a ghost of herself after learning the one thing she’d always wanted would most likely never be hers. She cried for weeks, and her tears made me go to the one person I’d really started to loathe who’d basically exiled me when he found out I wouldn’t marry the girl he wanted me to after not choosing the career he thought I should have. I knew with the right amount of money, anything was possible. He laughed in my face and told me I bet I wished I had “Crestfield” money now.

But a year later, when Gwen was sort of getting out of her funk, my stepfather showed up with a five-year-old boy and the papers already completed, the adoption done.

Only stepfather Dexter Crestfield could make something like that happen.

Just like that, we were parents. My wife became alive again, and we were happy.

We stayed that way until last year, a few weeks after my fortieth birthday, when I woke up with a feeling I couldn’t shake. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t sad or angry, but I felt as though something was missing. Doubts and fears I’d never had started to play in my head. Things that had never bothered me started to, stupid things like the one strand of gray hair that has been there since I turned thirty-five. Or the fact that I used to be able to work ten hours straight and still be up for a round or two with Gwen before bed without blinking an eye, and that was becoming a whole lot harder.

What really started to bother me was that as much as I loved my son with everything in me, when he had children, they wouldn’t share my blood. I was an only child, my father’s only son, and after me, there would be no more. It ate at me more and more, especially as Chris started to apply to colleges. It gnawed at me, and I couldn’t tell Gwen, my wife, my best friend. If anyone could have gotten me through it, it was her, but at the same time, these feelings would have destroyed her, devastated her. She’d have felt it was her fault, that I blamed her, and I didn’t—not for a second.

I never ever regretted making her my wife. She’s my other half, and being with her is enough. That’s what I told myself over and over and over, but she felt me growing distant, withdrawn. I distracted myself by reaching out to my stepdad and getting contracts for the farm in his commercial division. It helped distract me from all the inadequacies smothering me. She loves me so much. Even after all these years, I see the love in her eyes, feel it in her touch. When other guys who’ve been married as long as we have told me that their wives denied them, seemed to resent them, only tolerated their presence, I looked at them as though they were crazy.

Gwen and I were still in love, our feelings still fresh as the day we met—until these stupid feelings and thoughts and crap interfered. Gwen tried so hard to make me feel better. I never acted as if anything was wrong, but she could tell—your soul mate isn’t stupid. She complimented me more, told me how much she loved me more often; she even offered counseling. Like an idiot, I was too proud to talk to someone, to admit I had a problem. Talking may have helped. It may have helped me come up with a solution. Instead, I held everything in. I could handle it, I thought. But nothing helped.

Chris saw the changes too. He saw the changes affecting his mother, and he grew distant. I saw it all happening, and still I was broken. No matter what I did to try to fix myself, nothing worked. I was losing their sympathy, Chris and Gwen’s. I didn’t blame them. They wanted to know what was wrong, and I couldn’t tell them. Gwen channeled her frustration constructively—she decided to go back to school, taking night classes to get her associate’s degree. Chris threw himself into his music, and I floated around from project to project, feeling useless.

I remember clearly the day things changed. We were all eating dinner.

“Lisa needs help with her math. With Chris starting his music again and his clubs and me going back to school, tutoring her could give you something to do,” Gwen said.

“Who’s Lisa?” I asked dryly, somewhat annoyed. The fog of my problems clouded my memories, faces I should know, faces I didn’t care to recall. I saw the disappointment in Gwen’s face, disappointment that I was being an asshole.

“Lisa, your son’s best friend since they were knee-high. She really needs the help, and you certainly need something to inspire you, or at least motivate you to yank the stick out of your butt,” she said sharply before leaving the table.

I realized I was turning into an jerk. That night I apologized. I told her I’d give tutoring a try, and she smiled, easily forgiving me and wanting to really have hope for me. I wanted to give her hope. I had hope too. When I was a teacher, I enjoyed it. I felt as though I was making a difference in the world until I realized how screwed up the schools were. One of my best and favorite students at the inner city school I worked at was shot in the chest after leaving an honor society dinner. After that, I realized the difference I made was shit.

I couldn’t stomach being in that building or that neighborhood anymore, and Gwen and I packed up, moved to the farm, and slowly but surely, I became a farmer. My teaching days were far behind me. The closest I came to it was coaching some of Chris’s sports leagues when he was younger and helping him with his homework. I thought maybe tutoring could do me some good, and for the first time in a while, I imagined what could happen, allowed myself to dream. If it worked out, maybe I could tutor more kids. If I couldn’t leave my mark on the world biologically, I could leave my mark in memories. I was hopeful.

I tried to conjure up an image of Lisa, Chris’s best friend, but for some reason, I couldn’t get the vision of a ten-year-old tomboy who wrestled with Chris and Aidan and had scars on her elbows and knees out of my head. A couple of days before I was to start tutoring her, Chris called me, sounding a little slurred, and I was fuming. I had to calm myself down—I had a good kid and he didn’t sound dead drunk and he’d called me instead of letting some other drunk kid bring him home.

I remember fiddling with the radio when the car door opened and I looked up, and to my surprise, it wasn’t Chris. It was a beautiful girl with long almost-white blond hair, big green eyes, and a smile that reminded me of when I was younger and got smiles like the one she wore easily. She greeted me as if she knew me, and I had no clue who she was. Then it hit me—Lisa, and a ten-year-old tomboy she was not. I had to have seen her around the house, though I’d never paid her any attention, but sitting next to her in the car, she imprinted herself on my brain—her eyes, her lips, her voice, her laugh.

I’d never forget the way she looked at me before she got out of the car. She didn’t look at me as though I was her friend’s old dad. She looked at me in a way that made my heart speed up, that made blood rush to a place it shouldn’t have gone, in a way that let me know she was anything but a little girl. I should have known just from that look and the little voice in my head then that tutoring her was a bad idea. I should have made up an excuse to put it off or have Chris join us or only meet on days when Gwen was around, but I didn’t. I didn’t because for the first time in almost a year, I didn’t feel like a zombie slogging through life.

I felt alive.

I
t’s been two weeks since the night I decided to take destiny in my own hands and force myself on Will.

Two weeks since it exploded all over me, right in my face.

In a way, I was right. I knew what I felt wasn’t imagined—it was more than I could have ever have dreamed. Kissing him was surreal. He was magnetic and made my body feel things that only I’ve been able to make myself feel, but he made them happen faster and at a whole different level.