The Bridge to a Better Life (29 page)

But she couldn’t erase it. Nothing could.

She pressed her forehead to the tiles and slapped her hand against them, reaching deep for that inner control, that place of numbness where she’d resided for years. She couldn’t find it. A wild howl rose up from her belly, echoing up and out of her throat.

“Noooooo,”
she cried out, her head banging against the wall to stop the pain from hurtling through her like an avalanche.

Sinking to the floor of the shower, she succumbed to the tears she’d been fighting for years, tears finally unleashed by the reality that Blake wasn’t coming back.

Blake was halfway to the bridge by the time he realized he was running away. The woods around him swayed under the light of the half moon as he stopped and inhaled the crisp mountain air to calm his raging emotions.

She wasn’t ready to let him love her again.

Right now, he wasn’t sure that would change, that
she
would change. He hung his head and squeezed his eyes shut to block out the white lights he’d strung on the bridge before their date. An owl hooted off in the distance, and he heard a whine. Felt the soft nudge of Touchdown, who must have followed him out.

He had to go back. He knew it. If he didn’t, all would be lost between them. But he dreaded it, dreaded going back in there right now after how close they’d come, how far they’d fallen.

Well, he wasn’t a quitter, and he’d promised himself and Natalie he wouldn’t give up.

With determined steps, he walked back to the house and let himself in. Heading to the kitchen, he found a plastic bag and filled it with ice. In his line of work, he’d iced just about every part of his body except his dick, but there was a first time for everything.

He turned off all the lights and sat on the couch. In another part of the house, he could hear the shower running. When she finished, he’d…

He didn’t know.

His desolation was complete. Usually he had a plan. After the initial shock of her leaving him had worn off, he’d told himself he would win her back. Up until tonight, he’d felt certain, down to his gut, that she’d shut him out because of her inability to face her grief. Perhaps he’d been wrong the whole time. Maybe she just hadn’t loved him enough to stay. Tonight, she hadn’t even cared about him enough to make love with him in the way that gave them both the most pleasure. She had shut her eyes to block out his professions of love.

Touchdown put his head on his thigh, and Blake stroked it as the dark, piercing thoughts swirled in his mind. He was used to fighting them off, but tonight the demons were too clever, their whispers too real.

He was lost, and he knew it.

The patter of feet sounded behind him, and he tensed. He made himself look over his shoulder, but all he could make out was Natalie’s dark shape. Touchdown whined and jumped off the couch. She flicked on a lamp, and her gasp carried across the room.

“I thought you’d left,” she whispered, wringing her hands in front of her favorite terry cloth robe riddled with the wear of many years. Her gaze landed on the ice bag on his crotch, and she flinched.

“I almost did,” he said softly, “but I swore I wouldn’t leave you again. That I’d be here. In good times and in bad.” He realized how close those words were to the vows he’d made to her, the vows that were now null and void thanks to a stupid piece of paper.

And he remembered the way she’d smiled as he spoke those vows—a smile so bright it was as if she’d gathered all the light in the universe into herself. This time her face, flushed red from the shower, bunched up in a frown.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered in a thready voice.

“You’re forgiven,” he forced himself to say. If marriage had taught him one thing, it was that carrying a grudge only eroded love.

“Why didn’t you…ah…take care of that?” she asked, and she didn’t need to point at the object of her speculation.

They both knew he was still rock hard from unfulfilled desire. And perhaps that was where they could start. With the truth.

“The first time I took care of myself after you left me, I thought of you the whole time. When it was over, I didn’t feel relief. I felt sick and hurt and…pretty much like shit.”

Her eyes narrowed to the point of a squint, but she didn’t walk out.

He coughed to clear his voice so he could continue. “The first time I had sex with someone after you left, I felt even sicker. I was in my get-over-you phase, and I hooked up with a groupie for what I thought would be mindless sex. I hadn’t done that since my first year in the league, and I wasn’t proud of it, but I…I was afraid I’d never get over you. The dreams hadn’t stopped, and well…you wouldn’t return any of my calls. I was angry, and since I didn’t want to drink my way to oblivion—trust me, I tried a few times, and it didn’t work—I thought I could find it in sex. I wanted to erase you…even though the very thought of it broke my heart.”

Her hands clutched the top of the loveseat, her knuckles white.

“It wasn’t fair to her. I thought of you once we got started. But she
wasn’t
you. She didn’t smell like you or taste like you or even sound like you when I touched her.”

“Don’t,”
she entreated in that same harsh whisper.

The tone of her voice gave him the courage to continue. “I waited a while before I tried it again, hoping it would be better. This time, I chose one of my old friends-with-benefits from before I met you. We used to have a good time, and things weren’t complicated. She knew the score.”

“Blake—”

“She was familiar in her own way,” he interrupted, “but she wasn’t you either. I had to force myself to hold her and stay over so I wouldn’t treat her like a jerk. She didn’t deserve that. After that, I stopped trying to move on. So, I took care of myself, telling myself it was only temporary and someday we’d be together again, that I’d make love to you for real, and everything would be okay.”

She sunk into the chair perpendicular to the couch, sitting on the edge like she wanted to bolt. But she wasn’t leaving, and he took that as a good sign.

“So, now you know the ugly truth,” he continued, setting the bag of ice aside. His ardor had disappeared with the revelation of his shame. “Who did you try to move on with? I always thought it would be your friend, Jeremy. You two always had fun together, and he was good looking enough. You would have gone for someone you cared for, someone who’d be safe.”

Her eyes flicked down to study the hands clenched in her lap. “Please don’t talk about this.”

But she didn’t try to walk away, so he kept going. “Part of me hoped it would be okay for you when you did.” How many times had he imagined her with someone else, every image another slash to the gut? “The rest of me wanted to pull him apart for touching my wife. But the worst part was wondering how you could choose anyone else after saying you loved me.”

This time she did dart off the chair. He was sure she was going to run into her room and lock the door, shutting him out yet again. But she shocked him. She sank down beside him and grabbed his hand with all her strength.

“How can you talk about something so painful?” she asked.

He rubbed his brow. “Because it’s there, and we’ve been shoving it into Pandora’s box for weeks hoping we could drift along and survive on long runs in the canyon, TV nights, playing with Touchdown, and kissing. It isn’t working, and tonight brought that into painful focus. I can’t pretend anymore.”

She hung her head, the picture of abject misery, but he made no move to comfort her. He didn’t dare.

“I might love you and want you back, but there’s a whole bunch of hurt and mistrust between us. If we don’t talk about it sometime, we’ll never come out from under it. And after tonight, I’m all out of charm and guile. My better nature is gone, Nat. This is me, the bruised, hurting guy you left who still loves you. Who only wanted to make love to his wife tonight and then found out she really didn’t want him.”

Her nails dug into his hand. “I did want you.”

The pain in his chest was crushing. “Not enough to let me really love you. When I stood halfway between our houses on the bridge, it finally occurred to me that maybe I’ve been wrong this whole time—maybe you don’t really love me anymore. Maybe I’ve already lost everything.”

She pressed her free hand to her mouth and sniffed. Tears filled her eyes and started to fall down her cheeks. He’d never seen her cry before—
really
cry—so it felt like he was witnessing a miracle. A shaft of hope poured into him.

“I do love you,”
she whispered.

And with those precious words, he fell through the bottom of his own despair, into a place of new beginnings. Her tears fell on their joined hands, and the warmth of them washed over the hurt in his heart. His throat filled with emotion, but he made himself wait for her to continue.

“I’m scared,” she said, dashing at the tears streaming down her face unchecked. “It’s like there’s this dark room inside me, and it’s filled with all the pain of losing Kim—and you. I’m…afraid…that if I go in there I’ll never make it out again. I used to think I was…strong, but this pain…Blake, it’s too much for me. I don’t think I know what true strength is, but I don’t think I have it.”

He knew that kind of pain, understood the desperate desire to make it stop, to run from it.

“I can’t take it,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I’m afraid I’ll go crazy again, the kind of crazy I was after Kim’s funeral, when you found me on my knees in the shower, the cleaning powder dusting my hair, coating my dress. I looked in the mirror and hated myself. And I saw the look on your face. I wasn’t…the woman you’d fallen in love with, the woman you’d asked to marry you.”

She’d scared him shitless that day, and she wasn’t mincing words—she really had looked like a crazy woman. More than anything he’d wanted to take her into his arms and tell her it would be all right, but the words wouldn’t have been true, so he hadn’t said them. Now, sitting beside her on the couch, he clenched her hand tight in his.

“Before Adam died, I…thought I’d be prepared for it, you know? We had almost a year between that first serious cardiac incident and…his passing. We all knew he was living on borrowed time, and that he wouldn’t grow old like the rest of us.”

A soft light shone through her eyes as her tears continued to fall. He had to cough to clear his throat.

“When my mom called to tell me…he was gone…I didn’t think anything could hurt that bad. Losing you hurt bad. Don’t think for a moment I’m saying otherwise. But with Adam…there was no hope of a second chance. He was gone. Just like that. I was never going to see him again or hear him laugh or have him tell one of his silly jokes.”

The pain of losing him surfaced anew, and he felt his own eyes fill with tears, his nose start to run.

“I wish…I’d been there for you,” Natalie said, pressing closer.

He turned so she could nestle against him and carefully wrapped his arm around her. “Then you would have seen me in my own crazy. I probably threw five hundred passes through my training net in the backyard until I broke down and bawled. It wasn’t pretty. I mean I’ve cried before, but this was…”

“Madness,” she finished in a whisper. “When I saw you flinch that day in the bathroom, seeing me like that, I was…”

His gut trembled, afraid of what she was about to confess to him. He knew it was going to be part of the answer to why she’d left. “You were what?” he asked.

“I thought if…I could just stay numb, I wouldn’t become that crazy woman I saw in the mirror. I knew you wouldn’t let me stay that way. You…loved me too much not to try and comfort me, and I was sure that would only make it worse.”

His sixth sense told him there was something more, something a lot scarier hidden in her words. He braced himself to face down the monster. “What else?”

An anguished sound rose from her throat. “I…I thought if I stayed and went crazy, you’d… stop loving me.”

Oh shit. He squeezed his eyes shut as the pain flooded him. She hadn’t trusted him to love her enough. Somehow that hurt worse than the rest of her fallout from that decision.

“Keep going. Might as well get it all out.”

“I…saw your face when you opened the door. Your whole face scrunched up when you looked at me. I felt…like a leper.” Her fingernails dug deep grooves into his hands now. “I didn’t recognize myself. I hated that crazy woman covered in cleaning powder. How could you love her? I didn’t.”

The wetness in his eyes welled up, sending tears down his face. So far, they’d been confessing their deepest and darkest secrets without eye contact, but this revelation…she needed to see what was in his eyes. He turned to face her.

“When you looked at Kim at the end, when she weighed less than a hundred pounds, did you love her any less?”

Her lip trembled, and she shook her head fiercely from side to side.

He brought their joined hands to his mouth and kissed hers with all the aching sweetness he felt in his heart. “That’s how I felt when I saw you that day. No, you weren’t yourself, but I still loved you. Completely. Passionately. I promised to love you, through everything. It…hurt me to see you like that. I wanted to make it all better for you, but I knew I couldn’t.”