The Fight for Us (24 page)

He slipped his hand under her shirt, resting it on her stomach. “I know. But nothing’s changed. I’m here. I want to be here, and I want you.” He studied her for a moment as she nodded subtly. “I don’t like that you’re staying alone tonight. You have an ex in the area with a key to this house. And I don’t think he likes you very much anymore.”

She chuckled. “I’ll be fine. And he’s never liked me.”

He smirked. “Oh, yeah, and I’m pretty sure he’s a sociopath. As far at lunatics go, that’s a bad one.” He grumbled. He pulled his hand from her stomach, and reached for her chin. He ran his fingers over her scar, studying the path they ran.

“He did it.” She whispered as she peered up at him.

He finally pulled his attention from her chin and focused on her eyes. “I know.”

She sucked in a quick breath at his comment.

“And you’re going to tell me all about it when we’re both awake enough to remember the conversation.”

He must have seen the surprise in her expression; she was doing little to hide it.

“Don’t forget our daughters talk—a lot.” He lay down beside her, pulling her into his arms with her back to him. She drifted off slowly, listening and feeling the slow breaths he was taking.

When he jolted awake, it startled her out of sleep too.

“Shit.” He was mumbling as he pushed himself up. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. It’s nearly eleven thirty. I better get back to the girls.” He leaned down, kissing her as she hummed. She was damn glad, now that she was warm and comfortable, that she wasn’t the one who had to go back out. “Come over whenever you’re up and around.”

“I will.” She closed her eyes, and she drifted away again.

* * * *

“I need to t? What the hell does ‘I need to t’ mean?” Steph was already ranting about something before Joss was even fully awake and sufficiently caffeinated.

Joss poured herself a cup of coffee as she held her cell phone sandwiched between her ear and her shoulder. “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”

“A text you sent me last night. I tried to call you back but no answer.”

“Oh! I must have hit send. Sorry. Partial text message.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Oh, no you don’t. Spill it. What does ‘I need to t’ mean?”

“Fine. I need to talk.”

“Oh! Well, duh. I should have figured that out,” Steph grumbled sarcastically. “Time to start watching
Wheel of Fortune
again. Okay, so talk.”

“Well, that was last night.” She shrugged. She wasn’t ready to talk. Not enough caffeine had made it into her system yet for talk.

“What happened?”

“Oy…”

“It’s a little early to be breaking out the Yiddish already. It’s that bad?”

Joss sighed. “I found a picture of him and his wife in with all his bedroom boxes, which of course means he generally keeps the picture in his bedroom. I mean, it wasn’t a storage box headed for the basement or anything.”

“Oy is right.” Steph commiserated. “But you couldn’t have thought things like that don’t exist in his world. They were married. Of course there would be pictures. You had to know you’d find one sometime.”

“It just… I don’t know… It shocked the hell out of me.”

“Did you get angry at him?”

“Umm… No. I turned into a stammering idiot. I literally couldn’t figure out what to say, and I ended up complimenting him on how pretty his dead wife was over and over.”

“Huh… Okay, well, how is this any different than dating a divorced man?” Steph was now down to action. She was going to solve this dilemma for her best friend if it killed her. The conviction in her tone said it clearly.

Joss chuckled for a moment. “Well, first of all, I wouldn’t know. I don’t date—”

“No, dear, you have sex with your ex-husband, and you ignore your own emotional needs. Thank
God
that bit of crazy business is finally over.” She took a deep exasperated and exaggerated breath. “My point is this whole relationship thing is a bit new to you.” Ms. Freud to the rescue.

“Yeah. The thing is, if he was divorced, then I’d be with a man who had ended a relationship with the beautiful woman he used to love. He didn’t end anything. The woman he loved simply died. The
love
didn’t end, her
life
did.”

“Joss, stop. Why are you doing this to yourself? People move on—”

“Yeah. And some people keep pictures of their beautiful dead wife in their bedroom.”

“I’m not sure that’s necessarily unusual.”

“That’s just it. I’m not sure it is either! All I’m sure of is it hurt.” Joss sighed. “Yesterday was just a hard day.”

“Yeah. I was in the office when Randall came in with Todd the wad.”

Joss nodded, saying nothing for a moment. “Yeah. That situation didn’t help matters. Then to come face to face with her picture… She
really
was beautiful, but it’s not just that. She had these perfectly manicured nails. Her hair was perfectly done, and her collar was turned down in just that perfect sort of way—”

“And let me guess, you think she committed suicide to perfection too?” Her sarcasm was biting, and it put Joss in her place. “This was a sick woman. Her life wasn’t perfect. What looks perfect can be
very
deceiving.”

Joss stared at the tabletop feeling like a complete shit. “You’re right. I was feeling kind of sorry for myself yesterday. I was feeling about the furthest thing from perfect yesterday. Sometimes I see his life, and I feel like mine is a disaster in comparison. Don’t get me wrong, he has plenty of ghosts in his closet, but he’s not an idiot like me. I’ve made such ridiculously stupid decisions, and I’m paying for it now, and I just… I felt really embarrassed that he was seeing my life in all its glory yesterday. I just felt so pathetic. And then when I saw that picture, and just how—”

“Perfect?”

“I’m being stupid.”

“No, you’re not. You’re just being hard on yourself—something you’re quite good at doing. This is all new to you. It’s new to him too. And you said it yourself, it
was
a hard day.”

Joss sighed. She wanted to feel better, feel reassured, but in the end, she didn’t know how to feel about a man who loved another woman and would still, were she alive.

“I will say this. Running into his past is inevitable. It just is, as much as he has to deal with very literally running into yours too. And by the way, yours is a walking dickhead.” Steph paused as Joss chuckled. “But you do have every right to expect the man you have an intimate and sexual relationship with to have moved past his dead wife. You shouldn’t compromise on that. And you shouldn’t have to worry about seeing a picture of her on the night table as he’s…”

“Tending my lady garden with his love sword,” she offered a bit sarcastically.

There was silence for a moment. “That was disturbing,” Steph said bluntly. “But if that means fucking you, then yes.” There was silence for a moment. “Really? Love sword? Do me a favor; don’t say that in front of him. Anyway, my point is, that’s not okay.”

Joss took a very audible breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah.”

“Listen, I’ve seen the two of you together, and if you’re questioning how much he likes you, don’t. He adores you…now. I mean, he kinda didn’t like you at all at first, but then, you were rude to him.”

“He was rude to me first.”

Steph scoffed. “Be patient with yourself, okay? The past five years of your life put your self-esteem through a meat grinder. Your marriage before that was just as bad.
You made mistakes
. Cut yourself some slack. Stop feeling inadequate. I know you do, so don’t even try to deny it. You deserve to be put on a pedestal for once, so let him.”

“And how do I know someone else doesn’t already occupy his pedestal?”

“Be patient with him too. Give him time to put away
his
past. But don’t feel bad about being upset last night. It would be upsetting for anyone to come face to face with that.”

“Thanks, Steph. I needed to hear that.”

“Sure. Oh, hey! Thursday is Christmas. Are your parents coming to town?”

“No. You know them. They love their life elsewhere a bit too much to take the time to come see us.”

“I don’t understand them.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t either. It’s fine. They’ll send boatloads of gifts like usual in their place. Harp will be in heaven I’m sure.”

“Come to dinner then at my parents’ house midday?”

“Yeah. That’ll be nice.”

“If Isaiah and Natalie don’t have plans, invite them too. You know Mom. She wants to parent everyone.”

“Unlike my own mother, who’s always struggled to parent even me.” She replied sarcastically.

Steph laughed. “Yeah. I’ll see you soon.”

Chapter Twenty

By the time Joss got to Isaiah’s house, he’d nearly unpacked the entire living room, and they finally had T.V. The girls were still working in Nat’s room, though he suspected
working
was a loose term at this point, and he was guessing it was more like goofing around.

Joss looked as hesitant as he felt when he kissed her, but he pulled her down onto his lap on the couch anyway. “Are you okay?” He murmured against her ear.

When she pulled back to look at him, she nodded. “You?”

He nodded too. He didn’t know why he felt so awkward, and he didn’t know why he saw it in her eyes too, but it was there. It wasn’t distance. It wasn’t distrust. It wasn’t even anger. Things just felt weird, and he couldn’t nail it down.

She had his kitchen in order by lunchtime, and Natalie and Harper had taken care of organizing the spare bedrooms while he’d been in the office. Joss was a hard worker, and when he found her wiping down the dining room table early that afternoon, he wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled into the side of her neck as she stood back up.

“You now have a kitchen and an organized dining room.” She commented as he inhaled against her skin.

“Thank you. So, you’re finished then?”

“Yes, unless I find something else to wipe down.” She smirked.

“I’m going to work in my bedroom for a while.”

“Okay,” she said quietly. What she didn’t do was offer to help.

He paused, waiting to see if she would, but after the pause became uncomfortable, he let go of his hold on her.

She smiled at him shyly, maybe even nervously, and he slowly nodded his head, having no idea how else to behave. They were back to full-on awkwardness again. Neither seemed to have a clue what to say or do. She started to gnaw on the inside of her lip, and he finally cleared his throat.

“Well, umm…” he started without any idea where the sentence was going.

“I’m going to check on the girls, actually. I’ll see if they need any help. In fact, Harp and I are probably going to go soon. She wanted to go shopping this weekend. I could take Nat too. She might want to go. Get out for a while.” Every sentence she said sounded like a question—laced with insecurity.

“Sure.” They stared at one another again.

When Joss turned away and headed down the hall, he watched after her, feeling like a piece of shit. By the time he reached his bedroom, he was certain he’d fucked something up royally. She didn’t seem mad. Not at all in fact. Just leery. Just confused.

He sank to the side of his bed. The sheets were a mess from his tossing and turning all night long, but the room was otherwise untouched from how they’d left it the night before when Joss had found the picture of Delia. Hell, he’d not even managed to pull the quilt out of the box yet. He’d seen it the day before, and he suddenly couldn’t imagine putting it in her hands. Not that he cared if she touched anything of his whatsoever, but it felt exceptionally disrespectful to put the quilt he’d bought with Delia when they’d renovated their bedroom three years ago into Joss’s hands. He just plain didn’t want her to touch it. He didn’t want her to
have
to touch it.

He stared at the box on the floor at his feet. He knew what was inside, because he’d returned the damn picture to the box from the place Joss had left it on his bed the moment he got home the night before. He also knew there was a small jewelry box inside that held his simple gold wedding band and the earrings he’d bought Delia on their tenth anniversary. Her bottle of perfume was also in there, wrapped in Delia’s favorite scarf, and a small stack of cards she’d given him over the years for one life moment or another.

“Isaiah?” Joss was hollering from the hallway, and when he rounded the bed and peeked out, she was standing in the living room, leaning partially into the hallway as though she were afraid to even pass that barrier. She looked horribly nervous like she knew she was trespassing somewhere she didn’t belong, and he stared at her for a moment, nearly choking as his throat constricted.

“Yeah?” He could barely get the word out as her pain, the pain she was stuffing down inside her, became so glaringly obvious. He knew she’d been surprised. Hell, he knew she didn’t have a clue how to react the night before. But it was starting to really sink in as he watched her fidget just how hard this was for her—not to mention why it was so hard.

“Nat’s going to go with us.” She practically had to holler down the long corridor. “I’ll drop her off in a while. We’ll probably grab dinner out.”

“Okay.”

And then she turned away, and he returned to his room to sit in a stupor in front of the box. He listened as the front door closed behind them, and then he pulled the box open. His heart started pounding. His fingers trembled as he reached for the scarf, and he slowly unrolled the long length of material, pulling the small bottle from within. He held it up to his nose, inhaling and panicking as he did. He knew it would send a rush of memories through him, and he was afraid to see those memories, because he didn’t want them to touch his life anymore. He was also afraid they would, regardless of whether he wanted them to or not. But his biggest fear of all was that once he’d felt those memories again, he wouldn’t
want
to let them go.

Tears glossed over his vision, and when the scent hit him, his breath hitched and his tears fell. He groaned as his old life pulsed through him in waves, and he clutched at his stomach as he doubled over. It hurt. Every part of his body hurt with visions of a life that no longer existed. It was impossible to wrap his head around the concept of missing that life so much, and yet, wanting this life too. And it was more minutes than he could count or recall before the pain and confusion slowly subsided and he was able to right his posture and set the small glass bottle aside as he wiped his tears away. The framed picture was no better, and the tears that he usually hid from everyone including his daughter just didn’t seem to want to dry up. The jewelry box was perhaps the worst of it.