“She’ll be fine,” Mia says, holding the door open for us.
“I’ll be fine,” Jamie echoes, pushing me forward. “Go ahead.”
Benny’s bedroom is Mia’s old one, upstairs in the attic—a place I spent many, many days. It’s nothing at all like it was back then, though. They painted his room blue, while Mia’s was white, and she had girly furniture while Benny’s is all boy. The only thing the same is the pictures on the wall. They’re not the exact same photos, but they’re similar in that many have me in them: me and him or me and his mom.
I lower him onto the floor, and he rushes toward the bed, barely visible by all the boxes of puzzles he’s just been gifted. “They’re 3D ones!” he exclaims, holding up one of the Eiffel Tower.
“That’s gnarly, dude. We’re going to have to spend some time on those.”
Benny nods, big brown eyes on mine. “Can I stay with you and Jamie tonight and start one?”
“We’ll have to talk to your parents,” I reply, making room on the bed to sit down. “Don’t you want to hang with Papa and Tammy?”
He shrugs. “You and Jamie are more fun!”
A knock on the door has us both looking toward it just as it pushes open. “Hey,” Mia says, and I can tell by her eyes alone that something’s wrong.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Benny, can you go down and help Papa with dinner?”
Benny groans, placing the puzzle back on the bed. “I guess,” he says, moping away.
I wait until he’s out of the room to ask, “What’s going on?”
“Jamie’s gone,” Mia whispers.
“What?” I stand quickly, tapping my pockets for my keys, but they’re not there. I never take them out of the car when I’m home or here because I never need to.
Mia shakes her head, hands up defensively. “Don’t panic,” she assures. “She said she left her phone at home and needed—”
I push past her, saying, “She had her phone in the car, Mia!”
She follows after me. “Don’t yell at me. I’m just—”
“I know,” I rush out. “I’m sorry.”
We race out of the house together, and Mia—she must know what I’m thinking because she’s already unlocking her car before I even get to it. I turn just in time to catch the keys she throws toward me. I’ve barely sat behind the wheel before she’s blocking the door. “Holden...” she whispers, her chest deflating with her heavy exhale.
Fear clogs my airways. “What?”
Mia’s almost in tears. Jesus Christ. “I don’t know what happened. She said nothing while she was here, but I’ve seen that look before. I feel like I’ve been where she was, and I can’t...”
“I have to go,” I mumble.
“Okay,” Mia nods, stepping back. “Just... please be gentle with her, Holden.”
I don’t take a breath until I pull into my driveway and see the RV still parked where it always is. I rush into the house and open the door, and it’s... it’s every single nightmare I’ve ever had rolled into one.
The drawers of my dresser are open, items of clothing strewn about, and Jamie’s standing beside the bed, dumping shit into the open duffle bag. “Jamie...”
She won’t even look at me.
Heart pounding against my ribs, my feet feel like lead as I walk over and stand beside her. “What the hell are you doing?” I ask, voice low, jaw locked.
“What does it look like?” she spits.
“Jamie!” I yell, and I know I shouldn’t. I try to take a calming breath, and then another. I grab her wrist, stop her from packing. “Please stop.”
“This is what I do, Holden. I run,” she murmurs, shaking out of my hold. “And you knew that.”
“What the fuck did I do?” I almost laugh because none of this makes sense. Not even a little bit.
“You didn’t do anything.” She moves around me to the bathroom, gathering all her shit in her arms before returning to dump them in the bag. She hasn’t even looked at me, and… and that’s what pushes me over the edge.
“What the fuck happened, Jamie!” I shout, grabbing her arm and spinning her to me.
She tugs out of my grasp. “Don’t fucking yell at me!” she shouts back, her shoulders square as she looks up at me, not a single hint of emotion in her glare.
“You’re out of your goddamn mind right now,” I growl.
“No.” She goes back to packing. “I was out of my goddamn mind to think this was ever going to work.”
I throw her bag across the room, hitting a wall. “Stop it!”
Without even flinching, she calmly walks over to the bag and starts replacing the items.
I grasp my hair, the air thick as I swallow it down, down, down. I look up at the ceiling begging for answers, knowing I’m minutes away from losing her. Losing everything. I whisper to no one, “What the fuck is happening right now?”
Jamie doesn’t respond, and when I look over at her, she’s zipping up the bag and standing to full height. Then, she looks over at the hooks beside the front door. “Don’t you dare,” I warn.
She doesn’t respond. She simply moves to the door, and the moment I see her reach for the RV keys, I rush forward, grab them before she can.
“Give them back!” she demands.
I open the door, step outside, raise my fist holding the keys, pull back, and… and Jamie screams—a blood-curdling sound that has my heart stopping, slowing the adrenaline pumping through my veins.
She falls to her knees beside me, her face going to her hands as she wails. “Why would you do that?!”
There are very few moments in my life I wish I could take back. Sometimes I wonder if I’d just been more aware the night of our attack, then maybe I could’ve saved her somehow. Not so much the physical beating she’d taken, but what happened afterward when she had to see me the way I was. I told her once that I was the lucky one, that I came out of it with nothing but physical scars that healed perfectly fine, but sometimes, I feel like she’s still there, and she doesn’t even realize it.
Truth is, I had no idea what that was like for her—seeing the person you love hurting and knowing you couldn’t do anything to help…
…until right this moment.
“Baby,” I whisper, squatting down beside her. I wrap her in my arms, tears welling in my eyes as I force myself to listen to her cries. “I’m sorry.”
Her shoulders shake as her sobs strengthen, her heartbreak echoing all around us.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat, because I don’t know what else to say.
After minutes of silence, she says through a sob, “Why would you throw them away?”
I pull back, open my palm out between us, and show her the keys. “I didn’t.”
Her tear-soaked eyes lift, and I catch her quivering lips with mine, tasting the saltiness of her tears. I break the kiss, but hold her tighter. “I don’t know what happened,” I whisper, wiping my eyes along her shoulder. I feel like I’m eighteen again, and I’m saying the exact same words, only I was the one being held…