What would Maddie think when she saw him? She would probably get down on her knees and thank the heavens he’d made the choice he’d made. He knew damn well she still resented him for leaving her. That would go away if she knew how easily he’d broken. She would be happy he’d spared her the horrors of being chained to him.
He’d played the encounter out in his head a thousand times. She would be gorgeous and happy. She would smile at him, but this time it would be the kind of smile someone gave a suffering creature to show solidarity and sympathy. She would ask him how he was doing and he would say what he always said. As good as can be.
And then she would walk away and go back to changing the world. He would sit here and watch the world pass him by.
“Anything I can get you, son?” His mother had a red plastic cup in her hand, likely filled with lemonade or whatever punch she’d made. “Aunt Betty brought her seven-layer dip and deviled eggs, though she and Bobbie are arguing over whether to call them spiced eggs. I swear that new church Bobbie’s going to takes things way too seriously. She brought an angel food cake to balance out Marian’s devil’s food cupcakes.”
“I’m fine.” The words were said with a calculated uptick of his lips. He’d practiced it in the mirror, a necessary mask to help him get through the next few weeks until he could get back to his real life.
His real life was Special Forces and whatever dangerous assignment he could get. A man had visited him while he was in the hospital. A man who hadn’t introduced himself, merely asked him the same questions his superiors had and then gone deeper.
At the end of the interview the man had promised if he came back, there would be a job for him on his team.
His CIA team.
It felt like a good way to bury all the pain. It might be a good way to bury himself entirely.
His mother sniffled, but obviously tried to cover her frustration with him. “All right, then. You should know that Angie’s made your favorite enchiladas. I hope you can eat some. Oh, there’s Evelyn. I should go say hello.”
He didn’t want enchiladas. He wanted to see Maddie, wanted to know exactly how far out of reach she was now. When he’d been in high school he’d known she was too smart, too talented to end up saddled with him for life. Oh, it hadn’t stopped him from falling crazy in love with her or from having two great years with her. But when she’d gotten into Yale…
He wanted to see how happy she was so he could know he’d done one good thing.
The door came open again but it was only the youngest of his sisters.
He had five. His parents had kept trying until they’d had the son they’d wanted so desperately. Not that they didn’t love all their kids, but they’d wanted a son, too.
How disappointed would they be when they realized he wasn’t good enough to carry on the family name?
He didn’t think he would live long enough to carry on anything at all.
Angie’s face was flushed, and he hoped she hadn’t been crying. Everyone seemed to be crying these days. Not in front of him, of course. They did it behind closed doors and pretended everything was fine and great, and hey, did he need anything?
“Did you remember to take your meds?” His father was standing there with a bottle of pills in his hand. “The doc was hoping you would start on them this week, but I didn’t see you take them this morning.”
He reached out and grabbed the pills from his dad’s hand. “I’ll take them when I’m ready.”
“They take a while to work.” His father adjusted his glasses. “I’ve been reading up on them. It might take a while to adjust, and they might have to play around to get to the right dose. I was hoping you could make sure the dose is right before you think about going back.”
“Dad, I really need some space.”
He’d learned those were the magic words. He said them and his family backed off.
“All right. Just know we’re here for you.” His father stepped away.
Deke stared down at the antidepressants the doctor had prescribed. He wasn’t that guy, right? He didn’t need a pill. He needed to man up and get through it.
Or get back to work and let the inevitable play out.
He pocketed the pills. Why his father thought he should bring them to a birthday party he had no idea. They were perfectly happy sitting in the bathroom completely unused.
He sat back, listening to the conversations going on around him. They talked about soccer practices and whether the 49ers had what it would take to get to the playoffs. They complained about health conditions he didn’t recognize but was probably going to know too much about if he kept listening in because his elderly relatives could really overshare.
None of it touched him. Once he would have thrown himself into tales of Uncle Earnest’s battle with gout and offered to walk Clementine’s service dog who needed way more actual service than Clem. He would have seen the surreal humor in all of it.
Now he felt nothing.
“Hey, Deke. I need you to feed Nicholas.” Angie set the baby carrier on the table along with a bottle. She quickly had his nephew out of the car seat, and the little thing was already wriggling.
She wanted him to what?
He mentally corrected his previous thoughts. Panic. He could feel some panic. It pushed through the numbness and made him remember bad things could still happen to him. “Ang, go ask Mom. I haven’t fed a baby before.”
“Mom is trying to deal with cousin Christine, who is crying because someone criticized her meatballs and now she’s sure she’ll never find a husband,” Angie countered. “You know how these things go. It’s chaos.”
It was, but chaos could be fun. If he was the man he’d been before, he would be playing his devil’s food cupcake aunt off the angel food one to see how much he could eat before they realized what he was doing. But he wasn’t that man anymore. He was the man who had no idea how to feed a kid he couldn’t toss a sandwich at. “I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s easy. You shove the nipple end into his mouth. I know you know what a nipple looks like. I remember your high school years,” she said with a no-nonsense practicality he remembered but hadn’t seen from her since he’d gotten home. Angie had been his closest sister and the one who always let him know when he was being a moron. Now she was one of the ones who cried a lot because she didn’t know what to do with him. “Honestly, get it anywhere close and he’ll take care of things.”
She passed him over so quickly he had no choice but to hold the kid. Or he would drop him, and he couldn’t do that. Damn. She pressed the bottle into his hand and stepped back.
He couldn’t do this. What the hell? “Angie, I need some space.”
He used his magic, get-out-of-jail-free-card words.
His sister put her hands on her hips and looked so much like their mom he almost laughed. “And I need to get Grandma’s cake fixed because some dumbass didn’t keep the box flat and now I’ve got icing roses that look like they exploded. Do you want to fix that? Or sit there and feed a hungry baby? I will warn you that Janine took a class at the hobby store and thinks she knows how to fix things. She won’t touch the cake herself because she doesn’t want to take the blame. But she has no problem bossing me around. Which one, Deke? Which one sounds like more fun?”