“What?” I jerked back, feeling like I had been punched in the gut, all the air leaving my body. “No, she hasn’t.”
“You think I’d be here otherwise? Jesus, Mason, it took everything I had to come here,” she retorted. “I have seen her go through loss, be crippled by grief and agony. But this is worse.”
“Worse?”
“At least with Uncle Ben, you could see the emotion. Even if she faked her smiles and pretended to laugh, she had something still in her trying to survive.” Addison choked up. “There is nothing now. She goes to work, to the shelter, and home. The animals don’t even bring her much joy. There is nothing behind her eyes. She’s there, but she isn’t alive.”
Shit if that didn’t sound like me. Two lives destroyed by a single heart.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not the person to help.”
“Why not?” she wailed. “I know you’re in love with her too.”
I could think of no defense, no rebuttal, because it was true, but it didn’t change anything.
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You don’t get it!” I practically roared. “We were fighting a losing battle anyway. Everything is against us. Even time. But now?” I shook my head. “I can’t ever trust when she looks at me she won’t see him.” I slapped my hand on my heart. “It was never me she wanted, that somehow it was always about him. She found her way back to him because HE is the love of her life, not ME.”
Tears fell down Addison’s face, her head dropping.
I tucked back my ire, bringing my voice back down. “I can’t live my life in the shadow of someone else.”
Addison sniffed, her hand wiping at her eyes, making me feel even more like an asshole.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered.
She sucked in a shaky breath, taking a step back.
“You’re wrong, you know.” Her voice barely came out a whisper.
“About?”
“You wouldn’t be living in his shadow.” She swallowed. “He’d be living in yours. I think it was always you she was supposed to be with. You were her future. The love of her life. It was my uncle who gave you guys the chance to have it.” Addison retreated to the exit. “So, don’t you dare waste it.” She darted out of my garage, disappearing back down the street.
Days or minutes passed; I didn’t know. My guts were strewn over the floor, my soul gutted, my mind whirling with Addison’s declarations.
My ears drummed with my pulse, like my heart was trying to communicate with me. My palm slid over my left pec, feeling the pounding of the organ. From tests, the surgeon had been nervous my immune system wouldn’t accept the foreign object, rejecting the heart and putting me back at square one. Which we all knew would have been the end for me.
I didn’t. My body adapted to it faster than they thought, taking it on as though it was always supposed to be there.
Maybe it was.
Maybe instead of my enemy, Ben Roberts was my ally. The man who gave me a chance at a future he could no longer have, pushing me to finish the story.
A life loving the same woman.
Chapter 37
Emery
“I’m starting an intervention.”
I peered up from blankly staring at the table. Marcie dropped down on the other side of me, a cup of macaroni and cheese steaming in her hand.
“Think you need more than one person to have an intervention,” I replied, poking at my untouched lunch in front of me.
“Girl, the whole office would join me. And I’m sure if I called your sister, she’d be right over.”
Probably true.
“It would take Harper at least four hours to get here. I’d already be on the run by then.”
Marcie shot me a look, digging into her pasta. “She went home?”
“A week ago. She has a job and life to get back to.” I actually had to push her into her car, forcing her to leave. I outright lied and said I was fine. I went to work, paid my bills, and dressed myself. A fully functional adult.
Barely.
Culture praised people for “being strong,” for smiling through a devastating event, for keeping their chin up and being remarkable through horror. It was only so society didn’t feel uncomfortable. To have to acknowledge someone else’s pain, to take it on and feel it. We lived in a world where someone would ask you how you were, but they really didn’t want to know, especially the truth. The pressure to be “fine” tripled the weight on your shoulders to keep everyone else comfortable when you didn’t feel strong or brave. You wanted to be home under the covers, hoping sleep could numb you for a while longer. Except I was numb all the time. I had cried my tears and screamed in anger. I had nothing left to give.
My blasé state ticked Alisa off again when she called last night.
“I know you were seeing that boy,” she hissed in my ear. “What kind of person are you? How could you do this? He’s a child, Emery! I can’t even imagine what Ben would think. He’d be disgusted.”
Good thing Ben won’t ever know.
“Alisa…” I heard John in the background, a warning in his voice.
“No, John. This is unacceptable,” she screamed into the phone. “You were married to our son. And moments after his death, you’re jumping in bed with not only a child but the kid who has Ben’s heart? How do you live with yourself?”
Moments after? I mourned and grieved Ben for over three years, and honestly, without Mason, I probably still would be. I was chastised if I didn’t move on and punished if I did.
“I told Ben you were not the right girl for him, that you were low bred, but he didn’t listen to me. He was set on marrying you.”
“Alisa!” John yelled louder, but she didn’t pay him any attention.
“I guess it’s good he’s gone, so he doesn’t have to see what a manipulative little whore you are.” she shrieked before hanging up on me.
John called me ten minutes later to apologize, telling me she was just hurting and lashing out. They still wanted me in their life, which was a lie.
Not even John wanted the constant reminder of his son’s widow, especially now they knew I had been with someone else. I was no longer the person who could sit and reminisce for hours about Ben, my life with him staying frozen in time.
“Emery?” Marcie waved her hand in my face, waking me out of my stupor and fighting with myself. “Should I schedule Mason for a cleaning so you two can work it out?” She tried to tease, but at my flinch, her face softened. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I absently rubbed at the pain in my chest. “I need to move on, right? Maybe I should go out with Daniel.” He had been slyly hinting again, he probably sensed my vulnerability.
“I will kill you.” Marcie stabbed her fork in her pasta. “First, you don’t even like him more than a friend, and he likes you too much, so don’t do that to him. He doesn’t deserve it.” She tapped her finger on the table. “And second, I’ve seen you with Mason. Girl, I’m telling you, he is what the rest of us search our whole lives for. Don’t give up on it so easily.”
“Easily?” I sputtered, a streak of fury striking so fast I had to grip the table. “You think any of this has been easy?”