I let him because I needed that too.
Even if sometimes—most of the times—I wished this wasn’t real, those moments when he held me in silence, in prayer, I was okay with it being real.
Then he jolted with the sizzling coming from the pan.
He moved me with a gentle touch to my hip that sent heat to my stomach and a chill to my bones. My body battled between its instinctive reaction toward Heath, and then its instinctive reaction toward touch.
I was tucked into his shoulder as he took over cooking.
“Baby, you shouldn’t be cooking this,” he said, voice hard.
“Why? You like steak.”
It was true. He loved steak. He told me this right after I’d told him I was a vegetarian. We’d laughed about it. It was pure, that laughter. Easy. I’d never appreciated just how rare and complex such easy laughter was.
It was lost to me now.
I might laugh again. Surely I would. But not like that.
Heath loved steak but hadn’t eaten it in the whole time he’d been here. Because most of my friends brought food. And my friends knew me. So all of the food was vegetarian, healthy plant-based.
Heath was the only one who’d eaten without complaint. Rosie and Lucy had protested loudly about the “health of their babies,” but they’d eaten it too.
For me.
I’d decided that Heath was not going to be doing that anymore.
“Baby, you spent an hour telling me, in detail, how a steak is produced, and what an animal has to go through for me to have my New York Strip,” he said.
“Yes, and I do not eat meat for that reason,” I told him as I moved from his arms to get plates and salad. I ate more out of habit than anything else, not hunger. I was never hungry. Most of the time I had to force the food down without retching.
But I did it.
Because Heath watched me like a hawk. As did the rest of them. Me not eating, me fading away to skin and bone—like I urged to do—would hurt them.
So I ate.
“I’m not going to deprive you of something you love because of my beliefs,” I continued, pouring us both wine.
Wine was something that I didn’t have to force down. I did have to force myself from chugging a bottle of it down in one sitting, though. It dulled everything beautifully.
Heath turned from where he’d gotten my eggplant bake from the oven, placing it down with an intense gaze.
Though all of his gazes were intense.
He placed both glasses of wine down and yanked me into his arms with a roughness that told me he’d forgotten about our unwritten touching rules.
I held my breath.
“Sunshine, the only way you’re gonna deprive me of something I love, the one thing that matters, is if you stop breathing,” he rasped. “And you’re not gonna do that. Not anytime soon. I’ll be making sure of that. So I’ll handle the eggplant and the cauliflower for the rest of my life, happily. What I won’t do is have you doing something that you hate. Like supporting the cruelty and brutality of the meat industry.”
I wanted to smile at the way he was parroting my words from six years ago back at me. My mouth might’ve twitched. But I was still trying to hold my breath at the contact.
Something moved in Heath’s eyes as if he were realizing just now that he’d pressed his beautiful and hard body against mine. His grip loosened and he stepped back, clutching his glass of wine and handing me mine.
“Well,” I said, exhaling. “That particular steak was grass-fed, organic, and the kindest version of murder I could find. So I’ll bear cooking it.”
Heath looked at me. Then he smiled.
And then he chuckled.
He didn’t laugh.
Because I suspected he didn’t have that ability anymore either, but he chuckled, and it was real.
I smiled in the face of such beauty. It was real too.
“What?” I asked, sitting down as he served the plates on my small dining table.
I learned that it was impossible to try and help Heath, and he liked doing little things like these, so I let him.
He placed the food down in front of me and kissed my forehead before sitting. “Only you, my Sunshine, could talk about the kindest version of murder in regards to my steak,” he said, still smiling. “But, baby, I don’t want you to just bear cooking. Or just bear life with me.” He lost his smile now. “I want you to find joy in it again. I’ll do anything and everything I can. Anything. And right now I know that means understanding that bearing things is all you can do. Just want you to know I’m gonna be making sure that changes. I’ll be here to make sure that changes.”
I blinked at him. This was the most he’d said about the elephant in the room since I’d come home.
He was making promises.
All kinds.
Kinds that were too heavy for my delicate emotional state.
He squeezed my hand. “Your eggplant is getting cold,” he said, voice soft. “And considering on what that shit tastes like hot, I’m thinking you better eat it now.”
That was his version of telling me I didn’t have to respond. Deal.
So I ate.
And so did he.
And we both tried to ignore the big elephant in the room.
And we both failed.
Three Days Later
I had planned on telling Heath to leave the night of the steak. It had been a big thing. I even had a speech rehearsed
But I couldn’t do it.
Not after the meal when he topped off my glass and did the dishes while I read. Especially not when he bought the bottle, a tub of my favorite ice cream then turned on our new favorite show—yes, we had a favorite—pulling me into his embrace and settling us in.
No, I couldn’t do it then.
And then I’d fallen asleep.
And I couldn’t do it the next night.
Or the next.
It had to be tonight.
Because this was getting bad.
Because it was getting permanent. We had a show. We had a routine. Everything I’d wanted before. Nothing I could have now.
I was working on getting my life back together. Or at least fractured and chaotic like it had been before. Of course it would never be like it was before, but I could make it look that way. And when it looked that way, people would stop having to babysit me on rotations, stop having to hide the pain in their faces, just stop all of it. I needed to get my life back to its version of together so everyone around me would be okay with getting their lives together too.
Rosie and Lucy were having babies. They needed to be excited about that. Yelling at their husbands for trying to make them drink decaffeinated coffee and stop shooting people.
I spent three days preparing.
Making calls.
Making plans.
Procrastinating the one big thing I needed to be doing.
And I was forcing myself to do it today.
My stomach was roiling when Heath walked in the door, when his shoulders both sagged and tightened, when his eyes fastened on mine. When my soul relaxed, just the tiniest bit when he did.
“We need to talk,” I said before he could say “baby” in that soft, rough tone of his and melt my resolve.
He was instantly on guard.
Not that he wasn’t always.
But he was more so now. Because he was Heath and he saw most things in other people and everything in me.
Almost everything.