Wes didn’t hear the rest because he was too busy watching Bethany’s face and experiencing the slow erosion inside of his chest. And he couldn’t help but want to grab Bethany by the shoulders and shake her. Don’t fucking shut down on me now when I need you. It was too late, though. He could see that much clearly. Her brittle smile and distant expression had already moved into place, a mask to hide how she really felt about this failure.
No, not a failure. A setback.
Was there even the slightest chance he could make her see it like that? Did he even have the energy when his own disappointment was thick enough to choke him?
“Thank you,” Bethany said woodenly, as she closed the door behind Paula. They both stood there, but she was unable to make even the barest eye contact with Wes.
Humiliation ravaged her skin like fire ants.
Really, I find the home . . . cold.
The same had been said about her before by the men she put on ice, when they tried to get too close. All because she’d dreaded letting them in, all the way in, and having them come to that conclusion after meeting the real Bethany. That she was nothing more than an attractive package.
This home was an extension of her, wasn’t it? She’d put her heart and soul into every single touch, floor to ceiling. And it had been deemed cold.
All she could think to do now was minimize the pain of such a stark failure. She’d fooled Wes and Laura into believing she was the warm, settling-down type. But this had to prove what she’d been afraid of all along. She wasn’t the total package. She was an empty box dressed up in gift wrap.
“Don’t do this, Bethany.” She barely heard Wes’s rasped plea over the roaring in her ears. “Please.”
“Don’t do what?” she asked, dazedly.
“First of all, fucking look at me.” Oh God, she was. She was looking at this man she loved and he looked so defeated. She’d never seen him that way before, not even when she’d fired him. This was her fault. They’d cobbled together this wild idea that they could be a makeshift family and she’d been the wrong fit. What good was being a perfectionist if she couldn’t be perfect when it really counted? “Look . . . we’ll appeal it—”
“No, I . . . I mean, not here again. Obviously moving her . . . a-and you here was a bad choice.” She flung a shaky hand out to indicate the house. “It’s not for kids. Anyone can see that. This whole thing was crazy. It was crazy.”
“It wasn’t crazy. Stop saying that.” He caught the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “You’re not the only one who got punched in the gut here. I can be strong for both of us, but sometimes I need help. So I need you to keep it together for me right now.”
“I am keeping it together,” she said, making a break for the kitchen on wobbly legs. She just had to get away from the knowledge in his eyes. Bethany took a bottle of water out of the fridge, uncapped it, and took a hasty sip, desperately trying to control the chaos of her thoughts. The cool water sliding down her throat did nothing to help the sting of defeat, though.
“Bethany—”
“It’s fine. We tried to fool them into thinking I was a mommy or some . . . happy homemaker, but I’m not. I’m not warm and welcoming. I never will be. I’m not even sure I want to be.” Her words tripped over themselves. “And now you just have to adjust.”
“I have to adjust. Just like that it’s no longer we.”
“Yup.” She scoffed. “You would have been better off with almost anyone else.”
His laughter was low and humorless. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”
With foreboding buzzing in her fingertips, she slowly set down the bottle of water. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you were hunting for a flaw in what we’ve got here. A flaw in yourself. A flaw in us. So here you go, Bethany. Now you’ve got your excuse to cut and run.”
“I wasn’t looking for an excuse—”
“Bullshit.” He dropped a fist onto the kitchen island. “You’re pushing me away to minimize your own damage. And I can’t talk you back from the edge every time. Sometimes I’m standing on it, too.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, stricken. “I just think our expectations for this relationship got too high, too fast, and this is proof.” Oh God, she hated herself for every word coming out of her mouth, but she could only push, push until he finally left her alone where she could be mortified at her failure in peace. That woman saw right through me to the fraud beneath. “You’ll have a better chance without me.”
Wes appeared to be searching for patience, but he visibly couldn’t find any. He raked a hand through his hair, opened his mouth to say something and closed it again. She almost got down on her knees and apologized for every single word she’d just said. Almost begged him to pretend the last five minutes never happened. After all, they could fix the house and make it warmer for Laura. She knew enough from reading over Wes’s shoulder during the last week that unless the child was in danger in the home, the state wouldn’t take her away and they could repair the problem. Appeal the decision.
But in that moment, she genuinely wondered if Wes could do better alone. All her efforts to make this place homey had been totally lacking—and there was no escaping that fact. It had just been confirmed.
“We’ll be out of your hair as soon as possible,” Wes said, turning and leaving the kitchen.
A hundred-pound weight dropped in Bethany’s stomach. “Wait,” she wheezed, knocking the bottle of water off the counter. Now? All of this was happening now? She’d reacted first without thinking through the consequences. Wes was supposed to stop her from spinning out, wasn’t he? How had it gotten this far? “No. You don’t have to leave.”
Wes scooped his sleeping niece off the couch, stopping just before the hallway. “Yeah, I think we do.” He looked down at Laura. “I’ll let her sleep for now, but we’ll be out in the morning.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Bethany creaked down the hallway of Project Doomsday, dragging her fingertips along the wall. She’d traded places with the house. This morning, it had been a hollow vessel while she’d been so full of new life and hope. Now she was the empty one and the house was full of furniture waiting to be arranged.
After Wes had closed himself in his room, she’d returned to the jobsite alone, for once devoid of her usual excitement over that final stage of bringing a space to life. Everything was wrapped in plastic, placed in the appropriate room, but all four of her limbs were deadweights, so how those objects would find their way to the correct corners and angles, she had no idea.
An exhale stole the remaining energy in Bethany’s body, sending her sliding sideways down the wall of the hallway and leaving her there in a heap.
What did you do?
She’d asked herself the same question ninety times since walking on unsteady legs out of her house and driving like a zombie across town. The answer was still hovering somewhere outside the reach of her consciousness, mostly because grasping anything beyond the pain of losing Wes was too hard.
A fresh wave of misery rose over her and she shivered.