“I don’t feel sweet.”
I lean down to kiss her, just once, a small peck, but keep my nose touching hers. “Still taste sweet,” I whisper against her lips. All I’m rewarded with is a small smile that doesn’t last long. “I know things are off right now, but give it time. Everything will be better. I promise.”
“You’re making a lot of promises,” she says and her voice is soft, low, and full of doubt. Doubt that wouldn’t be there if we were as good as she keeps saying we are.
“And I aim to keep every one of them, Babygirl.” That nickname does it every time. Her eyes light up, her lips turn up, everything goes up and everything is better when I call her Babygirl.
It’s only a flicker though and then she falls back into this state she’s in… It drives me crazy.
“Tell me what’s wrong. Tell me now,” I demand.
“I just really want to go back to what we were. What we had, you know?” she asks me and the sincerity, the desperation is too much. Her voice cracks and she closes her eyes as she adds, “Can we just pretend to go back and never go through all of this?” She opens her eyes when I don’t answer and says, “I just want to go back to the very beginning. Back to you being on my porch steps.”
“I never left.” I answer her with all that I have. If that’s what she wants, she can have it and more. There’s an emptiness that she used to fill. Even when I didn’t have her, I could still feel her there. She’s slipping again. I can feel it but I don’t know why.
Her response is somber as she sets down the glass in her hand. “Right, I’m the one who fucked that up.”
“Hey, don’t do that. I’m just saying, I never stopped…” I trail off although the words loving you are there. Right there, but I still can’t say it. Not when I feel like there’s something between us and I don’t know what it is. “I was always yours,” I stress. “Whatever else I am in this life won’t ever hold a candle to that flame. I’m nothing if you’re not there, so I pretend you’re waiting for me at that door. It’s how I got through it and I never left. In my head I was always there, so close to seeing you again.”
I don’t anticipate her crying. She’s not one to be so emotional but the last few days have been heavy and I wish I could find a way to make it right. Fuck, I’m trying. I’m trying to hold us together and failing. As quickly as I can, I wrap my arm around her but she pulls back, resisting me.
Her words are muffled angrily. “You can’t say things like that.”
“Like what?” What the fuck did I do?
“Like your only good side is me, and that you being with me is…”
“What’s wrong with that?” The beer bottle clanks on the coffee table as I set it down. It’s exasperating; I don’t even know why we’re fighting right now. We should be good. She keeps saying we are but we aren’t.
“You aren’t leaving me, right? Because it sure as hell feels like you are.” Panic stricken. As I sit here, I am panic stricken and helpless. When did I become so helpless?
“I asked you to hold me until the end, right?” she asks and her voice gets tight. “That’s all I want. It’s my only wish right now. I just want you to hold me.”
“Then why are you so sad? I’ve never seen you like this. I can feel that things aren’t right.”
She falls forward, her head in her hands and this time when I try to hold her, she lets me. Something is off. Something’s so wrong and I can feel it. I know there’s something she’s hiding.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” I whisper and then add, “I’ll fix it. I promise.”
“I just want you to hold me, Seth.”
“I’m so fucking sorry,” I tell her with a ragged voice. I can’t control the emotion inside of me. It’s screaming that I’m losing her even though she’s telling me the opposite. “What can I do? Just tell me; I’ll do it.”
Seeing her like this wrecks me. She’s not supposed to be sad like this and broken. “I hate myself for putting you through this.”
“It’s not your fault,” she says and shakes her head, even as the tears fall.
“It is my fault. It’s all my fault and I’m so damn sorry.”
She does the opposite of what I expect. She climbs into my lap and holds me. Her arms are around my neck and her head rests in the crook of it. “I love you, Seth King. I love you.”
Hearing her whisper that calms me, but only slightly. So long as she’s hurting, I won’t be all right and it only forces the aggression to build.
“With nothing to fix, what can I do?”
“Just hold me.”
My phone goes off at fucking 4:00 a.m. Laura’s asleep in the crook of my arm and the insistent buzzing won’t stop. My eyes are burning from the lack of sleep, but I scrub them with one hand as I slip Laura onto her pillow. She wouldn’t let go of me. She won’t tell me anything else either.
I’ve never felt so helpless with her.
I’m groggy as fuck and I can barely see as I make my way out of the bedroom and answer the phone although I don’t actually listen to whoever’s on the other end yet.
It’s pitch black in my hallway but the second I get to the living room, the lights from the porch make getting to the kitchen counter easy enough. I lean on it and hear the muted “You there?” from the other end of the line.
“I’m here,” I breathe into the phone, finally lifting it to my ear.
“Are you listening?”
“I am now,” I answer Declan and take in a deep inhale, my eyes still half lidded as I lean against the counter. “What’s going on?”
“You said Walsh told you he looked into you and Laura?” he questions.
“Yeah.” I perk up slightly at Declan’s tone, but I need strong black coffee if I’m going to make it through this. “What’s going on?” It’s hard to shut off the thoughts about Laura and just focus. I can’t get over this nagging feeling that everything is wrong.
“There’s no alert, Seth.” My eyes open at what Declan just told me, staring at the coffee maker with the mug in my hand.
“Walsh said he didn’t know about Laura and me until recently.” I repeat the conflict out loud, “But you don’t have an alert that he searched my name?”
“Right.” He adds before I can ask, “Or Laura’s.”
“So go farther back with the dates on the system.”
“I did that already. I searched for a month. Bethany was curious about you, by the way.”
That part doesn’t strike me as odd. I bet she hates me for putting Laura through all of this too. So long as she doesn’t tear her away from me, she can hate me all she wants. That makes two of us.
“Check his work computers. The computers that aren’t registered. Maybe it looks like someone else.”
“No. No one looked up Laura other than Bethany until Laura was arrested. Not a soul. I wanted to do the search to see if we got any hits. There’s no search for her or any information regarding you that included her.” I’m silent, still trying to process what all this means and Declan keeps talking.