Present Day, Late September
Remnants of our devastation simmered just beneath the surface of my skin. A constant, nagging reminder of what I had lost. I’d do anything to purge them from my mind. Yet, at the same time, I clung to them. I clung to the memories that haunted my heart because they somehow comforted me. Those months that I’d been favored enough to spend in Elizabeth’s arms, with Lizzie by my side, those days we’d laughed and loved as we’d lost ourselves in expectation—I wanted to hang onto them.
God, I wanted to hang onto Elizabeth.
I rammed the heels of my hands in my eyes.
Fuck.
This wasn’t the life we were supposed to be living. I just didn’t know how to get through to her, how to break through the pain. How could I make her see?
The residual of last night pounded my head, spun with the overwhelming urge that burned inside to make this right. I thought I finally had.
I was so wrong.
The traffic light turned green, and I accelerated as I traveled the seven-point-three miles to Elizabeth’s house.
Bitter laughter bounced around the cab of my car.
Seven-point-three miles.
When I came to San Diego more than a year ago and found out just how close Elizabeth and Lizzie lived to me, the short distance had seemed like an affirmation that everything was as it should be. Like maybe things had shifted as they slowly aligned. Like if I just reached out, I’d be close enough to hold Lizzie and Elizabeth in the safety of my arms. That I’d be able to protect them. Love them.
Maybe I was a fool to think that after everything I’d done, I could somehow deserve what Elizabeth had promised.
Because now I knew better.
Seven-point-three miles was a greater distance than I could ever fathom.
God.
Remorse shook me as I glanced in the mirror and changed lanes. We’d come so close to making it. Only one day and Elizabeth would have been my wife. Then one brutal lash of fate had cut us deep. Shattered us in a way that neither of us could have anticipated. That wound had festered. Rotted and decayed. Built and burned until it’d erupted. Elizabeth had cut me from her life just as harshly as the trauma had struck her down.
But it wasn’t as if I weren’t broken, too.
I crossed those impenetrable miles. Steadily my heart began to pound harder and faster with each second that passed by. Not with the stirring of hope as it’d done all those months when I’d first returned, when I’d done everything I could to make amends for the greatest mistake I’d ever made. Definitely not like it’d done with the overpowering thrill of excitement I’d had when I traveled here after the modest house had become my home.
Now it thudded with the deepest resonance of pain.
On a heavy sigh, I made a left into the quiet neighborhood. I pulled into Elizabeth’s driveway, killed the engine, and forced myself to climb out. A cloak of early morning fog sat like an oppressive weight in the gray sky, blanketing me in a heaviness I couldn’t escape, even if the sun were to somehow manage to shine. In disinclination, I stuffed my hands in my pants pockets and plodded up her sidewalk to the front door. Drawing in a deep breath, I rapt twice on the door, then turned to study the loose threads of the tattered and worn welcome rug placed strategically in front of Elizabeth’s door.
Welcome.
Right.
Nerves wound me tight, a vise constricting the base of my throat. I fought to put up those walls of protection, desperate to guard my heart against what I would find inside.
For three months it’d been like this. But there was no getting used to it. I mean, God, I hadn’t gotten over Elizabeth in those six years I’d been away. There had been absolutely nothing I could do to cover up the love I had for her, no desires or goals or bodies dense enough to bury the need that had consumed me since the first time I’d glimpsed her. She’d stolen something from me that I’d never gotten back, something she kept hidden deep beneath the surface in places I doubted either of us could see, in places neither of us could define.
Did I really think I’d be able to strip her from my spirit now?
Metal scraped as the deadbolt was set free. The door slowly swung open to reveal Elizabeth standing there.
Unable to stop myself, my eyes sought out the one. The one who owned me, heart and soul. Looking at her crushed me anew. It was a punch straight to the gut, hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.
No. There wasn’t a chance in hell I would ever stop loving this woman.
She was thin. Too thin, her cheeks sunken and her arms frail, her skin ashen and pale. But it was the warmth that had been snubbed from her eyes that absolutely killed me.
Broken.
There was no other way to describe her.
Every part of me ached to step across the threshold, to take her in my arms and promise her that I would somehow help her heal, that in time, it really would be okay, and that one day, it wouldn’t hurt so bad.
But I had no fucking idea how to gather the scattered pieces, no clue how to put her back together.
For a fleeting moment, my eyes locked with hers, and I thought maybe I glimpsed it, a transient flicker of her own longing, like maybe she was wishing I was strong enough to save her, too.
In clear discomfort, Elizabeth dropped her gaze and fidgeted as she looked to the floor. “Lizzie, honey.” Her voice was weak. “Your daddy is here.”
“Coming!” Lizzie called back from upstairs. The muted echoes of my child’s movements in her room above filtered down to where I waited for her in the entryway below.
I shifted in the unease, attempting to study Elizabeth from where I pretended my focus was on my shoes. Gauging her, I tried to get some sense of whether she was really okay.
What a ridiculous notion. Okay. What did that even mean? Because okay in itself seemed impossible. Unattainable. She was most definitely not okay.
Fuck.
And neither was I. Not even close.
I knew she could feel me, the severity of my hidden stare, even when I was doing my best to conceal it beneath the suffocating tension that ricocheted between us every single time we were in the other’s presence. She tucked her chin deeper as if she could deflect my concern, curled and clenched her hands.
God, seeing her engagement ring on her left hand killed me.
I wanted to shake her. To beg her to snap out of it.
To plead with her to open her eyes and see. To remember exactly why she’d allowed me to place that ring there in the first place. I wanted to demand to know why she didn’t take it off.
But me pushing her was exactly what had cast the fatal stone, what had driven the last nail into splintering wood. The fracture between us was so profound, the pressure so intense, there was nothing we could do to stop the break. A separation of hearts when they just wouldn’t hold.
My gaze jerked upward when I heard footsteps above. Lizzie ran out of her room. She bounded downstairs, her inky black hair set free. Soft wisps and bangs framed that precious face. Her backpack bounced on her shoulders with each urgent step.
The pain in my heart ebbed. Just a fraction. But it was there.
This little girl was my light.
She smiled when she hit the last stair and hopped down into the foyer.
“Morning, Daddy.” She smiled through her haste.
“Good morning, princess. How’s my baby girl this morning?”
“I’m good, Daddy. I’m all ready for school and my backpack is all full, too,” she said with a distinct sense of pride and a resolute nod of her head.
“How about your lunch, sweetheart?” Elizabeth asked.
“I already packed it, Mommy. I’m all ready to go.”
“Well, I do believe you’re forgetting something, Lizzie,” I said, forcing myself to find a smile, to continue to show her how much I loved her.
Lizzie frowned, her little nose scrunched up in question. “What?”
“My hug, you silly girl.”
A roll of giggles escaped her, and she rushed in to hug me around the waist. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, leaned down to bury my nose in her hair, breathed her in.
When she started first grade a few weeks ago, she told me she was too big for me to hold her anymore.
God, did I ever disagree.
All I wanted was to pick her up so I could feel the weight of my daughter in my arms.
The way she was squeezing me now, I thought maybe she was feeling the same way, too.
“I missed you so much, Daddy,” she finally whispered, all the levity from before gone, replaced with the gravity of our situation.
“I missed you, too, sweetheart. More than you could ever know.”
She’d matured so much. The child had to have grown at least three inches over the summer. But where that maturity was really noticeable was in her expressions. Her cheekbones were becoming more prominent as the soft roundness of her chubby cheeks slowly faded away, as that baby face gave way to a little girl’s.
And her eyes. The vast innocence that had swum in their depths had been erased in time, wiped out by circumstances no child should ever have to face.
“I think I’m going to need one of those, too, Lizzie,” Elizabeth said with a tip of her head. Her smile was as forced as mine.
When we were with Lizzie, Elizabeth and I did our best to pretend as if everything was fine. It was the worst kind of deceit. The child had been affected just as severely as we had been, even if she hadn’t been able to fully grasp the meaning. She only knew that the life we’d finally attained had been destroyed, that for six weeks, there’d been so much torment filling the walls of this little house, none of us could breathe.
And then she’d known her daddy had left.
Her sixth birthday had come with such joy. We had a party just as big as the one I first attended the year before, although this one had been without all the unease and tension that had tarnished her fifth birthday party. None of that had existed on her sixth. Our family had been whole. Complete.
A week later, the security she found within the walls of that home had been crushed.
There was no doubt all of this had rocked her.
I glanced at the delicate gold ring she wore around her finger, the one Elizabeth and I had given her the night after I’d proposed to Elizabeth.
The commitment we had made to Lizzie was one we refused to break. No matter what happened between us, Lizzie would always know she was adored by both her mother and father. There was no fighting whether Lizzie would still be a part of my life. It’d come without question.
Now, it was just Elizabeth and I floundering, trying to figure out how to make all of this work.
Work.
Agony constricted every cell in my body, as if the life were being squeezed out of me, a slow asphyxiation. It was hard to comprehend how much standing here truly hurt. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. It was excruciating.
Nothing about this worked.
We were barely surviving, just fumbling through the days.
And all of them were spent missing my girls.
Lizzie turned and mashed herself to Elizabeth. Elizabeth ran her fingers through Lizzie’s hair and placed a tender kiss on the crown of her head.
“I’ll be there to pick you up after school,” she promised as she stepped back to free Lizzie from her hold.
“Okay, Mommy.”
I rubbed at the sore spot on my chest, wishing there was some way to soothe it. Hide it. Cover it. But there was no relief found in this miserable situation. How could there be? Because all I wanted were the two girls standing in front of me, and having only one of them for meager minutes a day did nothing to fill up the aching void.
Picking Lizzie up every morning for school took me to my highest high while it simultaneously knocked me to my lowest low.
Those precious moments with her were the only thing in this lonely life that I cherished. But leaving her there at the school entrance, watching her hair swish along her back as she disappeared through the gate, was the worst kind of reminder of what I was missing.
Warily, I glanced at Elizabeth. The woman I loved. The one who wouldn’t even spare me a glance.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “We’d better get going or you’ll be late for school,” I coaxed as I brushed my fingers along Lizzie’s shoulder.
She nodded, the sweet smile making a resurgence. It was as if the child didn’t know how to act, the joy that lived deep within her, that natural goodness vying to make its way out while the sorrow that had taken over our lives fought to keep it down.
“Bye, Mommy,” she called behind her as she turned and walked away.
I took her hand and led her down the sidewalk. The door quietly clicked shut behind us.
Lizzie climbed into her spot in the backseat of my car, tossing her backpack onto the seat beside her before she buckled herself into her booster.
I situated myself in the driver’s seat, put my car in reverse, and glanced at my little girl through the rearview mirror as I backed out of the driveway.
I hadn’t seen her since I’d dropped her back at her mother’s on Saturday morning after she spent Friday night with me at my condo. The weekends without Lizzie were the worst.
“How was your weekend, princess?”
Lizzie shrugged a little and trained her attention out the window. “Okay, I guess,” she said, her voice low, woven with despondence.
I put the car in drive and headed toward her school. Maybe it was completely out of the way, an irrational chore to travel all this way to drive her a mile to her school every morning. I didn’t care. I needed this time with her, this connection that promised I was still an integral part of her life.
“Just okay?” I prodded, struggling to keep my voice from cracking. I hated seeing her this way. Her mood constantly fluctuated, up and down, back and forth, hints of my sweet baby girl emerging then receding just as quickly.
“I was just bored. Uncle Maffew and Auntie Natalie didn’t come over all weekend, and Mommy didn’t want to go to the beach,” she almost pouted. She paused, grimaced as she continued on, seemingly grasping for the good things that did transpire over the days we’d been apart. “Mommy did play with me a little bit, but then she got tired and took a nap. And she let me pick out dinner and I helped her make it, too.” She smiled a little as her attention flitted up to meet mine in the mirror. “I got lots of time to play with my new dolls you got me, Daddy. And I got my dollhouse all set up.”
We’d gone shopping Friday night, searching out a dining room set for her prized dollhouse that was tucked in the corner of her room. We’d ended up with a tiny dining room set, and I couldn’t say no when Lizzie had asked me to add two new members to the ever-growing miniature family. Lately Lizzie seemed to spend more time lost in the sanctuary of their world than in her own.
Sorrow swamped me, because I could feel my daughter’s own. I hated it. I would do anything to be able to take it away.
“That doesn’t sound so bad.” I made a feeble attempt at encouraging her.
She sighed, slumped her chin in her hand as she rested her forehead on the window, her attention focused on the blur of the passing street. “I just don’t know why you can’t sleep at our house. It’s better when you’re there, Daddy.”
Her words cut right through me. I fought to gather myself, to keep it under control, because I knew I had to stay strong for my little girl.
I forced myself to speak. “We already talked about why I can’t right now.”
The problem was all of those reasons had come with little conviction. I didn’t believe them myself.
“Just tell Mommy you’re sorry,” she begged quietly. I heard the tears building in the vulnerability that wound its way into her angel voice.
God.
How was I going to get through another conversation like this? We had them often, and I’d give just about anything to offer her a different answer, to come up with a different result.
I wanted one myself.
Sighing heavily, I scrubbed my palm over my face, blinked as I tried to focus ahead through the sorrowful haze that clouded my vision.
“It’s not that simple, Lizzie.” God, how much did I wish it was.
Silence hovered in the car before she finally spoke again. “Your voice was so loud, Daddy. You made Mommy cry.” Her words came as a whisper, a memory that so clearly traumatized my little girl.
That day had been the first emotion I’d seen from Elizabeth in weeks. It’d been charged, the moment when Elizabeth had finally broken and I’d cracked.
I’d said things I never should have.
But Elizabeth had said them, too.
“I hate that you heard that, Lizzie, but sometimes grown-ups have fights and we raise our voices. None of that was directed at you.”
“But then you left,” she countered. “You’re supposed to say you’re sorry when you do something bad.”
Palpitations fluttered my heart. The deepest sense of grief and a suggestion of awe took hold. My little girl forever grasped so much more than I imagined she did. The intuitiveness that always seemed veiled beneath her child-like naivety shone through with the wise, logical words that she spoke.
If only it were that easy.
“Your mom and I are doing the best we can right now, sweetheart. But no matter what, we love you more than anything. You know that, don’t you?”
Intense blue eyes met mine in the mirror, honest and pure. “I always know that, Daddy. It just makes me sad that you can’t stay.”
Relief assuaged some of the guilt that wouldn’t let go, and a wistful smile pulled at my mouth. “You’re an amazing child, Little Elizabeth.”
Lizzie blushed the brightest red and fought a grin. Dimples dented her cheeks.
Affection pushed at my ribs.
I rarely called her that, but sometimes, I just couldn’t help myself.
She bore little physical resemblance to her mother, but I glimpsed her in so many things, the child a striking reminder of a young Elizabeth.
Sweet and kind.
Timid and shy and incredibly confident in the exact same moment.
Wise, but continuously led by her emotions.
Good.
That, and she shared Elizabeth’s grandmother’s name.
“I like that name, Daddy,” she mumbled through her shyness, that sweet little girl back again.
“I do, too, princess,” I whispered to her, emotion cresting my mouth. I loved her so much, so much it hurt.
She smiled a little. A silent conversation passed between us, something that spoke of a deep understanding. On some level, my little girl recognized what I was going through and the way I truly felt. She knew I would go home to them if I could, that if I could break down Elizabeth’s walls, I would.
I made a left-hand turn and merged right to wind into the circular drop-off in front of Lizzie’s school.
“Look!” Lizzie suddenly squealed.
I craned my head to try to take in what had caused such a reaction in Lizzie, the child overflowing with excitement. As I came to a full stop at the curb, she quickly unbuckled and shot forward in her seat. She pointed out to the sidewalk.
“What is it?” I asked, my eyes scanning the sea of children jumping from backseats of cars, slinging backpacks onto their shoulders, yelling and laughing as they began their day.
“Daddy, look it…right there!” She jabbed her finger in emphasis, and my sight finally settled on the source of the furor that surged through Lizzie.
A wistful smile emerged on my face.
Kelsey Glenn.
She stood on the sidewalk with her father, Logan. He knelt on a knee in front of her, helping her secure her backpack onto her shoulders. The little girl grinned as her dad lightly nudged her chin with the hook of his finger.
I’d met her a handful of times. Over the summer, the two girls had become close friends. I thought it was cute that Lizzie finally had a playmate that she gushed about almost every time I saw her, the way Lizzie would worry if Kelsey would like something or not, going on about Kelsey’s favorite food or favorite color or favorite show.
There was nothing that gave me mixed feelings like watching Lizzie grow up, to see her excited to have friends, to talk on the phone and giggle like a teenager. She was only six, but the last year had passed in what seemed a blink, a blip of time that now flickered and held as memories in my consciousness. I knew that as the years passed, they would only quicken. Lizzie would be grown before I could make sense of it.
It made me proud and sad, ushering in a fearful expectancy of what the future would bring.
Kelsey spent her time living between her parents’ houses, carted between the two on whichever day belonged to her mother or father. The two girls had been in the same kindergarten class. As the school year had neared its ending, right before everything had fallen apart, Elizabeth had found out her father lived just two streets over from us, and Lizzie and Kelsey had clung to each other over the difficult months that had ensued.
I guess I’d never thought it possible that Kelsey and Lizzie would end up having so much in common.
Lizzie couldn’t stop talking about her.
“What’s her name again…Kelly…Katie…Karen?” I teased.
“Daddy…” Lizzie drew out in a frustrated groan. “It’s Kelsey. And she’s my very best friend. Didn’t you know that? She even gave me a necklace that says so.”
I grinned as I peeked at my daughter in the rearview mirror. She played with the little pendant necklace she proudly wore around her neck. She lifted it a little higher when she caught my eye.
“See!” she prodded.
“Well, it looks like it’s official then.”
“Yep.” She giggled a little.
The sound filled the car, filled my heart. It felt so good to hear her laugh. For so long, it’d been missing. And I knew even if Elizabeth and I never healed from this, our daughter would.
“Well, we better get you out of here so you can catch up with her.”
I came around to the rear passenger side and opened the door. Lizzie slid out onto the safety of the walkway and grabbed her backpack from the seat. She slammed the door shut behind her.
Dropping to a knee, I helped her slide her backpack straps up her arms, then pulled her hair free from underneath it.
Softly I smiled at her, my attention locked on the sweetness in her vibrant blue eyes.
“You have a great day today, okay? I’m going to be thinking about you all day and all night until I see you again tomorrow morning. Then you’re going to come and spend tomorrow night with me. Does that sound like a good plan?”
She smiled a little. “Yeah, Daddy, I like that idea.”
“Lizzie!” The peal of a high-pitched voice reverberated across the lot. “Lizzie, over here!”
We both jerked to see Kelsey running our direction, the biggest grin on her face. The little girl smiled up at me as she approached. “Hi, Mr. Davison. Is it okay if Lizzie walks with me to class?”
“That’s fine by me.”
Lizzie beamed as she squinted up at me, every trace of her earlier melancholy erased. “Thank you, Daddy! I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I dropped a quick kiss to her forehead. “Bye, sweetheart. You be good. I’ll call you tonight.”
“Okay!” she said as the two turned. Giggles rolled from them both as they shot off in the direction of the school gates.
Logan casually walked up, wearing a pair of cargo shorts and a tee-shirt. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Morning.”
“Morning,” I returned absently, my attention on the two little girls skipping up the sidewalk.
“They sure are cute together, aren’t they?” he mused.
“Yeah.” They really were.
“Kelsey can’t stop talking about Lizzie,” he continued. “She asks if Lizzie can come over and play just about every time she’s at my house.”
“Yeah?” I said, the word not really a question, but a filler to take up the time that passed until my daughter disappeared into the mass of students flooding into the school hall.
“Elizabeth looked a lot better last week when I picked Kelsey up over there. I was glad to see a little color in her face.”
A deep frown burrowed in my brow as I cast a suspicious glance his way.
He was looking forward, watching the girls. His body was relaxed, chunks of his light blond hair stirred up by the short gusts of wind. But he was working his jaw. Nervous. Agitated.
Awareness prickled along my senses like a solitary string that pulled at my consciousness. A warning flare.
This asshole was digging. Waiting. Wanting.
The anger that had smoldered for all those months boiled, rose up in a swollen rage.
Did he think for one fucking second I’d let him have her? That I’d stand aside and watch the woman I’d loved for all my life fully slip from my grasp?
Yeah. Maybe I’d lost her. But that didn’t mean I was letting her go.
He looked over at me. Flinty green eyes narrowed as they took in my expression. He lifted his chin.
“I’ll see you around.” Then he turned and headed back toward his car. He pitched a fleeting glance at me from over his shoulder before he climbed into his car.
The sharpest shot of possessiveness rattled me straight to the core, deep enough to cut into the compulsory resignation that had spurred me to pack my things and walk out of Elizabeth’s house.
He pulled from the curb and out into the swarm of merging and exiting cars. He caught the severity of my gaze as I followed his departure. There wasn’t a god-damned thing I could do to stop myself from staring him down.
Because it slammed me—the realization that just because Elizabeth couldn’t stomach the sight of me didn’t mean she might not one day want someone else.
My hands curled into the tightest fists, and I buried them in the pockets of my slacks, struggling to hang onto my last ounce of sanity because I knew I was about five seconds from losing my fucking mind.
I just wasn’t rational when it came to her.
She was mine.
She’d always been.
And I was going to make sure she always was.