Chapter Ten
Present Day
I opened the door to the house and was surprised to hear voices coming from the kitchen. Usually, when I came in the mornings, the house was quiet because the children were still asleep. But from what I could hear, they were definitely awake.
Laughter floated through the foyer along with the unmistakable scent of pancakes and bacon. When I stepped into the kitchen, I couldn’t help the surprised look on my face. The kids were dressed and sitting at the table. Devon was at the stove cooking. I stood there for just a moment, taking it all in, soaking in the sight of Devon with his children, all happy and smiling, together. It was a sight I hadn’t seen since before Olivia passed.
Eventually, Ruby noticed my presence and alerted the other two.
“Auntie Evie! Daddy’s making pancakes!”
“I can see that,” I said, trying to force a smile on my face. When Devon turned to look at me, I saw the surprise come over his face too. Apparently, we were both caught off guard by each other that morning.
“Evie,” he said, sounding as if he was seeing me after years of being gone.
“You know how to make pancakes?” I couldn’t remember a time when he’d made a breakfast besides cereal or toast.
“I never have before,” he said carefully, and I could see he was trying to figure out what to say next. “I didn’t expect you here today. Didn’t think you’d come. So I got the kids up and decided to try my hand at a real breakfast.”
I knew why he didn’t expect me. Hell, when I woke up that morning I didn’t think I was going over there either. But then the guilt showed up and I imagined the kids’ faces when they realized I wasn’t there, and I decided any uncomfortableness I faced would be worth it if it saved the kids some sadness. Besides, I’d been pretending for nine years that everything was fine between Devon and me, why should that day be any different?
“Don’t look in the trash though,” he said, his voice lighter, turning back to the stove. “It’s like a burnt pancake graveyard.”
“Daddy made icky, black ones,” Jax said from his chair, his mouth half full of what I assumed wasn’t an icky black pancake.
“Yeah, they smelled really bad,” Ruby added.
“Well, in your daddy’s defense, the first pancake always burns. That’s just the way of pancakes.”
“Yeah, but Daddy threw away, like, fifteen pancakes.”
“Icky, black ones,” Jax added.
“How’s the laundry room?” I asked, trying to avoid any conversation that would cause tension between us.
“Well, the floor’s ruined and I think the bottom portion of the walls too. I have to go to the hardware store soon and rent some industrial fans to try to dry the place out a little more. My insurance company is sending over a contractor to look at the damage.”
“Wow. You’ve accomplished a lot this morning,” I said, peeking down the hallway.
“I couldn’t really sleep,” he said, his voice thicker, full of meaning. I tamped down the urge I felt to turn and look at him, to see if his eyes were full of longing. It was a masochistic urge and I was done torturing myself. “The insurance company said I needed to take pictures of the damage. I was going to do it myself, but since you’re here and all, do you think you could?”
“Definitely.” Could I pick up a camera and use it as a shield against all my emotions? I was actually, very good at that.
“Actually, if you could get the kids ready for school, I could drop Jaxy off at preschool and run to the store to get the fan real quick before the contractor gets here.”
“I’m here to help,” I said, plastering a fake smile on my face.
“And my mom said I’d never use my visual arts degree,” I said to myself as I snapped pictures of Devon’s waterlogged walls. Everything was damp. The floor was soft and the entire area that had been flooded looked terrible. I moved out of the laundry room and down the hall, taking pictures of anything and everything that looked affected by the water. Minutes later, when the doorbell rang, I thought I’d gotten all the pictures I needed. I placed my camera on the kitchen island as I walked past and opened the door with a smile.
My smile froze a little when I saw the man standing on the porch.
“Hi, good morning,” he said, his voice deep. “I was sent here to look at some flooding damage.” He stood there, smiling at me, and I couldn’t find a way to make my mouth work. “Um, do I have the right house?” His smile broadened as if he were used to women being slack jawed around him. I managed to bring myself out of my stupor.
“Oh, yes. Please, come in.” I opened the door wider and stepped back, allowing him in to the foyer. Even though my mouth had started functioning, I couldn’t stop my eyes from taking him all in. It was almost unbelievable, the way he looked. Almost as if cheesy music was going to start playing and he would peel off his tool belt. He was, quite nearly, a perfect male specimen. I shook my head, trying to clear the images from my mind. I shut the door and tried to form a normal sentence. “The laundry room flooded yesterday. You can follow me.” I walked past him and started toward the kitchen, trying not to think about how hot the back of my neck felt with him behind me, how acutely aware I was of my body in that moment. I kept walking until I approached the laundry room door. I motioned into the room and he inched past me with a killer smile.
“I’m Nate, by the way,” he said as he passed me, holding out his hand. I took it, even though we were too close to actually shake hands comfortably. For a moment we stood, squeezed close to one another, just holding each other’s hand, smiling at each other. When he pulled away, I took my hand back and pushed it through my hair, trying to convince myself it hadn’t been a severely intense moment.
“My name’s Evelyn.”
“Evelyn, huh?” he asked as he knelt next to the washing machine, moving the handle of his hammer out of the way of his thigh like he did it one million times a day, without even looking. “Were you named after a relative or something?”
I laughed a little because it wasn’t the first time someone had insinuated I had an old-fashioned name. “Nope. My mom just thought it was pretty.”
“Well, she was right,” he said, reaching behind the machine, his smile making my face heat and heart flutter. “Looks like the line to your washer split.”
“Huh?” I asked, confused, then I caught on to the change of subject, now blushing from embarrassment. “Oh, yeah. Right. I came home and there was water spraying everywhere. It was a mess.”
“I can imagine.” He stood and moved around the room, then came back into the hallway, looking at the floor, then kneeling low again to look at the walls. “You’re gonna need new floors and new drywall.” He looked back at me without standing up. “You’re lucky you caught it when you did. If the water had gotten into the kitchen, it could have hit electrical and then you’d really be in a mess. This shouldn’t take more than a few weeks to fix.”
“A few weeks? That’s a good estimate?” I asked, laughing a little. “That seems like a long time.”
“That’s kind of how it works. We gotta tear it all out before we put the new stuff in. But we have to dry it out first.”
“Oh, right! The fans. Devon is out getting fans right now.”
He stood at my words and a little bit of light was gone from his eyes. “Fans’ll be good. Once it’s all dried out, we can start working.”
With impeccable timing, I heard the front door open and turned my head to see Devon walking through the kitchen with two strange looking contraptions in his arms. The two men saw each other and a frost came over the room. I watched as Devon eyed Nate, and even though I couldn’t see him, I knew Nate was doing the same thing. It was tense and strange, and I was painfully uncomfortable.
“Devon, this is the contractor the insurance company sent over to look at the damage.”
“I gathered that,” he said, catching me off guard by his short and sharp words. He put the things that I assumed were fans down, and then reached his hand out toward Nate. “Thanks for coming out on such short notice,” he said, his tone not any nicer. Nate grabbed his hand and I winced watching their forearm muscles bulge. It was obvious they were both squeezing the hell out of the other’s hand.
“That’s my job,” Nate replied, smiling at Devon, but not the friendly smile I‘d gotten. No, he gave Devon a smirk. They shook hands for way too long, neither one of them seeming to want to give up first, but when they finally let each other go, it was with a sharp thrust. “As I was telling Evelyn here, you’ll need new flooring and new drywall. It’ll take a few weeks. I can probably start once everything is dried out.”
“Well, are those the fans you needed?” asked Devon, motioning toward the ones he’d brought in with him. They looked kind of like snails, rounded with a lip at the bottom. I’d imagined the kind of fans you’d use in your window on a hot day.
“Those’ll work, if it’s all you’ve got,” Nate said to Devon.
“I don’t usually keep a supply of industrial strength fans on hand,” he replied.
“Well, why would you?”
“Okay, boys, let’s calm down a little. Let’s get the fans set up, and get the drying process started. I’m sure we all have places to be.” I’d never had to defuse testosterone before. I reached for one of the fans, surprised by its weight.
“Here, Evelyn, let me do that.” Nate took the fan from me and turned to walk back to the laundry room.
“Her name’s Evie,” Devon said, the coldness of his words sending shivers down my back.
“Not what she told me,” Nate called from the laundry room.
“Devon, stop it,” I whispered, hoping Nate couldn’t hear me. “You’re acting like a child.”
Nate walked back into the kitchen, grabbed the other fan, and left again, his eyes darting back and forth between us. I kept staring at Devon, willing him to stop acting like an asshole. A moment later, the loudest fans I’d ever heard started up and I almost had to cover my ears. Nate came back in the kitchen and stopped just short of the dining table.
“Leave those fans on twenty-four-seven. I’ll come back in two days to check on the progress.”
“They’re really loud,” I said, still fighting the urge to cover my ears.
“Industrial,” Nate said in response.
“How are the kids supposed to sleep through that?”
“You’ve got kids?” he asked, his eyes boring into mine, and I could have sworn he sounded a little disappointed. Before I could clarify, Devon butted in.
“Two kids. Small ones. Need their sleep.” Great. Now he wasn’t even using complete sentences.
“You can turn it off when you’re sleeping if you need to, but it might take an extra day to dry in that case.” He looked at me, and then his eyes moved back to Devon, hardening. “I’ll be back Monday morning.” With that, he walked to the front door and left. I had an unfamiliar urge to stop him before he made it to the door, to explain everything that Devon had so conveniently left out, but it didn’t matter. I did, however, turn to Devon with daggers in my eyes.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, yelling partly because of the fans, but mostly because I was irritated by his behavior.
“What?” he answered, yelling back, obviously irritated as well.
“You totally made that guy think we had kids together!”
Devon rolled his eyes and walked out of the kitchen into the living room. He went to the front windows and pulled the curtains over, watching as a truck drove by that I assumed belonged to Nate. “I didn’t do anything of the sort, Evie. That guy was a douchebag.”
“What exactly did he do that made him a douchebag?”
“You didn’t see the way he was looking at you.”
“What?” I exclaimed, my voice shriller than I’d ever heard it before. “You’re insane. And even if he was looking at me, you don’t get to be all assholey to people for that. I’ve never seen you act like this.”
“I come home to find some stranger in my house, ogling you, nearly fucking you with his eyes, and I’m just supposed to sit back and act like nothing’s happening?”
“YES!” I screamed, my breath panting, heart pounding, hands shaking. “You’ve got no right doing anything about it! Besides, he was perfectly respectful. Nice, even. You didn’t have to go all Neanderthal on him. He thinks we’re married for Christ’s sake!”
“You’re upset because I chased off the contractor? Were you going to date him, Evie? You don’t date, ever.”
“I date.”
“Not since Elliot.”
His words sliced through me and my mouth fell open at his. He knew I didn’t like talking about Elliot.
“I talk with him sometimes,” he continued, his eyes mean, purposefully trying to hurt me. “He hates you. Hates what you did to him. You’re the reason he left the country, you know. He couldn’t even stand to be on the same continent as you.”
“Shut up,” I whispered, shocked at the acid dripping from his voice, the anger I’d never heard from him before.
“Why should I? I think it’s time we talked, got everything out in the open. You and I have been silent for too long.”
I shook my head. “I’m not talking to you while you’re like this, while you’re hurtful. I don’t know who you are right now.”
“This is me, Evie. This is me after years of torture. You think a person isn’t changed after going through what I did? Watching my wife die? Watching someone I thought I could protect be taken right out from under me? There was no order in her death. No reason. Nothing I could piece together to make any sense. So I just had to watch.” He took an angry step toward me. “And then, there’s you. Always pretending to be something you’re not.”
I gasped. “I’m not pretending to be anything,” I whispered. “You’re upset, Devon. I get that, but don’t take it out on me. I haven’t done anything.”
“That’s exactly the problem. You haven’t done anything. Ever. Besides pretend. You’ve been pretending since the first day we met. Pretending there wasn’t this thing between us. Pretending it didn’t cloud every single time we’ve ever been in the same room. It’s exhausting pretending not to be drawn to you.”
“I’m not pretending,” I said, my voice thick with the cries I was holding back. He came closer.
“You are. All the time. Even now. And I’m tired of it.” He kept walking toward me and I kept retreating, until I was backed into the refrigerator, only to watch as his hands pressed flat against it right next to my ears, blocking me in.
“Elliot won’t tell me what you did to him that made him hate you. Says it’s not his secret to tell. But I can hear in his voice how much you hurt him.” His eyes were darting back and forth between mine, and his face was so close. I wasn’t afraid he’d hurt me, but I was afraid that whatever was happening in that moment was going to change everything forever. “But I know your secret. It’s the same secret I’ve kept all these years.”
“Please, Devon. Don’t…”
“Don’t what? Be honest for once? Be real? What are you afraid of? Elliot’s gone. Olivia’s gone. It’s only us now. We’re the only ones we can hurt anymore. We can only damage each other.”
“I don’t want to hurt anymore,” I pleaded with him, begged him with my eyes to let whatever tirade he was on go, to let us slip back into that place of un-acknowledgement, where we let our problems lie just under the surface and fester.
“We’ve been hurting each other for years, Evie.”
I nodded. “I know,” I whispered. His forehead came to rest gently against mine, his breath passing over my face. I reached forward tentatively and gripped his t-shirt in my fingers, wanting to touch him but afraid of how hard it would be to eventually let go.
“We were both trying to be the better person for so long, and then Ruby came along, and life happened. And I swear to you, with everything that I am, I loved Olivia. I loved her and the family we made together. Not once did I think I’d made the wrong choice, Evie. I still don’t think I made the wrong choice. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t ever think about what my other option was. Didn’t wonder how life would have been with you. If only…”
“Please, don’t do this. We can’t do this.”
“If only I hadn’t walked away from you that first day.”
I finally let out the cry I’d been holding in for what seemed like days. Years even. I dropped my forehead to his chest, pulled his t-shirt closer, and cried. I’d cried a lot in prior months, losing a best friend would cause that to happen. But those tears might have been the most gut wrenching I’d felt in a while. How many times, in that first year of knowing Devon, had I wished for the exact same thing? Wished he’d asked for my number, made an effort, and pursued me, done anything that would have given me a claim to him over Olivia. Given me even one sliver of hope that what I’d felt for him was real.
I cried against him and I felt his hands cradle the back of my head, holding me close to him. I felt his lips press against my hair, heard him whisper soothing words to me, telling me it was going to be all right. When the tears finally stopped, it wasn’t because I felt like I’d exorcized all the feelings I’d held inside for so long. No. The crying stopped because I was able to close the door that had been holding them in again. I felt the wall go back up, brick by brick, I tucked my heart away just like I had so many years ago. It was the only thing to do – the only way everything could remain the same – and I wouldn’t end up losing anything more.
I slid away from him quickly, my hand coming up to wipe the tears his shirt hadn’t caught, as I grabbed my purse and left the house. I walked out the door listening to him calling my name, chasing after me. I slammed the door behind me, hoping that would be enough to deter him from following me. I made it to my car, but then realized I was crying too hard, making it difficult to find my keys in my purse. When I finally did, I started the engine and pulled away from the street, speeding one mile down the road before I pulled over. The tears were so thick I could hardly see the road, so I pulled into a gas station parking lot and cried until I was too exhausted to cry any more.
When I finally pulled up to my studio, hoping to salvage the day and get a little bit of work done, I realized I’d left my camera sitting on the kitchen island at Devon’s house. So I cried all over again.