Twenty-Four
Anna
A promotion…and not just any promotion.
The promotion Anna had wanted her entire career.
Carole was in Anna’s office when she arrived Monday morning. Her boss praised her on the Yoakum Ridge development then offered her a spot as vice president of planning and design.
The youngest vice president in company history.
Anna asked for a few days to consider the offer, and though Carole was taken aback by her less than enthusiastic response, she’d understood.
Now it was Wednesday, and she’d been staring at the same drawing on her computer for over an hour. At least it was almost time to go home.
Home.
Anna took up residence once again in Ryan and Layla’s guest room. Her time at Yoakum Ridge complete, she’d returned to her office on Monday. Though the room looked exactly the same, so many things were different. She was different.
Her elbows rested on the desk, hands covering her face.
Where was her home?
Was it the life she’d built for the last six years?
Or was it on that riverbank?
Their riverbank.
Drew called for the first time a few hours earlier. She stared at his picture on the screen, her chest aching with how badly she wanted to hear the deep rumble of his voice. But she couldn’t bring herself to answer. Not yet.
A knock at the door startled her, and she peeked through her fingers. Luke leaned against the frame in his signature cocky stance, arms crossed and an eyebrow raised.
“Well, thank goodness.” He let out a loud sigh, pushing off the door and walking in. “I’m glad to know you’re still alive.”
She stood and tackle hugged him. “What are you doing here?”
He squeezed her tight, and she relaxed in his arms. “I had a meeting in the neighborhood.”
“Really?” she asked, peeking up at his face.
“Okay, well, I did have a meeting, but it’s more in this office than in the neighborhood.”
He took a seat in her ugly blue guest chair while she leaned against the desk.
“I’m confused,” she said.
“I came to meet with my new partner. See when she’s starting? Frank’s ready to sign everything over to us. Are you ready to come home with me?”
Anna cringed, biting her lower lip.
Luke leaned back in the chair, linking his fingers behind his head. He looked up at the ceiling then to her. “You realize Drew is seriously freaking out. He’s going crazy wondering where you are. He’s convinced you’re not coming home…”
“He called me this morning,” she whispered.
“Of course he did. He’s had that phone glued to his damn hand for three days, trying not to call you, give you your space, but hoping you’d call.”
“I want to call…”
“But?”
“I don’t know what to do, Luke,” she admitted for the first time out loud.
Luke leaned forward, grabbing her hands in his. “I didn’t come here to upset you. I don’t want to watch you get hurt again, and if I’m being honest, I’ve sort of gotten used to having you around.”
Anna laughed. “I’ve gotten used to being around.”
“You clearly know who I think is the best choice. But I’m here for you, no matter what decision you make. I know this isn’t easy for you, and I’m here if you need me.”
“Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
In true Luke fashion, he proceeded to distract her from her troubles with some hilarious story about the crazy date he’d been on the night before. Anna grabbed her things, and they walked to the parking lot.
“Call me if you need me?” he said as they reached her car.
She didn’t want him to go. She wanted to beg him to stay and distract her from the war going on in her heart. But instead, she nodded.
Anna sat in the driver’s seat, and Luke crouched in front of her. “Drew loves you. He is completely and I’d even say ridiculously in love with you. He will spend the rest of his life protecting you and making you happy if that’s what you want.”
Tears filled her eyes as she nodded again. He patted her knee and stood to leave. The car door closed, and she watched as his truck disappeared.
Her head thudded against the headrest as the pressure in her chest increased. She couldn’t live in this limbo forever. It wasn’t fair to any of them.
Anna made dinner for her friends while she and Layla obsessed over the ultrasound photo from their first doctor’s appointment.
Dishwasher loaded, Anna wiped down the counter tops and went to join them in the living room. But only Layla waited on the couch with a soft smile on her face.
“You're always welcome to stay here, any time, for as long as you want…”
“But?” Anna questioned, with a half smile.
Layla simply stared at her until she sighed.
“I can’t wrap my head around him not finalizing the divorce, that we are still married.” Mason’s words from the park assaulted her. Please come home, Anna.
Layla placed her hand on Anna’s knee. “Do you want to go back to him?”
“He’s still my husband,” she whispered.
“That’s not what I asked. Do you think there’s anything left of your marriage to save?”
Anna blew out a breath. “We shared years of our lives together. That doesn’t disappear. I don’t know how to answer your question, Layla. I thought we were divorced. I let go of our marriage and moved on, and he moved on with her, and I can’t…I don’t…I took a vow. What do I do with that now?”
“He broke the vow, Anna,” she yelled. “He was the one who broke your marriage, and he was the one who moved on before you ever thought about it. It took Drew confessing he had been in love with you his entire life to make you even think about moving on. And even then it took you a while to let him in.”
Her head fell on Layla’s shoulder, and she closed her eyes. Her best friend wrapped her in a protective hug.
“What about Drew? He was going to propose. You know that, right?” Layla asked.
She could still picture Drew’s face on the front porch. That amazing smile showed off his dimple as he said he would wait for her. “The look on his face when I walked out and the way he kissed me, it was like he thought it might be the last time.”
“Will it be?”
“I don’t want it to be,” she whispered. “Before I left, he said he’d fight for me. I can’t stop thinking about those words. Layla, what’s the right choice?”
Anna needed her to lift the hundred-pound weight off her chest so she could breathe again.
“I can’t tell you that, sweetie.” Layla tucked her leg under her, turning to face Anna on the couch. “Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.” Layla covered Anna’s eyes with her hands. “I’m going to ask you a question.”
“Ooooookay,” Anna said, drawing out the word in confusion.
“Who do you picture spending the rest of your life with?”
Anna breathed in a long breath and let it out, the picture of their life together so clear she could almost touch it.
Anna opened her eyes and Layla smiled. “There. You have your answer.”
Could it be that simple?
Exhausted from first trimester fatigue, Layla made an early exit to bed. Anna followed and fell on the guest bed, staring at the spinning ceiling fan as memories ran through her mind on a loop.
Like Drew’s twelfth birthday when he asked her to be his girlfriend while hiding together in a corn maze.
Or the day, after only two months together, that Mason slept with her on the bathroom floor when she had the flu. He kissed her forehead after her third vomit session and said for the first time, “I love you.”
That Christmas night their junior year when Drew tapped on her window until she snuck outside to meet him. He led her to a candlelit blanket beside the river and placed the most beautiful ring on her finger with the promise they would always be together.
The night Mason showed up at Layla and Ryan’s door. It had been a week since his confession, and Anna listened from her hiding spot in the hallway while Layla screamed at him for what he’d done.
Maybe that was the moment he decided to file for divorce? Maybe she should have gone after him? But every time she looked at him, she saw her husband touching another woman, and she hadn’t been ready to face him yet. Or the blame she couldn’t stop putting on herself for what happened.
And now after six months together, even after finding out about Luke, Drew was prepared to commit to Anna for the rest of their lives.
But was Anna right in the beginning? Had too much happened for she and Drew to ever really have a life together?
The sun peeking in through the blinds confirmed the six a.m. alarm flashing on Anna’s phone. She’d spent the entire night trying to wrap her head around the right answer to an impossible question.
She called in sick and buried her face under the covers. Exhaustion eventually took over as Anna replayed Layla’s question.
“Who do you picture spending the rest of your life with?”
***
Anna startled awake at two-thirty in the afternoon. She’d slept away most of the day, but it had come with a sense of clarity.
Her heart ached, but she knew what needed to be done.
An hour later, she placed her keys on the kitchen counter as she’d done a million times before. She wandered through each room; the memories, good and bad, overwhelmed her to the point of suffocation.
What she’d come for sat on her old oak desk, and her hand shook as she hesitated to pick it up.
Anna steeled her shoulders, refusing to waver on her decision as the sadness of its finality clenched her heart. She sat on her favorite paisley couch in the living room and waited.
Exactly thirty-six minutes later, the garage door opened.
“Anna?” he yelled, sprinting toward the living room.
She stood to meet him. Those sapphire eyes lit with joy when he rounded the corner. “I’m so happy you’re here.”
Mason wrapped her in a hug before glancing down at the divorce papers beside them on the coffee table.
He pulled away, meeting her teary gaze.
“Sign them, Mason,” she pled, looking down as he grabbed her hands.
He had broken her more than once, but his pained expression felt almost unbearable. He shook his head but didn’t speak.
“Mason, I can’t…please sign them.”
He squeezed her hands in his. “Because you don’t love me or because you love him?”
She took in every single feature of his face. “I love him, but this has been over for a long time. You left a long time ago. There’s nothing here to save. You know it too. You just don’t want to accept it.”
Mason crossed his arms. “No, I won’t.”
He sank onto the couch, staring at the floor for several minutes before raising glassy eyes to hers. She knew him, probably better than anyone, and so she knew his heart. She was also certain he hadn’t told her everything.
Anna sat next to him, her hand resting on his knee. “I love you, Mason. I always will. But even though it’s breaking you to lose us, you know it’s over. It took me a long time to admit it to myself, to accept it, but I know you started the divorce before that trip.”
Mason nodded, and she pushed ahead. Asking the one question she didn’t actually want the answer to.
“The cheating. It wasn’t a one-time thing, was it?”
He looked away toward the fireplace. “A few weeks before…we went out for drinks after work, and I walked her to her car. We kissed, and she asked me to come home with her.”
“Did you?”
“Yes…but I didn’t sleep with her then.”
“I called you that night, and you wouldn’t pick up. I’d visited a friend from work and her new baby. It hurt, Mason, and I needed my husband to hold me and tell me everything would be okay. But you ignored me to be with her.” She sucked in a breath before continuing. “It took you a year to even tell me you hadn’t filed the papers. You waited until I’d finally moved on to do something about it. You gave up on us a long time ago.”
Anna took his hand in hers again, a million memories passing between their locked gaze before he looked away.
“I’m so sorry, Anna.” Mason hesitated, then opened the folder on the table and signed his full name in blue ink.
The finality of their marriage ending split pieces of her carefully patched together heart, but for the first time in days, she could breathe.
Anna picked up the folder and stood to leave. Mason followed behind her as she opened the front door.
“So you’re going to marry him?”
Anna turned to face him. “After what’s happened this week, I’m not sure he’ll still want me.”
He shook his head then kissed her cheek. “He will.”
“Goodbye, Mason,” she whispered, closing the door behind her.