He didn’t turn around. “Midnight.”
“You going to keep standing there, giving the world a free show, or are you coming back to bed?” She had to force the nonchalance in her tone, because in that second she realized something was different. His voice had changed, her boozy haze had cleared—they seemed more distant, somehow. Like the hotel room had stretched and the wall where he stood was ten feet farther away than it had been two seconds earlier.
“Don’t think that drunk old lady in the parking lot appreciated what she saw, anyway.” He shut the curtains and loped across the room, flopping onto the bed beside her wearing the same loose, easy grin he’d been giving her for the last day and a half.
He slid his arm around her waist and dragged her closer, and that’s when she knew for sure. This was an ending—this was nearly over.
She exaggerated her yawn, feigning a whole-body stretch so she could roll out of his grip. She didn’t want to talk, and she didn’t want to hear what he had to say. She wanted him to get it over with.
“I reckon I could sleep for a hundred years.” She burrowed under the covers, crossing her hands beneath the pillow and closing her eyes.
“Better not. Room’s only paid up until ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“I dare ’em to try and wake me.”
She resettled against the pillow, resisting the urge to take one last look at the man beside her and praying sleep overtook her quickly. She felt the mattress shift as he stirred, then stirred again, until she could practically hear the thoughts whirring in his head.
“Tara,” he murmured, running his thumb down the side of her face. “Are you awake?”
She grunted softly, trying to deter him from saying anything else. Don’t tell me you love me, she begged him silently. If he did, she knew she’d blurt out the awful truth—she knew she’d reply that she loved him too.
She fisted her hands beneath the pillow, trying to quell the rising panic in her throat so he wouldn’t notice her frantic breathing. Too much, too soon, too fast—too perfect. Too good for someone like her.
He exhaled as he lowered himself beside her. She longed to peek from beneath her lashes, to see what was in his eyes as he watched her, to give herself ten seconds to memorize every line and contour and feature of his face. Instead she kept her lids screwed shut, trying to keep her expression neutral as her pulse pounded in her ears.
Just go, she wanted to scream. We both know you can do so much better, now pack your bag and leave before this mistake gets any worse.
He must’ve stayed there, staring at her, for most of an hour. Her fingers went numb and her arms cramped, but she didn’t dare move a muscle. She was poised, waiting, willing the moment to arrive—the moment he made the decision so she didn’t have to. The moment he left her, so she never had to ask him to stay.
Finally he moved, easing out of the bed and slinking around the room. She heard the whisper of clothes shoved into a bag, the clink of his belt buckle, the creak as he opened the closet where he’d stowed his shoes. Then he was leaning over her, warm, still.
“I can’t do this to you,” he whispered. The contents of his bag rustled as he hiked it on his shoulder.
Do what? She fought the urge to frown. He bent down, smoothed the hair from her forehead and pressed a kiss on her temple.
“I know you’ll find the man you deserve. I’m just sorry it ain’t me, sugar.”
She tensed beneath the duvet, her mind working furiously as the sound of his footsteps diminished in his move toward the door. Did he mean he thought he wasn’t good enough for her? But that was all wrong—it was the other way around. She was the one who should apologize, who should release him from this stupid, day-old marriage. Couldn’t he see how amazing he was? That he was strong and smart and so special? She had the bad temper, the irrational outbursts, the complete inability to be lovable to anyone, including herself?
Unless he thought—unless he saw something that—
She bolted upright in bed, blinking in the darkness as she whispered his name with pleading, desperate urgency.
But the door was shut and the room was empty. He was gone.
As usual Tara heard Chance’s car long before she saw it, and she hoisted one of the heaviest boxes up on her hip in the hope she could pass it off to him in the doorway.
Even with the awkward weight digging into her hip, her smile came easily. After all, she’d been wearing it practically all day.
She’d thought long and hard about answering when her dad’s number had appeared on her cell phone display. For days she’d been listless, uncertain, caught between aching desire to memorize every second with Chance and the nagging impulse to run as far and fast as she could before her heart broke in two. As much as she was convinced he was the only man for her, her self-doubt expanded by the hour. Was she really enough for him? Could she be the anchor he’d need while he was away? Would she find the maturity and emotional stability not to wallow in loneliness, not to take it out on him, not to blame him for her own inability to cope?
The answer to all of the above was leaning toward no when her phone had vibrated on the countertop. She sighed in exasperation, and then for no good reason at all she draped the dishcloth over the oven handle and picked it up.
“He left you yet?”
“Hi, Dad.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
She waited for his wheezing, smoker’s cough to subside before she answered. “No, he ain’t left me. And he won’t, either.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do.”
“Uh-huh.” He paused for what she assumed was a gulp of beer. “Guess it’ll be you does the leaving this time, then.”
“I would never,” she replied hotly, her voice threatening to break on the last syllable as tears suddenly stung her eyes. And in that moment, as she recalled that desolate final night in the hotel room, the cheap polyester duvet scratching the underside of her arm, the occasional groan as the heating unit switched on and off, the ominous zip of Chance closing his bag as he prepared to leave her, she knew it was true—she would stay by his side, no matter what. She’d be steadfast where her father wasn’t, honest like she was when Chance first loped up to her bar, brave like she should’ve been the night he walked out.
He’d whispered that night that she deserved better, and she let him disappear because she was too cowardly to tell him he was more than she could’ve ever hoped for.
“Balls to that,” she muttered, and her father’s hoarse laugh reminded her he was still on the other end of the line.
“Here I thought you were so prim and proper you didn’t drink before noon anymore.”
“I’m not like you, Dad,” she shot back, meaning it in so many more ways than she knew he’d understand. “And so help me, I never will be. I’m sticking this thing out if it kills me. He’s worth it. He deserves this. He deserves me.”
“Well, you must have a pretty low opinion of him if—”
