Page 38 of Then You Happened
I glance around again, and the destruction tells me how very wrong I was.
How had I missed the deception before the day I lost my mind in here?
A brand new camera sits on the workbench. It’s the only thing not broken. It was Fletcher’s apology for smashing my other one “on accident” in a fit of rage after a major sale fell through.
I’d let him talk me into believing he was crushed over the long-term loss it would bring and had forgiven him for his outburst.
It’s the only thing untouched because it was the only thing I still gave a shit about.
My destruction is visual evidence of what happened when I found that not only did my husband max out every credit card we had but that he’d also squandered away what I’d still had of my savings account from before my father cut me off. The small stash that I kept on the side for just in case was gone, and I hadn’t even known.
This is the devastation I wrought after I found out my parents were right.
This is the realization that I was used. Sure, the love I felt might have been real, but the trust and security were nothing more than a smoke screen.
This is what the loss of the hopes and dreams I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life chasing looks like.
I give my studio one last look before retreating the two steps I had walked in and shutting the door again.
Tears salt my lip, but I don’t wipe them off as a broken laugh shreds my throat.
It’s almost cruel that I woke from a dream about one man I don’t want to want only to be reminded of the dream shattered by the only man I ever wanted.
“How about neither. How about neither are, were, or will ever be a good decision,” I mutter as I walk down the hallway on the way back to my bedroom. But when I pass a window and look toward the bunkhouse—at the darkened night beyond and the moonlight that seems to give the shadows a life of their own—my feet falter as the light inside flickers on.
My breath catches when I see a silhouette cut across the doorway. For the briefest of moments, I think that it’s Fletcher and not Jack, my mind brought back to the months before his death when he spent more time there than at the main house, working late into the night.
Or, rather, making bets with his bookies.
Fletcher is dead, I remind myself.
But Jack’s truck only rambled down the road and its headlights cut across my bedroom wall a few hours ago when he came back from wherever it is he goes every night when he clocks out. How in the hell can he already be up?
But he is. And I watch as he reaches for the bar braced in the doorway and slowly pulls himself up, pauses, and then lowers himself.
He does the pull-ups with an ease that’s impressive but with a determination that seems as if it’s a penance. One after another. Over and over. There is no break, just a punishing cadence that gives the impression—even across the distance—that he’s agitated by something.
Curiosity has me watching him and asking myself questions I say I don’t want the answers to, knowing that’s a lie.
Latent desire has me not turning away, my dream a not-so-distant memory that holds me captive just as securely as the man himself.
I could turn away.
I should turn away from the muscles rippling in his shoulders as he moves or the moonlight that reflects off sweat on his torso with each pull-up and then measured release back down. His body in tune as he demands physicality from it.
But I don’t.
Because I wonder.
And I question.
Would it be so bad to have a man like Jack Sutton for a lover? Would it be wrong to want to lose myself in someone simply so I can maybe find myself again?
It would be the worst mistake I could ever make because it would mean I didn’t learn from the first time I’d made it. After all, wasn’t the need to find myself one of the reasons I followed Fletcher in the first place? He offered me a way to be free of the restrictions of my parents so I could be me. He promised a future where we could raise our child with unconditional love.
I scoff.
Yes, he offered that, and what a pretty lie it had been.
