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Glancing at the clock on the nightstand, I saw that it was barely after midnight. A
A man could hope.
A quick shower and then I’d flopped down on the comfortable mattress. I hadn’t moved since. Just lain there staring at the ceiling as so many thoughts ran through my head.
Wanting to see Michelle’s grave was the one that stuck out the most. Maybe put some flowers on my grandparents’, too, while I was there. I wanted to tell them and my baby girl how sorry I was that I hadn’t been strong enough to face my mistakes and beg A
I wanted to tell my gram that I was sorry I hadn’t been the man she and Gramps had raised me to be. I wanted to beg her for forgiveness for all the things I’d done to mess up so many i
My chest started to tighten to the point that I could barely draw in a breath. Tears stung my nose and eyes, but I blinked them away. My OCD was suddenly going off-the-charts crazy, and without realizing it, I started tapping my fingers on my chest. Fourteen. Fourteen. Four-fucking-teen. Why did it have to be fourteen? Why couldn’t it have been three? Why couldn’t it have been nothing? Fuck, I just wanted it to stop. Nothing had ever helped. Not the meds that I’d been given as a kid, not the therapist I’d tried when everything felt like it was so fucking out of control.
The only thing that had ever helped was A
Gasping for breath, I jerked out of bed and stumbled across the room. With shaking fingers I managed to open the door and went straight to the closed door of A
As soon as I was inside her room, the scent that was so uniquely her own filled my nose and some of the tightness eased in my chest. Not nearly enough to calm me. Moving forward, I headed straight for her bed in the middle of the room.
Before I could reach it, A
Soft, soothing hands stroked through my hair. “Z, what’s wrong?” she whispered. “You’re scaring me.”
That was the last thing I wanted to do. Lifting my head, I let her see my tears as I tried to find my voice to tell her what I needed. “I want… No, I need to see Michelle’s grave.”
Her eyes widened. “Now?”
My throat was closing up again so I nodded. A
Scrubbing the back of one hand over my face, I stood on shaky legs and hurried back to my room. I grabbed the first thing I saw, jeans and a white tank. It was probably chilly out, but I didn’t waste time by looking for a jacket in my luggage. I pulled my boots on without bothering with socks and then quietly descended the stairs.
A
I nodded and followed her into the garage. A new red Tahoe was parked beside a cute, girly Jeep that I knew was Mieke’s. She’d told me Noah had bought it for her for her sixteenth birthday. Guilt and something else—pure, agonizing jealousy—churned in my stomach. It should have been me who had given Mieke her first vehicle. It should have been me buying her everything she needed, wanted, and spoiling her rotten.
A
Neither of us spoke for the longest time, but with each minute I didn’t say anything, I saw her tense a little more. Blowing out a sigh, she glanced at me once before turning her eyes back to the nearly empty road. “I sold your old truck. It broke down on the highway one day when I was on my way to one of my doctor’s appointments. So I had Noah sell it to some junk yard that used it for parts.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, and I didn’t think she really wanted me to. She just needed to talk, so I let her. All the way down to West Bridge she talked about random things. Like how Mieke had dared her to put the hot-pink streaks in her hair, but the joke had been on Mieke when A
I was so enthralled with what she was saying that I was surprised when A
Somewhere out there in that graveyard was my baby girl.
I closed my eyes and sucked in several deep breaths. When the passenger-side door opened, I snapped my eyes open and found A
A tear spilled from her right eye and the sight unglued me. I jumped down from the SUV and wrapped my arms around her. I hugged her against me, wanting to take away all the pain that I’d seen in her blue eyes. Quietly I closed the door and lifted her into my arms, tucking her head against my chest. I remembered where her father was buried, and since she’d told me she’d put Michelle next to him, that was the direction I started walking.