Witt didn’t make a sound. She simply had to look at him in that utter quiet. The silence compelled her. His face bore an unearthly stillness, his eyes a deepness that mirrored his pain. If she said one more word, she was sure he’d shatter, broken, irreparable. She’d never be able to pick up all the pieces. Knowing she was the cause was almost more than she could bear.
As quickly as it had come, the look was gone, masked, buried once more, though remnants of it leaked into his voice as he spoke. “I’ve always known loving you would be like this. Like a ten-inch serrated blade shoved up beneath my sternum.” He jabbed a fist into his chest. “You don’t even mean to do it. And you’re so sorry about it. I can see that all over you. That’s the worst. Knowing how fucking sorry you are. Because I’ll have to keep on forgiving you. Over and over. Every time you do it.” He closed his eyes, his nostrils flared, his lips flattened, the expression rolling down his features like a wave.
Watching, she wanted to die, wanted to hold him, wanted to tell him she was sorry. It was beyond her to acknowledge those desires aloud, or to even face the love word that he’d used. “You’ve only known me two months.”
When he looked at her, his eyes were the flat gray of the ocean on a cloudy day. The emotion was no longer in the soft tone of his voice or the lines of his face. It lived only in the words themselves, the sharp, harsh breath through his nose. “It feels like forever.”
He punctuated with another tense silence. She couldn’t meet his gaze.
Witt’s bones cracked as he rose.
She wouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t even want to tell him it was Cameron she’d screamed at, Cameron she’d told to get out.
Because Witt had to go. Words she could never take back might come out of her mouth if she let him stay. She was the one who didn’t want to hear them.
“Where’s my cell phone?” he asked, quiet, emotionless.
“My purse.”
She heard him rummage, then his footsteps across the bare floor. She felt him hunker down beside her, and he held out the phone. “My number’s in memory. Call it when you’re ready.” Again, the cracking of his knees, like the breaking of her heart, then that same flat voice. “If you’re ever ready.”
His boots on the stairs, the closing of the door, sounds of finality.
He was gone.
It was a good thing. She shouldn’t have fucked him the other night, shouldn’t have let him touch her last night. Sex between them complicated the whole situation. She was bad news. She’d ruin him. She’d be the death of him. She was his worst nightmare.
You’ll have to face your shit some day, Max. You should have done it when he gave you his worst.
She hugged the toilet and drowned out Cameron’s voice with the sound of her retching.
*
Max stood in a large, snow-laden clearing, and she was herself.
The snow was pristine, unmarked by footprints either human or animal. She didn’t how she’d gotten there; perhaps she’d been there since the snow began falling. It came lightly now, dusting the evergreens surrounding the meadow, dusting her eyelashes, her cheeks.
She wore a long, cream-colored dress, one Cameron had bought on their overdue honeymoon in Greece. Her feet bare, she did not feel the cold.
In fact, she was warm with anticipation.
In the distance, at the edge of the clearing, a figure left the safety of the trees. A man. Dressed in a black and red plaid shirt. Jeans. Boots.
Witt.
He left a single set of boot tracks marring the virgin snow.
Her heart beat faster with each new step he took. Then he stood in front of her. Large and solid, comforting.
He looked down at her with sky blue eyes. Snow flakes sparkled in his hair. He smelled like peppermints. The flannel of his shirt looked warm and soft and invited her fingers. She waited for him. For his signal.
“Kiss me, Max.”
Oh God yes. She would. Gladly. She rose on tiptoes, but the snow seemed to suck her down. Sinking deeper, she could not even reach out to him. In the cold, her lips froze in place.
“Won’t do it?”
No, she wanted to cry out. Not won’t, but can’t. I can’t. I really can’t. Help me.
His eyes turned ice blue. “Won’t.”
He pivoted and began the trek back to the surrounding forest. He didn’t even look over his shoulder as he disappeared amongst the spruce and pine.
The once unsullied snow was now polluted with several pairs of tracks, not only his, and they all led away from her.
In the pre-dawn, she heard Cameron’s voice. “He opened his wound for you, and you let him bleed.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, pulled her knees to her chest. “I didn’t ask him to tell me.”
“You never do.”
“And I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
“Do you even see how hard and cruel you are when you’re terrified?”
She prayed the conversation would end if she didn’t answer. Cameron, though, couldn’t resist getting a last shot at her. “The dream’s a prophecy, Max. Either you deal with your stuff or everyone you ever loved will walk away from you.”
“Including you?”
He didn’t answer.
Max wondered if he would have left her if he hadn’t died first.
Chapter Thirty-Four