Hold On

He read the note and looked at the picture.

In it, he was sitting on a barstool in Vegas. Mia was in a clingy dress he’d liked a fuckuva lot, standing next to him, hanging on him. She didn’t have to hang; he had his arm around her, holding her close.

On the bar was a three hundred dollar bottle of champagne. They were both holding filled flutes. They’d splurged because he’d just won seven thousand dollars at the craps table.

They’d taken a few sips before Mia had asked someone passing by to take that picture.

Then they took the champagne to the reception desk and did what they did. Not planning for a future, living in the now, doing it wild to pack in as much as they could, they blew almost all his winnings, got upgraded to a suite, and made short work of moving rooms.

The rest of the time they were in Vegas, three days, they didn’t leave that suite. They got room service if they needed to eat. But if they weren’t eating or sleeping, they were fucking, whispering, or laughing.

He’d never been happier.

And that was when it began. He felt it. He felt it their last night in Vegas when he laid on his back in the bed in that suite with his naked wife curled sleeping at his side.

He’d felt the fear.

They’d been three years in their marriage—three good, strong, solid years—and the minute they stepped foot off that plane onto Indiana soil, he’d started pulling away.

She’d let him. She hadn’t fought it once. She’d been confused. Scared. Hurt. She’d let that show. It had killed him, seeing that, seeing what he was doing to her, but he didn’t quit doing it. He didn’t once cease in his efforts at driving her away.

And in those three years she hadn’t once asked him what was in his head. What was making him drive a wedge between them. What was pushing him to kill their happy.

She hadn’t even begun to put up a fight.

Eight years later, she decided to put up a fight.

Staring at that picture, all they had, all they were, all he’d wanted, all that had fucked with his head, all the harm he’d done to her, all the pain he’d caused surfaced and he gave it a second of his time.

Eight years.

Then Cher’s bravery, smashing through that fortress she had every reason to build around herself to wake up that morning and look at him the way she did, touch him the way she did, brush her lips against his throat, take his mouth, moved all thought of Mia aside.

Cher’d had it tough in a way that even in twenty years on the force he hadn’t seen anyone fucked by life as much as her.

But it hadn’t even taken her a week to break through the walls she’d built to guard her heart to start letting him in. It got fucked up, but she’d still done it.

Not eight years.

Not even a week.

That was all Merry needed.

He picked up the picture, tore it in half, in quarters, in eighths, then toed his trash bin and tossed it inside.

After that, he went to his fridge to get a beer before he went to his couch and turned on the TV.

It was Tuesday.

Tomorrow was Wednesday.

Which meant it had been a week.

Cher’s time was up.

*

Ethan

Wednesday Morning

His mom’s phone beeped.

He went to it and saw the text from his gramma telling them they needed to figure out a time to have a family dinner.

He opened his mouth to yell at his mom as he engaged her phone, punching in her password, going to her texts.

He closed his mouth when his mom’s texts came up.

There was a line that said Merry.

Merry, a cool guy, a cop, a badass—not an in-your-face badass like Cal, but still a badass who would be able to stop anything bad from ever happening to his mom. A cool guy, cop badass who looked all natural holding his mom’s hand.

He knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help himself.

He touched the line with Merry’s name.

He read the string, scrolling with his finger, his eyes screwing up, not understanding.