Sara wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
His voice was softer when he spoke again. “He said you were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. More beautiful than the sun or a flower or any kind of scenery I could imagine. That’s what he said, Sara. He said when he looked at you he couldn’t breathe and his stomach went all crazy. He said when he looked at you he was home.”
A sob escaped her and the phone dropped from her hand, clattering as it hit the floor. Sara went to her hands and knees next to it, her head dropping forward. It hurt too much. The pain swept through her, wracking her body with tremors. Make it go away. Please. Make it go away.
Sara pulled herself to her feet, eyes trained on a drawer next to the sink. She was pulled to it by an invisible force, her fingers locking on the top of it. Once it was open, Sara stared at the collection of knives; all different shapes and sizes. She closed her eyes, jumping when someone pounded on the front door. Her eyes went back to the knives.
The door burst open and Sara reflexively slammed the drawer shut, whirling around to face the intruder, her pulse racing. How had he gotten there so fast?
They looked nothing alike. Lincoln Walker was bigger, taller, with gray eyes and darker hair. But when Sara looked at him, she saw his brother. It was in the perpetually lowered eyebrows, the square jaw, and the stance. Lincoln was the moodier, easier to anger, brother; her husband the more amiable, if slightly wild, brother. Nothing alike in personalities or looks and yet she saw her husband in Lincoln. Maybe because she wanted to.
“What are you doing, Sara?” he demanded.
“I’m—what are you doing?” she shot back.
“You look guilty.” Lincoln strode for her, not stopping until he was inches from her and looming over her.
Sara had to crane her neck back to meet his eyes, and when she did, she saw they were red-rimmed and bloodshot. She took in the dark stubble of his jaw and the unkempt, shaggy hair he used to always keep short. She’d never noticed before how it waved up around his ears on the nape of his neck. Brackets had taken a place around his mouth and he seemed thinner than she remembered. It was wearing on him too.
“You can’t just barge into my house, Lincoln.” Sara backed up a step and Lincoln followed.
He had on a gray hooded sweatshirt and faded jeans and brought the citrus and mint scent of soap and toothpaste with him. It was all wrong. Wrong man, wrong scent, wrong everything.
“Yeah, I can, ‘cause technically, it’s my brother’s house too. You look like shit. When’s the last time you showered or ate a decent meal?”
Lincoln had always been blunt, something Sara had admired. Now, though, she really wished he wasn’t quite so blunt. This was why she had been avoiding him as much as she could. Because she knew he’d do this. He thought he had to look out for her, he thought it was his responsibility to take care of her for his brother. On the phone he could talk to her and not expect anything, because he knew he wouldn’t get anything; not even a response, but in person, Lincoln agitated and pushed her and made demands; he always had. They’d used to argue as a form of communication, something that had forever irritated her husband.
“You’re one to talk. You don’t look much better.”
He opened his mouth, and then closed it. “What happened on the phone? You were there and then you weren’t.” Lincoln’s eyes went to the floor and he leaned down to pick up the beeping phone. He turned it off and resituated it on the wall before narrowing his flint-colored eyes on her. “I miss him too, Sara, but at least I work. At least I try to be normal. I don’t hide in my house and push everyone away. You lost your husband, but I lost my brother.”
Those words pierced her with overwhelming anguish. “Why don’t you hate me?” she asked raggedly.
Lincoln slammed his fingers through his hair, messing it up more. One lock went to rest against his forehead. “I think you hate yourself enough for the both of us.” He pointed a finger in the direction of the living room. “Go take a shower. Now.”
She shook her head. “No.”
He shifted his jaw back and forth, determination darkening his features. “You get in that shower now or I’ll put you in it myself.”
A trickle of fear went down her back, but Sara didn’t really believe Lincoln would do that. But the look on his face; it said he would. “I’m fine, Lincoln. I just…I dropped the phone and…”