When he spoke again, he wasn’t muttering.
“I live in a shithole apartment not big enough for my kids when I have them, and I don’t like it much even when I don’t. My daughter feels I betrayed her mother, and her, by seeing another woman, and I wasn’t with her or in a position to have the time or anything close to it to explain things to her how they should have been explained. My son is setting himself up to despise his mom until his last breath and I’m struggling with the fact I know I should do somethin’ about that and the understanding, with the harm she’s willingly inflicted on our family, I have no motivation to help her repair things with her boy. I was investigating a murder where every second is crucial in the days closest to the event to find as much as we could to catch the killer, and I’m driving twenty miles out to Becker’s place for him and your mother to play with me. That was all happening and I lost it. With you. I regret it. Because it was the wrong thing to do. But mostly because you didn’t deserve it and I know I hurt you.”
He was calm.
He was apologetic.
He was making sense.
He was taking his time in what was his busy, crazy, messed-up life to explain this to me.
He was beautiful, all tall and dark and leaning into my couch.
But I couldn’t do it.
Because when he’d said he wanted to complicate things with me, I’d never wanted anything more in my life, except Andy to have a happy one, and of course, the time I sat in the waiting room with Keith while Andy was in surgery, wanting Andy to get out of that surgery room alive.
I hadn’t even wanted Keith that much and I’d loved him with what I’d thought was every part of me.
But with Keith there was always the knowledge that he gave, I took, and the guilt I carried with me constantly because of that.
With Hixon, I got to give. I got to take care of him. I got to be the one he came to when he needed to suck back bourbon, not able to share anything but wanting to try to unwind from serious business after an incomprehensibly ugly day.
He gave too. He teased me and made me laugh and looked at me in a way that made me feel beautiful, and he not only showed, but verbalized that he appreciated what I gave to him and that it meant something.
He also didn’t hesitate to take all that away.
I couldn’t do it again.
Maybe from the beginning he’d been right.
Bad timing.
We should have waited. Waited for his life to calm down. Waited for him and his kids to settle into a new life.
Just waited.
We didn’t.
And now it was broken in a way it couldn’t be fixed.
I hated it that he knew he broke it and he was there trying to fix it.
And I hated it that I had to tell him it couldn’t be fixed.
“I can’t risk it again, Hixon.”
He kept his place but dropped his head.
God, I hated that too.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He tipped his head back and again gave me those blue eyes.
I didn’t hate those.
God.
“What we have is good,” he said softly.
“It’s not the right time.”
“Then we’ll give it time.”
I shook my head.
And I’d thought he’d gutted me the last time he was in my living room.
But I was wrong.
He gutted me right then.
“Greta, you’re the finest woman I’ve ever met. We work together. We fit together. I know you feel it the same as me. And we’d be fools not to see where that would lead, and I don’t give a shit all that’s swirling around me, or you. If we can make it through what I did to you, I can earn your trust again, and we can get beyond all that’s happening now, I got a strong feeling where it would lead.”
“I had a good man like you who left me because of my mother, Hixon. She’s not going anywhere.”
“I wanna know that story, but I don’t care about your mother.”
“Trust me, I’ve had thirty-eight years of it, and she’s been quiet for a week. She’s just sharpening her knives. Eventually, you’ll care.”
“Babe—”
“It hurt too much, what you did to me,” I whispered.
He shut up.
“It had only been days,” I explained quietly. “What happens when I have more and you take it away?”
“What could happen if that never happens?” he returned.
“That’s not the life I lead.”
He pushed up from the couch, kept looking me straight in the eyes, and declared, “I’m stronger than that other guy.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can because I know this, if you wanted a twenty-five thousand dollar ring for our anniversary, I’d take a second job to get it for you.”
I gasped.
And I stared.
“And that’s because in two days you gave me more than my wife did in nineteen years, notwithstanding our children and the fact she’s got issues, but she’s a good mother. That’s an uncomfortable realization, sweetheart. And she had her way of doin’ nice things. But she wasn’t you.”
“You can’t know that either.”
“I can. I do.”
Oh my God.
“Hixon.”
He lifted one hand and dropped it.
“You need time. I’ll give it to you. I need time too. Corinne is still pissed and Shaw’s not in a good place. But Greta, I leave, it’s not my right to ask this of you, but I’m gonna do it anyway. Think about it. Unblock my fuckin’ number. And after I give us time, take my call.”
“I don’t want to hurt you but I have to say at this juncture I don’t think that’s smart, and I say that for the both of us.”
“You seen the Avengers movie?”
And again my head twitched.
“Sorry?”
“The Avengers movie. You seen it?”
“Which one?” I asked stupidly because I’d seen them all. Andy liked them.
“Whatever one.”
“Yes . . . uh, all of them.”
He nodded. “I was a selfish fuck. I get you. I get that guilt you carried in your marriage. I don’t know the story. I just know in my way, I did that to you. I took from you and I didn’t give back. I did that because you came into my life in a time I needed to take. And that’ll happen again. But that’s not all there is to me. I just need you to think about whether you’ll give me the shot to prove it to you.”
That was incredibly sweet.
Still.
“Why did you ask about the Avenger movies?”
He smiled at me.
And I wished he hadn’t done it.
“Because my daughter says boys are stupid. They talk about themselves all the time, don’t ask girls questions, don’t let them talk, don’t listen. And I’ve unfortunately proved grown men who should know better do that too.”
Goddammit.
Now he was making sense, being sweet and now kinda cute.
“I wanna know all about you, Greta,” he said in a voice that sounded like velvet and felt that way too. “So I’ll give you time to think about it. And after you have that time, I hope you give me that privilege, ’cause before the season ends, I wanna go watch my son play ball and have you there, walking out of Raider Field with me next to you. Not Lou.”
After delivering that, he turned and strolled to the door.
He opened it.
Stopped.
Looked at me.
And smiled.
“Lock this, baby.”
Then he disappeared.
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Greta