Page 19 of Twice in a Lifetime

The front door opened as I hefted Ainsley out of her booster and placed her on the ground. All three of my kids bolted toward their uncle. “Hey, guys,” he chuckled as a tiny tornado of kids descended upon him. All three of them were talking over each other, vying for his attention, to the point of yelling.

“Good lord, guys. Let your uncle breathe for a second, why don’t you?”

He placed his hands on top of Adeline’s and Avett’s heads and smiled down at them. “Doc’s out back runnin’ through the sprinkler I set up. Why don’t you guys go join him? I’ll be right out. I need to talk to your momma first.”

The kids took off like a bullet, eager to play in the water with Tristan’s dog. Meanwhile, my stomach sank at the emotion skating over my brother’s face as he looked back up at me.

“What’s up?” I managed to ask, though everything inside me was screaming that I didn’t want to know. “You got really serious all of a sudden.”

He braced his hands on his hips and lowered his head as he let out a gust of breath. “I tried callin’. Wanted to give you a heads-up.”

“You’re freaking me out, little bro. Just tell me, already.”

I knew what was coming as soon as I saw the sympathy in his eyes, but I found myself holding my breath anyway. “Lincoln’s here to see you, B.”

And there it was.

It was funny how I’d been preparing myself for this very thing, yet I still wasn’t prepared.

I couldn’t breathe.As I stumbled out of the house and onto the front stoop, I struggled to fill my lungs with air. It felt like someone had punched me right in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me. I guess, given the news I just received, that was about right.

Footsteps sounded behind me, just as Tristan’s voice called out. “B? You okay?”

I wasn’t. God, I was the furthest thing from okay. “I can’t—” My voice cracked, and it took everything in me not to burst into tears. I didn’t want my kids to see me break down. They needed their mother to be strong. I couldn’t crumble. Not again. Elliott had caused that too many times already.

“I can’t be here,” I finally managed to get out. “Can you?—?”

“Of course. I’ve got the kids, B. You do what you need to do. I’m here. I’m always here.”

I nodded, blinking back the burn in my eyes as I raised up on my toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Thanks,” I croaked, that single word scraping along my throat like sandpaper. I rushed to my car and threw it into gear. I wanted to slam on the gas pedal and take off, but that would have been reckless, and reckless wasn’t something my family could afford.

I didn’t know where the hell I was going, but I couldn’t stay in that house, not with the walls closing in on me after the bomb Lincoln dropped.

It hadn’t been an affair. It was so much worse.

It hurt bad enough to know my husband had been sleeping with someone else, but he’d built a whole life I didn’t know about. Knowing he had a whole otherfamily... well, thatkilled. He had two kids with her, for Christ’s sake.Kids! All those business trips, all those lectures and conferences I thought he was going to, those had all been a cover for him to go spend time with them. His second family.

The pain in my chest wouldn’t let up. It was so bad that, if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought I was having a heart attack. What I was dealing with might not have been life threatening, but my heart was irreparably damaged nonetheless.

I ended up somewhere I hadn’t been in years, somewhere I never expected to be again. I’d driven on autopilot to a place that used to be second nature to me. Still dressed in my scrubs and hospital approved shoes from work, this definitely was not the proper footwear to be wearing on a hike, but my body moved of its own accord, without any input from my brain. Before I knew what was happening, I was out of my SUV and starting up a trail I used to know like the back of my hand.

My feet slipped on the bed of fallen leaves on the soft ground. I wound through the trees, somehow managing to keep from falling as I moved up, up, up. The tightness in my chest refused to loosen its vise grip. I was dangerously close to hyperventilating as I burst through the trees into the clearing beyond.

This place had meant something back then. It was special. It was a place Rhodes and I had kept to ourselves. It was where we’d first kissed, where I’d given him my virginity, where he’d said he loved me for the first time, and where he’d told me he planned on joining the Army as soon as he graduated, but I wasn’t focused on any of that then.

The cliff overlooked the beauty of this valley. It was a view that never failed to take my breath away with its stunning vista, but now I wasn’t seeing any of it. I couldn’t hear the trickle of the river below over the rush of blood in my ears. I couldn’t appreciate the peaks and valleys of the mountains stretched outbefore me. All I could think about was the pressure building inside of me. I felt like my insides were made of that shit kids put in their science fair volcanos, just waiting to explode. I was a human pressure cooker, and if I didn’t find some way to release it, I was going to lose my mind.

So I did the only thing I could think to do. It was the very thing Tristan had suggested days ago. I leaned back, opened my mouth, and screamed as loud and long as I possibly could. I felt better afterward, so I did it again. And again. Until my throat felt like it was on fire and tears were streaming down my face. Once I couldn’t scream any longer, I started letting out a stream of curses in between broken sobs as I poured out all the pain eating me up inside.

I sucked in a gasp and whipped around at the snap of a twig, right to where Rhodes was standing between two wide oak trees.

“Of course!” I shouted up at the sky, throwing my arms out wide. “Ofcourseyou’re here right now. How is it you always pop up when I’m at my very worst, huh? Did I do something evil in a past life? Was I an auditor for the IRS or something?”

Before he could formulate an answer, a fresh wave of rage and sorrow crashed into me, taking me down to my knees as my tears fell and leached into the dirt beneath me.

Chapter Eleven

Rhodes

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