Page 124 of The Truth About Love

Revving the engine, I do what I do on the days where missing Summer-Raine is especially painful. I drive through town and park across the street from the Rainey Days Foundation where, like a stalker, I watch her work through the windows.

Most of the time, the light shines too brightly on the glass to allow me to see through it, but it doesn’t matter.

Just knowing she’s close is enough to thaw the ice that freezes in my heart whenever I’m at home. Just feeling her proximity, even if through concrete walls, brings me a little slice of peace.

I’ve done this at least twice a week since the day I told her about the pregnancy.

I’m not breaking her rules, not trying to talk to her or make contact in anyway. She has no idea that I come here to feel close to her every couple of days.

And that’s the way it will stay.

Because even though it kills me not to go to her, even though I wish she hadn’t set the boundaries she did, I understand why she needs me to keep my space.

If the roles were reversed, I’d be the same.

The one time I saw another man lay their hands on her, I could have committed murder. I’d be sentenced to death row for all the crimes I’d commit if I had to watch her have a baby with someone else.

The doors to the foundation open and my breath catches.

There she is.

Her hair is loose around her shoulders, shiny golden waves that tickle her face with every bluster of wind. She’s dressed in denim overalls with a cropped white t-shirt underneath, leaving a strip of skin around her ribs exposed to the breeze. I want to trace my lips over it.

Behind her, she drags two bulging trash bags.

It takes everything in me not to throw open my door and demand to help her with them. But doing so would go against the one thing she told me to do. Leave her alone.

So, I don’t go to her.

But I still trace every ripple of her body as she picks up each bag and hauls them into the dumpster outside the building. They must be heavy?at least, they look to be?but Summer-Raine doesn’t struggle at all.

In the years it’s been since she admitted herself to the rehab facility, she’s softened out and built up her strength.

I remember the shock I’d felt at seeing how tiny she was when I first saw her after the five years of no contact. Her ribs and hipbones were protruding, and the skin around her chest and collarbones was taught and grey.

She looked gaunt.

Sick.

And that had all changed when she returned from rehab. Her body had new curves, her hair was shinier and her skin clear. She looked alive again.

But in the months that have passed since our last goodbye, I’ve watched from across the street as the life in her eyes has dulled and the softness in her body has returned to sharp edges.

It kills me.

When she doesn’t go straight back inside after throwing the trash out, I freeze.

Does she know I’m here?

Did she see me sitting here and I somehow missed her looking in my direction?

But she doesn’t turn to me or show any sign of knowing that I’m watching her. Instead, she wraps her arms around herself and tilts her head to the sky.

It takes me back to that night in senior year when I saw her for the first time. I’d thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in my life.

I still do.

But looking at her now, even as exquisite as she is, the harrowing pain that emanates from her almost makes me want to look away.

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