Page 157 of Faking the Pass
He paused a minute before speaking again. “Jessica saw Rosie when she was in Los Angeles last week.”
“Yeah?” I hated the hopeful note in my own voice.
“She said she looked rough,” Wilder said. “They got pretty close during your marriage, you know? She thinks Rosie’s having just as hard a time with this as you are.”
“I doubt it.”
I basically had one foot in the grave. Everything I’d seen in the news and on social media about her indicated she was doing just fine.
“Why don’t you reach out to her?” Wilder suggested. “It might be good for you both, if only to get some closure.”
“I think her presenting me with divorce papers literally a minute after the threat of the lawsuit passed is a pretty good indicator that the matter is closed.”
“She doesn’t love me,” I said flatly. “If she did, she wouldn’t have left.”
“Or… she left because she did love you.” Wilder said.
“What’s that supposed to mean? That makes no sense.”
“That’s what I did with Jess,” he explained. “After what happened with my SEAL team, I had this thing about loyalty.You know Hap never wanted any of his friends to date his sister, right?”
I nodded, recalling how fiercely protective Jessica’s older brother had been—still was.
“So of course that was an impediment,” Wilder said. “But it wasn’t the biggest one. I was convinced I wouldn’t be good for her. I thought my stained reputation would drag her down with me. And then I beat myself up after the incident at Coachella, convinced I’d failed her.”
“I remember.”
“The point is, we loved each other, and we almost lost each other because I kept finding ways to make myself wrong for her. I believed in her, but I didn’t believe in myselfforher—until I had a talk with Hap.”
“And flew to Venice,” I said. “And swam that nasty water like a prime idiot.”
Wilder grinned. “Smartest thing I ever did. Wound up with the perfect wife.”
The perfect wife.
That’s what Rosie had been—perfect for me at least. And I’d let her go.
But this was different from Wilder and Jessica’s story. They’d been madly in love with each other. I loved Rosie, but I didn’t know about her feelings.
Based on the fact I hadn’t heard from her once in over three months, they weren’t anything you could base a real “till death do us part” relationship on.
“You did,” I agreed with my brother. “Now can we change the subject please before I climb to the top of the stadium and jump?”
He laughed. “Sure. You ready for the big Lowe family camping trip next week?”
Each year at the end of football season, we all camped together, getting away from everything for three weeks.
The location varied, but it was always somewhere warm and always in a remote tech-free area where we could detox from social media and press coverage and just spend time together, having fun during the days and talking around the campfire at night.
I shook my head, wincing.
“I might skip it this year actually,” I said. “I’m not in the best place, you know? I’m gonna ruin the vibe.”
“The family ‘vibe’ is exactly what you need right now. You need to be with the people who love you. You gotta come. It won’t feel right without you,” Wilder said.
There was a lot of that going around.
Nothing had felt right since Rosie had left.
