Page 22 of The Biggest Secret
And that worries me because that’s my compartmentalization. It’s how I move through my day, it’s how I arrange my thoughts and put things in order. I need to work. I need to keep business number one. The fact that it slipped from my mind today means that I just stepped into a whole new realm of life now.
It’s something I have no idea how to navigate through.
* * *
I sent Billy home at the end of the day. I canceled his plans to come over with the guys. I just couldn’t do it. As the day wore on, I couldn’t shake my thoughts. The more I thought, the less work I did. So now I’m paying for it.
I tiled that damn bathroom until it was past eleven at night. My body hurt and I was starving. I closed everything up and drove home. As I pulled into my driveway, I watched Francesca’s old house from my rear-view mirror. Chelsea’s car was in the driveway, but the house was dark. I’m sure they were both sleeping. I wanted to go over there, to knock on her door and demand she give me answers.
Where has she been for two years?
Why did she leave?
Why is she back?
Why didn’t she tell me she was pregnant in the first place? Was I that bad of a boyfriend?
I lean my head back on the headrest and imagine Chelsea pregnant.I’m sure she was even more beautiful. I would have loved to see her belly grow with my son. Watched as two became three.
Chapter Seventeen
CHELSEA
I’m tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable in a bed that isn’t mine, in a house I have no right to.
Did I do the right thing by coming back here? I disrupted the life of everyone who was good to me.
‘You can’t keep coming in and out of their lives. You’re their father. They need you to stay.’
‘They won’t miss me.’
‘They already do! You don’t want me? Fine. But stop disrupting their lives. They’ll never understand what a good man is if youdon’t show them.’
Not only am I scarred from my own father coming in and out of my life, I’m also just like him, repeating the cycle. I get up from the bed, brushing thoughts of my childhood from my mind, and quietly walk down the hall to check on Dominic. He’s huddled in the corner of his pack and play, his makeshift bed until I can get the rest of our furniture moved in here. I tiptoe back out, leaving the door open an inch, and move to the couch, sitting in the dark silence for a few minutes. My sister went back to her apartment to pack up some more things and won’t be back for another few days.
The silence is killing me. I can’t sit still, so I get up and head to the kitchen, pouring myself a glass of water, and then I hear it. Adam’s truck coming down the road. It sounds like thunder, or like a tornado coming to swallow me whole. The intense rumble shoots through my body.
I close my eyes and allow myself to imagine what could have been. For just a moment, if I hadn’t run. After a long day of work, he could have been pulling into our driveway, of a house we live in together with our son.
I put the glass of water down on the countertop and slide onto a stool at the island.
How do I begin to explain what I was thinking? I can’t because I still don’t know. Looking back, I made an immature decision and then stuck to it because I’m stubborn. And it affected not just my life, and Adam’s, but his whole family.
I have so much guilt and regret; it weighs on me daily.
Then I hear it. A soft knock. I pause, wondering if it’s just my own heart knocking against my chest. But then I hear it again.I go to the front door and see a shadow. I glimpse out the side window and see Adam. My heart begins to race, and I’m flooded with emotions. Taking a deep breath, I open the door.
“Hi.” One word. It’s all I can get out. His mere presence takes my breath away, even after all these years of knowing him. He’s leaning against the door jamb with his forearm, his head resting against it, and he looks tired. Defeated. But when our eyes connect, there’s fire.
“Can I come in?”
I step out of the way, and he brushes past me, his touch igniting allmy senses, bringing them back to life. Life that has been lost for over two years. I ask him to wait just a minute, and I head down the hallway again, checking that Dominic is sleeping. I turn on the baby monitor in his room, shut the door completely and then grab the other monitor from my room, turning it on as I head back to Adam.
“So, you just decide to uproot his life, yours and mine, all over again?”
Guess we’re jumping right into this.I find him standing in the middle of the living room, and I stay rooted a few feet away, leaning against the wall. I want to reach out and touch him, hold his hand, anything to have some kind of connection while we go through this conversation, but I know he’s not ready for that. And neither am I. We’re not who we used to be.
“I expected this conversation, just not so soon and not at almost midnight, Adam.”
