Page 8 of Come Back To Me
Arkansas:Do you love me?
Gareth:I like hanging out and talking to you. Look, I’ll message you tomorrow. I’m sorry, but I really have to go. This whole thing is important to Riley.
That was only a month ago. It was a dinner with potential clients, and I told him I didn’t want to go alone. It’s when he kissed the back of my hand saying, “You don’t have to.”
My heart squeezes and fuck, I loved that man. Too much. I read more messages, and they’re all pretty much the same. Arkansas doesn’t ask him if he still loves me again until days before the accident.
Gareth:Yes
Arkansas:Do you love me?
Gareth:I don’t know.
It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no either. I jump to the very last conversation between them, my pulse beating in my ears.
Arkansas:Meet you in Little Rock the day after you arrive?
Gareth:I don’t think you should. Actually, I don’t think we should do this anymore.
Arkansas:But this weekend is supposed to be more special than the rest.
Gareth:Yeah, and that’s why I don’t think you should join me after all. I want to work on my marriage. I’m planning to tell Riley everything when I get home.
Arkansas:Are you serious? Are you going to tell him it’s me?
I know him. The shop owner said I did.
Gareth:No. I promise not to mention your name.
Arkansas:Why are you doing this? I love you, Gareth. We could make each other really happy. What are you afraid of?
There are no more messages after that. I drop the phone on the nightstand and fall back in the bed, staring at my shaking hands. He was choosing me. That doesn’t make me feel any better, though. He should have wanted to work on us before going to someone else for whatever he thought he couldn’t get from me anymore.
I can’t hate him for it no matter how much I try to. I keep trying anyway, and then end up rolling under the covers, soakingthe sheets in tears as I mourn more than the husband I lost. I mourn the chance to be all he needs again.
I’ll never get that. I’ll never hear him say he’s staying because he loves me too much to walk away—because he can’t see himself spending the rest of his life with someone else. He might have been with me when he lost control and hit that pole, but his mind was withhimas he read his last message.
I must have been exhausted because I fell asleep with Gareth’s phone in my hands after watching all the videos he had of us. We were smiling and laughing in almost all of them. I noticed the sadness in his eyes in the last one, the one I took before we left the house on the day I lost him. I kept telling him how handsome he was while he got dressed, filming him with his phone, and he held his hand over the lens, one side of his lips lifting.
“Turn that off and go brush that wild hair of yours,” he said.
Waving the phone back and forth, I laughed and said, “No, because I’ll have to do it again when you mess it up.”
Lips turned up in a full grin, he yanked me toward him. “I guess that’s true, huh?”
The video ended and that’s when he tossed the phone on the bed before laying me beside it to drag my shorts down my thighs.
He really was going to choose me. He made love to me that day the way he used to when I felt like our love was timeless. When I felt like we were unbreakable and nothing could come between us. I scroll through his gallery, seeing nothing but pictures of me. Me smiling. Me holding the towel up while showering. Me naked under the sheets. And me smiling before we got in the car and he kissed me like he was going to lose me if he didn’t.
He was going to choose us, and now I have to find a way to choose us too. In my recent dream, Gareth was stuck on the other side of the road, struggling to move past the rising gravel, and he kept shouting at me that there was only one way for me to choose him. He could come back to me. I could bring him back to me. I have to at least try to.
Four
Riley
Tingles dance along my spine and my palms itch as I get closer to the large leather-bound book. I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to spells, but I’ll figure it out. Something deep inside me says I can.
As my fingers run over the spine, footsteps close in on me and a hand rests on my shoulder. “Can I help you find something?”
