Page 78 of Sweet Spot
Well, this is as awkward as I imagined. Seeing Lacey and the hurt I caused her never gets easier. The girl who used to look at me as if I hung the moon, can now barely stand to look at me.
Maybe we were always doomed to fail. We married young without really talking about what kind of life we wanted together. But regardless of the reasons, I feel a deep sense of responsibility for the way it all ended.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get out here.”
“It’s fine.”
“All right. Should we get started?” I’m starting to sweat under my shirt.
“I already grabbed my things.” She nods to her car and the packed back seat and then hands me the keys to our unit. “It’s all yours. Just turn those in at the front desk when you’re done. If no one is there, they have a drop box.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks. Do you need any help unloading? I could follow you.”
“No thank you. I’ve got it,” she says and nods curtly.
The thing about divorce is you’re either fighting or being too polite to one another. I’m not an asshole that wants to yell and scream, but her anger was easier to live with.
She takes a step toward her car and I call after her, “Lace.”
She turns slowly, shoulders tensing as her guard goes up. “Yeah?”
“I really am sorry. For not taking care of this sooner and for . . . everything really.”
She stares at me for a moment as if she’s gauging my sincerity.
“I know that I’ve apologized before, and I don’t know if you believed it then or if you’ll believe it now, but not a day has gone by that I haven’t been sorry for how things ended. You deserved so much more. I hope you find it.”
“Thank you.” A tight smile lifts her lips. Maybe she believes me, maybe she doesn’t. Maybe the wound is too deep for my apology to make a difference either way. I don’t think I’ll ever know the answer, and I guess that’s my punishment. “See you around, Lincoln.”
I force myself to watch her go, waving as she pulls out of sight, and then with a deep breath, I turn toward the storage unit that holds my previous life. One side is empty where Lacey already grabbed her things, and the other contains boxes and colorful tubs, a few pieces of small furniture.
I load it all into my SUV, each item adding weight to the light feeling I walked in here with.
Since Keira came into my life, I’ve allowed myself small, indulgent thoughts. Not about the future exactly, but glimpses of what it might have been like with her instead.
But here, all around me, are the reminders that I can’t change the past or escape the baggage I carry from it. The best I can do is shove it, like these boxes, from one dark corner to another so it doesn’t touch what Keira and I have.
29
Keira
I headup to Lincoln’s the weekend before the sectional qualifier to play a round on the course and attempt to settle my nerves. He answers the door with his phone glued to his ear.
“I hate Friday night traffic,” I mumble.
Smiling as he talks to the person on the phone, he drops a quick kiss on my lips and then takes my bag from me and disappears toward his bedroom with it. He returns a second later, heading across the apartment to his office, talking on the phone the entire time.
I follow along behind him. Exhaustion from the long hours I’ve put in over the past few weeks mixed with excited anticipation makes me too frazzled to do anything else.
Lincoln takes a seat, and I climb onto his lap and wrap myself around him, hugging him tightly and breathing in his clean, familiar scent. We’ve seen each other almost every weekend over the past two months, and each time I miss him more between visits.
As he speaks, his chest vibrates under me. He scoots his chair closer to the desk, puts his phone on speaker, and sets it next to the keyboard. His arms circle around my waist so he can reach his keyboard behind me. I should probably move and let him work, but he doesn’t ask, so I melt into him.
The man on the phone gives Lincoln numbers—stats on total registered members for the website broken down by area of interest. It hits me in a way that it hasn’t before, how massive his company is and how much of a sacrifice he made when he agreed to coach me.
I lift my head and kiss his neck. Goose bumps pebble under my lips, and a thrill runs through me. Lincoln talks on, seemingly unaffected, but those little raised dots give him away.
I kiss my way up to his jaw, and he dips his head to take my lips. I smile into him as our mouths lazily linger and play.
