Page 3 of Through The Rain
Maybe they weren’t going to be man and wife anymore, but they’d been together for over twenty years. Surely they could find their way to being friends again.
“Did you eat on the road?” she asked, taking that tentative first step toward an amicable relationship.
“Yeah. Did you?” She nodded. “I’m going to clean up around the yard and get my tools out of the truck and stuff. Do you need help taking your stuff up to the loft first?”
His assumption that he would be getting the bed while she slept on one of the cots grated on her nerves. To hell with amicable. “I got here first and I’ve already made up the bed for myself. But thanks for the offer.”
“I’m a lot taller than you. And I’m taller than the couch is long, so I should get the real bed.”
“My bag’s already on it, so it’s mine.”
“This isn’t summer camp, Emily.”
“It’s our summer camp, and I got here first, put my bag on the bed, and claimed it. The cots are still folded up in the loft if you don’t like the couch.”
“You’re really going to be like this?”
She shrugged. Maybe it was petty because he was taller than her, but she was tired of sacrificing her own comfort for other people’s. It was part of the deal when it came to the kids, but Scott was a grown man. He could deal with it. If he was too tall for the cot, he could sleep on the floor.
He looked at the bed for a long moment, and then back at her. When he arched one brow in a questioning look, she shook her head, and after a few seconds of tense silence, he walked out of the cabin.
Scott could be mad if he wanted to, but there was absolutely no way they were sharing that bed. Yes, they’d done just that for many years, but being that close to him and not being able to touch him wasn’t an option.
Being alone here in the cabin with him was hard enough. Even though she knew putting them out of their marital misery had been the right thing to do, she missed him. Sometimes it was the low-key ache of missing the person she’d shared her entire adult life with. And sometimes it was the breathtaking agony of having lost the man she loved with her whole heart.
There was no denying her marriage had been broken, but she still struggled every day to accept it was really over. She’d thrown it away, though, and she could never take that back.
CHAPTER 2
When Scott opened his eyes the following morning, his first thought was of the woman sleeping in the bed underneath him. Not underneath him in the best way—naked and literally under his body—but in the room under the loft he’d had to crawl into.
It had taken him forever to fall asleep. He’d been hyperaware of her and heard every sigh and every creak of the old bed when she shifted. And sleep, when it finally came, had offered no refuge from the torment. He rarely remembered his dreams, but last night he’d dreamt about Emily. Not a sex dream, but one of those daily life dreams that felt so real, waking up alone and realizing it wasn’t had broken his heart all over again.
The second thing that crossed his mind was uncertainty about whether he was going to be able to get out of the cot, and if so, if he could get down to the coffee maker without hitting his head on the sloped ceiling or throwing out his back trying to get down the ladder.
He was definitely too old for cots in lofts.
With a few groans and a couple of curses muttered under his breath, he was able to half climb and half roll his way out of bed. It was still cold as hell at night this early in May in the northern part of the state, and the loft was only heated by what drifted up from the ground floor, so it was chilly enough to force him down the ladder despite his back’s protests.
Emily was coming out of the bathroom when he reached the bottom and she’d clearly just gotten out of bed herself. She didn’t look as though she’d slept any better than he had, and they exchanged grumbled good mornings as they passed.
She’d finished brewing her coffee by the time he was done in the bathroom, and he noticed she didn’t bother to reset the Keurig for him. It was a petty thing, and a small way of reminding him she didn’t want him there.
As if he could forget. She’d made it very clear she didn’t want him at all.
He went to the fridge while his coffee brewed and reached for his milk, but paused when he saw the stuff on her side. He pulled out a strange bottle and held it up. “What is this stuff?”
“Almond milk.” She lifted her chin. “I decided to take this weekend to try all the things I’ve always wanted to try but couldn’t because I had other people’s opinions to worry about.”
“You’re free to do whatever you want and you choose to go rogue with almond milk?” He put her bottle back and grabbed his milk. After fixing his coffee, he picked up his mug and walked to the small, square table. The couch should have been replaced a decade ago and it didn’t have a side table, so sitting with Emily was his best option. If he tweaked his back while on the couch and couldn’t get up, she might just leave him there for the rest of the weekend.
It wasn’t until after he sat down that he realized he’d sat in his traditional place—the side of the table next to her side—rather than across from her. But instead of making it a big deal, he took a sip of the hot coffee. He pulled out his phone and hoped today would be a good day for the intermittent cell coverage in the area. He pretended to read the screen, but Emily and her mug of freedom-flavored coffee were squarely in his peripheral vision.
She blew across the top of the cup twice, which had been driving him up a wall for years because the liquid wasn’t going to scald her mouth. They were hitting a button on a Keurig, not boiling water and grounds in a tin pot over an open fire.
Then, simply to annoy her, he looked up from his phone just as she took her first sip.
She caught him looking as she swallowed, and her face locked up as she fought not to grimace.
