Page 43 of Unbreakable
“Home. To my parents.”
I bobbed my head, stepping to her side to run a hand down her back. She stiffened under my touch. “Yeah. Okay. It’ll probably be good to get some support from them. Would you rather go when I’m away for the next road stand, though?”
She pursed her lips and stared at her hands working to fold another shirt. “I need to go now.”
“Sure, yeah. I get it. Do what you need to do, babe.” I put my arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek.
She closed her eyes and drew a shaky breath. “I might not come back, Dylan.”
I couldn’t breathe. This was all a bad dream, right? “You’re . . . leaving?”
She didn’t say anything, staring into the suitcase and running her fingers under her lower lashes.
“It’s just not working out, Dylan.”
My mouth gaped and I had to consciously shut it so I could swallow. “Jeannie, we said forever. Till death do us part. All that stuff—I meant every word.” I paused, watching her. Her face didn’t change. “I know you’re grieving, and I am too?—”
“She wanted you to leave me and you didn’t argue with her.”
Fuck. How much had she heard? Did she hear the awful insults too?
“Jeannie, what she said was so out of line?—”
“Then why didn’t you defend me?” she seethed, finally turning to face me with wild eyes. “Defend us?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, my nose stinging.
“You’ll fight a man in pads and skates for saying something stupid about one of your teammates, but you won’t argue with your mother when she says you should dump,” she broke into sobs, “the woman you married, the mother of your child that welost?—”
She trembled and I pulled her into me. Her tears and some saliva from crying so hard soaked the chest of my dress shirt. “Jeanine. Baby. Please.”
“Why didn’t you?” she wailed, shoving me back.
“It shocked me. It hurt me too, hearing her talk about you like that. It crushed me. She was a monster.”
“And yet you talked to her. You didn’t defend me. You didn’t hang up on her. You didn’t cut her out of your life.”
She wasn’t wrong. I could have done more. “She’s my mom, J. I . . . I don’t know how to talk back like that. If it had been my dad, I could have done it. But my mom’s just—I don’t know how to describe it.”
She nodded, seemingly sobering. “Well, while you figure it out, I’m going to Temecula.”
“Jeannie, no, please stay. I love you so fucking much. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with my mother, but you are number one. Okay? You are my top priority.”
“Am I? Then why didn’t you do something?”
I rubbed my forehead. “I should have. I’m sorry, Jeanine. You’re everything.” I gripped her upper arms in my hands. “We’re going through so much right now. I’ll never be able to feel exactly what you’re feeling, but I’ve been trying to put myself inyour shoes. But a lot of the time, Jeannie, I feel hopeless. I can’t take your pain away. I can’t kiss it better. All I can do is be here and keep loving you.”
Her eyes were on the floor between us. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Jeannie, look at me.” I cradled her chin in my hand. Her red-rimmed blue eyes met mine. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever been through, and there’s still no place I’d rather be. We will get through this. I don’t know if it will ever stop hurting, but we’re going to figure out how to live. Our baby will always be part of us, Jeanine. They will always be our first.”
I stopped talking as she sobbed into my hand. I pulled her to me as tightly as I could, hoping that if I held her a little closer, I could squeeze her pain out of her. When her crying slowed, I kissed her forehead.
“Your mom’s still a bitch,” she said with a wet laugh.
I laughed too. “Yeah. She is.”
“Who the hell does that?”
