Clipped Wings

34

HAYDEN

“What the fuck . . .” Chris trailed off as he took in the state of my living room.

“I was a little pissed off.”

The wooden coffee table was on its side, across the room. It might have gone farther, except the corner was embedded in the wall. The drafting table had fared worse. It was in pieces, the contents of Tenley’s folder strewn across the floor. I’d been staring at the mess for the past several minutes, completely unmotivated to clean it up, waiting for Chris to arrive. The chaos seemed apt, considering how I felt.

Chris stepped around the debris and dropped into the chair across from me. “How you feeling now?”

“Still pissed.”

He nodded like he understood. Which he didn’t.

“Wanna tell me what happened?”

“Tenley had a fiancé,” I said, “and he died. Less than a year ago.” What I left out was my relief at his nonexistence, because it meant he was one less threat. It was a horrible thing to be grateful for.

“Shit.” Chris let out a long exhale. “In the plane crash?”

I dipped my chin. “They were on their way to their wedding.”

“Jesus. Tenley told you that?”

Too wound up, I shot up off the couch and stepped over the crap littering the floor. I needed a drink to take the edge off. Chris followed me to the kitchen.

“Her asshole brother-in-law showed up at her door. He dropped a subpoena on her over some estate, and then he tossed that little bomb at me.” I slammed two glasses on the counter and uncapped the bottle. My hand shook as I poured. “You know what the worst part is? If that dick hadn’t stopped by, I still wouldn’t know, and then where the fuck would I be? Blissfully oblivious? A dead fiancé seems like a pretty fucking important detail to keep from me, especially when she’s clearly still involved with members of his fucking family.”

“I’m sorry, man. That’s one hell of a way to find something like that out.”

“I should have expected this. After all the shit I’ve dealt with, I finally have a good thing, and then poof. It’s fucking gone.” I slid a glass toward him and took a hefty gulp of my own.

“What do you mean it’s gone? I get that it’s hard to take, and you’re upset, but you’ll figure it out.”

I shook my head, remembering the way she had looked at me, with those vacant, dead eyes. “I’m pretty sure she broke up with me. It just felt like . . . I don’t fucking know . . . she told me to leave.”

Maybe the end was inevitable. Maybe once the tattoo was done, she would have walked away, having gotten what she needed. Like I was a temporary placeholder for the things she didn’t have anymore. Or maybe Tenley was drawn to me because I stood in direct opposition to everything and everyone she’d lost.

“What if she just didn’t know how to deal with it?” Chris reasoned.

“I don’t think so. She didn’t tell me about her fiancé because she didn’t want me to say no to the back piece.”

“What? According to who? You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“That’s what she said.” I took another sip of my drink and reached for the bottle in preparation to pour another. Chris grabbed it before I could. Whatever. I could get shitfaced after he was gone.

“Is that all she said?”

“She fed me some bullshit about not wanting me to see her differently, but she used that line before, back when she wouldn’t tell me about the crash in the first place.”

I scrubbed my face with my hands. She’d been so terrified that I wouldn’t want her once I found out how extensive her losses were. But knowing the truth hadn’t changed a damn thing. It wasn’t just the lie that got me, though. It was her refusal to be honest, to have faith that I could handle whatever she threw at me.

In spite of all that, I still wanted her. She was the one person I’d been with who got in past all the ink and steel, and when she found out what I was really like, she still wanted me.

Chris capped the bottle and put it away. “Can I ask you something without you ripping off my head?”

“No guarantees.”

He asked anyway. “What are you most pissed about, the dead fiancé or that she didn’t tell you in the first place?”

I thought about it for a minute, struggling to verbalize. “I don’t know. Both?”

“One has to outweigh the other.”

The exclusion of a crucial truth was a sharp pain in my chest. After a long pause I finally replied, “The betrayal.”

Ironic I chose to call Chris instead of Lisa. But I knew what Lisa would say. Chris got me on a different level. We’d been here before; the circumstances had been vastly different, but some of the emotions attached were similar.

He nodded slowly, mulling over my answer. “So you feel betrayed because she didn’t tell you, or because she was in love with someone other than you?”

And that was when it finally clicked. This dead man who had been hers would always be a black shadow between us. Death immortalized people. The less pleasant parts of them washed away, leaving behind a rosy, soft-edged impression of perfection. I was so fucking far from perfect. It hurt in ways I couldn’t begin to explain. I was her rebound. Her spiral down. Her punishment for surviving, just like her brother-in-law said.

“Tenley’s in love with my dick, not me.”

Chris arched his pierced brow. “I’m going to go ahead and disagree with you on that.”

“And you’re speaking from experience?”

Chris gave me a wry grin. “No need to rub that shit in. Look, I can hang out and keep you from trashing your apartment while you get wasted, but all that’s going to do is give you a hangover and a mess to clean up. The problem is still going to be there tomorrow. You might not want to acknowledge it, but this thing between you and Tenley is serious. In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never been like this about anyone. Are you really going to drop it all because you find out something you don’t like and you don’t know how to deal with?”

When I didn’t answer, he sighed. “Look, you’ve both kept parts of your past from each other. And for good reason. No one wants to relive that shit. I get it’s screwing with your head, but I think you need to ask yourself if it really changes how you feel about her.”

“Does it even matter? I can’t compete with the memory of a dead fucking fiancé.”

“It’s not a competition. You can be pissed at her for not telling you, but it comes down to whether or not you’re willing to walk away over it. And personally, I don’t think you are.”

“Thanks for the unsolicited opinion.”

“I thought that was why you called me. If we’re having an honesty session, I’m here because I don’t want to deal with your sorry emo ass if you make a stupid decision.”

Chris had a point. The lie and the betrayal were only a part of the problem. I wasn’t just angry about it; I was hurt. I wanted her to trust me enough to share those parts of herself and her past with me. I might not like the truth, but it was better to know than remain in the dark. Beyond that, I wanted to do for her what she’d done for me; fill the holes in my life I hadn’t realized were there. I wanted to be able to replace the memory of the person she’d lost, and I feared I never would. What an assload of revelation.

Chris’s phone vibrated on the counter. “It’s Sarah.”

I motioned for him to answer it. “Hey—” His greeting was cut off. “What? I can’t—Slow down. Are you—?”

Sarah’s voice filtered through the phone, high-pitched, frantic.

“She did what? We’re coming.” Chris ended the call. “We gotta go to Tee’s.”

It didn’t occur to me to argue. Not with the look on Chris’s face. “What’s going on?”

“She just left with her brother-in-law.”

“It’s after midnight. Where the hell would they go?”

I pushed away from the counter, grabbed my phone, and dialed Tenley, but it went to voice mail. I tried again as we left the condo and bolted down the stairs. We rushed across the street to her apartment. The anger over the belated disclosure evaporated as Sarah came into view, standing in Tenley’s doorway. Her eyes were red, she was sniffling, and TK was curled up in her arms. The kitten let out a forlorn meow and struggled out of Sarah’s hold, bounding toward me. As I picked her up, the heavy feeling in my chest expanded.

“Where is she?” I looked into Tenley’s apartment.

“She went home.”

“What?” I moved past Sarah, inside. My brain refused to process the words. This was her home. The bathroom door was open, the light still on. Her shoes were gone, and so was her jacket.

“She’s going back to Arden Hills. She left with Trey just before I called,” Sarah replied shakily. “I tried to get her to stay, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She wasn’t making much sense. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Her car’s still out back.”

“He drove. She had a suitcase with her. She asked me to look after TK until she came back,” Sarah said. Her pity felt like sandpaper on my already raw emotions.

Unwilling to accept she was gone, I strode through her apartment. Her living room was the same mess it had been before she told me to leave. When I reached the bathroom, I stopped short. Her medicine cabinet was wide open, the entire collection of pill bottles missing. In her bedroom the closet door was open, hangers missing from the middle. One of the dresser drawers was lying on the floor, half the contents strewn all over the place.

“She left me?” That choked feeling got worse, making it hard to breathe.

“She said she needed to take care of things,” Sarah said from the doorway.

“She’s running again.” I put the drawer back in the dresser and gathered up the discarded clothes, trying to create order for the chaos in my head.

“She has to deal with her estate.”

“So she left with that dickface? Couldn’t she have done that here?”

I wished I knew more. It made sense that Tenley had an estate; she was the sole survivor in her family. There must have been things left to her; a house maybe, money. And somehow that dick Trey played a role in things.

“Why didn’t she just tell me the truth in the first place?” I picked up the tank top lying on her bed. She’d worn it last night; I’d folded it and left it there this morning.

“Maybe she wanted to protect herself.”

“From what? Me?”

“She’s petrified of losing you, Hayden. Don’t you get it? All the important people in her life are gone. You gave her a reason to feel something good again. She wasn’t going to risk that.”

“So she left?”

Sarah looked at me with such empathy that it made me want to scream. “She’s in love with you. If she hadn’t lost all of those people, she never would have met you. I think it’s reasonable for her to be a little fucked up over it.”

I hated the look on Sarah’s face, like she needed to treat me with kid gloves so I wouldn’t lose my shit. I was pretty fucking close to the breaking point. I was angry at Tenley for leaving, at Sarah for letting her go, and at myself for walking out the door in the first place.

“She has to come back though, right? She wouldn’t just leave TK and not come back.” I was reaching for a lifeboat in a sea of hopelessness.

“Of course she’ll come back,” Sarah said.

But when Tenley returned, would she be back for me, too?

“I’m gonna go home,” I said. I couldn’t be in Tenley’s space without her.

“You want me to come with?” Chris asked, hands shoved in his pockets.

“Nah, man. Thanks. I just want to be alone right now.”

When I got home, I headed for the bedroom. It was exactly how we left it; sheets a twisted mess, pillows tossed on the floor. Tenley’s half-empty wineglass sat on the nightstand, lip print marking the rim. I couldn’t believe how quickly my life had been turned upside down. It was like coming home to death all over again, except this loss was so different. Tenley still existed, but she was gone. I didn’t know when or if she would be back, and whether she would want me anymore.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and ran my hand over the sheets. Being with her here had felt right. It had changed things.

My body numbed out, and the shaking started. The dissociated feeling settled in, like when I used to have panic attacks so many years ago. It felt like I was watching events from outside myself. Which was better. It hurt less that way.

Tenley hadn’t been gone more than ninety minutes and I missed her more than I could bear. In the weeks since I first met her she’d managed to break through my armor, getting under my skin. I’d let my guard down.

And I’d fallen in love with her.

That was the deadly ache in the center of my chest.

Chris was right; I wasn’t ready to walk away. If she felt the same way about me, that could explain why she ran.

I pushed up off the mattress and grabbed my keys and wallet, heading for the door.

She could run all she wanted, but I was coming after her. I wouldn’t let her go. Not without a fight.