Chapter 23

Zeke

"I got you something."

I had good intentions of sitting Rainey down when she got back from Gertie's and discussing every single thing between us that had been bothering me. All my cards on the table. Not one word left unsaid this time. I was also prepared as best as I could be to see the backside of her as she ran right out of here and didn't look back.

Instead, I took the item she handed me, something hard and pointy wrapped in plain brown paper. She looked so eager and hopeful, I couldn't point out that buying me things or learning my favorite color or making me breakfast was not what I wanted from her. I wanted her love, her loyalty, her fuckin' pinky promise she would never leave me again. Realizing that maybe she could never say those things, I ripped the paper off and plopped back down on the couch where I'd been when she walked in.

It was a picture of me and Rainey. And my dad.

I felt the couch move as Rainey sat next to me, snuggling into my side to gaze at the old picture in a plain wooden frame. I'd never seen the picture before, probably because the moment frozen in time was our high school graduation and Rainey had left that night.

"I saw this at Grandma's and I had to frame it for you. Look at the way he looks at you." She sniffled and I realized she was crying. Looking down at her, she swiped her hands across her cheeks, but her eyes kept welling up. "I'm sorry I wasn't here. I didn't get to say goodbye to him. Or be here for you. But I knew you'd want to remember how he looked at you."

"Rain," I whispered, placing the frame at my feet and pushing the hair away from her cheeks to cup her face. I kissed her nose and then each eyelid, breathing her in and wondering how I could love someone so much when they also hurt me more than anyone ever had. "Come here."

Our mouths crashed together and clothes found their way to the floor. We came together in a bumbling mash of whispers and gasps and hands stroking every square inch of skin. I was hopelessly in love with her, a refrain that played in the background the entire time I thrust into her. She seemed to say it back in the way her eyes stayed on mine and her hands clutched me tighter to her. Or perhaps a better bet would be that I was imagining things again. We came at the same time and I had to bite back the words that wanted to slip from my lips.

Not tonight.

Maybe tomorrow I'd work up the courage to say what needed to be said. To watch her walk away.

The following week sprawled out on repeat. I spent every hour the sun was in the sky at Glamper's Paradise, helping Gannon build a wood sauna structure that should belong on the cover of a magazine for luxury vacations. When the sunset meant we couldn't see any longer, we called it a day and I went home to Rainey. She made me a late dinner even when I insisted I could put together a simple sandwich. Then we tumbled into the shower or into bed, wrapped up in each other.

And each morning, I would slip out of bed before dawn and head to the jobsite, avoiding the conversation I knew we needed to have. I tricked myself into thinking that this could work. We could live together, fuck together, and even if we never exchanged those three little words, all of the rest would be good enough for me.

"If we don't finish this thing before noon, Paisley might kill me," Gannon said by way of greeting on the sixth day in a row we'd been working on the sauna.

I looked up from the section of deck I was painting with yet another coat of stain. "She in a hurry to get in the sauna?"

Gannon grunted. "No, she's in a hurry for me to have enough free time to swing by her work at noon. She's taken a desk job again and she gets restless. If you know what I mean."

By the sly grin on his face as he picked up a paintbrush, I knew exactly what he meant. His and Paisley's relationship was something of a role model for me. I gave him shit for being much older than me, but what he had here with his business and what he had with Paisley and their kiddos looked like paradise. They fought like dogs sometimes but then one of them would get a gleam in their eye, and the next thing you knew, the temperature around us rose ten degrees and even a nun would have been feeling horny in their heavy presence.

"You avoiding Rainey already? Aren't you still considered newlyweds?" he asked, his back to me as he painted another section of the exterior of the sauna.

I sighed, too frustrated and beat down with opposing thoughts to avoid his question. "Yeah, I'm avoiding her. Just during the daytime."

Gannon snorted. "I feel you there. I do that sometimes when Paisley's mad at me. I come home when I know she's had time to cool off and we can get right to the makeup-sex part of our argument. It's the key to a successful marriage."

I wished it were that easy. "We're not fighting. Exactly."

Gannon whistled. "That's worse. What's going on?"

My paintbrush stilled, and before I knew what was happening, we were sitting in our boxers inside the sauna, giving the giant machine a test run as I spilled my guts to a genuine friend. He listened, offering short commentary here or there but mostly he just let me vent while we both started to sweat.

"I feel confident on the job, so I rush to get here. Everything at home with Rainey is too jumbled. I feel incompetent there. I guess I'm wavering back and forth between letting things play out as they are with Rainey running right over me again or confronting her for an answer I'm not sure she can give and watching her walk away again."

"That's a fucked-up conundrum, dude," Gannon said finally, leaning back against the molded bench we'd made out of expensive cedar planks earlier in the week.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead, then realized even my forearm was sweating profusely. "Tell me about it."

"Can you live forever with the situation the way it is? You know, with your balls in a Rainey-sized vise?"

I shoved him with my elbow, but slid right off due to all the sweat. "Shut the fuck up."

He waved his hands in the air. "I'm kidding. Kind of. I mean, only you can answer for yourself, but I don't see you settling for a half-ass relationship. You're the type to stick up for what's right. Didn't the girls say you punched a guy junior year who made some lewd remark about Rainey? That's a guy who cares about right and wrong."

My skull made a loud clunk as I tipped my head back against the sauna wall. "Fuck."

Gannon let out a sigh to the ceiling. "Yep. Pretty much."

We didn't end up finishing the sauna by noon, but I did get home just before sunset that day, only to find Rainey missing. Daisy danced around me, wanting my attention, but my gaze was drilled to one spot. There was a letter on the kitchenette table that made my heart stop. For a few awful seconds, I thought Rainey left a note for me and that she was gone. Then I saw the ripped envelope next to the letter and realized it was addressed to her. I scanned the note shamelessly, figuring if she didn't want me to read it, she shouldn't have left it out in the open.

What I read made my heart sink even as the panic receded. It looked like some diner in Colorado had attached her last paycheck, along with a letter on official letterhead. It was from one of her past employers, informing her they'd fired her manager and wanted to rehire her to take his position. Putting the letter back down the way I found it, I called her name. Daisy jumped around in a circle instead of running to find Rainey which told me she was truly not here.

I ran to my bedroom anyway, suddenly needing to see her clothes next to mine in the closet. They were there, hung messily, all pinks and baby blues and flowers next to my boring T-shirts. I sank onto our bed and put my head in my hands.

Gannon was right. I had to do what was right. I couldn't keep living this way, expecting her to leave anytime I turned my back. I told myself that if she told me about the job offer, I'd ask her about her long-term intentions. We'd get it all out in the open. And if she didn't tell me, then I had my answer then too. If she hid it from me, we were definitely done.

"Zeke! What are you doing home so early?" I heard her call from the front of the house. Daisy took off running. I followed at a much slower pace, coming around the corner to see Rainey's face buried in Daisy's neck as the two of them hugged. It was a knife to the chest, seeing my dog love Rainey too. I wasn't the only one who'd miss her when she was gone.

"Got done early and figured we could make dinner together."

Rainey stood and walked over to fling her arms around my neck, a broad smile on her face. "Sounds perfect! I bought everything to make enchiladas. Can you grate the cheese?"

We moved about the kitchen making dinner, easily flowing around each other and the conversation mostly one-sided like usual as Rainey regaled me with something that had happened that day. Somehow, the job offer from her old employer hadn't ranked high enough on the list of what had happened that day for her to mention it to me. When we plated our food and Daisy had been fed, I moved to the table.

"Let's eat on the couches!" Rainey suggested, already moving in that direction.

I gave the letter on the table one last look before joining her. We ate, she chatted some more and then snuggled up to my chest while we watched a mindless movie. She fell asleep on my shoulder, her fine blonde hair spreading across my chest. I watched her sleep, memorizing every soft curve of her face, the lift of her chest as she breathed, and the way her fingers twitched as she dreamed.

At some point late in the evening, I picked her up gently and took her to bed, sliding in next to her and letting her snuggle up to me again in her sleep. I let her take comfort in my arms one last time.

Because tomorrow it would all change.

Tomorrow I'd do the thing I had to do.

Tomorrow I'd let my free bird go.