Chapter 62

There were no decorations. No chicken wire ghosts. No playful witches. No spooky clings in the windows. No pumpkins. I crossed my arms, frowning as I stared at our house. There wasn’t a goddamn pumpkin anywhere in sight. Had she not started decorating for Halloween?

That was unlike Genevieve. She’d always been ready to decorate for Halloween the minute the Fourth of July was over.

There was no sign of her anywhere. It was proper and expected, lacking all the flair and warmth she offered. That notion ebbed between the cracks in my armor, nagging at me.

“You know, I was hoping we’d see you back around here again.” The elderly voice made me turn. Ellen Whittaker stood on her front walkway, head tilted to the side with a sad smile as she watched me. Three years and the older woman looked the same, right down to her dark sweater and pristine hair. I gave up half a grin—it was all I could manage.

“How are you, Ellen?” I asked because it was the polite thing to do.

“Alive and kicking.” She chuckled. “But I’ll take it. Are you back for good, dear?”

“That’s the question of the year, isn’t it?” I muttered and blew out a long breath of air. I scanned the house once more, trying to grasp something I recognized. “Did she not decorate this year?”

“She hasn’t decorated in three years.” My gaze snapped in her direction. “We all miss her kooky little pumpkin displays. Grief is a funny thing, isn’t it? It takes things you never thought it would.”

“Yeah,” I whispered, but I barely heard her. I was stuck on the fucking notion that Genevieve hadn’t decorated for Halloween in three years. That wasn’t her. Numbly, I waved at Ellen and started up the steps. “Have a good day, Ellen.”

I let myself in with my key because I still kept the stupid thing on a keychain she’d given me. For as much as I’d tried to separate from her over three years, I never managed to let Genevieve go.

The house was bland.

That was the only word I could think of to describe it. Picturesque? Maybe that was a better word for it. Besides the neatly stacked and perfectly labeled moving boxes scattered throughout the first floor, it looked like something out of a magazine. Everything was plain and perfect, clean and neutral.

This wasn’t our fucking house. Our house was filled with a wild array of colorful blankets and pillows. It had ridiculous knick-knacks on every available surface and photo collages on the wall. Our house was filled with a dozen or more half-filled water bottles, cups, and mugs left everywhere when she was distracted. Our house was a home—lived in, cared for, and full of memories that echoed off every surface.

This house lacked everything that screamed Genevieve. It was as if she’d vanished from existence, packed away inside a box where no one could see her bright colors and brilliant personality.

This house felt wrong down to its very studs.

I stalked through the first floor, taking in the absence of detail. It fucking broke my heart. There wasn’t a shred of evidence—not real anyway—that the woman I fell in love with lived here. And there was no fucking way all that shit was packed already in a handful of boxes.

Even the coffee mugs she had laid out next to packing paper on the counter were all wrong. No color, no adorable designs, no wild shapes. They were all simple, plain mugs in crappy fucking white.

“Shit,” I whispered to the empty house. Had she been living like this for three years?

Did I do this to her?

I was afraid to look upstairs, but I had to. I had to fucking know how bad it was. My expectations for coming to see Genevieve hadn’t been high—a blowout fight was the top of that list—but finding our house like this… I didn’t know what the fuck to do with that.

Our house wasn’t remotely the biggest in Cedar Harbor. It was a quaint three-bedroom house with the rooms crammed around a cozy bathroom on the second floor. The first room at the top of the stairs was ours.

And the door was shut. Which was fucking odd because Genevieve hated closed doors. It gave her anxiety. She craved the openness.

The guest bedroom across from our room was open, and I peeked inside, unsure of what I’d find. Her clothes were neatly folded and sorted on the floor in piles dictated by season from what I could tell. The bed was lived in with its wrinkled sheets and her satin pillowcases.

Fuck me. Was she sleeping in the guest bedroom?

I leaned against the doorframe, closing my eyes and running my hands over my face. Fuck, I needed a minute. There was so much shit to take in before I dared to figure out what the hell was going on with our room. The pit of my stomach had long since dropped out, and my heart pounded hard in my chest. I had a fucking feeling I knew what I’d find, but I wanted to be wrong.

More than anything, I wanted to be fucking wrong.

But I wasn’t.

In three years, the room hadn’t fucking changed. My clothes still hung in the closet and filled the drawers. Guitar picks and random shit littered the top of my dresser, half-burnt candles were scattered throughout the room, and dust covered everything. My duffel bag still sat in the same fucking chair, open and half-full next to an extra pillow and blanket.

The only thing different was the bed. The sheets and blankets had been stripped off and tossed into a corner. An empty bucket and brush sat next to the bed while a tarp was thrown over the bare mattress. I sank against the dresser. I didn’t need to fucking lift the damn thing to know what was under it.

Her panicked cries and pleas in the middle of the night pulled my half-drunk ass out of my sleep.

The haunted sounds echoed off the walls, and I swallowed hard. My eyes and nose burned with painful tears as I took in the broken room that she’d hid away behind a goddamn door and pretended as if it didn’t exist.

Genevieve wasn’t hurting.

She was fucking frozen, trapped alone in one of the worst fucking moments of our life.

Which meant…

The door at the end of the hall was shut as well. I grabbed the doorknob, but fuck, I couldn’t open it. I needed to. For her, I needed to. I shut my eyes, pressing my forehead into the wood as I took in a shaky breath. I’d told myself I’d never enter this goddamn room again.

The little taped-up pieces of my cold fucking heart began to fall away, stripped raw as I made myself open the goddamn door. The pain came rushing back with the sight of the soft blue walls and sunshine yellow trim. Bright and airy was what she’d called it.

The perfect combination for a nursery.

Our son’s nursery.

My knees locked up as I stepped into the room. Dust coated the ledge of the white crib, collected on the matching changing table, and altered the glider she’d put in the corner next to the window. The gray tone was somehow fitting to what we’d lost—what had been unfairly taken from us.

My breath hitched hard in my throat, making it hard to breathe. Nothing had changed. Not a fucking thing. Even the clothes she’d laid out were still on the changing table. My hand shook as I touched the tiny onesie, running my fingers over the custom message on it.

Welcome to the world August James.

“August… I like that. We can call him Auggie or Gus-Gus. Oh! His first Halloween costume could be the mouse from Cinderella!” I could still hear her happy giggle at the thought.

Sitting next to the onesie was the only thing in the room that hadn’t been there before. A single photo of Genevieve and I holding our son. I picked it up and dragged my thumb over the image, feeling my fucking heart shatter.

Fuck, I didn’t even remember it being taken.It was such a devastating moment. I couldn’t remember a fucking person in the goddamn room let alone a picture being taken.

Somewhere in the middle of all the crap we were going through with her father, Genevieve had found out she was pregnant. She didn’t want anyone to know—our secret. We’d only have so much time before everyone wanted to be a part of his life, that was what she’d said. As the first Byrne in the next generation, she wasn’t wrong.

So, we kept the secret. Winter clothes and her barely noticeable belly made it possible for longer than I’d expected.

Genevieve thrived in it, nesting and building a fucking future for us. But me? I couldn’t see a fucking future beyond the shit her father was putting me through. I drank more than I should’ve, we fought a stupid amount, and we still pretended like we weren’t racing toward some inevitable explosion.

That catalyst came crashing down on us when she was twenty-five weeks pregnant and woke up bleeding. Bad. It wouldn’t stop, she couldn’t feel him move, and I was fucking helpless. All I could do was rush her to the nearest fucking hospital two towns over.

There had been no heartbeat.

That was the moment I watched my wife break in an unimaginable way—a way I didn’t know how to help her recover from. I stayed when they induced labor, and I stayed when she gave birth. I held him and not a damn thing in the fucking world could prepare me for the grief. I would’ve ripped out my own fucking heart and given it to him if it would’ve brought him back.

And the guilt?

The guilt drove me to the nearest bar while the nurses helped her shower and clean up. Guilt had me drowning in a bottle that couldn’t offer a damn thing. Guilt reared its ugly face to remind me this was my fucking fault. Every fight I picked with her had stressed her out.

I slid down the floor as my knees gave out, a sob tearing through me. Hot tears burned my cheeks as I clutched the photo. Pain, guilt, and grief clashed in a deadly combination. I’d spent three fucking years burying it, keeping it away, and pretending it wasn’t there.

How fucking wrong I was as it consumed me all over again, and I broke down.