“Wow, seems like you’ve got it all figured out. Every puzzle piece just fits together perfectly, doesn’t it?”
“You had wine,” I pointed out, “and champagne.”
“Are you serious right now?” His face completely broke. “After everything we’ve shared, everything, you’re going to believe a celebrity gossip?”
“Then tell me.” Tears spilled onto my cheeks. “Make me believe you. I don’t want—”
“You know the worst part?” He looked down at the floor, his posture defeated. “I thought that this was different, a fresh start. I thought that if I could just wake up to you, fall asleep next to you, that as long as you kept the demons at bay, I could trust you. I could finally be myself. I could, with some work, drop this exhausting facade, this persona people project onto me. And now—” He lifted his head and met my gaze, his eyes filled with inscrutable emotion. “—you’re looking at me as if I burned the world. You’re looking at me as if I’m already guilty.”
I sucked in a breath and covered my mouth with my hands as more hot tears welled then streamed down my cheeks.
Without saying anything else, he turned and walked out of the house but left the door open. He was back with a cardboard box.
He gently set it at my feet, and inside the box was the cutest bulldog puppy I’d ever seen in my life.
A red bow was tied around his neck.
And inside the box was a card that said Happy Birthday attached to a small blue Tiffany’s box.
“Drew—” I choked on a sob.
“I was trying to surprise you for your birthday. And Will found a local breeder who had a puppy left. But go ahead and let me know if you need me to piss in a cup to prove to you that I’m not a liar.” His voice cracked, and then he was walking away again. “I need air.”
“Drew!”
“Please…” He stopped in his tracks and refused to turn around. Seconds turned into a minute, my heart pounding in my ears. “…stay.”
He hung his head and whispered, “That’s all I ever wanted. Someone to look at me the way you do, and now I can’t bear to turn around. It will kill me to see what I know is every single one of my sins exploding inside me, as I stand there in utter shame and embarrassment, cutting my hands on the sharp broken edges, trying to pick up the dark, bloody pieces, all by myself… Utterly. Alone.” He held his head high again and kept walking; the slow cadence of his footsteps felt like a death march. “I need to deal with this, and I need to think.”
And that was all he said before getting into his car and driving off, leaving me wondering why I hadn’t just assumed the best instead of the worst.
Was it because we didn’t make sense?
Was it because I was that insecure? Still?
I hated myself.
I hated my mistrust.
And most of all, I hated that I projected it onto Drew when it had been another man who’d put it there in the first place.
“Mom?” Amelia’s thick voice filled the empty living room. “Did he leave us?”
Us.
Not you.
Us.
I covered my mouth with my hands. I wanted to keep it in, the sob, because if it was unleashed, I wondered if it would stop.
But all it took was my daughter’s arms wrapping around me in comfort for me to break.
The dam was too overwhelmed with the pain.
She’d just repeated what she’d said when she was a little girl; only this time, she sounded sad, not relieved.
“I don’t know,” I choked out. “I don’t know.”
“Shh, Mom, it’s okay… it’s okay. I’m going to call Braden—”
“No!” I sniffled. “He’s on his honeymoon. He needs time—”
“Mom.” Amelia put her hands on my shoulders and forced me to face her. “—you’ve spent your entire life protecting us, loving us, taking care of us. Now it’s our turn.”
I started crying all over again and wondered how I was going to fix this when the puppy managed to bounce out of his box and run over to the couch.
Amelia picked him up and let out a little gasp when she read the small note attached to him.
“What?” Sniffing, I rubbed my nose with the back of my hand like a four-year-old. “What’s his name?”
“It doesn’t say.”
“What does it say?” I whispered.
Amelia’s eyes filled with tears, then one slid down her cheek. “Not-Our-Family-Dog.”
I closed my eyes.
“And it says to read the card.”
She shook as she went over to pick up the card and the Tiffany’s box, and with trembling hands, opened the card and read out loud. “Not-My-Future-Wife.”
Tears were streaming so hard I couldn’t see straight.
The last thing in the box was a worn brown leather notebook I’d seen him carry around; he’d had it at the studio too.
The yellow sticky note on top of it read, “
The only person who’s ever asked to see my demons and truly meant it — is you. So here they are, laid out in painful page after page. It reads like a story with a happy ending, though, because somehow the universe saved your songs for last, the ones you inspired, so maybe it’s possible to walk into the sunset. Maybe you battle the demons and then get your reward. Maybe my reward, though so undeserved, is you. Happy birthday.”
Sobs wracked my body. “I have to talk to him; I have to—”
“It’s going to be okay.” She wrapped an arm around me. “Braden will know what to do. We’ll just talk to him. You know how some guys get, and Drew’s… He’s… different from normal people.”
“He feels too much,” I said through my tears. “What if this causes him to do something stupid? What if I’m the reason—”
“Nope. Not going there, Mom. He’s not a Ryan. He’s a Drew, remember?”
Last night’s conversation played over and over in my head. “He’s a Drew.”
“I’m gonna wait for a Drew, Mom.”
I hoped I
