Page 28 of Ebbing Tides (The Lighthouse Duology #2)

Melanie bandaged my hands after breaking up a fight that Lido had somehow unintentionally started by supposedly liking CJ more than Danny—how the boys had come to that exact conclusion, we never did get a straight answer for.

After assessing the self-inflicted wounds myself, I wasn’t sure they needed to be treated with such attention, but Melanie insisted. I thought that maybe, as much as she felt I needed someone to care for me, she also needed someone to take care of. Someone other than her kids.

“What was your wife like?” she asked, dabbing the antibacterial ointment onto the little cuts scattered across my knuckles on both hands.

There wasn’t a hint of envy in her tone, and that made me smile.

“She was strong … and stubborn,” I replied. “She had fallen in love with me when she was seventeen and never stopped, even though I never said it back. Not until we were much, much older.”

Melanie’s brows rose with intrigue. She laid down strips of gauze as she asked, “Did you love her then? When you were younger?”

“I think I did.” I shrugged, a bit embarrassed. “I knew I liked her a lot, but I kept her at arm’s length. I was scared of getting too close to her.”

“What were you scared of?”

“Hurting her. Turning into my dad and becoming an asshole.” I chuckled bitterly at the thought now. How ridiculous I had been, how immature and irrational. “I think … I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

Melanie furrowed her brow as she secured the gauze in place with bandage tape. “I’m sure it’s not.”

“Oh, no. It is,” I said with a brusque laugh. “I think I was afraid I didn’t know how to love someone properly. Because … because nobody had ever loved me.”

Then, oddly enough, just then, for the first time in many, many years, I thought about that.

The fear the younger version of me once had.

The worry that I’d be incapable of loving because my parents had failed to show me how.

But … no, I’d been right to call it stupid. Because it was, in fact, very much so.

My sisters loved me, didn’t they? They always had. They’d relied on me; they’d looked up to me. They hadn’t learned to follow my parents’ example to treat me with torment and neglect.

And I loved them without hesitation, without resentment.

I always had.

So, why the hell had I believed I couldn’t love her?

“I see the regret in your eyes,” Melanie said, infiltrating my thoughts with her sweet, gentle voice. “Don’t do that to yourself. There’s no point. It changes nothing.”

“I know,” I muttered, shutting my eyes to her and the world. “But I can’t help it.”

She sighed and laid her hands over mine, stroking her thumbs over the freshly bandaged wounds. Then she repeated in a rueful whisper, “I know.”

The boys watched TV in the living room and rolled around on the floor with Lido, who had somehow reverted back to puppyhood in the presence of these three rowdy kids, as Melanie put away the first aid supplies.

With the four of them in the house, I somehow forgot the horrors I’d experienced here.

The years of abuse and fear. The trauma of finding my mother dead in my old bedroom.

Panic wormed beneath my skin, tangling with my veins and nerves.

How the hell can I make them stay?

“Sometimes, I think about the years I spent apart from my husband,” she said, keeping her gaze down as she closed the first aid kit.

“Not the time he was in prison, but I mean after I broke up with him. I think about what would’ve happened if I hadn’t left.

I think … well, no, I know he never would’ve been arrested for fucking murder .

” She shook her head and barked with a laugh that was equal parts bitter and disbelieving.

“It’s weird,” she went on, easily brushing off the regret.

“I know we’d still be together now. Our kids would be older.

He’d still be alive. Let’s be honest with ourselves.

He’d still be a fuckup—he always was; he couldn’t help it …

but we’d be together . I know this. We’d be happy—or as happy as we could be.

But even knowing that, knowing he’d still be here, I don’t regret the time we spent apart.

I needed those years. I needed them to grow .

I needed them to be who I am now. God, I don’t even know who I’d be if I hadn’t broken up with him when I did. ”

“Lizzie and Jane never would’ve been born,” I muttered, thinking of the girls I had called mine for the briefest moment in time. God, it was a blip really. Hardly anything. But thinking about them broke my heart just as much as if I’d known them forever.

Melanie looked at me then, her gaze curious. “Lizzie and Jane?”

“Laura’s girls,” I replied, twisting my lips to the side.

She raised her chin. “You miss them.”

I nodded slowly. “So much. But … ah”—I swept the thought away with a dismissive gesture—“they probably don’t even remember me.”

“I think you’d be surprised,” she said matter-of-factly. “You were a part of their lives just as long as they were a part of yours.”

“Hmm,” I grunted with a single nod.

“Okay. I gotta get those guys back to Charlie’s house.

We’re going to go through some of Luke—my husband’s—stuff and some old pictures and probably cry a lot.

So”—she wiped her hands against her thighs, and I smiled, recognizing her tell, the one that said she felt uncomfortable—“that’s gonna be fun.

Might have to stop by a certain security guard’s office later and grab a cigarette. ”

I chuckled, tentatively reaching out to grasp her hand in mine. “He might have a couple other ideas on how to relieve stress too. You never know.”

Melanie smiled, painting my dark gray world with color once again. “As long as he doesn’t mind if I cry a little.”

My thumb ran over her knuckles as I shook my head. “He would never. I’d kick his ass if he even thought about complaining about that.”

She took a step toward me, her bottom lip snagged between her teeth. Her eyes volleyed to the adjacent living room, checking on the kids, before bringing her gaze to mine.

“See, my problem is that the thought of you kicking someone’s ass kinda turns me on.” She rolled her eyes as she brought both hands to my chest. “Okay, a little more than kinda. A lot.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “The thought of me kicking the shit out of someone turns you on?”

“I can’t help it, okay? I have a thing for toxic, protective men.” There was a glint of humor in her sparkling eyes as she tipped her head back and stood on her toes. “Or do I have to remind you again about the whole late husband in prison for murder thing?”

Her ability to joke around about things so heartbreaking and terrible was incredible.

My sisters, Ricky, and Sid were so cautious around me, even a decade later.

Afraid to bring up the past. Afraid they’d pick at that old, crusted scab and send me hurtling over the side of the bridge.

But this woman … God, this rare, hurt, extraordinary woman …

She was everything I never knew I needed.

A breath of air after being suffocated. A ray of sun after living in the dark.

She was a feast of terrific joy after being famished, living on nothing but sadness for years.

And all those things and everything else was what brought my lips down to hers, tethered by an invisible string until they met.

Two broken, jagged pieces fitting together to create something smoothed out and perfect. Whole .

“Mommy’s kissing Max,” CJ whispered from behind us.

“Because Mommy loves Max,” Luke muttered, unimpressed.

I thought she’d pull away after being found by her kids. I thought she’d pretend like nothing had happened. But Melanie’s lips smiled against mine, and she clenched my shirt between tight fists.

It made me wonder if there was truth to what the kid had said, and I scolded myself for wondering at all.

***

Dad was still asleep when I was getting ready to leave. I’d expected as much; the morphine usually knocked him out. It wasn’t unlike Dad to go a night without eating—the cancer did that sometimes—but it didn’t stop me from feeling guilty as I pulled on my coat, about to head out the door.

I had texted my sisters to let them know, and Grace said she’d stop by in a bit to see if he was hungry.

“Maybe if he hadn’t been so upset,” I muttered to Melanie as we walked through the front door together, “he would’ve been willing to eat something.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” she said, keeping an eye on her kids as they ran down the porch steps toward the car. “You did ask—hey, Luke! Hands off your brother!”

“Yeah, that’s true,” I grumbled, locking the door behind me. “But if he doesn’t eat …”

Her hand was on the railing when she looked up at me for the briefest moment. The look in her eyes stopped the thought from finishing.

“You’ve been doing this with him for a long time, so I know I don’t have to tell you this. But I’ll say it anyway. Your job is to make him comfortable , not to perform miracles.”

She was right; she didn’t need to tell me that. Still, hearing the words come from her mouth instead of listening to them run laps around my mind hit differently.

It made my reality hurt a little more. It made me feel a little more helpless.

I sighed and thought about every loss I’d suffered in my life. There were many. Friends at war. My wife and unborn son. My mother. But they’d all been sudden, unexpected tragedies nobody could’ve seen coming … with maybe the exception of my mother, I supposed.

The woman had been depressed for as long as I’d been alive, and I guessed maybe we all collectively should’ve been more worried about the possibility of her taking her own life, but …

well, you sort of got used to someone else’s degree of misery when that was all you’d known from them.

She hadn’t killed herself in all that time, so why would any of us have believed she would do it on a random Sunday in the middle of April?