Page 26 of Everything After

Panic filled my chest, making it harder to breathe as I stood speechless. My mind went blank while I stared at the love of my life, packing to leave me. Once I came to my senses I rushed forward, wrapped my arms around his waist and buried my face in his chest.

“Please, Alfie. Don’t go,” I choked out past a huge lump that had formed in my throat.

My eyes swam with tears as he took my head in his hands, lifted it away, and tilted my face skyward to see me. “Baby, I think we’ve got to be honest with each other,” he muttered, swiping my tears away with his thumbs. “Lately, I’ve felt as ifI’ve had a constant knot in my chest and a lead weight in my stomach. That’s no good for any man. That tells me this break from the band has come at the right time.”

“But…” I began to protest, but I couldn’t find words to express how to make him stop what he was doing. To try to make him see sense in all this, and to make him understand how much I loved him.

“Seeing how you push yourself beyond what is necessary for your career is pissing me off.” I confessed. “I’m not leaving you… least I don’t think I am. I’m taking a break from everything that’s stressing me.”

“Including me,” I snapped, barely containing my hysteria. The sadness in his eyes and etched on his face was breaking my heart. However, I knew Alfie well enough to see from his jerky movements and the way his jaw clenched that no amount of persuasion was going to change the outcome of this. Alfie was leaving our home for now, and I was the one to blame.

CHAPTER 15

ALFIE

I jogged down the stairs, knowing if I slowed, I’d turn back, take Lily in my arms and beg her forgiveness for making her cry. Then as I left the house for the second time that night, I could almost feel my heart cracking in two.

It had never been my intention to leave again when I had gone back. And I had no clue where to go. But once I’d made my decision, I believed I’d had no choice but to follow through on it.

As I sped away for the second time that night, I wondered how we had come to this. No matter what my head told me that I needed to do, my heart violently argued that Lily Parnell was the one and only love of my life.

If I was honest, I’d known that she was it for me from the beginning, even when I had tried my darndest not to fall for her. Back then, she was like an irresistible drug I’d gotten hooked on, and I’d been high on her ever since.

But now, the balance of the love we share appeared weighted in my direction, and I wondered how my taking a stand would all play out.Do I have the will to hold out until she recognizes howone-sided our relationship had become? How I’d been the one to sacrifice all my spare time to go wherever she went?

If this is a test, how will I cope if it backfires? Can I live with a decision that might tear the most important contract of my life, if I lost her?

Pushing the throttle fully open on the boat as I sped away from our home, I wondered if I lost Lily by my action, would it be becauseshecould live without me. Either way, I believed that I couldn’t allow our lives to coast in parallel lines any longer, not now that I felt as if I was slowly drowning.

The last thing I’d wanted was to be one of those burned-out, aging, childless rock stars, living life out of a bottle, on the road with a wife I barely saw, and an empty home to return to.

Lily needed to realize and understand that there were two lives at stake here—twotender hearts, not just hers. The fact that I was leaving for now didn’t mean that mine didn’t still yearn for her, or pump with love with every beat.

As I pulled alongside my berth at the dock, my heart jolted in shock when I considered whether my love for Lily was on a deeper level than hers was for me. And whether her heart had ever been completely synchronized with mine.

Perhaps time away from each other without being forced apart by our schedules would give us both time to figure things out.

After tying off my vessel on the cleat, I stepped ashore and wandered toward the familiar, stocky, weather-beaten sailor I knew, who was busy spraying salt water off the bow of his boat.

“Ronnie, can you do me a favor?” Ronnie and his cousin Grant were two guys we’d used regularly, like a water taxi mostly when we needed to leave or return to Star Island.

He stopped spraying and glanced up in the fading daylight. “Sure, what do you need?”

“Can you call Grant so someone can take the boat back to the island… in case Lily needs it?”

“She’s home and you’re leaving? Damn, is that how you two survive married life?” he joked.

I nodded even though my heart sank at how true his joke sounded in that moment.

“Something like that,” I mumbled, and wondered how near to the truth his flippant statement might be.

Instead of checking in to some swanky hotel where all my needs would have been met, I went back to the one place I figured I’d get time to think—my childhood home.

I’d never once thought of selling the place. Even though it had undergone major renovations since I’d moved out, the place still felt like home to me. These days my house was kept stocked and managed by a part-time housekeeper for whenever I felt the need to check back for a day or so.

Once I’d stepped inside, I texted Oscar the address and told him to meet me at 11:00 a.m. the next morning. Then, the moment I eyed the unopened bottle of McClennan, I headed for my drink cart.

I poured myself a two fingers deep measure into a wide crystal tumbler. Taking off my leather jacket, I slung it over the back of the couch, grabbed the bottle and tumbler, and slumped heavily into an armchair.