Page 43

I idle the car in the parking lot as we both stare at the building in front of us. It’s the high school gymnasium, the site of basketball games and Homecoming dances and one of the many classes we had together all four years.

I glance over at her profile, and she seems lost in contemplation. I wonder what she’s thinking, and I’m about to ask when my phone interrupts Stone Temple Pilots’ “Where the River Goes” to announce over Bluetooth, “Text Message from Savannah Buck.”

These fucking cars and their innovative ways of keeping us from texting while driving are spectacular, but that doesn’t mean I want my passengers knowing who’s texting me.

Tessa clears her throat as I turn down the volume. I have to press the screen for the car to read me the message, and I’m not doing that with Tessa in the car.

“Savannah,” she says quietly. “That’s your wife?”

I close my eyes and shake my head as I exhale a mirthless chuckle through my nose. “Yeah.”

I stare straight ahead for a beat, and then I glance over at her.

She presses her lips together. “You should probably take me home.” Her voice is quiet, and I get the sense that she thinks we’re doing something wrong here.

“It’s, uh…it’s not what you think. With Savannah, I mean. Yes, she’s my wife, but we’re…separated.”

“Separated?” she repeats.

I nod. “It’s complicated.”

I don’t know how much to tell her. I want to share the details about the divorce proceedings and the blackmail and even the fact that my investigative wife has been digging into her history. But I also want to protect her from all that. She doesn’t need to know what Savannah is doing.

And then there’s the fact that she’s the person I used to trust most in the entire world until she left without telling me. She’s a different person now, and we haven’t even touched that subject in the short time we’ve had together so far. We’ll get to it in time, certainly. But she took things from me with her exit, and my ability to trust women was at the top of that list.

Clearly.

And then I put my trust in the wrong woman and ended up in a marriage I can’t find my way out of.

Life is messy and complicated.

“Separated means still married,” she says flatly.

“Yeah,” I murmur absently, not sure what she’s getting at.

She’s quiet a long beat, and then she says, “I think you should probably take me home.”

She’s right, but I don’t want this reunion to end on a sour note, so I go for honesty.

“It was a mistake from the beginning,” I say quietly. “I put my trust in the wrong person, and I ended up getting burned. Now I’m stuck in a marriage I can’t get out of, but not for lack of trying.”

I feel her eyes on my profile. “What do you mean not for lack of trying ?”

“I filed for divorce about a month after we were married. She’s a former reporter, and she, uh…digs. She finds ways to get what she wants. And she wants my paycheck. She wants the last name of a football player. She wants access to the post-game room that only families have access to. She wants things that I’m unwilling to give her, but she continues to find ways to prolong the inevitable.”

“She won’t divorce you?” she asks.

I shake my head. “As soon as we settle the division of assets, she switches lawyers so the whole process has to start over. She manipulates and lies and blackmails.”

“She sounds awful.”

“She’s the biggest mistake I ever made. A hidden mistake since I can’t go public with it, but still, a glaring, horrible mistake. And my dad always taught me to fix my mistakes. I’ve been trying for nearly two years to fix this one that stemmed from one drunken night in Vegas and led to this shit.” I blow out a frustrated breath.

“I’m so sorry, Tristan,” she says softly, and hearing the way my name rolls off her lips speaks to a part of my soul that has been locked away for far too long. She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “Do you have a good lawyer? I have a friend that might be able to help.”

I nod. “I appreciate that. But it’s not my lawyer that’s the problem. It’s her. If I try to push forward, she finds something else to blackmail me with.”

“What does she have on you?”

I glance at her, and the earnestness in her eyes tells me I can trust her. Of course I can. This is my Tessa.

And furthermore…I want to tell her. I want to let her in.

Already.

“She has evidence that makes it look like I was using substances that would get me suspended.” I grip my steering wheel until my knuckles turn white.

“You took illegal substances?” she asks, a touch of shock coloring her tone.

I shake my head and clear my throat. “She drugged me and obtained my sample.”

“Oh my God. What sort of horrible person does that?”

Is it any worse than leaving without a trace?

I bite my tongue.

I’m obviously holding onto some baggage here, and the need to run hits me. It’s that same feeling I’ve felt many times over the last seven years—like I’m running from something.

I want to run from this conversation.

I want to run from the feelings I feel for Tessa since I’ll only get hurt in the end.

I want to run from the fear that I’ll get her back in my life only to lose her again, maybe even lose her to something as stupid as Savannah, who has already ruined so many other parts of my life.

I just want to run.

I put the car in drive and head back toward Oak Tree Lane. I turn down Hickory Tree Lane, the street immediately to the south of ours, so I can circle around the block and park on the right side of the street in front of my house.

I’m ready to be ever the gentleman and run around to her side of the car, but she’s already hopping down by the time I get there.

She grabs her bacon, eggs, and gum out then holds the bag with my items toward me. “Well…thanks,” she says awkwardly, and I reach for the bag.

Her hands are covered in gloves, but if they weren’t, our fingers would brush and some magical spell would befall us and we’d start over again with the mistakes of the past behind us…but this isn’t some fairy tale.

Instead, I take the bag from her. “Thanks.”

“Um,” she begins at the same time I say, “I guess—”

We both chuckle.

“This is awkward,” she says.

I nod. “Yeah. I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”

She nods and waves before turning to walk the few paces toward her mom’s front door. I watch her as she goes, and I can’t help when my big mouth opens.

“Hey Tessa?”

She pauses and turns to look at me with her brows drawn together. “Yeah?”

“How come you never used my number?”

She blinks, clearly surprised I asked the question. “Well…I was, um, at a gas station and saw a magazine with a headline that implied you and your wife were expecting. I’d…well, I’d just found some things out about my father and some affairs he’d been having, and I couldn’t—” She interrupts herself as emotions seem to take over. She clears her throat, but her voice cracks a little as she continues. “I guess I have a couple of half-siblings I never knew about, and it affected me in ways I’m still learning. A lot was going on at the time and I just couldn’t get involved with someone who was married to somebody else, so I threw it away.”

Whoa.

That’s a lot to take in.

Bill Taylor had affairs?

She has half-siblings?

My mom hasn’t mentioned any of this to me, and she loves to tell me every detail about the town gossip when we talk. I wonder if she knows.

I don’t know what to say to any of that, so I set it aside for now and focus on what Savannah did as I avert my eyes to the ground. “She fed that story to some friends of hers. It’s all lies.” I move my eyes back to hers, praying she believes me.

She nods a little. “I didn’t know that. It felt wrong using it.”

“I understand. If you hadn’t seen that headline?” I press.

She lifts a shoulder. “I don’t know.” Another gust of wind blows through, and she shivers. “Thanks for the ride. Goodnight.”

I hold up a hand to wave as she approaches her door. “Goodnight,” I echo.

I stare at her front door as it closes behind her for a full minute before I head inside my own house.

“Looks like Tristan’s cooking breakfast in the morning,” my dad announces to my mom as I unpack the grocery bag and set my items in the refrigerator. He’s sitting at the kitchen table with a crossword puzzle and my mom’s in the family room next to us still watching her game shows.

“I got it so you’d cook it, old man,” I tease, and he chuckles.

“You were gone a long time for bacon and eggs,” he says, waiting for me to fill in the blanks.

“I ran into some old friends and took a drive through town. Looks pretty much the same, just smaller than I remember.” I sit across from him.

“Maybe you just got bigger,” he suggests.

“Well there’s definitely that.” I look over at his crossword and spot a clue even upside down. “Twelve down is Boston.”

He looks at the clue and reads it aloud. “Redskins city before DC.” He glances over at twelve down. “Hm, looks like that might be right.”

I sit with my mom while he finishes his crossword, and he stands and stretches around nine-thirty.

“Time to hit the hay,” he says, and my mom stands, too.

“I’m going to FRHS in the morning for a workout,” I say. “I’ll probably be gone before you’re up.”

“Be safe,” my mom says. “It’s late. Get some good rest, kiddo.” She kisses my cheek and the two of them head off to bed.

It’s not late.

It’s nine-thirty.

I flip through the channels, but all I can do is think about the fact that Tessa Taylor is in the house next door and she threw away my number when she thought I’d knocked up my wife and her father cheated on her mother and had other kids. I can’t help but wonder…what else did her father do?

So much time has been wasted. So many misunderstandings lie between us.

In my heart, I hope we can overcome it. But in my head…I’m not so sure we can.