Page 35 of What You left in Me

My chest constricts beneath the avalanche of needling guilt. Guilt, that stabs biting and searing, because here he is, the perfect fiancé, and I’m sitting here reminiscing over the taste of another man in my mouth.

Julian, totally unaware, presses a kiss to my hair and drags his hand up and down my back, soothing me with small, concentric circles I don’t deserve the loveliness of.

“He’s strong, Ari,” Julian comforts, killing me one word at a time. “He’ll make it. The doctors are optimistic.”

Every word he gives me is exactly what a woman in my position should want to hear.

And yet.

Julian’s touch is soft, careful, protective. It feels safe. He is good. He loves me.

But I can’t help noticing the difference. Julian’s touch is gentle with me, and Finn’s touch burned like a firebrand. One dotes on me. The other claimed me.

I hate myself for even daring to compare.

I force a smile, squeeze Julian’s hand. “Thank you,” I whisper. “For being here.”

His answering smile is flawless. But deep down, my stomach flips, nausea flooding my senses.

Here is a fact: last night cracked something open, and no amount of careful coffee or shoulder circles can stitch it shut.

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If Julian is refined comfort, my mother is brittle chaos wrapped in pearls. She’s terrorized every nurse on the floor since sunrise.

“No lilies!” she snaps at one poor woman carrying a vase. “They’re scream funereal. Do you want the room to look like a wake?”

The nurse mutters an apology and retreats.

Mom paces the hallway with her clipboard, fielding calls from reporters, dictating who can and cannot visit, even instructing the nurses on which flowers are “appropriate.” Control is her oxygen. If she stops for even a second, she’ll drop to the ground, undone.

But when I duck down to the vending machine for a Coke, I catch her at the end of the corridor. She’s not as elegant then.

Her pearls are still there, but her shoulders shake. Her lipstick has bled at the edges. She presses the heel of her hand hard against her eye, like she can erase tears by force. For the first time in years, she looks human. Small and terrified.

It reminds me of the day she got married, which was probably the last time we actually connected.

“Mommy?” I try, careful as I approach her.

She startles, straightens, swipes at her face so fast it’s almost violent. “Don’t.”

I step closer anyway, Coke forgotten in my hand. “You don’t have to hold it all together.”

“Yes, I do.” Her voice cracks once, then sharpens. “One of us has to stay alert.”

I stare at her, at the brittle mask that slips like water over her spiky grief, and I want to scream. I want to scream at her that all this—her guise of perfection, the way she works so hard to smooth every edge that life erects—won’t keep Richard alive. That this isn’t the time to care about all this stuff that doesn’t even matter.

That I’d rather have her messy, terrified, human.

But it’s already too late.

She’s already turned her face away. The moment has already disintegrated.

Just like that, it’s me who is fighting tears, messy and terrified and human. And so alone. “Fine,” I choke out. “Then I guess I’ll fall apart for both of us.”

I watch her mouth purse into a line, and her eyes squeeze shut.

For a moment, I almost think that I’ve gotten through to her.