It was all I could do.
I drove back to my mom’s house. It didn’t really feel like home. I mean, I know I had a roof over my head and that I should be grateful for it, but I still felt like I had lost everything, was barely holding what I did have left together, and that the rest of me was just hanging by a thread.
I stepped over the pile of mail that’d been delivered through the front door’s slot and set down my briefcase and the box of ceramics I wanted to try and paint on my own time so that I could retrieve the letters and junk fliers to sort through them.
I paused a few pieces of mail down and drew in a deep steadying breath at my soon-to-be-ex-husband’s divorce attorney’s letterhead.
I opened the envelope, scanning the letter inside and felt the color drain from my face. He was going after half my business… Clayrity.
I shook my head, a jumble of emotions tumbling out of their hiding places like an overloaded closet when the door has finally been opened. I stood there with the shattered pieces all around me, twinkling in the dim light from the overhead light of the kitchen stove which I always kept on, and felt like this was it. That that was the last of it and there was nothing left.
I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my coat and tears welled.
I’d been so successfully isolated by my cheating ex-husband, my mother dead, my brother gone – his wife and I never any kind of close… I literally had no one to even call.
Or did I?
Desperate times called for desperate measures.
I went to my little black book on top of the boxes by the front door and flipped it open. Bringing up the keypad on my phone, I dialed and held my breath as the call connected and started ringing.
“Hello?”
I closed my eyes and took a desperate leap.
Chapter Six
Fenris…
My phone started buzzing across the table in front of me and I picked it up. It was a number I didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“Hi.” The voice was soft, feminine and held a strained quality to it. I didn’t like it, but I was thrilled because I knew instantly who it was.
“Aspen?” I asked, and Dump Truck and Little Bird exchanged a look.
“Yeah, um,” her voice cracked, “I think I need help.”
I sat up straighter and asked, “You at home?”
“Yeah.” She sounded mournful.
“Say no more, I’m on my way.”
I ended the call and got up, reaching for my wallet.
“I got it, go,” Dump Truck said, and he fixed me with a look that said he absolutely understood. I looked at Little Bird and she gave me a sympathetic nod.
“Thank you, brother.”
I went for the door and got on my bike. I was a good forty-five or fifty minutes from her place and remembered exactly how to get there like I’d dropped her off just yesterday instead of a couple of weeks ago.
When I pulled up to the curb in front of her house, the windows were dark, but the front porch light glowed dimly. I pulled off my lid, smoothed a hand over the top of my hair to tame any random frizz and marched up the front walk to her door. I knocked twice and held my breath.
She opened it and looked up at me with a tear-stained face, her makeup in muddy tracks down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, and she stared stricken for a few heartbeats as if trying to decide how much to tell me. Her expression crumbled, and she started to cry all over again and said to me, “I just don’t think I want to be alive anymore and I’m scared.”
“Oh, baby. Fuck,” I muttered, and I pulled her toward me. She crashed against me, sobbing heartbrokenly into my chest.
I stepped into her, over the threshold and kicked the door shut behind us and just let her cry.
I had no idea what the fuck had happened, but it said something to me that I, the fuckin’ guy she’d literally just met, was the only person she had that she could call at a time like this. I mean, that was something fucking tragic. Wasn’t it?
“I’m so sorry! I’m sorry!” she cried between her sobs, and I just clutched her tighter to me.
“It’s okay, I got yah. It’s alright now. You just let it out.” I didn’t know what else to say. What else to do. So, I just did