first time aloud and... “Jesus, I think I’m going to be sick.” He sat down, or maybe his legs buckled under the ugly, staggering weight of what he’d done.
A rush of shame and regret choked him as he realized he’d left Annie alone to figure it out for herself. Made a decision when he was mad that would affect her for the rest of her life. What kind of man was he?
Not one his mom or daughter would be proud of. “Breathe, man, you can fix this,” Levi said, but Emmitt was already shaking his head.
“No, I can apologize and do everything in my power to make her realize I’m the ass, and I’m going to. But I don’t know if I can fix what I did. To love someone is to trust them.”
And Emmitt didn’t deserve either from her.
Chapter 28
By the time Annie set out the last of the appetizers, she had batter dried to her shirt, shards of broken twinkle lights under her nails, and a thin dusting of glitter in every nook and cranny. She also had a heartache the size of the Grand Canyon and enough bags under her eyes to start her own airline.
“Why don’t you go take a shower before everyone starts arriving,” Levi said from atop the ladder. “I can finish this up on my own.”
They were in the backyard, hanging the last few strands of lights, effectively turning Emmitt’s backyard into a twinkling wonderland. The planter boxes were filled with colorful flowers, the deck around the pool resembled a tropical paradise, complete with a makeshift tiki bar stocked with all the virgin daiquiris the girls could drink.
“I’ll make it quick.”
“Take your time,” he said. “Gray texted a few minutes ago to say Paisley is on her fifth change of clothes and it’s not looking good for number six, seven, or eight.”
Annie smiled at that as she reached up to grab the empty box Levi had placed on the roof. But when she went to take it from him, he held on until she was forced to meet his gaze. She felt her smile crumple.
“I can’t, Levi.” Her words trembled. “I just need to get through tonight without crying, and when you look at me like that I want to cry, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, and the sympathy in his voice was worse than the look.
He finally let go of the box, but she could tell it went against every manly fiber in him. Like Gray, Levi wanted to fix this mess, felt some kind of obligation to make right all of Emmitt’s wrongs.
They didn’t know what she knew. No amount of fixing would ever make her world right again. And it wasn’t just Emmitt’s wrongs. He’d left her at the first sign of rough waters, but he hadn’t been solely to blame.
She’d betrayed his trust by keeping Les’s condition from him. And he’d betrayed her love when he walked away without even a backward glance.
She tried not to think about that as she stripped and stepped under the hot spray. Just like she tried not to think about the last time she’d been in this shower, when Emmitt had been the one lathering her up.
Rather than using his shampoo and risk smelling like him, she used the body wash and wound up smelling like rosemary and lime. She’d match the tropical theme of the night.
And when the trying got too hard, she stood under the spray with her forehead against the tile wall and let the tears fall.
God, she was tired. The kind of tired that comes when the grief becomes larger than the soul. Annie had witnessed a lot of loss working in oncology and then the ER, but that kind of loss was different, and so was the grieving.
In oncology, the families were able to grieve in increments, experience the loss over time. There was the loss of future dreams, the loss of mobility, the loss of a full home, and finally the loss of the soul entirely.
In the ER, fatalities were often sudden and unexpected, leaving loved ones to overcome the shock of it all before they could even address what changes they were going to face. There were no last words, a lot of things left unsaid, the endless “what ifs” that coincided with instantaneous death, and the guilt. The guilt in itself could be paralyzing.
Annie wasn’t certain one loss was more painful than the other, but she did believe that the instantaneous loss had the most potential to