the condo, only in Cale’s memory. Worrying about someone else’s battles instead of her own for a while would be a welcome change. If going with him made it a tiny bit easier for him to handle, then she was totally up for that.
As she said good-night and got out of the vehicle, she quashed the obstinate, clueless voice in her head that quietly insisted she would have preferred that he had asked her on a date.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CALE HAD WOKEN up just over an hour ago with a gut ache and a bad feeling about this.
He’d known going to his condo was going to suck the big one, but he hadn’t realized just how much, after all this time, it would still knock him on his ass. Why he’d thought even for a second it was a good idea to have Rachel tag along to witness his own personal freak show was beyond him. He would’ve been much better off facing it alone.
All of this flashed through his mind in forty-five seconds as he stood outside the door with Rachel behind him and made himself stall. He fumbled with the keys on the black-and-gold keychain Noelle had given him, dropped the whole thing, acted as if he wasn’t sure which was the right key. He knew damn well which one it was because the thing taunted him every time he happened to notice it. He’d given thought to taking it off his keychain, but that would be a concrete sign he was a wuss. Learning to ignore it had had to suffice.
“Want me to do it?” Rachel asked from behind him in a concerned, well-meaning voice that irritated rather than soothed him.
His response was to shove the key in the hole and open the lock. He pushed open the door as if it had personally offended him.
“Welcome to our humble home,” he muttered as he walked inside, cringing at the sight that met his eyes—solid proof of just how much his last and only venture in had leveled him.
Shame burned in him as he took in the half-demolished wall between the kitchen and dining room. It’d been way too soon for him to come back to this place, and the gamut of emotional crap that had engulfed him had obviously been too much for him to handle. The wall, or what was left of it, was a testament to the rage that had eventually won out over everything else—rage that Noelle had been taken from him too soon, rage that she hadn’t had a chance to live out a full life. Rage at so many things.
He’d always intended to take out the wall between the kitchen and dining area in order to open up the space and make it more suitable for entertaining. But he hadn’t planned to do it that day over a year ago, and he hadn’t had the proper tools or state of mind to do it. Jagged edges and exposed wires jutted everywhere, lacking any sign of professionalism or even remote competence.
The air in the place had gone a little staler and there was dust everywhere. His tools were still scattered over the dining-room table, just waiting for him to pick up where he’d left off. The blinds on the window still hung six inches below the bottom sill on one side and eight or nine inches below it on the other, begging to be replaced.
Rachel stared at the partially destroyed wall in silence, her brows arched in concern. Cale didn’t even want to imagine what she must think of him.
Looking to his right toward the living room, he could see the open, year-and-a-half-old Sports Illustrated still draped, cover-side up, over the arm of the sofa, half-read. The forty-two-inch flat-screen TV had been less than a month old when Noelle had died, and there it sat now, just like new.
Unable to help himself, Cale walked slowly, apprehensively, to the living room to once again survey the other bits of his life he’d left hanging there. He was testing himself, wondering if he’d handle things any better this time.
The sumptuous brown leather sofa that once had begged him to sink into it now mocked him as he played a searing memory back in his head. The day the furniture had been delivered, he and Noelle had been in a celebratory mood as it and the television were the first pieces they’d bought for their new home. They’d been messing around on the sofa and she’d stopped him,