A Time for Us - By Amy Knupp Page 0,38

laughing the whole time, and insisted he take her to the bedroom instead of “messing up their new couch.”

Cale had never gotten the chance to break in the sofa with his wife-to-be.

The emotional blast was there again but not as violent this time. He ground his jaw from side to side and the muscles were so tight it popped loudly. He cracked his knuckles to keep from taking everything out on the condo again.

He vaguely noticed Rachel as she walked past him, giving him a wide berth, toward the door that opened directly onto the beach.

“I can see why she was so excited,” she said, her back to him. From this angle, she could have been Noelle with a haircut. “This place was perfect for her. Her dream.”

Without a glance back at him, seemingly—and thankfully—oblivious to Cale’s internal struggle, Rachel opened the vertical blinds covering the door and let herself out the door onto the patio.

As if no time had passed and he hadn’t spent months grieving and getting closer to acceptance, it all came back to him at once. Sadness. Anger. Loss. So many other ugly feelings. He wanted to curl up in a ball in the corner and hide from it all, and that just ticked him off more.

He kicked the side of the sofa, which of course did nothing but hurt his damn foot. He grabbed the magazine, ripped it in two then threw the pages in the air. Leaves of glossy, four-color paper fluttered to the couch and the floor much too peacefully.

He strode back through the dining area and into the kitchen on the end of the condo opposite from the beach. There on the floor at the base of part of the wall that still stood intact was the hammer he’d taken to the drywall. A hammer, for God’s sake. He hadn’t had a more appropriate tool for demolition and he hadn’t cared. It was the reason for the hack job—well, that and the red fury that had driven him.

He picked up the hammer, fighting to avoid a similar meltdown even as the emotional storm inside of him intensified. Just as he’d feared.

This remodeling project was supposed to be one of joy, one to celebrate a promising future full of love and family and everything he and Noelle had dreamed of. The plan had been to open up the kitchen to the dining room, reconfiguring the cabinets on the other three walls. His fun-loving, social-butterfly fiancée had been looking forward to having parties here—a housewarming, birthdays, holidays, you name it. She’d gone on and on, bubbling over with her characteristic enthusiasm for the possibilities once the kitchen project was finished.

He had no intention of a repeat performance, but he couldn’t stifle the urge for one good swing. He twisted, wound up like a pitcher, then gave the center of the in-tact drywall everything he had. “Son of a bitch!”

“Cale!”

Shit.

He heard the sliding glass door slam shut in the distance and Rachel’s footsteps behind him on the tile floor, but he didn’t turn to face her. He used all his energy to try to calm himself. He set the hammer on the table—hard—before he could take another shot.

“Cale, what are you doing?” Rachel rushed up to him and touched his arm. He shrugged her off. “No. You can’t do this. Not again.”

Something in her tone hit him like an incendiary and it was a damn good thing he’d already set the hammer aside, otherwise he might have swung at the wall again as an exclamation point.

“I set the hammer down,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Good. You know that doesn’t help.”

“Maybe you could tell me what the hell is going to help.” Caught up only in himself, he continued when he should have shut up. “What am I saying? Not exactly your area of expertise.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He stepped farther away from her and flung open the top of the battered, metal toolbox he’d picked up secondhand. He began tossing in the tools on the table.

“Cale, what’s that supposed to mean?” Rachel came around the table to his side.

He wanted to be alone with his pain, needed her to get out of his space. “You’re no expert on dealing with your grief.”

She stared at him for several seconds—he could feel her gaze burning into the side of his face. The silence grew, and he didn’t back down because it was true and he wasn’t in the right state of mind to take it back.

“You act