The Cabin - Jasinda Wilder Page 0,77

idiotic games with me.

I was fine subsisting day to day, going to work and coming home alone and being celibate and drinking myself to something like sleep, waking up and doing it all over again. Repeat as needed until I go to heaven or nirvana or wherever, and I get to be with her again.

Then Adrian sent me to this cabin, and then he sent Nadia to live next to me, and now I don’t know which way is up.

Because I could…I could imagine her being something that comes before THE END.

When I threw that one red rose and that handful of black loam onto the polished cherry wood coffin, that was me writing THE END. On me, on her, on us, on my life as I knew it. It was over. The rest was just filler, details not worth remembering. There would be no after.

And then Nadia.

Coffee. Pasta. Mimosas. A hike around the lake.

A few little things. I don’t know her middle name. I’ve never held her hand, or even thought about what she looks like naked. It’s not that.

It’s more. It’s deeper. Both innocent and indemnifying at the same time.

It’s putting the lie to THE END. It’s creating a possibility of AND THEN.

And I just don’t know how to reconcile the two.

I sit up in bed and twist on the bedside lamp and reach for the book.

At some point, I think you just have to jump. It’s hard and scary when you’re young, when your heart is new and fresh and unscarred. You’re risking so much, then. Trusting the virgin vulnerability of your precious, secret heart, and you have no guarantee how it’ll turn out. His POV. You dive in, headfirst, terrified. Wonder of wonders, it turns out more amazing than you could ever expect. Joy is such an effervescent thing, isn’t it? The giddy happiness of true love is the purest emotion a human can experience. That sacred falling, the majestic weaving of two lives, two souls, two personalities into a single entity…that, I believe, is the meaning of life. The big WHY.

And then it’s taken from you.

You hear those words, “I’m sorry, sir, but your wife didn’t make it. We did everything we could.”

And suddenly, you’re not you anymore. Your face looks back at you from the mirror and your hands are the hands that have sat at the ends of your wrists all these years of your life, but you’ve been scooped hollow by the vicious talons of Loss. And you’re not you.

You wallow. Grieve. Drown. Moving on is a joke, right? That’s for people who didn’t love the way you did.

But then. Oh, but then. You meet HER. And somehow, the sun might just be trying to peek out from behind the haze of storm clouds that have followed you. There just might be something like a tomorrow that doesn’t include barrels of whiskey just to be able to fake a semblance of humanity.

Only, how do you get past this mountain that is grief, that is sorrow? It’s insurmountable. You didn’t WANT to get past it, over it, under it, around it. You wanted it to just bury you and be done.

SHE makes you think maybe you’re not done. Not yet.

And what I’m coming to, what I’m realizing, is that you just have to jump.

It’s so much worse than the first time. Your heart isn’t whole. It’s not even a kintsugi heart, a fragile pottery thing broken into pieces and repaired with seams of gold and silver. It’s just dust in the corner on the floor, a few bits and pieces here and there to give you a hint of what it might once have been. You aren’t just vulnerable. You’re all exposed nerve endings. You think you’ve armored up against the assaults of the world, but that’s a silly lie, easily exposed. I mean, shit, you walk down the street and some lady you’ve never met walks past wearing her perfume and suddenly you’re fighting back sobs and hyperventilation. That one song you danced to at your wedding comes on the radio and you have to pull onto the shoulder because you can’t see and you can’t breathe. Armor? Ha.

Now, jumping is a thing of bravery. Before, it was bravado. They’re not the same. Before, you felt invincible. Jumping was a risk, but calculated. You stood to gain so much, after all, right? The love of a good woman is worth any risk. That’s what you thought, then.

Now, you know better.

Now, you know