“I am?”
“Yeah,” I clipped.
“You believe that, I’ll give you her number. You call Chelle. Ask why she divorced me.”
I hitched a hip just as I put a hand to it and asked flippantly, “That’ll be interesting, Creed, what’ll she tell me?”
“That she filed for the same reason you lost your mind tonight. She filed when she found out why I insisted on naming our kids. She filed because of why I named our kids those names. And she filed because she was done bein’ married to man who was in love with a f**kin’ ghost.”
It took effort but I just managed to ignore his verbal blows pummeling the breath clean out of me.
“So you’re an equal opportunity ass**le, doing that to her at the same time you did it to me,” I noted.
“Yep,” he agreed. “Still don’t give a f**k which is why it’s good she’s shot of me. Decent woman. Never should have done it to her. I got them, I got her part of them and I got you in them. The way I saw it, I had a lifetime of livin’ without what I most wanted, made certain I got all I wanted outta that. I like it like that and I’d do it again.”
Seriously, this dickhead could not be believed.
“You are an ass**le,” I bit off.
“Didn’t deny it. Live with it every day. You don’t have to repeat it.”
“How’d she find out?”
“I told her. On your birthday seven years ago. The one day she never got. The one day every year I’d get shitfaced hammered out of my mind, all alone, just me. Difference that year was she didn’t let me be. She pushed it. So she got it. All of it. Best thing that ever happened to her. Finally meant she could be free of the ass**le that’s me.”
“Lucky her, now she probably celebrates my birthday.”
“No,” he shook his head. “For me it was you. For her it was me.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
I ignored that and stated, “I wasn’t a ghost, Creed.” I motioned to myself with my free hand. “As you can see, I’m alive and well.”
“You were a ghost to me.”
“Your choice.”
“No it wasn’t,” he returned immediately. “Dig deep and you know it.”
I felt my eyes narrow, I leaned in and hissed, “I don’t know shit.”
“Know this,” he growled and turned his back to me. It was a move so surprising, I didn’t have a chance not only to retreat but even to brace.
At what I saw, I couldn’t control it. I sucked in a sharp, audible breath.
I’d drawn blood on his back as well as his neck and you could see other scratch marks.
None of them marred the tattoo that spanned the entirety of his skin.
A pier.
A lake.
A horizon.
The sun shining.
And along the pier a name spelled out in flowers up the indent of his lower spine.