“Okay, Ella.”
I heard her disconnect. Then I felt it slice through me leaving nothing but raw in its wake.
Then I pulled my shit together and started packing.
* * * * *
One hour later…
“I saw him,” Bessie said.
We were in her car on the way to the airport.
“What?” I asked, my mind on other things, my head so full it was aching, about to explode.
“With you on the beach,” she went on.
I sucked in breath and stared out the windshield.
Then I whispered, “Bess –”
She kept going. “Watched,” she whispered. “Watched him with you. Didn’t go to you, the way he was…” She cleared her throat. “The way he was with you. I liked it, Lexie.”
I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth then opened them and begged, “Stop.”
She was silent.
Then she wasn’t.
“Thought you took so long to call me for dinner, he was gettin’ through to you. You called, I was surprised. All these weeks, kept thinkin’ how I could tell you, how I could talk you into –”
“Stop.”
She stopped.
Then she started again.
“Shoulda talked you into givin’ him another shot.”
She should have. She should have done that.
But even if she did, I wouldn’t have listened.
“Doesn’t matter now,” I whispered.
“No,” she said gently, “doesn’t matter now, Lexie.”
It didn’t matter now.
Nothing mattered now.
She fell silent and kept driving.
* * * * *
Ten hours later…
I’d run the gamut, convincing myself my voice would be the miracle healing elixir that would wake Ty up the minute I whispered in his ear in his hospital bed and set him to healing to knowing by the time my plane touched down at Denver International Airport that he’d be dead by the time I arrived.