“See you in the morning.” I press a kiss over his lips. Mitch doesn’t move. He’s rigid with disbelief, the stunned look of betrayal still fresh on his face.
“In the morning,” he whispers.
Max ushers me out the door as if the roof was on fire.
Mitch is back. All of my prayers have been answered. It’s nothing short of a miracle, and now I’m so frightened I wonder what I’ve done—how to get us out of this mess. We’ve become a tangled necklace that needs to be ripped apart with no hope of ever being whole and beautiful again. Everything is about to change. I know this. I can feel it, see it. But nothing is willing to give, and I could never leave Max.
Max saved me. He doesn’t deserve this. He never signed up to be second best to Mitch. I would never let him think that. I could never leave Max, but in a strange way I don’t feel married to him at all anymore. Now it’s just cheating on Mitch in the worst way possible.
Mitch
Molten hot water beads off my skin as I indulge in the world’s longest shower. I’m not sure how successful I was in washing the grime of reality off my flesh, but I concede and put on the clothes Colt scraped up for me. Wish I could wash Max Shepherd away—ship him off to the nearest desert island, hell, reeducation center.
Downstairs I find Colt and Mom huddled over the kitchen table with anxiety-riddled faces. Figures. As glad as Mom is to have me back, she’s worried for me and most likely for Max. It just proves her heart is too damn big.
“Where are the keys to your truck?” I ask, giving a gentle shove into Colt’s shoulder. There’s no way in hell I’m going to sleep tonight, so why bother trying.
He plucks them from his pocket and dangles them before me.
“I don’t know, man.” He snatches them back into his palm with a clear look of apprehension. “The idea of you navigating your way around Mono at this late hour, sans any vehicular history for the better part of a decade, kind of has me worried.”
“Thanks.” I snatch them up and bolt for the door without acknowledging his vote of confidence.
“Where are you going?” Mom shouts after me.
“Just getting a burger.”
Colt sprints down the driveway and hops into the passenger seat uninvited. I don’t really mind. I’ve got one serious fucking bone to pick with him anyway.
We speed out the driveway and slide onto the main road with a bit more drama than I bargained for.
“Relax.” Colt struggles with his seatbelt. “Try not to get yourself killed just yet.”
I don’t say anything, just keep driving until I get to my favorite fast food restaurant and order twelve cheeseburgers by way of the drive-thru.
“I need some cash.” I flick my fingers at Colt. “You want anything?”
“That’s enough to efficiently clog both our arteries.” He gives a wry smile as he forks over the dough.
“They’re all for me. I’ve been slacking off in the artery-hardening department. What do you want?”
“Two burgers. And, by the way, death by cholesterol isn’t the best suicide solution either.”
I throw in some drinks and fries—and exchange the bills for two piping hot bags.
“I miss all this,” I say, driving back out into a blanket of darkness.
I make a left instead of a right and head down toward the shore.
The moon blanches the landscape with its pale illumination, and suddenly it all feels like a dream—hell some of those fantasies in isolation felt more real than this.
“So where we going?” Colt seems disinterested, his question lodged behind his burger.
“Home.” The one I shared with Lee. The one I built for Lee.
“Dude.”
“Relax. I just want to see it. Make sure it’s still standing. I wouldn’t want anything but the best for Max fucking Shepherd.”
“I’ve got news for you.” Colton crams his burger into his mouth before washing it down with a few quick swigs. “Stella and Eli didn’t ask to be put in the middle of this. Just chill out—don’t do anything stupid.”
“This?” I straighten. “What’s this? Two days ago I was a prisoner at the hands of homicidal maniacs, and now I’m responsible for this.” The ocean gleams from between the houses as we drive down the familiar streets. I take in the white caps crushing the sand, watch them wash out in a peaceful surrender. That’s what the world wants me to do, surrender to the circumstances. I kill the lights as the house comes up on us. “God—there it is,” I whisper, pulling alongside the curb about a half a block down.
It’s still there. Standing in perfect form like a two-story soldier built to protect.
A spring of tears well up in my eyes, and I blink them away. It’s all real now—Lee and her new family, moving on without me.
“Dude, I know it’s killing you.” Colton readjusts himself in the seat before putting his bare feet up on the dash. “Max is pretty decent once you get to know him. He’s sort of like a brother.”
“You think she’ll kick him out?” I want to cut to the chase. Certainly Colt has insider information on his decent new “brother.”
It’s quiet a few seconds too long.
“Shit.” I sink in my seat in defeat. This isn’t going well. Not in any one of my fucking fantasies did I come home to this hellish alternate universe. I wouldn’t even qualify this disaster as a nightmare. We’ve drifted far beyond the horizon of some common nocturnal wandering.
“I don’t think she should be put in that position.” Colt jumps to her defense. “She’s confused right now. Give her some time to figure things out—but don’t hold it against her if she doesn’t come barreling out with a suitcase in the next ten seconds.”
“It’s not Lee who should leave. I’d die before Shepherd squats in my house by himself.” The lights are on upstairs in the back. Master bedroom. An image of his hungry mouth roving up and down her creamy skin comes to mind uninvited. “He’s defiled it. We’ll have to burn it and start from scratch.” The lights go on downstairs, and I sink a little lower as though they could see us. “You always liked, Lee.” I leave it there to see if he bites—to see if he can explain how in the hell he let this tragedy unfold without so much as a whimper.
“Lee’s a tough nut.” Colt shifts before plucking another burger from the bag.
“I will hang you by the balls if you don’t detail to me what in the hell happened.”
“Fine, but you asked for it.” Colt leans up against the door and gives a long blink. “Lee needed help with the business. She was a fucking wreck, and Max was more than eager to comply. He started hanging around every day. And, after Stella was born, they were sort of, together.”
“After Stella was born?” Ironic how my anger helps me see with perfect clarity. I let the idea simmer until my eyeballs demand to shoot out from sheer pressure. “That’s not even four months after I disappeared. Nice to see Max doesn’t waste any time.”
“She had needs.”
I throw the bag of burgers at his chest.
“At the vineyard—she had needs at the vineyard. Besides—” he hesitates.
“Besides what?” I demand. Colt’s face is starting to look like a bullseye right about now, and my fist is looking to relieve some tension.
“Never mind.” He shoves another burger down his throat to keep from rattling out the atrocity. Although, I don’t see how it could get any worse.
“Besides what?” I pull the keys from the ignition, and rattle them. “We’ll be here until morning unless you finish that thought.”
“I’m seeing someone now,” he nods, satisfied with his transition. “Some chick from French Polynesia, can’t understand a damn thing she says, but we speak the same language after a couple margaritas. You want me to set you up with one of her friends?”
I jam my fist into his arm, put some meaning behind it as a taste of what’s to come. I’m not opposed to the idea of beating the shit out Colt in lieu of Max tonight. “Say whatever the hell you were going to
say.”
Colt shakes his head and looks up at the house as a shadow moves across the window. “I don’t think you’re—”
I snatch him by arm and twist it behind his shoulder. “You don’t think, Colt. That’s why I’m in this mess. That’s why Stella and Lee have to put up with the fallout of all this bullshit because you can’t fucking think straight.”
Colt pushes me off and lets out a heated breath. He knows its true. He can’t even deny it. Stupid broken leg. If he would have paid attention to the one simple task I gave him that day, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. I’d be upstairs kissing Lee, putting babies in her tummy.
I lunge over and wrench his arm just waiting for the next stupid thing to fly from his lips.
“I slept with Lee.”
I let go with a shove. “What?” His words sting like a fresh slap.
“Jeez. I think you hyper-extended my shoulder.” He takes a swig of his drink as though nothing happened. “Actually, she slept with me—a week before the wedding. She thought I was you. Willed me to be you. She was tanked out of her freaking mind.” He shakes his head at the memory.
I glance out the window a moment. An image of Lee wrapped around Colt sears through my mind. I can feel her desperation as she “willed” him to be me.
“A week before the wedding, huh?” I state it more as a fact than a question. Lee was feeling guilty—wanting me so bad she was willing to lose everything with Max for just one more night. Colt was just a stand-in for the real thing. “You walk her down the aisle?”
Colt mutes up and gives a quick nod.
I don’t say anything just start the ignition and drive past my old house like I’ve done a thousand times before. I don’t notice any stop signs or pay attention to the signals as I race back to my mother’s driveway. I jump out of the truck and come around the passenger’s side before plucking him from his seat.
“What the hell?” He tries to stave me off with a burger.
There’s not a burger in the world that’s going to stop me from what I’m about to do next. I bash his face in with my weak, undernourished fist until it feels like I’m going to pass out from the effort. I’m not sure if I truly blindsided Colt, or if he’s letting me beat the shit out of him for all the misery he’s caused—nevertheless, it’s good practice for the flesh ripping I plan on gifting Max in the very near future.
It’s only fair.
Max
The fresh sting of California sunshine falls across my eyelids through a crack in the blinds. I glance over at Lee sleeping peacefully beside me and carefully untangle our limbs. She’s so beautiful, so damn heartbreakingly gorgeous I’d wake her with a kiss, but the truth is my head is still spinning from a long night of zero sleep. Instead, I jog downstairs and peer out the window to see if Mitch is staking out the house. I would if the roles were reversed.
No sign of Mitch—yet.
I make my way over to the family room, still wiping the sleep from my eyes. I’m not sure I slept last night, just tossed and turned and thought about how Mitch is going to inject himself in our lives. I held onto Lee for dear life as if she were about to be blown away by a cyclone. Honest to God, this nightmare scenario never once played out in my mind.
Outside the blue Pacific is veiled in a thin layer of fog. I open the slider and feel the cool rush of morning air waft in, filling my lungs with the sweet brine from the ocean. The trio of Coke bottles that sit on the mantle, campaign for my attention. The one in the middle is filled with a mixture of Townsend, Shepherd soil, the one on the right with Townsend, the left with Shepherd—a gift from Lee on our first anniversary. It was a symbol of who we were, how we breeched long past rivalries and combined the two to create an unstoppable enterprise. Now Mitch is back, and he’s going to extricate every last Townsend element from my grasp and reclaim it as his own. I’d be delusional to think otherwise—hell, I would do the same. Lee first.
Like some robot on autopilot, I put on a pot of coffee and lean up against the counter while it percolates. It’s hard to believe life has turned into a heaping pile of shit in less than twenty-four hours, although I suppose the opposite is true for Mitch. I vote Lee should stay with me while Mitch does another tour of duty.
A dull laugh rattles from my chest. I wouldn’t want Mitch going back. Hell, I’m glad he’s not pushing up daisies, but I can’t see us rekindling any kind of non-existent friendship, not with Lee in the balance—not with her in my bed.
I glance out the window as the marine layer settles over the horizon, thick as frosting. Lee has got to stay with me. I’m not above begging—not when it comes to my wife. I can’t imagine not keeping my family—my business intact. I thought Lee and I would last forever.
The coffeemaker burps, rousing me from my dreamlike stupor. I pour myself a cup, and wander out onto the patio.
Beach front. Mitch put a triple lien on Townsend just to pick up the property, not including the cost of materials to build it. Of course it was worth it in the end, but questionable financial moves like this one is what ran his company into the ground. By the time Lee led me to it, I had to resuscitate it with some serious mouth to mouth—Shepherd finances to Townsend until it finally eeked out a profit.
A wave crests through the mist, and pulls up on shore, bubbling into sea foam before peeling away.
My father never made a mistake in business. He made plenty in his marriage, thus turning my mother into a wandering ball of lust, but not in the boardroom. He knew the difference between a calculated risk and a bullshit deal that would land you upside down, raining the change loose from your pockets. And now, every time I’m presented with a fork in the road I ask myself what would Dad do?
So here I am—unexpectedly staring at one big fucking fork in the road. Now what? Can’t exactly use the same philosophy when it comes to Lee and me and this tangled net we’re snared in. This is just another case of Townsend bad luck. There’s no other explanation.
Ironic how my mother loves to lament the fact Lee and I are so normal. How we cleanse the debris of white trash shenanigans she and Hudson seem to continually suck us into. Hudson with his lovely new porn star girlfriend. The sex tape comes out soon. A perfect holiday gift for the pervert on your list. I guess that qualifies Colton for a copy, probably two.
“Morning.” A cheery voice comes from behind. Lee offers a spontaneous massage to my shoulders, and I repay her with a groan of satisfaction. I pull her onto my lap with a kiss. Lee didn’t push me in the shower last night. To tell the truth, I was too jarred to think straight, and her elation didn’t exactly help the situation.
Her jeans catch my eye.
“You’re dressed,” I say a bit surprised considering the hour. I guess I shouldn’t be too caught off guard at her hyper-willingness to get the day started—not with the big impending reunion scheduled for later this morning.
I take a closer look at her hair, her makeup. She looks immaculately put together, more like a night on the town than a quick jaunt out for some eggs. The more I inspect her, the more my stomach sinks like a brick.
“Get ready,” she whispers, pulling at my shirt. “We can drop the kids off on the way.”
Her eyes sparkle like an unblemished summer sky. Her lips twist as she purrs. Lee is floating on air, and this unnerves me. She’s so damn chipper it’s grating on me.
“I’m not going.” I let out a breath I’ve been holding since last night. I’m pretty sure the entire event would end up in a verbal or physical altercation, both if I were lucky. And judging by the way Mitch has evaporated, it wouldn’t be a fair fight. It’s like he stepped out of a concentration camp. It probably wasn’t much better.
“Oh, no.” Lee’s smile melts from her face as if she were genuinely disappointed. “Please? It won’t be the same without you. Besides, that way I won’t have to recount every detail to you when I get back. Don’t you want to know what happened?”
“Yes. I want to know everything.” Not really. I know enough
. All the important details anyway. She hones in on the sarcasm in my voice and frowns. “You go.” I slip my hand up her shirt and rub her back. “I’ll take the kids to school. Actually I might keep Eli home. I saw him pull at his ear last night. He might be coming down with a cold.” Eli’s more than a little prone to ear infections. Both Lee and I know the fallout—a multitude of sleepless nights, and force feeding him medicine that he likes to spit back in our faces.
“Max.” She closes her eyes a moment as disappointment permeates her. “Are you sure? I could have your mom or Janice watch him.”
“I’m positive.” I want to tell her that I’m not ready, but its pointless considering I’ll never be ready to deal with Mitch.
“Okay. Well, thank you.” She gives a little bounce, and for a minute I’m not sure if she’s thanking me for staying with Eli or for not interfering with her outing. “You deserve an award for being the best father of the year. I’ll have to bake you a cake.” She dots my lips with a kiss.
Great. Now I’m practically a hero for not going.
“You’re all the reward I need, Lee.”
Her demeanor changes as she takes me in, desperate and broken from just one brief encounter with her not-so-long-lost husband. It’s the repercussions that have me fearful—that have me wondering how fast she’ll shove a suitcase in my face and tell me to get the hell out.
It’s not so much Mitch keeping me from going, or hearing him recite the atrocities that most likely occurred, it’s the pain that ignites in me when I think of Lee looking at him in that way. It’s the thought of feeling like a third wheel on some date my wife is on with her dead ex-husband. It’s a nightmare within a nightmare, and there doesn’t seem to be a way out. I wish there were some great analogy that could relay how I feel—some girl who would drive Lee to the edge of a mental cliff, but there isn’t. I don’t have some great love who has suddenly resurrected herself to compare the situation. Lee is the only one for me. Always has been. Always will.
Lee and I were a whole encyclopedia of wonder and excitement together, and now I feel like nothing more than some old, useless receipt.