For Life (Reclaimed Hearts Book 1) (2 page)

“Thirty-eight. I met my soul mate twenty-two years ago, and you see how that turned out. So if you think what I should be doing with my life instead of earning money and advancing my career is having my life ruined by a man, then sure. I’m all for it.”

“Oh, don’t be dramatic. You have two great kids, a successful career, tons of friends… He didn’t ruin your life.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t there,” I snap. I have no idea why her words have touched such a nerve today. I must just be feeling the single parent blues. She eyes me warily and I sigh. “Sorry. But the whole relationship thing?
Ugh
. Maybe I need to do what you do. Where do you find men who just want to have no-strings sex?”

She laughs. “Well, you can find them in bars, only they’re old and gross and looking for girls half our age to rouse their tired old cocks. Or you could do what I do and find them on college campuses.”

“Oh my God, you’re such a cougar. How old’s this latest one?”

“Twenty-two,” she says smugly. “He’s a personal trainer. Eleven percent body fat, and his strongest muscle is—”

I cut her off before she can go any further. “Nope. I’m so sorry I even asked. I should know better.”

“I’m only kidding. Well, sort of kidding,” she amends. “But seriously, Adam was what, three years older than you? Maybe you need to try a little younger.”

“Gavin isn’t twenty-two, is he?” I ask warily. (One never knows with Sandra.)

“Mid- thirties,” she replies, checking her phone. “Plenty old. And on that note, loverboy just texted me. He’s done class, so… Off for my cardio.” She rises and gives me a quick hug. “Let me know about the invitations, ‘kay? And hot yoga this weekend, maybe?”

“Sure. Yeah. Enjoy your
cardio
.”

She throws me a saucy smirk as she heads out the door.

Twenty-two
. I’m incredulous. What the hell would I do with a twenty-two year old boy? I mean, besides the obvious. The thought of it makes me squirm a bit in my chair. It’s been far too long, and my body must be making a concentrated last-ditch effort to breed, because I’m hornier than I’ve ever been in my life. Thank God for battery-operated boyfriends. They’re the only reason I’m not humping random strangers in the supermarket like a cat in heat.

I hate my married friends who complain that all their husbands want is sex. It’s not such a bad thing to wake up next to a man who can’t resist you. I remember that as being one of the perks of marriage to Grady. He always wanted me - even at the most inconvenient times, I might add. Our marriage was a lot of things, but of all that was wrong with it, passion was never lacking.

Would I trade single life for marriage again? There are so many times I ask myself that question. So many times I find myself wishing I had a partner to share the load with or someone to hold me when I’ve had a shitty day. Every time I walk into a place filled with couples I ask myself if what I went through was really that bad or if it just seemed it at the time.

And then it all comes back to me. The anxiety. The loneliness. The anger, all the time, so much of it I thought I would explode at any moment. I was suffocating in that marriage, and by ending it I gave myself breath again. So no. I wouldn’t trade it. Things are perfectly fine the way they are.

Grady

“Grady…”

Her whisper stirs me in the darkness.

“Grady, my love…”

I reach for her and she slides against me, all silky chestnut hair and satin limbs. Lush, warm curves fill my hands as she breathes my name against my lips. Sweet, so sweet, twining around me, moving with me. Enveloping me in her scent. Soft sighs echo in my ears as I bury myself deeper, losing myself in her. Before long she’s whimpering, shuddering, her body tensing with impending pleasure, and I can’t hold back. She cries out, but her moans of pleasure are carried away by some other, harsher sound.

Suddenly, she’s torn from my arms. My eyes fly open, and I realize the bed is empty and the shrill beeping of my alarm clock is my only companion. Cassie isn’t here, just as she hasn’t been here for the past eleven years, even though every morning I still expect to wake and find her next to me.

Like a fool.

I slap the “off” button on my alarm clock and haul my carcass out of bed. It’s 5:15 a.m. on Friday, the last day of my work week, and I’m more than ready for the weekend and some down time with the kids. I pull on some running gear, get my dog harnessed, and then we’re out the door, alone on the quiet suburban street. Ares trots beside me, scanning his surroundings like a member of Homeland Security in the way all German Shepherds do.

I’d hoped some of the best parts of my dream about Cassie would stay in my head so I could replay them on my run, but in the few short minutes since I’ve woken she’s already fading. In my dream I could feel the impossibly smooth texture of her skin, taste her sweet kisses, even smell her hair, but now she vaporizes into the cold morning air, as ephemeral as my frozen breath. There are things I remember even in my waking hours. Her tinkly laughter. The look of sheer adoration in her dark eyes, just for me. The way she said my name when she was happy, or angry, or about to come. But in my dream this morning she’d been
right there
. Closer than I’ve had her in too many years to think about.

And then I woke up.
Fuck.

I force her out of my head and mentally plan my day as my feet drum the pavement. Drop off my dry cleaning. Meet Craig at the new building site at eight o-clock. Call Mom at lunchtime to check in.

And I’ve got to grocery shop for the kids at some point, since I’ll have them by nine a.m. tomorrow. They’re both Halloween freaks, so I’ve bought a selection of classic slasher films for a Saturday night gore-fest. I promised I’d take them to the mall after our breakfast at the diner, and then we’re off to pick pumpkins. Tomorrow night I’ll make some burgers and S’mores on the grill and together we’ll shout at the TV while the characters on the screen try to avoid being hacked to death by killers. A perfect day with Chloe and Caden.

Tonight I’m headed to happy hour after work with Craig and a few others. I’m hoping my partner won’t make good on his threat to invite his sister-in-law. He’s practically family, and therefore she’s off-limits. Sure, Kira is stunning. Tall, blond, willowy, amazing breasts, beautiful smile. Never married, twenty-nine, and lovely as can be. She’s a ray of sunshine, that woman. Always smiling. She probably sings in the shower and has sweet breath in the morning. Every time I see her she all but tells me she’s interested. But I can’t do it. It isn’t fair.

The woman of my dreams is thirty-eight, temperamental, and slightly bossy. She’s as much storm as she is sunshine, and she definitely needs her Listerine when she wakes up. But she’s got big dark eyes as endless as the universe, a musical laugh, and a great sense of humor. With her flowing dark hair and legs for days she looks amazing in a pair of jeans and equally stunning dressed up.

When I hear other people talk about their ex-wives, I feel sorry for them. They say they wonder what they ever saw in the women they pledged their lives to. Sometimes they’re baffled by the women they once loved and say they only thought they knew.

But I know Cassie. We barely speak these days, but I
know
her. I don’t wonder what I saw in her because I still see it during the ten minutes or so we spend together every other weekend, when I pick the kids up on Saturday mornings and drop them off again on Sunday nights. She keeps herself at arms’ length even though I’ve tried to be friends with her over the years. Another man might be angry with her for breaking things off the way she did and keeping her distance from, but she was justified and I can’t hold the past against her. She’s not perfect, but she always did her best which is more than I can say for myself.

I wish I could’ve stayed in that dream a little longer. But real life interrupted, as it always does, reminding me that Cassie is gone and not coming back. I sprint hard at the end of my run, punishing myself until my lungs are screaming, and by the time I reach my front door my head is clear and I’m ready to face the day. 

CHAPTER TWO

Cassie

The shrill chirp of my cell phone breaks through my haze. It’s Saturday, my one day of rest, and last night I set my alarm for seven-thirty knowing my bladder would wake me at six-thirty and I could crawl back to bed undisturbed by teenagers for another hour.

According to my phone it’s a few minutes before six, and the display shows Grady’s cell number, which is odd. He never calls me. As in,
never
.

I answer, panic slicing through my haze. Both kids are home, thank goodness, or I’d be in even more of a tizzy.
Something must be wrong with Donna
is the thought that seizes me even as Grady begins to speak.

“Sorry. I thought I’d get your voicemail,” he apologizes. “I figured you were still asleep.” His voice is thick and distracted, and it’s that more than the hour of the call that resonates with me.

“What’s wrong?” I turn on my bedside lamp, as if seeing clearly will help me absorb whatever bad news he has to tell me.

“It’s Carl,” he chokes, and when he tells me his older brother’s been killed in a car accident I realize Grady must’ve been crying before he called me. He tells me the story gently, as if he’s trying to protect me from the shock, but it doesn’t stop me from being instantly worried about him. And Donna, his mother. And Renée, Carl’s widow. And their children.

“Oh my God…” I can’t stop repeating myself. I must say it twenty times. I’m so stunned by the news that the tears pricking the backs of my eyelids won’t even fall. Carl was barely forty years old. He had a wife and small kids and should’ve lived another forty or fifty years. How could someone like that be dead? My sleep-fogged brain can’t make sense of it.

I ask the first question that pops into my mind. “When’s the service?”

“Don’t know. I just hung up the phone with Mom. I haven’t even talked to Renée yet.”

“Oh my God, poor Renée,” I breathe. It’s unfathomable. She just sent me a happy family photo with the new baby, and less than a week later she’s a widow with four kids under the age of eight. “I’m coming out,” I blurt without even thinking of what I’m offering. “I’ll bring the kids. I can help. We can all help.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line for a long moment.

“Everyone would appreciate that, Cass,” he says finally, his voice choked again.

“I’ll tell the kids and we’ll be out as soon as I can get there. Tonight, probably.”

“You know you can always stay at Mom’s. Or I can book you guys a hotel room. Don’t pay for one.”

“We’ll stay with Donna.” In my head I’m calculating all the things she’ll need, all the things Renée will need. Meals. Housework done. Kids looked after. A buffer from the endless phone calls and well-meaning neighbors with casseroles. Someone to handle the wake and deal with the funeral home. If we stay at a hotel we’re removed from all that, which won’t do. They’re still family. I have to be there.

Grady clears his throat. “I’m about to load the truck and head out. If you need anything, call me, yeah?”

“Okay, Grady, I will,” I promise.

It isn’t until I hang up the phone and start hauling our suitcases out of the closets that I realize I’ve just finished the longest conversation I’ve had with my ex-husband in eleven years.

* * * *

I let the kids sleep and drink three cups of coffee as the news slowly sinks in. Carl Mahoney, my ex-husband’s older brother, was an incredible husband and father. Unlike Grady and I, Renée and Carl weren’t high school sweethearts. Renée was a bit of a wild child who no man could pin down until she met Carl. He was a desirable local bachelor, popular for his shirtless pictures in the county’s “Men in Uniform” calendar. The two started dating in their mid-twenties, settling down and taking almost immediately to domestic life. They were also the happiest couple I’ve ever known. The fact that the universe could permit the separation of two people so happily married is just wrong.

At eight o’clock I wake the kids and break the news to them.

“But we just saw him.” Caden, like me, can’t wrap his head around it. He stares at me, incredulous.

Chloe immediately bursts into tears. “Oh my God, poor Daddy and poor Nana! And what is Aunt Renée going to do without him?” She cries for all of us, her emotions as always right at the surface. I envy her ability to feel the pain and ride it out. She clings to me, which she never does. When Caden takes her hand she lets him, and he blinks back tears of his own while I tell them we’re headed to Delaware to be with the family.

But Caden’s full of questions about the car accident, and when he starts asking about it, he sets Chloe off. She whirls on her brother to tearfully hiss that he’s disgusting for asking about the accident, which in turn upsets him because he doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong.

It’s going to be a long trip with these two,
I think to myself, silently willing my children not to add to my already mounting stress.

It takes two hours for me to make my phone calls, pack, help the kids pack, and get the car loaded up. I take a whole week off from work and warn Jai and my board president that I might need a second week. Depending on how well Renée’s bearing up, I could be back in a few days, but I have no idea what I’m walking into, so I’m leaving things open. Luckily the kids are on a fall break, so they’re only going to miss three days of school even if we’re gone for the week.

Mrs. Dempsey next door has agreed to check in on Mr. Tibbles, and I make myself a note to buy her a thank-you gift. Mums, maybe, since she loves flowers. She watches us from her front porch, concern all over her face, and once again I'm thankful we moved in next door to her.

The kids tumble into the back of the car together with their pillows, wanting to sit together despite their earlier quibbling. By the time I’m on the turnpike they’re both out cold, two glossy dark heads nestled against their respective windows. It’s just me and my coffee and the road.

Wilmington is about seven hours from Cleveland when the weather is decent and the traffic isn’t backed up. Thankfully it’s a clear, bright day and I make great time, even for a Saturday. Chloe and Caden sleep like logs when we’re on the road, so I have some time to think. Thank God, because my head is in a lot of different places.

After our divorce I maintained my close relationship with Donna. She’s a wonderful grandmother and the kids adore her, so I keep in contact with her - calls and cards and e-mails and the occasional visit. The kids go out there with Grady several times a year, so her house is a second home for them. But I haven’t stayed the night in that house since Grady and I were married, and the thought of doing it now - with him there, under the same roof - has my stomach tied in knots.

Grady lost his dad the year before we met, so I never knew Carl, Sr. other than from the photos on the walls and the stories his family told of him. Donna took his death hard and the boys rallied around their mom together. Now Grady has to be there for his mom alone, without his big brother.

They both need as much support as they can get.

There isn’t much other family to speak of. Grady has some cousins scattered far and wide, but Carl, Sr. and Donna were both only children. Renée has a big family, and even though her relationship with them has always been somewhat strained, I know they’ll help in some way. Donna and Grady will only have each other.

And us.

I think of all the things I’d do for my closest friends in the same situation. Hug them. Let them cry on my shoulder. Be there to listen. Feed them, clean for them, make sure they’re taking care of themselves.

I can do all those things for Donna. She’s like a second mother to me - in fact, I’m closer to her than I am to my own mother. I’d called her as soon as I hung up with Grady and hearing the depth of her loss in her fragile voice was all the affirmation I needed for taking the week off work.

But Grady…

I haven’t even had a normal conversation with him in eleven years. The last time we spoke to each other for more than twenty minutes, I called him a shitty husband and told him I wanted him out of my house. When was the last time I saw Grady cry? When was the last time I hugged him, fed him, folded his laundry?

How can I do all those things and keep my feelings about the past behind us?