“Right.”
All of Luke’s stammering and all the vague truisms about staying safe and healthy and him going on with his life, me going on with mine, were a far cry from what he said two days ago. Maybe he was regretting it. Maybe he was angry, considering the last time I saw him, I had kicked him to the street.
And yet he’d said that stuff about our marriage being real, the stuff I wanted to put on pause forever, and turn over, and make sure that we were feeling the same thing.
And what was that thing? Could I stand that he lied and feel what I was feeling at the same time? Was it just brought on by adrenaline, by the extreme? Should I tell him I forgive him? Do I?
“Oh, guess what?” he said, bursting my thoughts, his eyes wide and happy.
“What?”
“My family is having a little Purple Heart ceremony for me. Tomorrow. They wanted to make sure they got it in before the arraignment. You know—” He paused. “Just in case.”
“That’s wonderful.” I smiled at him. He smiled back. My skin got warm.
“Yeah, Yarvis will be there. It’s going to be really small. But nice.” He looked shocked. “Do you want to come? I mean, if you want. I would love for you to come.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, I would like that a lot.”
I could feel my face flush warmer, this time out of discomfort. “We’re going to Galveston tomorrow,” I said. “On tour. We got a record deal out of the show last night.”
“No!” he almost yelled, more animated than I had seen him in a long time. “Cassie, that’s amazing!”
“Yeah,” I said, letting a grin break through my nerves. “Yeah, it’s kind of the shit.”
His phone buzzed. He looked at it, and looked at me. “Jake’s outside with JJ in the car seat, so.”
I stood. He stood, slow.
“I’m sorry I probably can’t make the ceremony.”
“No, no worries,” he said, his voice deep, restrained. “I’ll just see you . . .”
“At the hearing?”
“Yeah.”
My hands twitched at my sides. His made fists. We walked side by side to the door, and he braced on his cane as he stepped down.
On the stairs, he looked back at me for a long minute. I didn’t break his gaze. “Bye, Cass.”
“Bye, Luke.”
The hole in my chest was back. My ears followed the steady rhythm of his footsteps growing fainter. Tension in every muscle released at the hope that we were going to beat the charges, balled up again at the thought that he might not want to see me anymore, and released at the memory of his calm words, his conviction, his determination to make this right.
“Hey!” I heard, muffled, from below.
I panicked, dashing to the door, my heart racing. He was looking up at me, waiting, his chiseled arms resting on either side of the door frame at the bottom of the stairs, now open to the porch.
“What?” I said, laughing a little. “You scared me.”
“Sorry. I forgot to tell you. I did it!” he called up the stairs. He gestured toward his injured leg, where he had leaned his cane, and I gasped, knowing what he meant.
He nodded. “I ran. I went running!”
But before I could congratulate him, the door was closed, and he was gone.
Luke
A string held me to that room, where she was still sitting, wearing that silly white button-up shirt that looked nothing like the soft T-shirts she normally wore, stumbling over her words, looking at me like she had never looked at me before. Hearing that she was open to something new afterward, maybe not as friends, maybe not as husband and wife, but just whatever we were, was almost too much to take.
I reminded myself of the rules I had come up with after being arrested. Leave Cassie alone.
She was feeling warm toward me now because she was coming off the wake of the news that we had a chance to beat the charges. But it was just one day I had been good to her. Soon she would remember everything that came before that, that I had messed up her life. Whatever she was feeling now, she would have time to reconsider.
And yet when the sun hit me outside as I walked to where Jake idled near the curb, a hard bright diamond bouncing off the hoods of parked cars on Cassie’s street, tinkling piano sounds drifting from her open window, I waited until the last possible moment to open Jake’s car door. I savored the seconds when Cassie was still a few hundred feet away, wanting me.
Cassie
The next morning, I stopped the Subaru outside my mother’s house, and got out, standing on my old street. I knocked on the screen door. When there was no answer, I let myself in.