My Twist of Fortune Rayne, Piper (top books to read TXT) 📖

“A part of me feels like I’m doing something wrong.”

She doesn’t say anything, and her face shows no reaction either. I can’t tell if I’ve completely insulted this woman I care about after sleeping with her for the first time or not.

“She died so suddenly, and the circumstances were tragic.”

I shake my head. “We’re not talking about this.”

She gets up on her knees and scoots closer to me, taking my hands. “One thing I think went wrong with Jeff and me was that we were never really good friends.” She looks at the ceiling then back at me. “We never talked. Sure, we discussed the kids or their schedules or his work, but we didn’t really confide about much else with each other.”

I squeeze her hands.

“It’s what scares me about Jed. Jeff couldn’t be vulnerable with me—he saw it as a sign of weakness. So when things went wrong with his business, he’d drown it in alcohol or, as I found out later, women. He never trusted me enough to come to me.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to burden you with it.”

She shakes her head. “That wasn’t it. I couldn’t make him feel better because he didn’t trust me to do it. We never had that mutual respect for one another. We weren’t a team. Look at Jed. Do you think I’d raise my kids to act that way? And I know deep down that sweet little boy I used to know is in there. I practically raised Posey by myself because Jeff was at work so much by then.”

I chuckle. That girl is well beyond her years.

“I’m not sure what’s going to happen with us, but I don’t want another relationship like that,” she says. “Our pasts are our pasts. Do I feel a little threatened by Laurie? In all honesty, I do. But that’s my problem and I’ll discuss it with you if I ever feel like it might overwhelm me or affect what we have. But we’re new, and if I’m your first relationship after Laurie, it’s going to churn up some feelings. And I want to be the one to hold your hand while you sort through them.”

I shake my head at her.

“What?”

I lean forward and wrap my hand around the back of her neck, pulling her into me for a kiss. “Just you. You’re amazing.”

She shakes her head as though she doesn’t believe me. “Would you tell me what happened? Or is it too painful?” She leans back, takes my foot between her hands, and massages.

My chest constricts. I haven’t had to do this in a long time. Everyone in our lives is more than aware of the tragedy that took my wife. “It was on the small lake about a quarter mile away from the house. Chevelle was five. She was going through this phase where she would follow Cade or the other boys everywhere. She was sure they were always doing fun things she was told she was too young to do. The boys had been out on the lake a week earlier, messing around. But the weather had gotten warmer.”

I take a moment and start back up. “I don’t know all the specifics because I had all the boys with me at football. I know that Chevelle had fallen asleep on the couch before the boys and I left, so I suspect she must’ve woke and went looking for them, not realizing they weren’t home. I pulled up to the house just as Laurie was running toward the lake, screaming for Chevelle. I threw the truck into park and ran after her. By the time I got there, Laurie was standing on the ice in the center of the lake, Chevelle beside her. We looked at one another with a sigh of relief as she told Chevelle to slowly walk toward me.”

She runs her hand up to my calf, and I fight the tears threatening to break free.

“It was this shared look like, ‘man, we almost lost her.’ I remember Laurie was in her pajamas, her hair in a ponytail. A smile was just about to form on her lips as Chevelle grew closer to me. Then it was like a movie. Laurie stepped forward and this loud crack echoed across the lake. The ice splintered like a cobweb. Her eyes widened and terror flashed in them right before the ice broke and she sank down.”

I almost feel the chill of the air that day. The screams that I recognized as my own later on. The boys coming to the edge of the lake. Me yelling at them to take Chevelle and to call for help.

“Our neighbors heard the screams and came running. I jumped in the water, but it was so dark. I couldn’t see anything, and the chunks of ice were too big.”

Marla runs her smooth palms slowly over my skin as though she’s soothing me. And it does help. A little.

“Eventually I felt my hand brush against something, and it was her. I got her out. At first I thought the same thing I had earlier—that we’d dodged a bullet. You know? I got us to the side of the lake and our neighbor returned with blankets. I remember her dropping them and saying she’d keep the kids busy. She must’ve seen what I didn’t—Laurie’s blue lips and still body. I wrapped her up while her husband tried to wrap blankets around me, but I think my adrenaline had kicked in. I started CPR. An ambulance came and took both of us, but she’d been trapped under the ice too long. She drowned.”

I release a breath, finding Marla with a familiar expression on her face. The same one of empathy or sympathy I got for years afterward. I haven’t actually relived that story in a while. For the first couple years after she passed, I would run through what happened every day. Try to figure out if there was some way