Laid Bare - Lauren Dane [13]
“No. Oh fuck, I don’t know. This is very intense. I have an intense job. I’m not sure if I need an intense personal life too.”
“I see.” She looked into his eyes, wishing he’d wake up and see her. See them and what they could have together.
“You keep saying that, Erin. But how can you see? I don’t even see.”
“All I see is a man who can’t face himself. And it makes me sad, because you’re alive when we’re together and you’re not hiding who you are. You’re playing a game with this, a stupid game. Why I don’t know, because I like who you are. I won’t play this game with you. I’m worth more and so are you.” She leaned up, pressed her hand over his heart and kissed his chin. “Good-bye, Todd. I wish you well, I really do. If you change your mind, give me a call. Maybe I’ll be available.”
He watched her walk out the door and told himself it was for the best, but he knew he was lying to himself. Just like she said he was.
5
Present Day
Todd pulled his truck down his street and smiled when he saw the house. His house. He’d been driving for three days. Escaping Boston, a broken marriage, a waste of a job and eighteen months of physical therapy that had enabled him to walk without a limp. Mostly.
Into his new life, back to Seattle and into his new job with some old friends from the Seattle Police Department.
Coming back to the Northwest seemed a lot less like escape than leaving it nearly ten years before had. He’d spun out of control, run from what could have been a great relationship and into a job he’d started out loving and that had ended up nearly killing him.
That didn’t even address the ex-wife situation. He’d tried; she might have for a few more years, but it just fell apart. She wasn’t who he’d truly wanted, and he wasn’t the person she thought she’d married either. A mess of epic proportions, and the shooting had been the final burden that had simply torn the last bit of the foundations apart.
Sheila was a nice woman and all, but he didn’t ache for her at night, didn’t think about where she might be at any given time. In truth, it was as if the past eight years of his life had been an uninteresting interlude punctuated with a coma, painful PT and mediocre sex. He had no one but himself to blame.
She’d filed for divorce when he came out of the coma, but had hung around to be sure he was all right. He’d give her that much. Not six months after that she’d gotten married to someone else, and last he’d heard she was pregnant with the child she’d wanted but that he’d been too busy to give her.
He’d had a lot of time to examine his life, his mistakes. He’d looked at himself pretty unflinchingly and he’d admitted he lived half a life out of fear of expressing just exactly who he was. So he’d accepted it, and during his physical recovery he’d had the time to make plans for a future doing what he wanted to do. A future being who he was instead of who he thought he should be.
Once he’d gotten the green light to go back to work, he’d handed in his resignation and begun to figure out a business plan with some old friends of his in Seattle.
So here he was, opening the front door to his new house and ready to take on his new life.
The house was typical of the Greenlake neighborhood: big bay windows, hardwood floors, small bedrooms but large common rooms and a good-sized kitchen. The basement had been converted into a mother-in-law flat, so he would use that as his office.
The furniture and boxes had been delivered the week before, and he smiled when he noted that his mother had not only put linens on the beds but had taken the time to leave a note telling him she’d left him dinner in the freezer.
He turned in a big circle. This was his. His life, his future, loomed ahead of him, and for the first time in a very long time, he couldn’t wait to see what was next.
Erin finished stirring the soup for that day’s lunch special and turned around to check the progress of the pasta for the salad. Another two minutes should do it.
She checked the readerboard above the coffee counter