The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [143]
Tess didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t an expert on how to heal. She did the best she could. She kissed him. And he didn’t taste of whiskey or cigarettes. He tasted suspiciously of apples.
Her gaze went from him to his glass to him. He sat stiffly while she sniffed the contents.
“Apple juice?”
“Yeah.” Shame infused his cheeks again. “I tried whiskey. I truly, truly did. And every time I raised the glass, I just saw Marion shaking her head at me. Christ”—he hung his head—“I’m a teetotaler!”
“It’s okay,” she assured him, stroking his hair. “It’ll get easier. It will.”
He didn’t look convinced. Her fingers traced the beard on his cheeks, the purple puffiness beneath his eyes, the fullness of his lips. “J.T., I love you.”
He groaned like a trapped beast. His eyes closed. “Why can’t you just go away? Why can’t you just leave me alone? You killed him, you survived, isn’t that enough for you?”
“I don’t want to live in the past.”
“I can’t escape it.”
“You can, it’s just going to take a while.” She gave up sitting beside him and slid onto his lap. In this bar few people noticed. His thighs were hard and masculine beneath her, the denim of his jeans soft and worn. She kissed his lips, then his cheek, and then the scar on his chest.
She rested her head against his shoulder, and after a heartbeat she felt his arms slide around her waist. He buried his face in her hair.
And after a ponderous moment his broad shoulders began to shake.
“Tell me,” she commanded softly.
“I love you. Christ, I love you.”
And he was dying and there was nothing for him anymore. No place he could go where he didn’t see Marion lying in the dirt, no room to sit in where he didn’t see Rachel waving to him and blowing a kiss as she got into her car, and Teddy’s little arm waving in the backseat. He wanted to find them each again. He wanted to hold them in his arms and whisper, Please, please be happy. I love you, I just wanted you to be happy. I love you.
Remember me young, for both of us.
He raised his head. There were tear tracks on his cheeks. He didn’t care anymore.
“Make me whole. I want to be whole.”
She pressed his face against her throat and stroked his hair. She smelled of roses. He inhaled deeply and felt the scent finally soothe his shattered senses.
“Come on. It’s time to go home and meet my daughter.”
He kissed her. He held her close.
And he let her take him home.
LATER, ALMOST TWELVE months after that bloody night, he had the dream for the first time. Marion and Rachel were in a field of wildflowers, wearing white dresses and whimsical summer hats. Teddy picked daisies at their feet, his chubby hand filled with the flowers. They were talking and laughing, enjoying the day.
J.T. stood at the edge of the field, invisible to them and unable to touch. They spread out in the field and opened their arms to the sun.
It was a ridiculous dream, he thought upon waking. But he held it in his mind anyway.
He liked to remember them laughing, he liked to remember them happy. In the end maybe that was the most any of us can do—remember the ones we loved the way we loved them.
He rolled over and curled his arm around his wife’s supple waist.
“Bad dreams?” she murmured sleepily.
“No.”
“Okay. Stop hogging the covers.”
She drifted back to sleep. He pulled the covers over her shoulders, then settled her against him. She whispered his name and even in her sleep returned his embrace.
Read on for a preview from Lisa Gardner’s upcoming novel
LOVE YOU MORE
Available March 2011
PROLOGUE
Who do you love?
It’s a question anyone should be able to answer. A question that defines a life, creates a future, guides most minutes of one’s days. Simple, elegant, encompassing.
Who do you love?
He asked the question, and I felt the answer in the weight of my duty belt, the constrictive confines of my armored vest, the tight brim of my trooper’s hat, pulled low over my brow. I reached down slowly, my fingers just brushing the top of my Sig Sauer, holstered at my hip.
“Who do you love?” he cried again, louder now, more insistent.