Page 131 of We Drank the Dawn

My sheets smell like him.

His side is cold.

His office door is closed.

I have no one to talk to.

His music isn’t playing.

And I feel so guilty that I can’t live with myself.

I fought my tears like they were coming to steal my homeland, but they persisted, slowly tightening my throat and blurring my vision and shaking my lips. I drove home half-way breathing, hardly moving, clenching my jaw against the way the dam around my emotions shook.

Inside, I took the fastest shower of my life and gulped down some food in the kitchen then jumped in bed, determined to be unconscious as quickly as possible. But then, Jackie texted me again which caused me to pick up my phone—a grave misstep when you’re soon-to-be-divorced.

After our text exchange about how her date went, my rebellious thumb pulled up Instagram, and there, sitting front and center on my screen was Peter.

On a horse.

In the training ring.

Laughing.

I blinked—surely, I was seeing wrong. Hallucinating, maybe? I rubbed my eyes and watched again, unable to peel my retinas away from that beautiful smile. The smile I missed so much.

Meadowbrook had posted this reel a few hours ago. It was just a highlight reel of the training they’d done that week, and a clip of Peter on a horse made it in. The clip couldn’t have been longer than two seconds, but it was enough for me to see that real smile. Not the one he gave people when he was pretending.

“Play again?”

I tapped it. And I played it over and over and over, holding my thumb on the screen to see his smile, his face, his hair. His skin was tan and his eyes gleamed with life. He held the reins loosely in one hand, as if he was completely comfortable up there—like he was suddenly a cowboy.

The fortress around my heart groaned, threatening to buckle.

My breath came out like a wheeze, scraping over my vocal chords.

He looked so…good.

With a violent crack, a painful sob wrenched from my throat and I dropped the phone on my chest. My body heaved as every locked-up feeling tore through my heart and exited my mouth.

Why? That’s all I wanted to know.

Why, when I had advocated for him, did it take him being away from me to be happy? I knew Peter—that look in his eyes wasn’t a show. Why could I not help him find peace? Despite the relief unfurling in my chest, darkness rushed into my heart.

Everything he had said about needing space started to make sense.

Maybe I was the problem, smothering him somehow.

Because now he looked so free.

I wracked my brain trying to remember what I’d done to push him away like this. Every time I’d opened my mouth in the last two years, I was trying to advocate for him. Trying to push him toward good things that his soul and body needed.

My mom and dad suddenly took over my brain.

And a realization clapped against my heart.

I was doing for Peter what I wished my mom would’ve done for my dad.

And that was a good thing, right? I wasn’t going to be the kind of woman who let my man sit around and waste away. I wouldn’t let him rot into the easy chair, drinking beer and watching football.