Page 48 of Twisted Fate

When I was finally able to move, I lay down next to him, curled into his side. The tension from earlier settled in the air around us, an unspoken grievance a heavy weight between our hearts.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I didn’t need to elaborate. He knew exactly what I meant. He blew out a breath and brought his hand to his forehead, rubbing his brow.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he began, and I stiffened in his arms. Noticing my discomfort, he tightened his hold on me. “I was thinking about Sarah, and I…” he began, pausing to take a breath. “I felt guilty,” he admitted. I swallowed thickly, bracing myself for what he would say next.

“Here I am living my life, when hers was cut short. I miss her so damn bad, but I also care about you. I can’t quite reconcile these two facts. They aren’t mutually exclusive, yet I don’t know how they can exist together.” Tears welled in my eyes at his raw honesty.

“You make me happy,” he said, and my heart swelled. “And that makes me feel even guiltier because I don’t deserve happiness. Not after what I did.” Shame and anguish laced his words, and I looked up at him in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s my fault Sarah is gone.”

“Vance,” I said, propping myself up on my elbow, “she died of a ruptured aneurysm. There was nothing you could do to cause or prevent that.”

“You don’t understand,” he proclaimed, sitting up and putting his back to me. The dismissal hurt, but I pushed it down, focusing instead on him. He was finally opening up to me, and my pain was nowhere near what this man had been carrying around for the last nine months.

“I caused it,” he said, hanging his head. “We got into a fight that day. I said things I shouldn’t have said. She was crying, and I was so damn angry.” His voice cracked, and I fought the urge to go to him. He needed to get this out, and I didn’t want to do anything to make him clam up. So, I sat there quiet as a mouse and still as a statue as he relayed the events of the day Sarah died.

42

Vance

“She’d just beento the doctor a couple weeks before. Her blood pressure was steadily climbing, and she was getting frequent headaches. They seemed to think her blood pressure was causing the headaches but wanted to do a scan just to rule out anything more serious.” I shuddered at the memory. If only we’d known then…

“They warned us she needed to keep her blood pressure down and avoid stressful situations. She had to take her meds regularly, but she wasn’t very good at that. Her scan was scheduled for the following week.” My voice trailed off as I pinched my eyes closed, trying to erase the memory. She never made it to her appointment.

“I found texts on her phone,” I announced quietly, afraid to say the words too loud. If I gave voice to them, that meant I couldn’t pretend anymore. I couldn’t make myself believe that Sarah had been perfect even though that was how I wanted everyone to remember her, including myself.

I took a deep breath before continuing, steeling myself for what I had to say next. “She’d been talking to another man. I wasn’t sure when or how it started or how far things had gone, but she wasn’t talking to him like a married woman.” I nearly choked on the last sentence, rage and heartbreak strangling my windpipe.

“I confronted her about it before work that morning. She denied sleeping with him, but at the time, I wasn’t sure I believed her. I tried to take her phone so I could tell him it was over and block his number, but she wouldn’t let me. She said she’d talk to him, that she would end it, but I wasn’t taking any chances. So, I ripped it from her hands and threw it across the room.”

My head dipped lower between my shoulders as the shame of my actions weighed me down. I lost my temper and acted rashly and as a result, I lost my wife.

“I got the call a few hours later,” I said, fighting back tears as I heard the police officer's words on a continuous loop in my head. “She’d been able to call 9-1-1 despite her screen being cracked and gave them her address before she passed out, but there was a crash on the freeway. By the time paramedics arrived, it was too late.”

I scrubbed my hands over my hair, fisting the strands in frustration. “If I had just kept my cool and talked to her calmly instead of letting my jealousy get in the way, she wouldn’t have been so upset and her blood pressure wouldn’t have spiked. They said that was most likely what ruptured her aneurysm, her blood pressure being too high.”

Delilah was silent, soaking in everything I just told her and probably thinking I was a monster. I felt her shift on the bed, and I fully expected her to get up and leave, disgusted with what I’d just confessed. I couldn’t blame her. I was disgusted with myself.

To my surprise, she pressed herself against my back and wrapped her arms around me, engulfing me in her warmth. “Vance,” she whispered against my skin before pressing a kiss to my shoulder. I covered her arms with mine, letting her hold me tight, offering the comfort I desperately needed but was too ashamed to seek out on my own.

“What happened was not your fault,” she proclaimed. I opened my mouth to argue, but she cut me off. “Her aneurysm was a ticking time bomb. You didn’t even know it was there, and you certainly couldn’t have known when or if it would rupture. And if she wasn’t taking her medication regularly, that could’ve caused her blood pressure to get too high.”

Her assurances did little to assuage my guilt, but it planted a seed of doubt in my mind. This whole time, I believed it was my actions that set off the chain of events that led to the rupture, but what if it was going to happen anyway? What if she forgot her blood pressure medicine that morning and it was really a ticking time bomb like Delilah said?

I didn’t know what to think anymore, but I felt lighter having confessed my deepest, darkest secrets to the woman I was falling for. Instead of scaring her away, it brought us closer.

I turned in her arms and pressed a chaste kiss to her lips. Pressing my forehead to hers, I breathed her in. “Thank you,” I said, my appreciation for her growing by the second. “I haven’t been able to tell anyone that, and it’s been eating me up inside.”

A sad smile flitted across her lips. “I know what you mean.” Her eyes filled with anguish, but she looked away, unable to meet my gaze.

I placed my finger beneath her chin and tilted her face to mine. She avoided my stare as long as she could until finally her eyes met mine. “Talk to me. What are you holding onto that you’ve never told anyone?”

Her chin wobbled, and she shook her head, batting my hand away. “I can’t,” she said, voice shaking. An uneasy feeling crawled up my spine, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

I reached for her, but she pulled away, tucking her knees to her chest and hugging her legs. Fear prickled my skin as a chilling sensation settled over me. What was she hiding? I swallowed hard before speaking again, afraid I wouldn’t like what she’d have to say.

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