Page 67 of Apex of the Curve

I was hoping that we could keep something going. That she would want that with me.

I went into my bedroom and changed into a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a thermal shirt. It was getting colder at night, the autumn rains rolling in. The chill and the damp rolling in could sometimes permeate the house and I didn’t want to turn on the heat, not yet. I wanted Aspen close and cozy, so I split the difference and pulled a warm, microfiber blanket, down from the top of my closet.

“Here, take this down for me,” I murmured and passed it to her in the hallway. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

“Okay.” she smiled and hugged the blanket to her and disappeared down the stairs.

I rushed through brushing my own teeth and with a sigh, looked at myself in the mirror above the bathroom sink.

Not for the first time I asked myself, was this fair to her? Getting involved like this? I wouldn’t typically describe myself as a particularly insecure man, but she brought it out in me somehow. Like, I genuinely worried about disappointing her. About letting her down. About doing to her what my dad did to my mom.

I mean, he knew… but he hadn’t been there to actually see it. I had – the weeping, the longing, the loneliness and waiting. The guilt when she couldn’t do it. When she couldn’t go on that way, and finally the anger and bitter resentment for my pops having put her through it.

I could handle a lot of shit, but I don’t know if I would be able to handle my woman looking at me the way my mom looked at my dad on the last visit she ever took me and Lacy on to see him when he’d been locked up.

How she’d sent us to stand in the corner to talk to him alone. How his expression had iced over and how he’d looked at our mother with a calculated and almost murderous stare when she told him she was moving on without him, and not only that, how she was taking us kids along for that particular ride.

My dad had lost his whole family that day and that shit had been fucked. I don’t know if I was willing to repeat history. You know?

So, don’t get caught,a deriding voice from within said.

If only it were that easy.

I mean, Aspen had already caught me, thoroughly entangling me in her web, and I couldn’t for one second say I was sorry for myself on that score.

It just remained to be seen if I would be sorry for her.

I pushed off the counter and left the bathroom, switching out the light. With a determined sigh at not being caught out over my inner dilemma, I went down to the waiting woman in my living room, to hold her, to love her like she asked, and to cement the good memories in place before it all went to hell and the good times were a thing of the past.

It wasn’t exactly pessimism. It was how the life went. You seized the good times while you had them because the bad times were always on your tail.

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