Page 43 of Little Bird
“That’s not your room, Taryn. What the fuck were you doing in there? In that?” My voice is harsh and judgmental, leaving no room for any innocent explanation. I’m being unfair but can’t seem to stop myself.
It’s so much easier to be angry than hurt.
“What?” she asks, her voice a breathy counterpoint to my anger. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
“And yet you were in my son’s room in your pajamas,” I note coldly. “And I’m guessing you weren’t sleeping. What were you doing, trying to get back into his good graces? Using all your charms?” I sneer the last word.
The moment her eyes grow wet with tears, I hate myself for it.
“How dare you?” she whispers. “What the fuck is wrong with you, that you would even ask something like that?”
“Because I’ve seen two making eyes at each other since you got back!” I shout. “I’ve seen you brushing up against each other for no reason. Touching when you don’t have to. Staring at each other. Hell, I caught you practically making out last night.”
Now she draws herself up to her full height, looking absolutely furious. A tear is sliding down her cheek, telling me exactly how upset she is, but she’s letting her anger get the better of her, too. And boy does she have a temper.
“And what’s it to you if we were?” she shouts back. “It’s not like you want anything from me. You’ve barely had time to fucking talk to me since I got back, and when you do, you act like I’m the worst thing that ever happened to you!”
I get in her face, unable to stop myself. “Maybe you are! Maybe I used to love you but stopped the moment you and your bitch mother ran out on us. Have you ever thought of that? Ever thought that maybe I don’t want you back here at all?”
She draws back, betrayal clear as day on her face. That was a blow too far, and no, she’d never thought that maybe I didn’t want her back, because why would she have? When she left, I was so attached to her that I’d been planning the rest of my life as her dad, and she knew it.
I’d told her as much.
And now I’m here taking it back in the cruelest way possible, because I’m jealous of something I shouldn’t even want. I know nothing was going on in there. She and Gabe were best friends when they were kids and were probably in there talking. Catching up. Christ, maybe she can help him get that temper of his under control so we can go back to actually having a relationship. Maybe she can save him, because I don’t know how the fuck to do it.
But no matter how innocent it might be, the base of it all is the same. She was with him rather than me.
And that’s the fucking problem, right there. This never happened before she was here. I’ve made a career of being cold and disconnected from everything. Maintaining the boundaries I very carefully built after she and Helen left.
But now that she’s here, she’s tearing through them like they don’t exist. Taking my walls down to rubble and making it impossible to keep my emotions in the box I built for them. And as long as I have emotions, I may as well use them on the person who’s causing them. It’s a harsh, terrible thought.
That doesn’t change my mind.
I open my mouth to shout at her again, though I can see from the look in her eyes that she’s already stopped listening to me and started protecting herself. I don’t care. I need to say what I need to say. Before I can, though, Gabe comes flying out of his room, hands up and ready to fight. He slaps his palms on my chest and shoves me backward into the wall, then gets in my face.
“What the fuck?” he snaps. “I have to wake up to the sound of you screaming in the hallway, lying to her like it’s your fucking job?”
That’s not all he says, but I’m too busy coming up with an answer to listen. This kid has no idea what he’s talking about. He doesn’t know what it’s like to lose one wife and then another, in quick succession, and right when you’re trying to start trusting someone again. He has no idea how hard I work to keep a roof over his head, and how challenging that is when he no longer even talks to me.
He can’t know how fucking lonely I am, and how I spend most nights lying awake and staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out where it all went wrong.
I scream back at him, barely taking a breath, and he shouts at me until our words are so mixed up with each other that I can’t tell who’s saying what or if we’re even making sense anymore. We’re both venting out all our frustrations and fears, and I don’t know if we’re fighting each other or ourselves.
Or if maybe it’s the same thing.
By the time we stop to draw breath, our chests heaving and our cheeks burning with anger, I think we may have destroyed what little relationship we had left.
I turn my eyes to the ceiling, trying to rein my emotions in, and then look to the doorway where Taryn is standing.
Except she’s not there anymore.
Gabe turns when he sees my face, and startles at the emptiness where she was. Moments later, we hear the front door slam.
A few seconds after that, we hear the engine of the truck start.
“Oh my God,” Gabe breathes.
We both look to the window, where the world has become one mass of swirling snow, and realize in the same instance that a full-blown storm is coming on. That’s not normal snow out there. That’s dangerous snow.
