Tempting(63)

And every single part of that scared the ever-loving shit out of me.

Because I hadn’t been looking for it. And I certainly didn’t think I deserved it. But nevertheless, she was there. I didn’t want that to change. We could just stay like this, keep our heads down while she was finishing her classes. I was thinking about the future again.

The realization that Adele had embedded herself so deeply underneath my skin is what drove me to sit on my couch, staring at the wedding picture of me and Diana.

Diana had fought her mother for that veil, the one with tiny pearls along the edge, that had sat anchored underneath all her dark hair. I remember sitting with her, railing and cursing at how her mother was a fascist tyrant who couldn’t fathom doing something new if it jammed her in the asshole. Our relationship had been so smooth and so real, we knew everything about the other person, knew when to soothe and when to push the buttons that would immediately turn a disagreement into a fight. Losing her had been like chopping off both of my arms in one fell swoop. And it had taken this long for them to grow back.

I sat there, staring at our young, smiling faces, not knowing what to feel. I wasn’t an idiot, I knew Diana wouldn’t expect me to stay single and celibate for the rest of my life. But she hadn’t had cancer, something where we’d had time to talk about what might happen in my future. One second she was there, the next, I’d blinked, and she was gone. We’d never had the opportunity to have those conversations. About kids and love and regrets.

I knew my regrets. That wasn’t the issue. They were never far from my thoughts, especially when I was sitting in this home by myself.

While I sat there, turning those things over in my head, there was a knock on the door. Like the universe, or God, or quite possibly Lucifer himself knew that it was the very last thing I needed. Adele was working, so I knew it wasn’t her. When I looked through the peephole, I almost lost my breath. The eyes that looked back at me were the exact same shade of deep brown, so dark that you couldn’t read much of anything, unless you really knew them.

“Open the fucking door, Nathan. I can see you looking at me.”

So I did. I opened the door and stared at my former brother in law for the first time in four years. Since the day we lowered my wife, his sister, into the ground.

He was bigger than he used to be, and a beard fell inches past his chin, the same dark brown that his whole family had.

“Elias,” I said in greeting, opening the door to let him in. He shouldered past me, pushing just hard enough that I had to step back, or get shoved. I set my jaw and faced him once the door was shut. “Where’s your car? Did you lose it again?”

He’d plopped onto my couch, stretching his long, tree trunk legs out onto the mahogany coffee table. “I haven’t had a car in years, dickface. Cabs and trains and buses and planes take me everywhere I need to go.”

“What are you doing here?”

He scratched his jaw, hidden somewhere under all that fucking hair, and peered up at me. “I missed you.”

I almost laughed. But the coldness in his eyes kept my mouth shut. I didn’t sit. I didn’t want to grant him the smallest comfort in my home.

“I bet. Seriously, what do you want, Elias? It’s been too long for a simple social call.”

He leaned forward, and the motion made his shoulders pop with muscles that gave me pause. There was a good chance that he’d take any opportunity to pound the hell out of me. And from the looks of it, he probably could.

“It’s been over four years.”

I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. “I know. Do you honestly think I don’t remember?”

Elias shrugged, his coal colored eyes never leaving mine. “I’m sure you do, Nathaniel. And you should. It’s your fucking fault she’s dead.”

I sank into the chair behind me, dropping my head into my hands. “I know.”

“Good.”

When I finally looked up at him, the silence in the room too heavy for me to shoulder any longer, he looked less angry and more sad. “And you needed to remind me?”

“Yes. I’ll remind you for as long as it takes me not miss my sister so much that I feel like someone’s ripping my goddamned heart out of my chest.”

When I stood, he did too. “Why are you here?”

“I’m here because I’ve stayed away for too fucking long. She was my sister, Easton. I didn’t have a single memory that didn't include her, until you came along.”

“So why now?”

He shook his head, looking around the room, which was the exact same way as it had been the last time he’d been here, a month before Diana had died.