Rebound: Chapter 45

“Bro, no. Come on, for fuck’s sake, man, you can’t be serious. You’ve only just escaped from her,” Mason says. And predictably so. I expected this reaction from him when I told them all about me and Amber.

“I am serious,” I reply, my voice strained but calm.

Drake congratulates me, and I thank him, but now my eyes are fixed on Nathan as I await his objections. “I spoke to Amber this morning. As you know, she saved my kid’s life, and for that I will be eternally grateful. But Elijah, this is fucked up. She made your life a living hell for years. You’re better off without her.”

From the corner of my eye, I see my dad gripping the arms of his chair tightly. “Dad? Dad, are you okay?” I’m at his side in a second. He’s pale and appears to be in pain. The fight I was about to embark on with my brothers is temporarily forgotten.

“Of course I am,” he snaps, his nostrils flaring. “I’m just … Goddamn it, where are those snacks Maddox promised us? I haven’t eaten since lunch.”

My brothers move closer, all of us expressing our concern. He slaps us away and stands up tall, puffing out his chest as though to remind us boys that he is still the boss around here. “I. Am. Fine. I do not need you all to behave like my nanny. I appreciate your concern, but I’m not about to keel over. If you must know, I’m on a new medication, and if I don’t eat regularly, I get a little faint. That’s all this is.”

Nathan reaches into his jacket pocket and passes over a packet containing a biscuit in the shape of a bunny, and we all stare at him. He shrugs. “They’re Luke’s, but I kinda like ’em.”

Dad quickly chews it down, and almost instantly, his color is back, and he sits back down. “Fucking delicious,” he says, making us all laugh.

Dad’s right; we are acting like his nanny. Crisis averted, once I am one hundred percent sure that he’s actually okay, I get back to the business at hand. I love my siblings dearly, but I have had enough of their bullshit. My father, at least, was respectful enough to simply ask if I was sure rather than lecturing me.

“Mason, Nathan,” I say, glaring at them both. “You are both full of shit. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, and you don’t really know her.”

Nathan opens his mouth to object, and I hold up a hand to silence him. Every now and then, big brother power pays off, and he stays quiet for once.

“No. I will not stand here and listen to another goddamn word about the woman I love. If you have any respect for me, you will shut the fuck up, and you will listen. I am in love with Amber, and I always have been. I’m devoted to my wife, and I should have shown her a hell of a lot more respect than I have the past several years. I stopped making her my priority, and even worse, I let her believe that she wasn’t enough for me.

“I am going to spend the rest of my fucking life with her. If you can’t live with that, if you can’t find a way to deal with my choices, then you’ll have to steer clear of me. Because I will live without all of you if I have to, but I sure as fuck won’t spend one more day without her. From this day forward, we come as a package deal. Do you fucking understand?”

I glare at both of them like they’re naughty schoolboys in the principal’s office. Mason is desperate to make some kind of snappy retort, and Nathan would quite like to take a swing at me. “Well?” I snap.

“Okay, bro, we understand,” Mason finally says, shaking his head. Nathan nods once, which is as close to approval as I’m going to get. Drake simply gets up and slaps me on the back. “Congrats, bro,” he says, beaming at me with as much force as Nathan’s glower.

Dad gets up and shakes my hand. “Seems to me like you’re sure, son,” he says, grinning. “Now, who wants a club soda to celebrate?” He’s cutting back on the Scotch, and we all laugh at the sheer horror in his voice as he utters the words “club soda.”

At that moment, Maddox walks back into the room. And he has no damn snacks. I didn’t mean to break the news without him here, but Nathan started talking about Luke and what happened in Queens, and one thing kind of led to another. “Hey, asswipe,” says Mason, shoving Maddox playfully. “Where the hell have you been? You missed the big announcement.”

Maddox looks around the room, frowning. Eventually, he blows out a big breath. “I think I can guess what it was,” he says, jerking his chin at me. “Amber was just here.”

“What?” I reply, confused. We were supposed to be meeting up tomorrow, and I was looking forward to telling her about all of this. I’m booked on a flight to Seoul the day after and wanted to make our reunion official before I left. “Amber was here? Where is she now?”

“She left. She was wearing … Uh, well, that doesn’t matter. She came in briefly and heard you guys arguing.”

“What did she hear?” I ask. “The whole conversation?”

“How the fuck do I know? I have no idea what the whole conversation was. She heard raised voices, and then she left. I walked her to a cab, and she asked me not to tell you she was here.”

Double fuck and shit! Classic Amber move—hide the pain and pretend it doesn’t hurt. I’m grateful Maddox was somehow immune to her epic powers of persuasion and told me.

I replay the scene from earlier in my mind, a sinking feeling in my stomach. What the hell did she hear? If she was only here briefly, that means she likely heard the absolute worst of it and didn’t hear me say a word in her defense. For fuck’s sake.

I don’t bother explaining. I just leave, intending to get to Brooklyn as fast as I can. I try calling her from the car and leave a voicemail telling her I’m on my way. I’m halfway across the bridge when her message lands.

The cabbie barely reacts when I tell him I need to go back. The Moonlight Diner is off Broadway and is somewhere we used to go when we were younger. It’s a fun place that pulls in an eclectic mix of customers, everyone from firefighters to thespians. I haven’t walked through its doors in years, but it hasn’t changed at all. I find her in a corner booth, nursing a mug of coffee and dressed in a dark-colored trench coat. She doesn’t look like she’s been crying, but that’s not guarantee she’s not upset—or pissed.

“Damn Maddox,” she murmurs lightly as I slide into the seat opposite her. “I thought I had him.”

“Looks like your Jedi mind tricks don’t work on my baby brother. Amber, what you heard⁠—”

“No. Let me stop you there. It doesn’t matter what they said.”

I guess it only matters what she didn’t hear me say. Before I can respond, the waitress brings over a mug and a coffee pot and pours without a word. I take a sip, scalding my lips and wait to speak until we’re alone again. “I told them. They didn’t react well—but we expected that, didn’t we?”

She remains silent, sipping her coffee. My heart is cracking wide open here. If she heard what they said, if she heard me asking if my dad was okay instead of laying into them … Fuck, I know what that must have sounded like and how much it must have hurt her.

I rush to explain about Dad looking pale and his new meds, and the look of concern on her face has me trailing off.

“Is he all right?” she asks.

“Yeah, it was nothing, but that’s why you didn’t hear me jump in and tell them to go fuck themselves.”

“And you did?” she asks, tilting her head. “Tell them to go fuck themselves?”

“Basically, yeah. I told them that from now on, we’re a package deal. That you don’t get one of us without the other, and if they have a problem with that, then they don’t get to be a part of my life, because you are the most important person in the entire world to me. You are the only person in this entire goddamn universe who I’m unwilling to live without, and I am so fucking sorry it took us getting divorced to make me realize that.”

She turns the new information around as she drinks, and damn, she has the world’s best poker face. “Do you believe me?” I ask.

She stares at me over the coffee steam, and I genuinely have no idea which way she’s going to jump. “Baby,” I say, my voice low. “I love you, and I will turn my world upside down to make this thing between us work. But I need to hear your words.”

Her tongue darts out, and she licks her lips. Then she places a twenty-dollar bill on the table, more than enough to cover our coffees, and steps out of the booth, pulling the belt of her coat tighter around her waist.

This is it. I’ve fucked up one too many times, and it doesn’t matter that I stuck up for her—for us—tonight, because all of those times that I didn’t can’t be undone. I was a shitty husband, and this is the price I am paying for it.

“Where are you going?”

Her eyes are full of emotion as she pins me with her gaze. “Home.”

My heart shatters into a million pieces.

Then she holds out her hand to me, and for a few seconds, I simply stare at it. Is she inviting me to join her, or this a final goodbye handshake? Her gentle laugh snaps me out of my stupor. “Aren’t you coming?”

Am I coming? Home? With her? Hell the fuck yes I am. I slide out of the booth and take her hand in mine, and we walk out of the diner together.

Standing at the corner, waiting for a cab, I wrap my arms around her waist.

“I didn’t hang around to hear you telling your brothers about us, honey,” she says, resting her hands on my shoulders. “I didn’t want to hear their objections, and I trusted you to stand up for us.”

Relief washes over me. “You couldn’t have told me that ten minutes ago, before I convinced myself you left because you heard all the bad stuff and none of the good?”

She looks up at me, grinning mischievously. “Did Maddox also tell you what I was wearing when he opened the door?” Her voice has been dipped in sin.

I flick the end of the belt on her trench coat. “No, but given this sexy little number, please tell me it’s nothing but underwear, mi amor.”

“I guess you’ll find out soon enough.” She gives me a wink.

I hail a passing cab and practically shove her into it, making her laugh again.

I am desperate to get my wife alone—not only to find out what’s going on beneath that coat, but so I can tell her and show her all the ways I cannot live without her.