I want my lips on her throat, my hands all over her body. My mouth between her legs again.
I just want her.
But we haven’t spoken about that night in the hotel. Other than comforting her at the funeral earlier, we haven’t touched. There’s no longing in her tired eyes when she looks at me. I don’t see the heat she couldn’t control that night, and it’s killing me because I want her with every fiber of my being.
“Do you have one of these at your house?” Alex asks, his eyes staying locked on the game as he tries to keep the little ball from falling out of play.
“No, but I could get one,” I answer simply.
Tinley clears her throat, and when I look at her, she’s glaring in my direction.
“You’ll have to get up a little earlier for school,” Tinley says instead of confronting me about building Alex’s hope about moving to St. Louis.
“It’s no problem, Mom. I’ll just go to bed earlier.”
Tinley and I both look at him.
“Who are you and what did you do with my son?” Alex just smiles as he continues to play. I think the grin makes Tinley calm down some, a little hint that the future isn’t as bleak as she’s let herself believe.
Chapter 24
Tinley
Sometimes there is a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
The rainbow I’ve tried to celebrate since my mother’s death is that Ignacio was right. Cooper didn’t trash the house while we were at the rental property last week. The pot of gold is that he was gone when we returned to the house, leaving a note that demanded to let him know when the house sold.
Of course, the bracelet my dad gave me when I turned thirteen and my father’s wedding band Mom kept after he died are gone as well, but getting upset because my brother is awful will only give me a headache, and the tears I’ve cried since I came into her room are already doing a good enough job at making my temples throb.
I touch each item of hers, not wanting to get rid of anything because each item holds sentimental value to me.
The long, red socks she’d pull up to her knees over her lounge pants were her favorite despite the tiny hole in the toe of one.
The faded sweatshirt she wore in an effort not to have to turn on the heat has a coffee stain on one shoulder, but I just can’t seem to part with it either.
Three things take up space in the trash bag I carried in here after Alex left for school. Two being jeans I don’t think she’s worn in years, and one being the gray blanket she used to cover her legs during chemo. None of those carry good memories and were easily discarded.
Everything else?
I can pull images of her wearing, using, or planning to use it all.
How can I dispose of or donate any of it?
Not the shoes she wore to weed the flower beds in front of the house.
Not the book on her night table, a torn piece of the Sunday paper marking her spot on page one forty-two.
Not even the half empty bottle of water. It was one of the last things to touch her lips.
It’s been two weeks since the funeral and I’m no closer to being okay than I was the day I whispered my goodbyes, praying that she could hear me and that she knew how much she was loved before she went.
Hanging my head, I press curled fists into my eyes. They burn from tears and lack of sleep and the misery of watching Ignacio walk out of the house every night.
It made sense to come back to the house after realizing Cooper was gone, and I hate to admit I had gotten used to him being around during Mom’s final days, through the funeral, and the week we spent at that house.
Then we come back home and nothing.
At the rental we didn’t touch, kiss, or flirt, but his presence was calming. The second we get back here, he’s out the door faster than I can blink.
I’ve done my best not to imagine where he is when he’s not with us, but it’s nearly impossible not to imagine him with someone else, his mouth on another woman’s skin, his tongue in her—
“No,” I hiss into the room. “Fuck, no.”
“Tin?”
I spin my head around so fast, I grow dizzy, my eyes taking a long moment to refocus on Ignacio standing in the doorway to my mother’s room.
“You okay?”
God, how many times is he going to ask that question? The words have been on his lips on repeat for weeks.
Maybe if you stop lying to him, he’ll stop asking.
“I’m fine,” I snap, hating that he’s a witness to my internal struggle.