Unconditional

“She said she was leaving. Taking Kaylee too. There was a guy,” I say, hoarse. “She’d been with him, off and on, since high school. She wanted to be with him now, she’d always loved him.” I clench my jaw. “She’d never stopped seeing him. Even after we were married. After Kaylee. All that time, while I was away…She was f**king around on me.”

The betrayal cuts me now, slices deep into my heart. Weeks, months, years of lies. Cheating, hiding, sneaking off at night to see this other guy. “She’d had a whole other life.” I feel the fury all over again, my stupid dumb rage. “I had no clue about any of it and I was the damn fool who thought I had it all.”

“God, Garrett…” Carina’s face creases with sympathy. “That’s terrible.”

I shake my head, hating myself. “That’s not even…I could have dealt with that. I mean, it was a betrayal, but still, I could have found a way. But then…then she said…” I close my eyes. “Kaylee was his daughter.”

I hear the intake of Carina’s gasp.

“My girl, my baby girl, she wasn’t even mine.” I open my eyes again, fixing Carina with a hollow stare. “I loved her, I watched her grow, and the whole time, she didn’t belong to me. I wasn’t her real dad.”

“You were,” Carina answers fiercely. “If you were there, if you loved her, that’s all that matters.”

“No,” I answer, broken. “Not as far as the law is concerned. Charlotte left that day, and Kaylee was already gone. I tried to see her, I tried everything, but they didn’t care. He was her biological father, I didn’t have a claim. Charlotte said, it was only hurting her,” I add, biting back the sting of tears. “She said Kaylee was upset whenever I came around. She said, I’d been away so much, this other guy was more of a father than me anyway.”

“That’s crazy!” Carina leaps up, enraged. “How can she say that? You weren’t some deadbeat dad. You were fighting for your country!”

I’m touched by her fury, but it makes no difference. “You think I haven’t argued all this a hundred times over?” I demand. “Different case workers, different judges. It’s no use. Kaylee’s happy with them, they’re a family now. And I…”

The walls are closing in on me. I back away, shaking my head. “I can’t do this. I need some air,” I tell her roughly, striding past her and out to the back porch.

The sun has set, the bay curving in a dull gleam of silver and gray. I pace up and down the wooden boards, wishing I’d never got started telling her my broken, messy past. I should have known it would all be too much. Too much loss, too much pain. Too many questions that drive me crazy on those dark, lonely nights, poring over the agony of the past, wishing with all my heart for some other, happy ending.

Because after my anger at Charlotte dies away, after the grief over losing Kaylee, I’m left with the most ruinous truth of all.

I failed them.

I grip the porch railing, taking a shaking breath as I face the darkest of all my black regrets. If I’d been a better husband, if I’d been a better father, then Charlotte would never have left. She’d have stayed right there with me, and I’d be none the wiser about any of the betrayal. I would be happy that way, with the family I loved, instead of alone with nothing but a whiskey bottle and a one-night stand to ease the wretched ache.

I wasn’t good enough. I drove her away.

How’s that for irony? The family I wasn’t even sure I wanted, and losing them has sent me to hell and back.

I’m lost in the pain of the past when I feel a gentle touch on my shoulder.

I flinch.

“Oh Garrett,” Carina murmurs, soft. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I can’t imagine everything you’ve lost.”

I slowly turn and meet her gaze. The unwavering sweetness in her steady blue stare finds a way past all my defenses, down to the broken, tragic truth.

“It’s like it wasn’t real at all,” I admit hoarsely. “We spent years together, and now I have nothing left of them. It’s like I’m the one who died,” I add, clenching my fists at my side. “They moved on, they forgot about me. Kaylee was too young. Soon, she won’t remember me at all. They’re off, happy out there, and I’m stuck here, left behind.”

I have to stop then. There’s nothing else I can say, no way to communicate the depths of my torment. I wait for a half-hearted response, for some gentle offering of clichéd comfort, but when I look in Carina’s eyes, I see I don’t need words. She understands; I can see it in the tender ache in her expression.

She knows loss.

“That’s why you never stay with a girl more than a few nights,” Carina murmurs softly, realization slipping across her face. “It’s so you don’t get attached again. So you never get your heart broken the same way.”

I give a sharp nod. “I know what it feels like, losing everything, and I can’t go through that again. I just can’t. So, I don’t get involved. It’s easier this way.”

“But aren’t you lonely?” she asks in a quiet voice. Her eyes meet mine, searching deep inside. “Don’t you want to feel something again, no matter what the risk?”

I feel an ache twisting in my chest. “Nope,” I lie, trying to ignore the truth—to gloss over the wretched nights and empty days, all the times I’ve longed to feel that connection again with someone, to love anything the way I loved my family. “And if I do…”