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Rock. Hard place.
“I want to sing. I can’t. We’re both stuck in a rut we can’t get out of.”
* * *
Matthew listened to the sound of Evangeline’s heart against his and threaded fingers through her hair.
“Rut. Valley. Same difference.”
There was nothing quantifiable about the grieving process. It had stages, or so he’d read. But they weren’t easily identifiable so he had no idea if he’d gone through them all, remained immobilized in one, or had stumbled his way back to the beginning to run through them a second time.
He’d been stuck in the valley for far too long. And he was sick of it.
Her lips grazed his throat and stayed there. They’d both lost so much. Did she find it as comforting as he did to be in the arms of someone who understood? She not only understood, she’d given him permission to be mad.
That was powerful.
Because he was mad. And felt guilty about being mad. Evangeline somehow made it okay to let all that out, let it flow, and the anger cleansed as it burned through his blood.
“I was part of something,” he said. “In Dallas. Some sons rebel against the family business, but I couldn’t wait to be on the team. My parents were proud of me, and I thrived on that. Thrived on being married and looked forward to starting a family. Then it was gone and I couldn’t function. I don’t know how to get that back.”
The sheer pressure of life without Amber had nearly suffocated him. But it was more than missing her. They’d been like cogs in a complex machine, complementing each other. He didn’t know how to be successful without her.
“I admire you,” she said quietly.
He snorted. “For what, disappointing everyone?”
That was at least half his onus—how did he face everyone again, knowing he’d abandoned them? Knowing they were eyeing him with apprehension, waiting for him to freak out again?
“For recognizing that you needed time away to get your head on straight. It was brave.”
“Cowardly, you mean,” he corrected. “People deal with pressure gracefully all the time. I cracked. It wasn’t pretty.”
“But you changed things. You left your comfort zone and struck out to fix it, without any idea how or where that would occur. That’s sheer courage in my book.”
He started to tell her she should reread that book but closed his mouth. She saw him differently. But that didn’t mean she needed glasses. Perhaps he did.
“Thanks. That’s nice to hear.”
“You had a choice and made it.” The unspoken I didn’t wrenched his heart.
“Have you ever noticed the stuff people say when you’re grieving makes no sense?” That was another gripe he’d been carrying around since the funeral.
“What like, ‘Sorry for your loss’?”
“Yeah. My favorite is, ‘But think of all you do have.’” He struggled to voice the anxiety whipping through him. Struggled to phrase it in a way that didn’t sound self-centered. And gave up. This was Evangeline. He didn’t have to pull punches. “It’s meaningless. Thanks for pointing out I still have a mom and a dad. That makes it all better. And oh, yeah, I have my health. The fact that I’m still breathing is supposed to get me through the valley?”
“I got an, ‘At least you still have all the money’. Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful I can afford to eat. A lot of people can’t after losing their job. But money doesn’t make up for losing who you were.”
“Exactly.” It was like she peered down his throat and read the words in his heart, expressing for him what he couldn’t formulate. “Singing was your purpose. So what do you do now that it’s gone, right?”
She laughed without humor. “Isn’t that the million-dollar question?”
He’d meant it rhetorically, but something in her tone tugged at him. “Is it?”
She didn’t answer, and he lightly bumped her head with his chest. “Middle-of-the-night. Nothing is sacred.”
Don’t call armadillo. His senses tingled. This was critically important, he could tell.
Her soft sigh drifted across his skin. “I don’t know what to do now. That’s my demon.”
“The one I’m here to beat back for you?” The phantoms in her eyes weren’t just from losing her voice. How could he have missed that? Because he’d been wallowing around in his own problems instead of tending to hers.
“Singing is all I’m good at. My only talent.”
“Not hardly.”
“Being good in bed isn’t a talent.” The eye-roll came through loud and clear.
He bit back a chuckle and the accompanying comment—it is the way you do it.
“You’re good at making me cheerful. That’s something no one else could accomplish, so don’t knock it. But I was going to say the music industry can’t be easy to crack or everyone would do it. Persistence is a talent. You worked hard to achieve success.”
“Yeah. Hard work.” Her voice fractured. “There was a lot of that.”
There was more, something else she wasn’t saying, and she was hurting. The inability to fix it crawled around in his chest. But this middle-of-the-night was exactly what he’d asked for—the exploration of what two damaged souls could become to each other.
Dang it if he’d fail at being what she needed.
“Hey.” He brought her hand to his cheek and held it there, reminding them both he wasn’t going anywhere. “This demon of yours, what does he look like? Big and scary? Small and quick with a sharp stick? I’ll do a much better job of keeping him away if I have an idea what I’m looking for.”
She laughed, low and easy, drawing a smile from him. “Big. With claws. And he doesn’t shut up. Ever.”
“What does he sound like? James Earl Jones or more Al Pacino?”
“Dan Rather.”
Ah. “So your demon moonlights as a reporter who asks you questions you don’t like.” And he’d bet the demon answered to the name armadillo.
“Yeah.”
The single syllable quaked through her damaged vocal cords and snapped something behind his rib cage.
“Like what?” he whispered, his voice nearly as raw as hers.
“It’s not the questions.” She shifted and wet pooled into the hollow of his shoulder right about where her eye had been. Tears. “It’s the lack of answers. Bad stuff happens. They were just vocal cords. Why don’t I know what to do next?”
“Because,” he countered fiercely. “You’re not out of the valley yet. Once you clear it, then you’ll see where to go.”
He had to believe that was true, had to believe it was possible. He wanted out of that valley—for himself, but also to show her the way.
“Music was a part of my soul.” More tears dripped onto his chest, but he didn’t wipe them away. Didn’t move at all for fear of stemming the tide of her grief. “And I thought it always would be or I wouldn’t have inked eighth notes on my body permanently. How do you find a new direction when something so ingrained is gone?”
Silently,