“What’s bothering you?” Savannah asked him.
Bruce ran his finger over the diamond encrusted platinum wedding band that he had just recently slipped back onto her finger. Savannah didn’t remember the day she had taken that ring off and put it on the kitchen counter before she left their home for good. That memory was burned into his brain. He only wished he could erase it. After she’d left, he’d held that ring in his hand for hours, plotting its demise. He thought to throw it away, crush it in the garbage disposal, flush it, melt it down or pawn it. But in the end, he’d thrown it into a dresser drawer, mostly forgotten, until the early-morning hour when Savannah asked about it.
“You’ve lost a lot of time, Savannah.” Bruce started in the only way he knew how.
Fear, fleeting but undeniable, swept over her face. She was scared—scared about the memories she’d lost—and scared that they weren’t going to come back.
“Once I get back to my own home, surrounded by all of the things that I love, I really think that it’ll all come back.” Savannah had an expectant look on her face. “Don’t you?”
He wanted to reassure her, but he wasn’t as optimistic. She’d lost so much in the accident—it was hard for him to believe that Savannah would ever be exactly as she once was.
“I’d like to think.” Bruce tried to take the long way around.
“I just need to go home,” she restated. “That’s all. I just need to go home.”
Still holding on to her hand, Bruce cleared his throat. “Well—that’s what I’d like to talk to you about.”
With her head resting on the pillow, her dark brown hair fanned out around her face, her eyes intent on him, Savannah waited for him to continue.
“There’s a lot that’s gone on between us, Savannah. A lot that you don’t remember.”
Savannah’s fingers tightened around his fingers, that look of fear and discomfort back in her eyes. “You’re scaring me.”
He didn’t want to scare her—and he told her as much.
“Just tell me what’s on your mind, Bruce.”
Her entreaty was faint and laced with uneasiness. Savannah had always been a “pull the Band-Aid off quick” kind of person. She didn’t like to draw things out.
Bruce had spent the last two years fighting like cats and dogs with this woman, and now all he wanted to do was protect her from the pain they had willingly caused each other. He dropped his head for a moment and shook it. The only way out was forward.
“For the last couple of years, we’ve been going through a divorce,” Bruce finally mustered the guts to tell her. The sound of her sharp intake of breath brought his eyes back to hers. The look in her eyes could only be described as stunned.
Savannah looked down at their hands, at their wedding rings. She swallowed several times, her eyes filling with unshed tears, before she asked, “You weren’t wearing your ring. When I first saw you. You weren’t wearing it. Are we even...married?”
He held on to her hand even though it seemed as if she were already trying to pull it away. How many times had he wished for a second chance with Savannah? He hadn’t wanted it this way—never this way—but he would be a fool to let her slip away from him a second time without putting up one heck of a fight.
“We’re still married,” he reassured her. It wasn’t important, right at this moment, for Savannah to know just how close they had come to ending their marriage.
“I don’t remember...” Savannah stopped midsentence, tears slipping unchecked onto her cheeks.
“It’s going to be okay, Savannah.” He felt impotent to console her. There weren’t words that could make this right for her.
Savannah stared at him hard, with a look of distrust in her eyes. “How can you say that? We’ve split up, but it’s going to be fine? Why would you want a divorce? What happened to us?”
When he didn’t answer right away, she tugged her fingers loose from his hold.
“Tell me why.”
How could he explain the last several years of their marriage in a sentence or two? There were things that they had all agreed that Savannah didn’t need to know right now.
“I didn’t file for divorce, Savannah. You did.”
Bewildered, she stared into his eyes, seeming to be searching for answers. “I did? Why? Why would I do that?”
“We had a lot of problems we just couldn’t seem to work out,” he told her honestly.
Savannah covered her face with her hands. In a muffled voice, she said, “I just want to go home.”
Bruce moved to her side; sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled her hands down from her face and tugged her gently into his arms so he could comfort her in the only way he knew how. He ran his hand over the back of her hair, the way she always liked him to do, and was relieved that, instead of drawing away from him, Savannah leaned against him and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Come home to me, Savannah.” Bruce hugged his wife, his eyes closed.
Savannah broke the embrace and studied his face, looking directly into his eyes again when she asked him, “Do you still love me?”
The cowboy answered firmly and without any hesitation, “Yes, Beautiful. Yes, I do.”
“So, this is over.” Kerri had been sitting across from him at her small kitchen table, not saying a word, arms crossed in front of her body.
Bruce sat stiffly in the chair opposite Kerri. He’d never felt truly comfortable at Kerri’s table—the chairs were too small, the table too low. Today, he felt uncomfortable for a whole new set of reasons.
“I’m sorry.” He apologized for the second time. His apology may have sounded hollow to Kerri’s ears, but it was sincere. If he’d known that he had even a fraction of a shot of winning Savannah back, he’d never have rekindled his old high school romance with Kerri. He wasn’t in the business of breaking hearts for the fun of it.
“You’re sorry.” Kerri made a little sarcastic laugh as she looked out the kitchen window. “Well, that makes it all better then, doesn’t it?”
Bruce stared at the woman he’d cared about for most of his life. Her forgiveness could be a long time coming.
Bruce stood up and grabbed his hat off the table. “I’d better go.”
Kerri didn’t look at him. She gave a small, annoyed shake of her head, but she refused to look at him even as he opened the door to leave.
“If you ever need me, I’m just a phone call away.” Bruce paused in the entranceway, the door half-open.
Kerri hadn’t said a word, hadn’t looked his way once, and there were tears flowing freely onto her cheek.
“Take care of yourself,” Bruce said before he ducked out of the door, choked up at the sight of Kerri’s tears. He cared an awful lot about Kerri. He always had. But Savannah was his heart.
* * *
“Home!” Savannah exclaimed as she walked through the back door of the modest log cabin they had designed and built together. “I’m finally home!”
Bruce had never thought to hear those words come out of his wife’s mouth again. He followed her into the mudroom, carrying in each hand two heavy suitcases packed by her family. They were greeted by three dogs, mutts all, tails wagging, barking excitedly.