Chapter Twelve

THAT’S WHEN DARKNESS MOVED into the shadow of our life.

I grew distant. From James, from life.

For the longest time, I felt as if I was no longer a woman, no longer deserving to be a wife. It was my fault Dad had crashed. Should have called an ambulance. Daddy was too distraught to drive that day, any fool could see that. Only I didn’t, and now I have no father or daughter.

James did everything he could think of to try and help me find my way back to him. To us. He even signed a lease on a new condo so I wouldn’t have to look at the walls that would have rocked Sasha to sleep each night in our old place, walls I now loathed to set eyes on.

The pain in my gut and the holes that Daddy and Sasha had left behind in my heart wouldn’t allow me to see what I still had. A husband who adored me, loved me. The only time I felt like myself was at work. At work, I didn’t have to think about Sasha or Daddy or, ashamedly, James.

So, I took every project my boss gave me, even asking for more. Projects that, in the past, I would never have taken. I’d stay at the office until I was sure James was asleep.

For the longest time, he was not permitted to touch me. I cried every night, forgetting that I had a husband who wanted a clean pair of undies to put on.

Or a wife to hold him and say she loved him more than anything, and that she was sorry for making him feel like he wasn’t enough.

I was so far gone that I’d even talked to an attorney about filing for a divorce, but the moment James found out about it, he gave me the talking to that my soul needed, loving me through the pain. “You are allowed to grieve, Raine! You are allowed to scream at the whole godforsaken world about what has happened to Sasha and your dad. But you are not, I emphasize not, allowed to walk away from what we have. Because we have not done anything wrong, and you deserve to be loved by me. And God knows, I deserve to be allowed to love you.”

That talk helped me find peace, helped me learn to be okay with it just being him and I.

By our fifth year, a rainbow was finally starting to appear after the storm.

But like real rainbows, ours came and went in a flash. All fizzled out.

James lost his job, and for four months, he resented that I had gotten a promotion and was the one paying the bills and keeping things afloat.

The tension that crept into our marriage during that time was heinous, unbearable. It didn’t go away until James landed a job at Baker, Henson, & Brown, a new law firm quickly making a name for itself. It was nice seeing my husband begin to feel like a man again.

Years six through nine then slid by like butter, our “smooth and sexy years” being what James called them. By then, we had fallen into a rhythm that kept me smiling like a teenager whenever I thought about him.