The Love Losers (Unlucky in Love #3)

Chapter 38

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

ANTHONY

My mother and sister aren’t home when I get back.

So I get changed upstairs, since I can’t envision chopping down a tree in a suit, and head out to the shed for the axe. My hand is a problem. It hasn’t been throbbing much, but I still have stitches and probably shouldn’t be doing strenuous work with it. I’ve already pushed my luck. My father was a big believer in pain being a motivator, though, so it only seems right for him to soak up some more of my blood today. One last time.

I get to the tree and laugh at myself, because I’ve never cut down a tree before, not even a Christmas tree, and even though the tree has sickened, it has a thick knobby trunk and is tall. It’ll probably take all day to chop it down, if the axe will even do the job.

It doesn’t matter.

I grip it with both hands, the axe handle waking up the wound in my hand, and take a swipe. The vibration travels through my body. I feel it in my teeth.

“Did you like that?” I ask, feeling stupid for talking to a ghost. Needing down to my bones to do it anyway.

I detach the axe, using more of my biceps than I’d thought I would need to, and swipe again. Again. Each time I do, the pain vibrates through me, making me remember.

He used to flay my back open with switches carved from this tree’s branches. Just like his father did to him to make him strong.

Only he didn’t have any scars on his back, probably because his father only did it once or twice, not once a month, and then every week, and then nearly every day. Probably because his father didn’t like beating him until his back was raw.

My father had always told me hide it from your mother and take it like a man. And it’s the only way you’ll learn.

I had hidden it from her…

But then she’d seen the marks, and I’d told her everything, because I was still just a kid. Days later, she’d left me at the house alone because there’d been an emergency with Emma. My father had come home early from a meeting, pleased to find me alone. He’d told me that I needed to be punished for telling my mother the truth, because no man would lean on a woman in that way.

So I’d watched him climb the tree, because he always made me watch him choose the branch and make the switch—part of the discipline, he said. Only this time he’d fallen.

Fallen and died instantly. In front of my eyes.

Just like I’d been wishing he would, each and every time.

I’m alarmed to feel tears in my eyes.

I never cry.

I didn’t cry at his funeral.

Haven’t cried since the day he died.

I hear something over the rushing in my ears, my head, and I look up, feeling lost, and I see her like a vision, just like I did the other day my world fell apart. Rosie.

She rushes toward me, and I drop the axe, only then noticing there’s fresh blood on my bandage. And then her arms are wrapped around me, her scent in my nose, and the awful ache inside of me is curbed. I feel, again, like everything’s going to be okay, because I’m not alone anymore. I have this woman. I have my wife . And because of her, I have my mother and Emma again. Because of her, I can have my dream.

“Oh, Anthony,” she says, tightening her grip on me, burying her face in my neck. “What happened?”

My hands are shaking, everything inside of me still vibrating like my teeth did the first time I used that axe.

“I love you,” I say, pulling away enough to look at her. “I love you.”

There’s more I could say, about how she’s saved me from myself and from this legacy I’ve never been able to leave behind. But right now, that’s what I need her to know.

She reaches up and rips the chain off her neck. For a second my heart races for a different reason, and I try to prepare myself for her to give me back the ring. The horrible possibility that she may have come here to tell me she changed her mind rolls over me, but then she lets the chain drop and spool at our feet and puts the ring on her engagement finger, where it belongs. Looking at me with glistening eyes, she says, “I love you too. Now tell me why we’re fucking up this tree. Please .”

Relief bursts inside of me as she guides me to sitting on the ground beside the tree, which is bleeding sap from its wound. The snow is wet, but the ground beneath is solid.

She sits in my lap, facing me, and I nearly start crying again from the relief of it. But she’s staring at me, and I know she’s waiting.

“I wanted him to die,” I admit to her, saying it for the first time out loud.

If she judges me for that, it doesn’t show on her face.

I swallow. “When my father did something really bad or dangerous when he was a kid, his father would make a switch out of one of the branches from the apple tree and switch his back. He…” I rub my jaw. “He credited that with making a man of him.”

Understanding dawns in her eyes. “That bastard ,” she says through clenched teeth.

I cup her cheek, embarrassed but vindicated by her rage on my behalf. “It didn’t get bad until I was ten or so. It went from once every few months, to every month, and then…” I glance away. “It was supposed to be a secret from my mother, but he went too far. One of the cuts bled through the back of my shirt, and she noticed, and I was only eleven, and my mother’s much smarter than me. It wasn’t hard for her to get me to talk.”

Her lips part, and I can tell she wants to drag my father’s name in the dirt. To pummel and destroy him. I’m brought back to the moment when my mother found out. To the way she got down on her knees in front of me and hugged me, tears streaming down her face. My mother is nothing if not a woman of action, though. She confronted him that night, and the whole house had filled with echoes of their shouting voices.

Taking a ragged breath, I say, “His accident happened after that. He came home when he knew I’d be alone, and he wasn’t careful. He fell, and his neck hit at the exact wrong angle and—”

I feel tears in my eyes again, and I’m ashamed, but she grips my face in the crook of her hand, forcing me to look at her.

“Good,” she says firmly. “That means someone took care of you. Someone was your angel, Anthony. I believe that.”

I lean in and kiss her, my hands lifting into her golden hair. I may not believe what she’s saying, but I believe she’s my angel now. Maybe all of these frustrating, lonely years were what I needed to bring me here, to her.

She pulls away slightly, her expression determined, and lifts my bandaged hand for inspection. When she looks back up, she says, “You’re in no condition to take this tree down alone. This is where I need to be real with you and say there’s no way you would have been able to do it alone, without any supplies, even if your hand wasn’t bleeding.”

“At least I know you’ll never bullshit me…”

She’s right, of course. But it needs to come down. And it’s supposed to happen today.

I feel it in every bit of me, every particle of Anthony Rosings Smith.

“I—”

She runs her fingers over my bearded cheek. “Jake was worried about you because you missed your lunch with him, so we rode over here together, because he got me worried, and I also wanted to tell you that Nicole’s friend managed to take care of my fingerprints problem.”

“He’s here now?” I ask, horrified.

“He’s in the car.” She slowly runs her hands up and down my arms, her touch settling me. “He’s your friend, Anthony. We saw you by the tree, and he turned back and told me he’d give us a moment.”

Part of me is embarrassed. The part that still thinks a real man wouldn’t have cried. That he’d be able to cut the damn tree down by himself without any help from anyone else.

But that part of me has roots intertwined with the apple tree, and I want to pull them out too, even if it hurts.

So I nod and say, “Sure. Let’s take the tree down together. Jake would be a big help.”

She purses her mouth to the side. “Yes, but why not go bigger? Like…maybe we could get Declan over here. Not for nothing, but my brother has arm muscles the size of tree trunks, and he’s a freaking landscaper. And Damien’s pretty strong, and your mom and Emma would at least want to watch. They had to live with the miserable bastard too. Basically, I was thinking we could make this a party.” She shrugs one shoulder, her arm brushing against mine. “Honestly, I think it should be a party.”

“For who?” I ask, my brain barely firing.

“For you. To celebrate the end of one era and the beginning of another. Also, I figured it could be a ding, dong, the dick is dead kind of thing.”

My father would hate that.

He’d hate everything that’s happened today, and Simon is right. He would hate the man I’m finally becoming. But I don’t care anymore, and the freedom of that is the greatest gift anyone has ever given me.

I take a deep breath, then wrap her up, holding her against my chest. “Okay, let’s do it.”

A few hours later, we’re back where I started, next to the tree. Except this time we have appropriate equipment, including a rented bucket truck. we’re with Jake and Lainey, Declan and Claire, my mother and sister, and Nicole and Damien. They all know about our engagement now, and Jake brought over several bottles of champagne to fulfill the terms of his bet with Rosie.

My mother took one look at the bottles, sniffed, and disappeared into her basement, reappearing with a much superior vintage.

She also had some lounge chairs stored down there which look—and smell—like they last saw the sun during World War II, but they’re comfortable enough, and we can’t all attack the tree at once. Under my mother’s direction, Jake set up a temporary bar, even though I pointed out it wasn’t a stellar idea to drink around chainsaws and axes. My mother said she wouldn’t be doing any of the work anyway, so my complaint was irrelevant, and if a woman can’t get soused on the day her husband dies a second time, then when can she?

Claire brought over enough baked goods to feed everyone multiple times.

I feel…

I feel full in a way I never have before. Content.

Before the destruction commences in earnest, Declan pulls me aside. I’ve never been a small guy, but he’s bigger than me, and he wears it in the way he walks. He can be intimidating, and right now he means to be.

“So, you’re marrying my sister to get that money,” he says.

“No,” I correct him. “I want to marry your sister. And we both wouldn’t mind getting the money.”

He nods, accepting that or at least pretending to.

“And you’re wondering why you didn’t hear it from me,” I say, feeling like I’ve already fucked up with him, so I might as well call a spade a spade.

“I was,” he admits, then shifts his weight. “But Rosie reminded me that she grew up a long time ago, and she doesn’t need anyone’s permission to do anything. She likes reminding me of that every day, and I suspect she’ll like reminding you of the same thing.”

“She already does.” I glance at her, standing next to the tree with Claire and Lainey. She meets my gaze and makes a face, mouthing ‘sorry.’ Smiling, but only a little, because I’d prefer for her brother not to hit me, I say, “But I still should have come to talk to you. I’d like your blessing, for her sake. And your brother’s.”

He nods. “He’s coming. I talked to him just before we headed over here, and he was already out the door before he hung up. He’s driving down with Claire’s father, though, and he’ll be disappointed to realize that man likes to pack for every possible outcome.”

I nod, because I expected both of her brothers would want to be there.

“And if we don’t give you our blessing?” he asks, lifting his eyebrows. “I don’t like seeing my sister mixed up with all of this shit. Especially not before we have all the facts on the table.”

“I understand.” I don’t like it either, but I also don’t want to let her go.

“But you wouldn’t leave her, even if it’s for her own good.”

“No,” I say without hesitation. “Not unless she wants to be left. I love her.”

He considers this for a moment before nodding. “Good. Did you really hitch a ride on a snowplow?”

A surprised laugh escapes me. Then I nod toward my sister, who’s steadily getting drunk with my mother, Nicole, and Joy. “My lawyer would tell me to take the fifth.”

He claps me on the back. “Next time you can use the door.”

I feel Rosie watching me. When I look at her, she crooks her fingers, and it’s as if they pull at something within my chest.

“Go on,” Declan says brusquely. “Let’s bring it down.”

He’s the one who does most of the work, given he actually knows what he’s doing. But it’s a group effort, led by him. We all work together, and when the last of it falls to the ground, I have tears in my eyes. Worse, my mother has tears in her eyes.

“Should we burn it?” Rosie asks, eying the messy pile of leaves and wood and apples in various stages of rot. There’s still snow on the ground, and the scene is strangely beautiful.

I wrap my arms around her, laughing. “Easy, we don’t want to bring the whole house down.”

“No,” Emma says, “Just everything inside of it and on the walls.”

My mother smirks at her. “I’ve given you too much power.”