Almost Mine Read Online Free Page B

grin. “The sheets are clean, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
    So many questions and only Travis held the answers. Stripped down to nothing but my boxers, T-shirt and socks, I crawled into the bed and pulled him to my chest. God, but he felt good there. Thoughts of betrayal had no place here, in this our final night together. Tonight, for one last time, Travis was mine. Almost mine.
    The wrongness in him pulsed like a living thing, preventing ardor, but he nestled snugly against my chest, as he’d done for many years.
    I had to ask, “Why—”
    “Sh… No questions. Just hold me, please.” Weariness slurred his tones; he’d danced off any alcohol long ago. “Tired, so tired.”
    “I promised to stay the night, remember? If you don’t want to answer questions, I won’t ask.” I might explode from not knowing, but my wounded pride wouldn’t let me beg for explanations.
    He curled tighter into me, a soft smile playing on his lips. “Thank you.” The words emerged scarcely above a whisper. The deep in and out of his breathing a short time later told me he slept.
    What now? Perhaps the time had come for me to say the goodbye I’d come to.
    I gazed down at the man I’d given my heart to once upon a time. Travis appeared younger in slumber, the beginnings of crow’s feet relaxed in sleep. Now I understood. I’d agreed to this night to retrieve the heart he’d taken from me. But hey, I wasn’t really using it anyway.
    Would he begrudge me a last kiss? Travis snuffled in his sleep, the same gentle noise I’d heard many times before from the pillow beside me. A fist seized my heart. When I walked out of the door in the morning, I’d sever our last connection except for Bob, and I’d managed well enough to co-parent these last two years without speaking to the other parent.
    My full bladder forced me into the bathroom. Afterward, I washed my hands. A partially opened medicine cabinet beckoned.
    My heart pounded a reggae beat. The man outside the door, lying in bed, was my Travis, and yet he wasn’t. I’d never known Travis to do drugs, and he denied being sick, but something simply wasn’t right. Gone were the joy, the joking, and the ever-present laughter. I rifled through his cabinets, searching for the kinds on illicit substances often bandied about in courtrooms as evidence. What I found was… Oh dear God. Still in rumpled drug store bags, receipts attached: five months’ worth of clomipramine, all five bottles unopened, all with Travis’s name on the label.
    Not being familiar with the product, I accessed the Internet from my phone. An antidepressant. Also prescribed for obsessive-compulsive behavior. Our lovely home. Always so neat. My perfectionist husband. Obsessive compulsive? Maybe. But depressed? Five bottles filled over five months. All unopened. He wasn’t taking his medication; he’d been saving every dose.
    One didn’t need a pharmacy degree to decipher the message. Travis intended this one night as a goodbye—a more permanent one than I’d ever imagined. The image formed clearly in my head, Travis, showing me out the door and, a handful at a time, gulping down these pills. My heart skipped a beat, then slammed against my ribs. I grabbed the sink to keep from falling. Travis, my Travis, the other father to my son, planned to kill himself.
    Oh. Hell. No.
    He’d brought me here to say goodbye, did he? Well, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
    What the hell could I do? Confront him and watch him try to lie his way out of a confession? As an actor, he’d likely put on an Academy Award worthy performance, but I couldn’t deny the evidence. Travis meant too much to me.
    He might soon hate me, but I was still his husband, and when morning came, I’d do what I had to do—as his husband.
    Travis slept on, clad in boxer shorts and socks, nothing else. I curled up next to him on the bed. He trembled when I slipped an arm around him, then sighed and placed his head on my shoulder.
    I