Free Breaking by Claire Kent

he’d wanted was his
father’s love, and it was something he’d never been able to get. As a teenager,
he’d done everything he could to defy his father and all of his expectations,
so he’d made decisions he’d known would enrage and humiliate him. For so many
years, he’d made himself nothing more than a body, since he’d believed he
wasn’t worth anything more.
    “It shouldn’t
matter,” he managed to say. “It shouldn’t be a big deal. He’d had a
heart-condition for a while, and he hasn’t been a part of my life in years.
It’s not like someone else losing their father.”
    “Of course, it
matters. Of course, it’s a big deal. He was your dad.”
    He hadn’t
thought about him as his “dad” since he was a boy.
    He’d never
believed in the possibility of that ever changing, but now the thinnest sliver
of a chance was gone for good.
    It felt like
Lori’s arms were the only things holding him together. He was never this weak.
Never this shattered.
    He just
couldn’t stop himself from being so right now.
    “He left…” His
voice broke so he had to try again. “He left the bulk of his estate to…to me.”
    He heard Lori’s
soft gasp and felt her tighten in surprise.
    His own
reaction had been more dramatic.
    “Why would he
do that?” he choked out, trying to take full breaths.
    “I don’t know.”
    Ander kept
trying to breathe.
    “Maybe he loved
you after all.” She squeezed him, so tightly it would have been painful at any
other time. “I know he didn’t know how—at all—but maybe, in his way, he did.”
    “He couldn’t
have. Not after the way he always treated me. He couldn’t have loved me.”
    She was crying
now. He could hear the smothered sobs and feel it in her body behind him.
    She was crying
for him.
    “I don’t know,”
she said at last. “But maybe this was his way of trying to show you—at the end—that
he really did.”
    Ander couldn’t
think it through clearly enough to sort through such possibilities. He couldn’t
do anything but feel emotions that ripped through him like a storm. He couldn’t
do anything but shudder, shake, breathe in painful wheezes.
    Lori never let
him go. Not when he could finally breathe evenly again. Not when his body gradually
relaxed in pure exhaustion. And not, a long time later, when his eyes closed,
and he drifted toward the oblivion of sleep.
    She held him
the whole time, with a kind of undemanding support he used to believe didn’t
exist in the world.
    Sometime during
the night, he rolled over so he was facing her and wrapped his arms around her.
    So they ended
up holding each other.

Six
     
    The next morning, Ander could
barely move.
    Every muscle in
his body ached, and his head pounded brutally. He smothered a groan as he
reached for the bottle of water beside his bed and downed it in about six
gulps.
    His motion must
have woken Lori because she stirred restlessly and then opened her eyes. She
smiled up at him, obviously too groggy to remember the night before, since
there was no trace of concern in her expression.
     He smiled
back, wondering how he’d ever managed to get such an extraordinary woman to say
“yes” to a marriage proposal.
    Her expression
changed as her memory of the night before returned. “How do you feel?”
    “Like I’ve been
through a battle.”
    “Me too—kind
of.”
    He didn’t doubt
it. She loved him so much that she hurt when he hurt. Three years ago, he
hadn’t known it was possible.
    “You don’t have
to work today, do you? It’s Saturday and…” She trailed off, her eyes searching
his face.
    “I don’t have
to work today.”
    “Good. Then you
stay in bed. I’m going to get us some coffee.”
    He lay back
down, mostly because his body protested any other option, as she went to the
bathroom and then disappeared toward the kitchen for the coffee.
    When she
returned with two mugs, Ander propped himself up on the pillows and she
situated herself beside him.
    They were
silent for a