Free Slow Burn by K. Bromberg Page A

hair and cheek. “Your daddy and I aren’t going anywhere. I promise you. We’re Haddie Maddie,” I say, calling us the nickname that Lexi used to have for me when we were kids. The same name she chose to name her baby girl in tribute to me. “We’ve got hearts to break and high heels to wear, right?”
    She angles her head and stares at me with her big chocolate brown eyes and chin quivering as she fights back the tears, trying to figure out if I’m telling the truth or not. I hold out my pinkie finger. “Promise.”
    A soft smile curls up the corner of her lips as her pinkie grips onto mine. “Haddie Maddie promise,” she whispers, her smile growing wider. “Hearts and heels.”
    “Always. Okay, then.” She looks at me one last time and then rushes down the hall.
    I turn around once she’s gone to meet Danny’s tear-filled eyes. There is nothing I can say to him that I haven’t said before, nothing that can ease the ache in his soul, so I just shake my head and swallow through the tears in my throat. I’m gazing at a picture of Lexi and newborn Maddie when he speaks from behind me.
    “You know,” he says, his voice soft and uneven, “when Lex was sick … when she was going through chemo and losing her hair … it used to drive me crazy.” He shakes his head as he remembers, and I’m trying hard to follow histrain of thought—give him time to get it out—but I know Maddie will be here soon. I don’t want her to hear him talking about Lex with sadness. She’s had way too much in her short life already.
    “I used to tease her that she was shedding hair like a dog. Tried to make a joke about it. Strands of it would be stuck in the couch, balled up on my shirts when they came out of the drier … the seats in the car…. It was just
everywhere
….” He laughs with a quiet sadness and then falls silent. I turn to face him, listening but not wanting to hear it, not wanting to remember how upset she’d get when hair would fall out clumps at a time.
    He sighs, his shoulders shaking as he reins it in. “God, Had … I missed her so much the other day. Her scent’s fading from her clothes in the closet…. I … I was losing it, needing to feel connected to her.” He runs a hand through his hair and presses his fingers beneath his glasses to wipe his eyes. “And I remembered her hair being everywhere…. I was like a lunatic, searching all over this goddamn house for some of her hair. Any of it. A single strand.” He looks up and meets my eyes, disbelief warring with sorrow. “I couldn’t find any, Had.”
    I breathe in a slow, measured breath, trying to control the emotional floodgates from breaking. And even if they did, I think I’m all out of tears. I’ve cried enough in the past six months that it shouldn’t be possible for me to shed more.
    “For Christ’s sake, I was scraping the lint trap in the dryer to find some.” He shakes his head, tosses his glasses on the couch, and scrubs his hands over his face. The muscle in his jaw tics as I watch him struggle not to break down. “I feel like I’m going crazy here.”
    I take a step toward him, a single tear dripping down my cheek, and pain in my heart. He holds his hands up to stop me, knowing damn well if I hug him, we’ll both be blubbering messes in a matter of seconds. “You should have called me. You don’t—”
    “And say what, Had?” A sliver of a laugh escapes, but I can hear borderline hysteria in it. “I know you’re dying just as much without her as I am. I can’t call you every time I have a bad day … bring you down.”
    The things I want to say are in my head, but I have a hard time getting them out. They choke in my throat, words cutting like razor blades. “Lexi wanted you to keep living, Danny. She wanted you to find someone eventually and move on.” My voice is soft, but I know he heard me because his body stills and his head snaps up, his eyes flash with anger.
    “Never,” he says with conviction. “She