JUNE 9th, 1993, SEATTLE, WA
"WHERE THE HELL are you going?" Dave growled. He jumped up from his perch on the edge of the bed and snatched Reagan around the waist, dragging her back into him. She fixed one hand on his shoulder and pushed against his stronghold.
"I've got to run errands," she said.
"Bullshit. It's your birthday. You don't have to do anything except be with me."
"It's important."
She wiggled a little more in his grasp, though Dave didn't loosen his arms. He only squeezed tighter, using one hand to snap at the buttons on her blazer. A flash of her lacy bra became exposed and he kissed her bare chest, lightly gliding his tongue across her skin. Reagan jumped.
"Dave," she hissed. "Sarah's still here with Gracie!"
"So shut the door."
"It's five o'clock!"
Reagan unroped his arms from her waist and skittered backwards, adjusting her skirt. It was already thigh-baring enough as it was. She didn't need Dave yanking it up anymore.
"You're right, it is five. I was going to take you to dinner tonight. That's why Sarah is still here," Dave said, clearly exasperated.
"We can still do dinner," Reagan insisted. "Just let me run out real quick and I'll be back."
She bent down to scoop her bag up from the floor, but Dave pursed his lips at her with a questioning look.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
Reagan froze, her torso still leaning forward and wisps of hair falling into in her face.
"What?" she replied stupidly.
"Where do you have to go that's so important? You haven't even put your keys down since you walked through the door."
She looked down into her hand, where sure enough, her car keys were still gripped against her palm. The divots of the keys had left fleshy indentions in her skin.
"We need milk," she lied. It was such a ridiculous bluff that she didn't even have to hold her breath, hoping Dave would go with it.
"We have milk. I was just looking in the fridge."
"Well, we need more milk. You can never have enough milk. Especially with a baby."
Dave stood up from the bed and folded his arms. Telling by the way he was looking at her, Reagan sensed that he already knew what was going on, or had at least the slightest idea of where she was headed. She winced with guilt.
"Can you tell me where you're really going?" he asked expectantly.
"Dave," she sighed. This was the conversation that she'd been hoping to avoid when she'd made her mind up about her plans earlier. But with Dave being Dave, he'd gotten to the bottom of her deceit quickly. The longer time that they spent together, the more adept he became at chipping away the variety of masks that she put on.
"Just say it," he commanded. "Tell me."
Ashamedly, Reagan glanced down at the floor and into the matte black leather of her heels. He didn't need to ask so persistently. He must have already known. She'd mentioned it offhandedly the other day, thinking it wouldn't stick to his brain, but it obviously had.
When she didn't answer, Dave finally provided a response for her.
"You're going to see Kurt," he said frankly.
Damn, did he have a bitingly good memory.
"Just for thirty minutes," Reagan maintained helplessly. "I want to check in, that's all. I have to see how he's doing for myself."
"I told you how he's doing," Dave said, dragging both hands back through his hair with a sigh.
"Yeah, you said he's going crazy."
"Obviously. The intervention and then that fight with Courtney set him off."
He named the two sole reasons why Reagan felt a pulling need to see her friend. The first couple of weeks in June had so far been hellish for Kurt. Not only had he suffered through the intense scrutiny of an intervention, surrounded by a breadth of people whose trust he'd apparently lost, but Kurt had also been hauled away by the police for a domestic dispute with Courtney.
The retelling of these events by Dave had painted an awful picture in her head. She was glad, eternally grateful, that she and Dave hadn't gone to that intervention. They would have declined anyways, but Reagan knew she wouldn't have been able to sit through it, looking into Kurt's dead gaze and knowing that she was betraying him by being there. The humiliation he must have felt would have attacked her with metaphysical force and eventually, she would have cracked.
The fight with Courtney was just another pound of salt rubbed into a raw wound. Naturally, Reagan believed that Courtney was grinding Kurt's nerves into dust, but she was well aware of how much of a pain that he'd become. She held no doubts that he'd been an active participant in whatever chaos had ensued in their newly purchased Lake Washington home that night.
But she had to see him. She had to see with her own two eyes that he was okay, or that in the very least, he held some trace of the person she'd once known. It was imperative that she finally take hold of the advice Richard had given her.
Months had drifted by without her taking action. She'd seen Kurt sparingly, but the real missed opportunity had come at the Cow Palace in April, when she'd barely spoken more than ten sentences to him before Nirvana's benefit performance. The regret had been gnawing at her ever since.
With Kurt in such close range of her home now, Reagan knew that it was time to seize her opportunity to listen to him. That's what she was calling it — she wouldn't talk to him, but she would listen, just as Richard had suggested she do. If it suited Kurt, then she wouldn't even say a word at all.
"I'm his friend," Reagan reasoned. "He needs a friend right now."
She thought that Dave would follow-up with an exclamation that he was Kurt's friend too, but he only stared at her ambiguously, rubbing a hand behind his neck.
"I know you don't want me to go over there," she continued. "I know you said I shouldn't —,"
"It's not that I don't want you to see him. I don't want him to hurt your feelings, Reagan. Things aren't what they used to be."
"I get that. But he can't hurt my feelings. Since when have I ever been sensitive?"
"You're sensitive about him. Sensitive the way you are about Robbie, or Kody. He can be really fucking mean, Reags. If he goes off on you, I know you'll snap right back and then Courtney will get involved."
"I can handle Courtney."
"I know," Dave groaned, rolling his eyes, "and that's why I'm worried. I really don't want to have bail you out of jail on your birthday."
"It'll be fine. I won't throw a punch unless she does."
"She just might. She knows that you've turned on her, now. I wouldn't put it past her to get in your face."
Reagan considered this possibility, but it wasn't enough to stop her from going over there. Courtney wasn't the problem. Kurt was. Courtney only thought that she was the impenetrable wall keeping others out and away from her husband, particularly those that she despised, but Reagan hardly held any fear for Courtney and her exaggerated intimidation tactics.
If she wanted to see Kurt, then she would see him. That went without saying.
"Do you have to do this on your birthday?" Dave asked softly. "Can it wait?"
Reagan nervously turned her keys over in her hand, feeling as if she were disappointing him greatly.
"I have waited. I've waited for months. I don't want to wait anymore. What if it gets to where it's too late?"
"I don't think anything tragic is going to happen in the next twenty-four hours."
"You don't know that. You can't keep me from doing this. I have to. I have to go see him."
"I wasn't trying to keep you from doing anything," Dave said, drawing back with a hurt look. "I would never keep you from doing anything that you wanted to do. I know you care about him."
"I know, but —,"
"Don't you get that I have to protect you?" He stepped forward and locked his hands around Reagan's arms. "Physically and emotionally?"
Being so close to him felt like stepping into an all-encompassing embrace of safety, but Reagan shook the feeling off. Granted safety away from the murkiness of Nirvana's newfound troubles was nice, but it wasn't who Reagan was. She could have hidden herself away in her home with Dave and dashed off to work jauntily with the proud knowledge that she had a family to come home to, but it felt painfully wrong. Choosing ignorance and turning her back on Kurt would have been the worst thing she could have done as his friend.
She still had her roots. They were embedded in her, knotted into her body like companions to her veins and tendons. She'd grown up amongst the tightly-knit packs of Olympia's musicians. She knew what the bonds of friendship meant in a city where teenagers ran free, experimenting on their own and relying on their friends to get them through it.
Her loyalty to Kurt stretched all the way back to those early days when she'd been a girl who drummed and he'd been the new guy in town, fresh out of Aberdeen and eagerly looking to start a band. Reagan had seen something in him back then and she saw something in him now. It might have become more blurred over the years, but she owed it to Kurt to be there for him. It was the rite of having come from the same place with the same desperate wish to break free.
"You can't stop me," she told Dave, attempting to be gentle.
He dropped his hands from her arms immediately. "I hate when you do that."
"Do what?"
"You make it sound like I don't want you to be friends with Kurt. Like I'm deliberately keeping you away from him."
Dave turned his back to her and pulled one hand down his face, hovering his palm over his mouth. He massaged his chin, hoping that the wobbling of it wouldn't give way and expose the crux of all his feelings regarding Kurt. He was in pain, too. He worried just as much as Reagan did about his friend, bandmate and old roommate.
"I know that's not true," Reagan said. She brushed her fingers against his back. "I know you're trying to make things as normal as possible around here. We promised —,"
"We did promise," Dave blurted. He spun back around and stared hard into her eyes. "We promised each other to keep this life separate from my other one. It can't work, trying to blend the two. Someone will end up getting hurt. I told you that I'll do my thing with the band, but come home to you and be a dad and a husband. How do you expect to keep that promise going when you're running off to Kurt? And on your birthday? When we're supposed to be together?"
"It was a silly promise. You can't live two separate lives, even if you wanted to. It's all mixed together now. We can't change that," Reagan murmured.
"Fine. It's mixed together, then. I still don't see why you have to sacrifice your own birthday for something that's beyond your control."
"What's the point of celebrating my birthday? I'm not actually looking forward to getting older."
Dave made a noise in the back of his throat and to Reagan, it sounded like defeat. He fixed his hands on his hips and evaluated her behind eyes that betrayed hundreds of thoughts, chewing the inside of his cheek. Reagan gripped her keys tighter in her hand.
"Can you at least be back before eight?" Dave finally asked with a rigid brusqueness.
Reagan nodded her head in confirmation of his wish and kissed his cheek.
"Love you," she whispered, the words caressing his face as her lips glided by. She left their room with her bag over her shoulder and waved goodbye to Sarah, fibbing the same lie that she'd told Dave about an errand. Gracie called out to her, one little cry of 'mama,' but Reagan steeled herself towards the door before she changed her mind entirely and swept Gracie up into her arms.
In the solitude of her car, she gathered her composure with a few easy breaths and stuck the keys into the ignition. Dave had given her the address of Kurt and Courtney's new home a few weeks prior. The only reason she'd remembered it was because of her shock upon hearing where the couple had relocated. Their new house was in Denny-Blaine, an upscale neighborhood that hugged the edge of Lake Washington and was known to be the corralling spot for Seattle's wealthiest inhabitants.
As Reagan drove, she tried to remember if she had ever shared a heart-to-heart conversation with Kurt in the past. No specific instance of one wormed its way into her memory. Truthfully, they had never been close enough for that. Close enough to consider each other friends, of course, but whenever Reagan had been around Kurt, it had been with predominant reason to jam with him and Krist.
Everyone knew everybody in that corner of Olympia, the one that was spilling with aspiring musicians. Reagan had never properly invested her time into trying to claim Kurt as a best friend. Their time together had been limited, always cramped into a specific allotted amount that was reserved for playing instruments and goofing off. She wouldn't have even picked him out of a lineup of people she was most tightly bonded to. Chris had always been her closest friend.
There was one time though, right before Bleach had been released on record, that Reagan had stopped by Kurt's old apartment. Tracy had been away and Kurt was alone, cuddled up on the couch with his cats milling about and his pet rat nestled into his hand. Reagan had asked where Krist was, assuming that they would kick back with some leisurely playing, but Kurt had told her that Krist was working overtime in Tacoma.
She hadn't left. She would have if there had been an air of awkwardness in her isolation with Kurt, but she'd driven over a bridge to get there and saw no reason to rush out. So Reagan had sat on the couch with him. They'd talked and as the conversation deepened, Kurt had brought up his family, telling Reagan for the first time how he had bounced from house to house in pursuit of a family member or friend that would keep him.
That's when Reagan had known. Sitting leg-to-leg on that ratty couch surrounded by the stench of animals with Kurt, she had known that she cared for him. In his quiet, sheltered pain, she saw her middle brother staring back at her. From that point on, she had nursed a soft spot for Kurt ever since.
The memory melted away when she finally pulled up to Kurt and Courtney's looming Queen Anne estate. The gate was open and with relief, she pulled right up the driveway, trying not to gawk at the sturdy brick behemoth in front of her.
The house was beautiful, there was no doubt about it. It didn't exactly align with Kurt's previous tastes, but it was definitely fitting for a rockstar. Reagan inevitably compared the house to her and Dave's modest lodging. Their house was lovely too, with its similar brick-lined exterior and the elevated slope of a hill that it rested upon, but it was no mansion by any means. Kurt's entire property reeked of wealth and stardom. It was ironic, considering all of the beliefs of the man who lived inside.
Reagan got out of her car and walked straight up to the front door, rapping her knuckles against it with determination. It took several empty minutes before the door finally swung open and revealed a tall, scraggly-haired man with a five o' clock shadow and painfully pinpointed pupils. He blinked in surprise at Reagan.
"Hey," he said.
"Hi," Reagan returned uncertainly. "Is Kurt home?"
"Uh . . ."
"Cali, who the fuck is it?"
Reagan knew that it was Courtney coming up behind the man before she even came into view. Unfortunately, she would have known that scratchy rasp of a voice from anywhere, even if she were buried under an avalanche of snow in the wilderness. That was not to say that she would particularly want Courtney's help in a life threatening situation, though . . .
"Oh," Courtney said. She shouldered Cali to the side and leaned against the doorframe, wearing a floaty, translucent negligee that left little to the imagination. Reagan wanted to scoff. Between Courtney's fingers was a burning cigarette.
"Well, well, well," Courtney sang, though it came out as more of a sneer. "Look who showed up late to the housewarming party."
"Sorry, I forgot to bring a gift with me," Reagan said back coolly.
"Don't worry. You're three months late," came Courtney's equally icy retort.
It was blatantly obvious that throughout the course of the spring, Courtney had caught on to Reagan's mounting dislike for her. Courtney could have sniffed out her cynics without a moment's hesitation and Reagan's clear reluctance to be within even a foot of her had pushed her right into the anti-Courtney club. Reagan had no regrets. Whatever wisp of a budding friendship that they'd once had was long gone.
"Where's Kurt?" Reagan questioned.
"Why?" Courtney shot back. "What do you want?"
"To talk to him."
"If you came here to try and fill my husband's head with false shit about me, then you can get in your car and go back to wherever you came from."
Reagan let out a bitter laugh. As if Courtney could play off not knowing that Reagan lived a mere thirty minutes away.
"It has nothing to do with you," Reagan said tightly. "I need to speak with him. Now."
"Call our lawyers first and set up a meeting," Courtney hissed.
"Is that Reagan?" It was Kurt's voice that entered the heated confrontation, coming from somewhere behind Courtney's towering frame. She stepped aside and revealed him, standing there with Frances in his arms and a wrinkled Half Japanese shirt on.
"Hi Kurt," Reagan said. Her greeting was laced with pain as she took in the sight of him looking so bedraggled and thinner than usual. The only spot of bright light in his overall image came from Frances, who was happily wrapped around him like a vise.
"Reagan," Kurt mumbled. He looked surprised to see her as he glanced down at his sock covered feet. "What are you doing here?"
"My question exactly," Courtney interjected.
"I came to say hello," Reagan said, softening her voice. "I wanted to see you."
"If you wanted to see him, go pick up a magazine at Safeway and —," Courtney began. Kurt boldly interrupted her before she could finish her spiteful statement.
"Come in," he said. Reagan resisted throwing a smirk at Courtney as she stepped inside of the house. There was an acrid scent in the air, something that she didn't want to stipulate on further at the risk of being heartbroken by it, but the house was much more put-together than the Los Angeles shack that the Cobains had resided in. It was still a haphazard mess of things, but there was a certain Kurt-ish quality about it.
"We can go out back, if you want," Kurt offered. Not only was Reagan grateful for the ease with which he accepted her visit, but she was glad that he'd suggested getting out of the house. She didn't want Courtney eavesdropping on them, even when Reagan had nothing bad to say.
"Sure," Reagan agreed. Kurt led her through the kitchen and out back. Lake Washington glistened ahead of them and settled against the picturesque backdrop was a small playground for Frances. Kurt walked right out into the grass and before Reagan could begin to wander where they were going to sit, he dropped right down into a criss-cross. Frances squealed and staggered out of his arms, wobbling momentarily on her feet while keeping a firm grip on Kurt's outstretched hand.
Reagan waited a moment before she dropped down into the grass too, adjusting the hem of her skirt and folding her legs to one side. It didn't matter if her work clothes got dirty. That was what the washing machine was for.
"You don't mind getting dirt on that?" Kurt asked, as if reading her mind. He was analyzing Reagan's outfit with intense speculation.
"They're just clothes," she answered.
"I heard about you becoming A and R at DGC. You look the part."
Instinctively, Reagan looked down at herself. Kurt was right. With her neat little blazer, short skirt and black panty-hosed legs that were capped off with pumps, she fit the image of a businesswoman at a record label. She grabbed the heels of her shoes and pulled them off, setting them aside in the grass next to her.
"Maybe, but it's not who I am," she shrugged.
Kurt smiled slightly. "Really? How'd you get the job, then?"
At first, she assumed he was insinuating that her promotion had come from her connection with Dave. She stiffened, but relaxed upon understanding that Kurt's initial question had nothing to do with the mechanics of who had gifted her the role, but rather if it reflected who she was inside.
"I like music," she said blandly. She wrapped a blade of grass around her finger and ripped it from the soil. "They saw that, I guess."
"That's good."
Neither of them continued talking, allowing Frances's baby babble to fill the void of silence. Reagan observed Kurt's face as he watched his daughter, smiling tenderly when she flashed him her bright grin of delight as she toddled in circles around him. His love for her felt tangible, enough so that Reagan's heart stuttered and she remembered why she had come.
"Kurt, are you happy?" she spouted off. Kurt looked at her, confused.
"Why are you asking?"
"Because. You don't seem happy."
"I'm fine. I've got Frances. We got custody back, you know. She's ours."
"I'm really glad to hear that."
Kurt focused his attention back onto Frances and left Reagan with the feeling that there was something more that he wanted to say. There was no set starting to point to where he could begin.
"You're still you," she murmured. Her hand darted out and came to rest on his knee. "Do you know that? You're still Kurt. You don't have to be what everyone wants you to be."
He gave Reagan the same befuddled, though somehow understanding, look. "I think it's a little late for that."
"No, it's not. Nothing is ever too late. You don't have to suffer if you don't want to. You could take Frances and go somewhere. Just leave. Get away from it all."
She deliberately left out Courtney's name, though it would have been impossible for Kurt to go anywhere in possession of Frances without his wife's company. It was a far-fetched blueprint of what could have been, though. Somewhere in his eyes, Reagan got the feeling that he would have preferred that it be just him and Frances, anyways.
"I can't. I would have lawyers on my ass before I got out of Seattle," Kurt replied. He remained monotone and distant, as if the cold hardness of the truth distanced him from any kind of dreaming.
"I would help you," Reagan said. "Dave would, too. We would both do whatever it takes to make things better for you. Especially me. I just want you to be okay."
He paused, digesting what she had said. Her words unlocked something within him and suddenly, he was talking, really talking to her, lacking the robotic drone that he'd originally spoken with. His mouth moved at rapid speed as he talked, all of his inner demons spilling forth freely. Reagan knew that his trust in her had been reinstated. All it had taken was one sincere passing look and Kurt had known — she was there for him. She had come to fulfill her promise to listen.
He told her about the heroin first. She hadn't been expecting him to divulge much about it, but he exposed the truth of his habit with abandon, telling her that he hadn't meant for it to go as far as it had. He told her that he wanted to quit. He said that he didn't know how to stop, how to make the poisonous yearning for the drug go away.
He talked about Courtney and their rocky relationship and all the ways that she'd gotten under his skin, seeming to exist far outside the orbit of the life they'd started together. She had become something of an enemy to him, a juxtapose of love and hate that didn't make any sense. He loved her, but he hated what they'd become, hated how their relationship had dissolved into rage-fueled arguments and taunting that went beyond reason.
When he talked about his career and the music that he'd so lovingly cherished in his youth, Reagan had to bite her lip to keep from crying. The way Kurt talked about music was all too relatable. It struck a bone-jolting chord inside of her and forced her to remember the past again, when it had always been about music and fun and the everlasting 'what-if.'
At some point during the conversation, Kurt took her hand. She didn't know if he'd meant to, but he squeezed her fingers into his fist with a frenzied need, like a touch-starved prisoner. She held his hand back and caressed her thumb over his knuckles, soothing him silently. The whole time that it was happening, she thanked the stars above that he was opening himself to her and that she'd trusted her instincts in coming there. Richard had been right.
Kurt had needed someone to just listen.
By the time he was done talking, daylight had been extinguished and replaced with an inky black sky dotted by faint starlight. It was breezy out for the June evening and Frances, reacting to the mild change in temperature, had curled up like a cat in Kurt's lap and was clinging to him with sleep-heavy eyes.
Reagan had barely spoken once in the hour that had almost passed.
"I'm sorry," Kurt said. He had been quiet for a few minutes. "I didn't mean to put all that on you."
"That's why I came. I wanted to listen."
"Thanks."
"We should bring Frances in. She looks tired."
"Yeah. We should."
They both clambered to their feet and went back inside the house. The downstairs was empty, leaving Reagan to wonder where Courtney and Cali had gotten off to, but she didn't question it as she headed for the front door. It was late and she had to get back home. She'd promised Dave that she would be back in time for dinner.
"Reagan?" Kurt asked. His voice was childlike, soft and pleading. Reagan turned to face him, dropping her hand away from the front door knob.
"Yes?"
"Thank you. Thanks for coming here."
His gratitude was more expressive than before, thick with an emotion that he was barring back. Even in the low light of the foyer, Reagan swore that she saw his blue eyes swimming with tears. He suddenly looked so much younger than twenty-six. Standing in front of Reagan, it was almost as if he was twenty-one again, hiding behind long curtains of knotted blonde hair and peering out from under them with a round-eyed look of hope.
Reagan hugged him, crushing Frances to her chest along with Kurt in the process, and held both of them there. She could feel the jut of his shoulder blades sticking out under her hand.
"Of course," she whispered.
It was hard not to look back when she finally got into her car and drove away. She felt like she was leaving a family member behind in jail after a brief visitation. There was nothing that she could do to quell the sadness that was taking over her, making her fingers tremble against the steering wheel and her throat clog up with sobs that she forced down.
Dave had been wrong about what it would be like to visit Kurt. He'd rightfully assumed that it would go badly, questioning whether or not Kurt would react to Reagan with anger, but in the end that had not been true. It had been far from it. Kurt had needed Reagan. Maybe not her specifically, but someone like her who could at least fill the role of a person who cared without the addition of judgement.
She got back to her house and shakily walked up the stone steps to the door, fiddling her keys in her hand and trying to sort herself into a reasonable state. If Dave saw her looking so wigged out, he would be upset.
"Hello?" Reagan called as she made her way through the door and locked it behind her. The house was dark except for the glow of several candles and a nearby lamp, the only source of electrical light. It smelled like someone had been cooking.
"Dave? Sarah?" She dropped her purse and swiveled her head, listening keenly for the sound of Gracie's voice, but it was Dave who made his presence known first. He came down the hall quietly, relief crossing his face when he saw Reagan.
"Hey," he said. "You're back. Right on time."
"Where's Sarah and Gracie?" Reagan asked confusedly.
"I told Sarah she could go home. Gracie's already asleep. Sarah said she ran her into the ground playing all day."
"But what about dinner? I thought we were going somewhere?"
"Taken care of."
Dave gestured towards the room next to the kitchen where the dining table was. Reagan glanced at him questioningly, but followed the smell of food into the room and came to an abrupt halt before she entered.
The table was set and centered with a large bouquet of red roses and a card propped against the vase. On the plates were helpings of spaghetti, specifically Ginny Grohl's spaghetti, as Reagan could tell by the familiar mouthwatering smell. Similarly to the rest of the house, the lighting had been dimmed and only the flickering flames of tapered candles in their holders reflected the generous spread on the table.
"Happy birthday," Dave murmured, appearing behind Reagan and pressing his lips to her neck.
"You . . . you cooked . . . you didn't have to . . .," Reagan sputtered.
"I know. I thought about it a little more after you left and figured you would prefer this to going out anyways. It's been a good few weeks since I served you my mom's spaghetti. Didn't want you getting antsy for it."
"Dave," Reagan whispered. She turned in his arms and he held her close, smiling down at her with a shining look of love and happiness.
Reagan didn't know what suddenly triggered her overwhelming sadness. It could have been the way Dave was looking at her or the efforts he'd made for her birthday dinner, staring her right in the face with such pristine care. Something about it all crippled her ability to keep her emotions in check. She thought about Kurt again, sitting in his drafty mansion with only his daughter to keep him truly happy, and she broke down with a choking sob.
"What is it?" Dave asked urgently, all traces of bliss vanishing from his face. He slid one hand behind Reagan's neck and cradled her face, attempting to keep her eyes level with his. "Reagan, what happened?"
"Kurt . . . everything. It's everything," Reagan gasped out. She knew that she would regret this later. She would hate herself for having ruined Dave's perfectly planned dinner by crying, but there was no stopping the flood of tears that brimmed over and flowed down her cheeks.
Dave didn't push her away. She might have been sobbing her heart out and spoiling the romantic night that he'd prepared for her, but he only pulled her in tighter and folded her into his embrace.
"It's okay," he whispered, petting his hand down her hair. "It's okay, baby."
With their dinner growing cold on the table, Reagan limply leaned her weight against him and buried her face into his shirt, crying as she let the heaviness of the entire night suck her under.