Read Outside the Lines for Free Online

himself completely.
    But hadn’t today been another kind of loss? Running from his family? Having to apologize to Lydia, to beg for her forgiveness and understanding yet again? As each moment passed, he felt himself slipping down deeper. Blackness pulled at his thoughts, shadowing over any hope that he would escape this life unharmed. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be there anymore. He wasn’t sure if any of it was worth it.
    He pulled up in front of the house and put the car into park but left the engine running. If he didn’t have his studio set up in what used to be their garage, he could have just pulled right in and shut the door. Leave the car running and let the fumes overtake him. It would be quick and silent. No one else would have to get hurt. A quick flash of light glimmered in the front window as the curtains opened. Eden. She saw him. He might as well go in. He turned off the car and walked up the steps in the too-small slippers he’d borrowed from Rick.
    “Daddy!” Eden squealed as she opened the door and jumped into his arms. “I was so worried about you!”
    Still on the front porch, David wrapped his arms around Eden and buried his nose in his daughter’s silky black, apple-scented hair. Would Lydia smell Angel, even beneath the earthy funk of the weed smoke he was drenched in? He needed to clean up before they talked. The last time he took off she’d seen the telling purple bruise on his neck when he returned. She knew right away what he’d done. Even though the doctors told her his impulsiveness might spill over into sexual behaviors, she hadn’t believed them. David hadn’t believed them either. Not until he was naked in a bathroom with Cerina, the manager of Wild Orchid, a gallery that had bought a few of his paintings. He threw up after the first time it happened. And yet later, he went back for more.
    “I’m sorry, Bug,” he said to his daughter. “I’m so, so sorry.”
    Eden rubbed her father’s back and squeezed him tighter before sliding back down to the floor and looking up to his face with her almost violently blue eyes. “It’s okay,” she said. “We can always go another day.” She smiled bravely, a thin, false happy mask resting over the disappointment David sensed beneath it. His brave, loving girl. He wasn’t sure how he could have helped create something as perfect as she seemed to him. None of his paintings even came close to expressing her kind of beauty. It wasn’t something he could capture on a canvas. It was something he lived and breathed.
    “I’m going to shower,” he said. He blinked a few times upon fully entering the house. Rick never had more than a tableside lamp on in his house. Lydia loved her brightly lit chandelier. David felt as though he were a mole emerging from the damp, dark earth. A stranger in a strange land. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong anywhere.
    He took the stairs slowly, one at a time, feeling Eden’s eyes on him the entire way to the second floor. The door to their bedroom was open. Lydia was sure to be inside, lying on their bed, a cold cloth over her swollen eyes. She cried when he left, though she tried to hide it from him when he returned. Lydia was so strong. Too strong, maybe, for the likes of him.
    When he entered the room, he was surprised to see his wife sitting calmly on the edge of the bed. She eyed him. “Glad to see you’re alive. Your daughter was worried.”
    He dropped his chin to his chest and looked up at her from beneath his eyebrows with a questioning look. “And you? Were you worried?”
    “I don’t know,” she said flatly. “I don’t know what I am anymore.”
    “That makes two of us,” David said. He ran a nervous hand through his hair. It felt greasy. He didn’t want Lydia to know about Angel. He didn’t want to hurt her any more than he knew he already had. “I’m going to shower, okay? And then we can talk.”
    “I’d like to talk now.” Lydia shot him a cold stare with the same