by LJ Evans
Mia and Derek seemed to get a hold of themselves. “We’re sorry,” Derek said. “It’s just…been a week. I think laughter is the only way we can handle any more.”
“I’m sorry,” Ginny said, her smile dimming a little.
“I can’t believe all three of my children dropped out of school within a week. What did we do wrong?” Mia said, looking at Derek, her face now serious as the reality of what Ginny had said really settled in.
“I seem to remember someone just about Ginny’s age taking off on a road trip across the country with a complete stranger.” He said it softly, with love and emotion in his face, and I wasn’t sure if it meant that Mia had done the same to be with him, but I kind of suspected it did.
Mia proved my hunch to be true when she said, “You weren’t a stranger. Blake knew you.”
“Barely,” Cam snorted.
“Mayson and Grace know Cole,” Derek said, looking toward Ginny’s and my cousins.
Silence settled down over us, and I saw waves of emotions cross Mia’s face. A mother with all her baby birds flying from their nest. The moment must have been bittersweet.
“Will you be gone the entire semester?” Mia asked, choking a little over the words.
Ginny looked at me, and we both shrugged at the same time. “Not sure.”
“We have a concert in Paris on Valentine’s Day,” Derek said. “Maybe you could join us there?”
There wasn’t a reason we couldn’t plan to be in Paris, supposedly the most romantic city in the world, on Valentine’s Day. I could have thought of a lot worse places to end up. Ginny and I nodded.
“And you’ll go back to school in the fall?” Mia looked worried.
Ginny nodded. “I still want to graduate.”
Mia pulled Ginny into a fierce hug, saying quietly but so I still heard, “Just tell me you’ll eventually come back.”
Ginny nodded, and I swore to myself we’d do our best to meet that request, but I also had a suspicion the longer I was with Ginny, the more I wouldn’t want to lose her. That I was going to want our lives melded together completely. I wasn’t sure Tennessee was going to be where that life existed, but I also knew we didn’t have to make that decision right at that moment. We had years before we had to decide on a place to settle down.
For now, we would be together, marking items off her list. Maybe I could add a few new ones to it because I was damn sure there were some unpredictable and heart-pounding ones she hadn’t had there.
Derek wrapped his arms around Ginny and her mom, squeezing them tight and kissing the top of Ginny’s head. “I’m proud of you. I never thought you’d break out enough to chase after the things you wanted.” As he let them go, he turned to eye me. “Have you traveled before?”
Code for: Can you keep my daughter safe? I nodded. “A lot, actually.”
Which wasn’t a lie. Even before I’d traveled to Ireland on my own, my parents and I had traveled all over the place. I was pretty handy at figuring things out.
“I’m assuming, with the deal you made with my brother, you won’t be falling off the planet anytime soon?” he asked, pressing. I could see his worry even after he’d said he was proud of Ginny, and even after saying I wasn’t a stranger, there was still the “Dad” part of him that wasn’t going to just trust me without proving myself.
“We’ll be in regular communication with everyone, I promise.”
Then, one of the cousins called Ginny to the dance floor, and she dragged me with her. Me, all bumbling feet, and Ginny, all grace and finesse from her salsa classes that spread into every move she made. We danced and flirted and kissed as the minutes ticked away to a brand-new year.
After the party was disrupted by birthday songs and more surprises, and as the hands on the clock neared midnight, I grabbed two glasses of champagne and followed Ginny out onto the landing. She was watching fireworks that were going off at the town square. The burst of color and sound were just like her. The way she’d burst into my world, surprising the hell out of me and bewitching me with her scent and her smile and her multi-colored eyes.
“To being unpredictable,” I said, as I held a glass of champagne out to her.
“To being alive,” she said, glass tinkling with mine, but then she was pushing her body up against me, and wrapping her arms around my neck, and placing her lips against mine. Lips that tasted like maple and champagne and my future. I’d come to Tennessee to make sure my cousin found her heart again, and somehow, I’d found mine as well. I hadn’t known I’d lost it. I hadn’t known it was missing.
I promised I’d never let it go again. I’d never let her go.
Europe was only the beginning.
Cover Images: © Deposit Photos | SolominViktor and iStock | Antonel
Edie Brennan and Garrett Drummond
THE SECOND HALF
And finally, we get back to the very beginning. To Edie and Garrett, and the little life they formed out of love, and how it all came back together.
Still confused? Check out the “My Life as an Album Series Who’s Who.”
Edie
PLEASE COME HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
“Please come home for Christmas
If not for Christmas by New Year's night.”
Performed by Kelly Clarkson
Written by Brown / Redd
The baby let out a tiny, little cry. It was so small and so weak it was almost unreal. It was the same cry she’d done since she’d burst into life earlier than planned. I was instantly at her side, pulling her from the beautiful bassinet Aunt Cam had given me once she’d found out I had very few things at my parents’. The majority of the baby’s things were back in the extra room in the townhouse in Knoxville.
The room in Knoxville wasn’t even a nursery yet. We’d just thrown all the baby items we’d gotten from the baby shower into the extra room, the one we’d used for guests. The plan had been to put it all together once we both got back after New Year’s.
I held my baby girl to my chest as waves of emotions filled me. Joy. Adoration. Anguish. He was missing this.
“Shh, shh. What is it now, sweetheart?” I said, trying my best to not tie her to the name that was scrolling through my brain. I was trying to wait for Garrett before I named her for real. Just thinking of Garrett brought tears to my eyes.
I focused through the damp lashes to her, staring at her precious pink face, beautiful dark lashes, and fingers so small they seemed impossible, and my chest tried to explode with the impossibility of the love that filled it. She was perfect. The hours of labor seemed inconsequential now. Holding her made it all fade away into nothing.
She had Garrett’s nose. My heart seized up before it banged back to life. Mom didn’t agree. She said baby noses were just…babyish, but all I could see when I looked at it was him. We’d made this little creature together, and now she was showing us just how much she belonged to us.
She mewed again. Another thing Mom said would change. That she’d get louder as she found her voice, but for now, it was so tiny it worried me. Just like it worried me that I didn’t know what she wanted. I had a feeling she was simply unsettled.
Like me, my frayed nerves and Titanic-sized waves of emotions bleeding into her. It had been the same when she’d been inside me. If I was wound up, she’d been wound up, flipping around in my womb. It was the reason she wasn’t nursing well. I was too uptight.
I sat down on the chair in my childhood room, opened the front of the robe I was wearing, and tried to get her to latch on again. She did, sucked half-heartedly, and then fussed again.
“I wish I knew what you wanted, Little One,” I said before singing a soft lullaby as I rocked her gently. I rechecked her diaper, adjusted the swaddled blanket into a tighter position, and then just walked with her into the bathroom where I’d been getting ready for the party.
I wasn’t sure I felt like going. I was exhausted and still hurting. Some of the pain was from the long delivery, but it was mos
tly my heart and soul that were battered. Garrett had missed our baby’s birth. We’d both been stupid. We’d both lamely expected the baby to show up on her due date, as if we could schedule her like we’d scheduled the rest of our lives.
I pulled out my phone from the pocket of my robe, glancing down at it, hoping for a missed call. A missed text. There was none. I’d talked to Garrett once at the hospital, before I’d actually delivered our girl, and then not again. When I’d gotten a hold of him, it had been through his secretary, who’d called his grandmother, Margery, who’d gotten hold of him on some island where he was inspecting a distillery they were trying to buy.
The service had been spotty. When I told him I was at the hospital, that the baby was coming, I thought I’d lost him because he was quiet for so long.
Then he’d let out an agonized, “But it isn’t due for another week.”
I’d been hit with a contraction that had me breathing hard, and I dropped the phone. Mom had picked it up and finished the conversation. When she hung up, she said, “He’s coming, Edie. He’s on his way.”
But we both knew it was too late.
By the time he got back to an airport, bought a ticket, and flew across the Atlantic, we’d already have a baby.
Still, I’d expected him to be here by now. Days ago.
When I called after the delivery, his phone and his secretary’s phone had both gone straight to voicemail. Margery’s phone did the same thing. I was at a loss. I almost called the distillery but caught myself. If he wanted to know about me and the baby, he knew where we were. He knew…
That was when I’d lost it at the hospital. It was how I lost it now. The thought of him knowing I’d had the baby and still not calling back. Mom had found me in the hospital that way, silently crying into the blanket surrounding our darling little baby. She’d sat down on the bed with me, wrapped me in arms that had been holding me for as long as I could remember, and asked the thing I’d been dreading.
“What’s going on with you and Garrett?”
“I think it’s over. I think I’ve lost him for good.” It was said between more tears, my voice hoarse and ragged.
“He loves you, Edie. I see it every time he looks at you. Whatever this is, remember that. Anything can be made better if love is there.”
“The day he left… I said… We both said such awful things.”
“We often take our stress out on those we love most,” Mom replied, smoothing my hair, kissing my temple.
“I told him if he left, to not come back,” I sobbed, and Mom’s hands had stilled before she moved her hands to my back, rubbing in a circular motion I remembered from being sick or upset when I was little.
“You didn’t mean it,” she said.
“But what if he thought I did?” I asked, looking into her wise face. The person who’d loved me the most after Dad. The person who had loved me more than my real mother.
Now, I had a baby of my own who I was going to have to raise without her dad, all because I’d told him it was over.
“I’m sure he knew you were angry. Have you spoken about it at all?”
I thought of all his messages I hadn’t returned. How I’d ghosted him. How I’d let my anger and hurt keep me from answering his call.
I shook my head.
“Keep calling. You never know why he hasn’t called back now. I’m sure he’s trying to get here. The snowstorm has shut everything down. The whole East Coast is on hold while it passes over.”
I knew she was right. I did, but I couldn’t help wonder if he’d finally just given up.
His own words about feeling trapped in Tennessee and the insinuation that I’d gotten pregnant on purpose had been more than I could handle. I’d flung back at him that I’d never asked him to move to the U.S. He’d done that of his own volition.
A knock on my bedroom door was followed by Mom’s voice asking to come in, and when I answered, she joined me at the open bathroom door. She looked gorgeous in a black cocktail dress. It wasn’t new. I’d seen her in it before, but Mom had kept her figure and her grace as she’d aged. Fifty didn’t look old on her.
“You look beautiful, Mom,” I told her.
She smiled and put a hand on the baby’s face, running a finger along her soft cheek.
“I figured you’d still be trying to get ready. Let me take our little one while you finish up.”
I hesitated like I had every single time someone had offered to take her from me since delivering her. It was stupid. The feeling that if I let her go, I’d lose her, too. As if I could fill the missing chunk of my heart with her instead of her father.
I kissed her cheek and handed her to Mom, who was instantly cooing and swaying with her, taking her from the room. My heart stopped as the door shut. It was ridiculous. She wasn’t going anywhere. She was in the next room, for heaven’s sake.
I picked up my phone and told it to call Garrett. It went directly to his voicemail once more. Instead of him filling up my message box, we were now reversed. I was filling up his. I feared I was too late.
“Garrett… I just… I know I’ve made a mess of things. I know you said I’d chosen my family over you, just like I’d said you’d chosen yours over me. But I want you to know I haven’t. You. Our baby. The two of you are the only things that really matter. Everything else can be figured out. I just… I love you.”
I hung up. It was basically the same thing I’d said for two days now. Eventually, I’d have to face the fact. The things we loved most about each other were also the things that made us impossible.
♫ ♫ ♫
I swayed at the back of the room, trying to soothe our sweet little one. The noise was too much for her brand-new ears. I wasn’t going to be able to stay much longer. I really wasn’t needed. We’d surprised the parents as they’d come in, thinking we were just having a private family dinner. Mom had cried. Dad had fought back the tears with a goofy grin. Uncle Derek and the other members of the band had clapped each other on the back with smiles. Aunt Cam had been speechless, which was a rare thing.
The dinner had been as perfect as catered, buffet food could have been.
All that was left was to say a few words, cut the cake, and let everyone resume their dancing and partying as the clock rolled on toward midnight. I definitely didn’t want to be here then. Not only because I was sure the baby would be miserable, but also because the thought of starting a new year without Garrett at my side was enough to swallow my stomach into a black hole.
As I moved slowly, rhythmically to the time of the music, I watched my beautiful family and friends, the crowd large but full of laughter, warmth, and happiness. I was blessed to have them. There were so many families out there who weren’t like this. Families who pushed at you. Families who held you back. Families who made you feel less.
This huge, happy family had never been that way.
All you had to do was look at the past week and realize we were unusual. So many truths and secrets had come tumbling out. So many endings as well as new beginnings. I was slightly envious of my brother and my cousins who had stood up for their dreams and their relationships. Khi and Stephen taking on a baby they hadn’t planned along with marriage and graduation. Ty leaving school to enter the draft and his girlfriend, Maleena, standing by him. Eliza eloping with Brett and moving thousands of miles away just to be with him. Mayson getting a movie deal and starting a production company with the woman he loved and her cousin. Even quiet, predictable Ginny had taken a radical step, announcing she was taking a semester off to travel Europe with Cole. She was still glowing. Happier than I’d ever seen her.
They’d all been brave. They’d all faced their fears with courage, and our family had rolled with every single punch it had been dealt. Our family had celebrated with them, because it meant that each of them got to live their dreams. Even if this new chapter ended with a closed door or heartache, it would still be a chapter they’d given their all to. They worke
d hard, lived every moment, and loved every breath.
I couldn’t say the same for me or Garrett. I’d refused to sacrifice for him. I’d blamed it on my family, saying I couldn’t leave them. But the truth was clear: I’d been afraid. Afraid that if I left, they’d somehow forget me, my wounds from my childhood coming back to slap me in my face. Mom and Dad had never left me. Not the way my biological mom, Lita, had. They would be sad to have me an ocean away in Scotland, but they wouldn’t let me be there alone. They would call and text and video chat. They would visit; I would visit. Moving would be a beginning, not an ending.
I hoped with all my heart I’d be able to tell Garrett all that eventually.
Dalton twirled in my direction with his best friend, Reese, wrapped in his arms. I smiled at the cozy picture they made. Happy to see them finally together as more than friends. Happy to see the love they’d always shined at each other finally being realized for what it was. But the glow of their love was also hard to look at when mine was so shadowed.
As they continued to twirl, both of them laughing, they almost ran into me and my little one, but Dalton shifted at the last moment.
“Sorry, Eds. We got carried away there for a moment,” Dalton said.
“You got carried away,” Reese said with a smirk.
“Can’t help it. You make me wild.”
Reese laughed.
Because Reese lived at Uncle Blake’s ranch, managing the horses, it was rare to see her in anything but jeans or riding gear. Tonight, she was wearing a silver sequined dress that showed off her lean curves and muscles. As if in defiance of the dress, she’d partnered it with a pair of bright, robin’s-egg-colored cowboy boots. It was funky and beautiful all at the same time. It was so Reese.
When she’d first taken over the job after her father had died of a heart attack, some folks had wondered if someone so young would be able to handle it, but she’d done a fabulous job. I’d originally thought the bruise she was sporting on her cheek under layers of makeup was from one of the horses, until I’d heard whispered talk about Reese’s ex-boyfriend among my male cousins. They’d handled it. In the over-the-top, protective way they’d always looked after all of us.