Only tears and hugs. And of course, the minute I laid eyes on him, reading the complete and utter brokenness on his face, my tears came fast and hard. I tried to stem them long enough to wrap my arms around him, but it was no use.
We spent most of our time at Molly’s parents’, helping out in whatever way we could to get ready for the service and reception tomorrow. I helped Aunt Jax, Addie, and my mom with preparing food. Aunt Sadie and Mia, with the help of their husbands, got it all to the church where the reception would be held.
I was exhausted, emotionally and physically, by the time we all returned to our hotel rooms. I collapsed onto the bed and was nearly asleep before Jason managed to turn out the lights.
Morning came too soon, but it would have been too soon no matter what. A day, a week, didn’t matter. Funerals sucked. Our hotel room was quiet as we both readied for the service. I attempted to do my makeup, but gave up when my eyes wouldn’t quit watering enough to do more than swipe on mascara. I guess I’d just have to own the red-rimmed, blotchy look.
When it was time to go, I pulled my black wool coat on over my long-sleeved dress and stuffed a bunch of the hotel tissues into the pocket. Stepping into my black oxfords, I waited for Jason to finish righting his tie and grab his jacket.
We met the others in the lobby and grouped off to fill the rental cars. It was grey and dismal when we stepped outside. I eyed the clouds in the sky and silently sent up a prayer that the rain would hold off until after the service. Jason and I rode with my parents and brother to the cemetery. I sat sandwiched between them in the back of the car. I held Jason’s hand tightly and rested my head on Colton’s shoulder. He laid his head against mine and we stayed that way the entire car ride, which only lasted a few minutes. Newport wasn’t a large town.
All too quickly we were piling out of the car and joining everyone else at the gravesite. I remained between Jason and Colton through it all. It was the most heart-wrenching funeral I’d ever sat through, and when the pastor spoke of baby Amelia, the dam that had been holding back the worst of my cries broke. There were large, blown-up pictures of Molly and Amelia individually and with Jaime as a family, on easels amongst all the flowers and wreaths. All I could do was stare at Amelia’s big eyes and cry my own out. My body shook so bad that Colton grabbed me and pulled me into his arms and held me tight. If he hadn’t, I would have crumbled to the ground. My brother held me through the rest of the service, and it was a good thing too. Molly’s parents got up to speak and broke down part way through. I lost it even more. The entire gravesite was filled with the sounds of grief.
Jaime had long since sunk to his knees in the damp grass, his head hung low as his body shook. His mom and sister knelt beside him, their bodies half laid over the top of his as they held him and tried to comfort him through their own pain and cries. Unable to bear everyone else’s grief on top of my own, I buried my head in Colton’s jacket and waited until it was over.
When at last it was, I pried myself loose of Colton’s arms and pulled tissues from my pocket to wipe at my eyes and nose. The crowd began to disperse, and I saw Addie tucked into Abel’s arms, her body wracked with sobs as he held her much the same way Colton had held me through the worst of mine. I looked up at Jason’s face through bleary eyes. “I’ll meet you guys back at the car.”
I walked on shaky legs over to them. Abel met my eyes as I approached. There was so much pain in his. I wouldn’t have thought my own could get any worse, but something about seeing him look so desolate increased mine exponentially. I swallowed and blinked rapidly. I laid my hand on Addie’s back. She picked her head up and looked at me. I held my arms out to her and she moved to mine.
“It’s not fair,” she cried hoarsely into my neck. “Molly and Amelia didn’t deserve this. Jaime didn’t deserve this.”
“No, they didn’t,” I said roughly, fighting against the urge to fall apart again.
Abel laid his hand on Addie’s back and gently said, “I’m going to help load up some of the flowers and stuff to take to the reception hall.”
I nodded. I had Addie and she had me. Abel walked away, and Addie and I stayed right where we were, as slowly the cemetery emptied. Addie shook in my arms and I knew it was more than grief. Her arms were icy in her sleeveless dress, and goosebumps covered her skin. I shrugged out of my jacket and urged her to put it on.
“It’s okay,” she sniffed. “You need it.”
I ignored her and draped it over her shoulders. “I have long sleeves. You don’t.” She didn’t fight me and worked her arms into the coat, pulling it tight around her.
Jesse walked over and dragged her into his protective embrace. “It’s okay, I got her.” She laid her head on his chest, a few more tears were squeezed from her eyes.
My beautiful friend had such a sensitive soul. She’d struggled all her life, trying not to feel things as deeply as she did, believing there was something wrong with her. It was no use though. There was nothing wrong with her, she just felt things on a different level than most, but it made her the most compassionate, caring person I knew, despite how hard she tried to hide it or appear tough. And make no mistake, she was tough, just not in the unfeeling way I knew she sometimes wished she could be.
Leaving Jesse to take care of her and get her to a car, I sauntered ahead of them toward the exit with the last of the other stragglers. Aunt Jax put her arm around my shoulder when I sidled up next to her, and we walked out together. I broke away when we reached the parking lot, and walked over to the car where Jason was waiting with my family.
Nobody spoke on the short drive to the church.
Unlike other memorials and funeral receptions I’d been to, this one wasn’t any easier or lighter than the funeral service itself. Usually some of the heaviness would lift as reminiscing began and stories and memories were shared. It was too hard to look back on Molly’s life and see anything but this tragedy. She herself was so young, but Amelia, she hadn’t even gotten to live. Her first birthday was only last week. How could you laugh or smile or think of anything except for how tragic and awful it was that she wouldn’t see her second?
Molly wouldn’t see twenty-five, and Jaime was left to go on without them both.
I filled a plate with food, not even sure why, except that it seemed to be what everyone was doing. I had no appetite, but I forced myself to pick at the different salads and casseroles, sitting around the table with my family. Jason was on one side, Addie on my other. Abel, Jesse, and Colton also sat with us. The rest of our families were spread out amongst the little round tables all around us in the church’s reception hall.
“Agh,” Addie sniffed, “My nose won’t quit running.”
“There are some tissues in my jacket pocket,” I told her. I thought nothing of her reaching into the pockets, until she pulled her hand out of the wrong one, clutching something other than tissues.
“What is this?” she asked hoarsely, holding the ring up.
I cursed silently and snatched it from her fingers, but everyone at the table had already seen it.
“Holy crap,” I heard my brother mutter.
“Is that . . . an engagement ring?” Addie asked, wide eyed and bewildered.
I nodded jerkily. “Please don’t make a big deal of this right now. We weren’t planning on telling anyone until we got through this and back home.”
Addie bobbed her head up and down, looking a bit dazed. “Yeah, okay,” she whispered.
I quickly met Jesse’s and then Colton’s eyes pleadingly, “Please, can you guys keep this to yourselves until we’re back home?”
They both agreed, albeit somewhat uncomfortably, and only then did I dare to look at Abel. There was no mistaking the raw pain I saw when our gazes collided, and my heart squeezed painfully, but he quickly shuttered it and cleared his throat. “Won’t say a word.”
Seventeen
Abel
Just when you think you know how much a human heart can take, when you think it can’t possibly hurt
any more, that you’ve reached the capacity for pain, you find out you’re wrong. It can always hurt more. It can always get worse.
And when I saw that ring I realized just how much.
I’d say it felt a lot like having my heart ripped brutally from my chest, but that would be preferable to what I felt. That would be a mercy. Having my heart yanked out would hurt far less than it remaining inside my chest cavity.
No, what I felt was more like a hand punching a hole in my chest, grabbing hold of the small beating organ and squeezing it. It felt like dying slowly but knowing that you’d never actually be put out of your misery.
Five days later, and it hadn’t lessened even a fraction. I’d never known a devastation like this. I was Destroyed? Decimated? Demolished? My brain wouldn’t stop. Words were everything and the pen in my hand scribbled every word my brain could spit out trying to find the right one to describe this, but sometimes you could exhaust the entire English language and never quite find the right one. Sometimes words were lacking. Sometimes what you felt on the inside couldn’t be expressed or conveyed by simple words on a page. So you had to set them to music, scream them, cry them out, break stuff, paint them on a canvas, shoot them in a photograph, anything to release them, to make someone else, even if it was just one someone else, understand.
I wrote, and I scratched it out, tore pages from the binding, drank some whiskey, and I wrote some more, but nothing was adequate. Everything I tried to write felt as hollow as I did.
Is this what it was to lose the last shred of hope you held onto?
The ring on her finger was the final confirmation.
I wasn’t getting her back. Not now. Not ever.
“Dude,” the abused notebook was ripped from my hands and the pen went flying.
“What the hell!” I shouted at Jesse. He stood over me, eyeing me laid out on his couch like I was the most pathetic thing he’d seen.
“Get off the couch. You’ve been there for three days and I’m going to have to throw it out if you don’t find your way to a shower.”
“Fuck off,” I growled.
“No.” He tossed the notebook to the coffee table, then grabbed my legs and swung them off the couch, forcing me to sit up. He dropped down beside me. Nash came around the couch next and lowered himself onto the coffee table. “I think this is what they call an intervention, bro.”
“Intervention? For what?”
“This pathetic, self-pitying thing. You’ve been in that same spot pretty much since we got back from Oregon.”
“Sorry,” I gritted. “Katya isn’t out of my place yet.”
“It’s not about you crashing here,” Jesse said. “But I can’t take any more of the moping and writing sad songs.”
I scowled.
“He’s right. It’s depressing as shit, man.”
“Fine,” I said tightly. “I’ll just get a hotel room and get out of your hair.” I stood, and they stood with me.
“We’re not kicking you out,” Jesse said.
“Well, we kinda are,” Nash countered.
“But not so you can go drown in your sorrows in a hotel room.”
“This isn’t you, man. It’s like you’ve given up,” Nash’s face wrinkled like it left a bitter taste in his mouth.
I let out a derisive laugh. “I think that when the girl you love gets engaged to another man, it’s the appropriate time to give up.”
“No way,” Nash said. “Haven’t you seen any romantic movie ever? You don’t give up until she says I do, even if it means riding a horse into the middle of the ceremony.”
“He’s right.” Jesse cocked his brow. “And you know it. You need to get your ass back to Boston and tell Abbi not to marry him.”
“I am going to go back to Boston. On Saturday. For the engagement party.”
“Fuuuuck that,” Nash dragged out. “You need to go now. Break that shit up so there is no engagement party.”
“I can’t do that.”
Nash folded his massive arms across his bulky chest. “Why the hell not? You love her.”
“Exactly. Which is why I’m not going to do shit. For once in my damn life I’m not going to be selfish with her. All I want, all I have ever wanted is for her to be happy. I was arrogant enough to believe it was always going to be me that made her happy, but it’s time I accept that’s not the case. She’s happier with him. She chose him. She wants to marry him. So I’m going to go to that engagement party, tell her congratulations and that I’m happy for her, and I’m going to try my damnedest to mean it, or at the very least pretend my ass off.”
“Noo!” an angry cry sounded from the doorway of the apartment. I spun around, oblivious to when my sister had joined us. She was always popping up when I least wanted her to. She shoved the front door closed and shot a glare at Jesse. “Why did you start without me?”
He shrugged. “You were late, and he looked like he was about to start crying on my couch. I couldn’t take another second of it.”
“Dick,” I muttered under my breath. He ignored me, and Addie came stomping over, tossing her purse down on the counter, and gave me a pleading look.
“You can’t give up.”
“You’re wrong. I think it’s time I finally did. I need to let her go and stop standing in her way.”
“AGH!!!” she let out the most frustrated groan-growl-scream I’d ever heard. “This isn’t right. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. When you love someone the way you do, you don’t ever let go. Not. Ever.”
“Addie, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I really do, but it’s because of how much I love her that I have to stop doing this to both of us. If I keep fighting this, it’s only going to hurt us both more.”
Addie’s face fell. “But you two are meant to be.”
“Or maybe we had our time,” I said softly. Every molecule of my being revolted against the veracity of it, but maybe it was true nonetheless.
“I don’t believe that,” she said weakly. “And you shouldn’t either.”
“Add, I have to.”
“No!” An indignant flush reddened her cheeks. “Abbi has loved you her entire life. She’s known this guy a year!” She threw her hands up. “I don’t care how great he is or how in love with him she thinks she is. He’s not you. He’s never going to be you. Abbi’s only fooling herself, and if you let her do this, you will both regret it. I know her just like I know you, and I can see what you’re both doing, so why can’t the two of you?”
“Hey, It’s going to be okay.” I didn’t feel like it, but I couldn’t bear to put my pain onto my sister.
“No, it’s not,” her voice cracked. “It’s not, because Abbi is it for you. We all know it, and if you let her marry someone else, then I’m afraid you’re never going to be happy, and I can’t let that happen.” She shook her head hysterically. “I can’t. None of us can.”
“I’m sorry, sis, but this just isn’t about what you want or what I want. It’s about what Abbi wants.”
“Have you even asked her what she wants?” she cried out exasperatedly.
“No, but I’m pretty sure he did, and I’m pretty sure she said yes. That’s how it works.”
Her face scrunched up in a frown.
“Dude, that’s noble and all, but it’s also bullshit,” Jesse finally spoke again.
“Yes, screw being noble,” Addie said.
“Just stop,” I told them all. “Abbi’s marrying her guy. It’s not me, and we all just have to accept that. If I can, then you all sure as hell can.”
“Whatever,” Jesse grunted.
“We tried,” Nash let out a resigned breath.
Addie said nothing, she just held my stare for several moments, and then with an aggravated huff, she spun around and headed for the door, snagging her purse on the way. “I hope you come to your senses before it’s too late,” she tossed backward.
“It’s already too late,” I muttered after her.
She stopped with her hand on the doo
rknob and glanced over her shoulder at me. “It’s not too late until she says I do.”
She left the apartment, and the other two left the room.
I sighed and dropped back onto the couch. Something poked me in the ass. I lifted and reached under me and pulled out the pen. I tossed it onto the table next to the notebook, but the notebook was gone. One of those jackasses must have confiscated it. Assholes.
I sat back and tipped my head back.
Some intervention.
Jesse was right about one thing. I did need a damn shower.
And to do laundry. I was running out of clean clothes without going to my place. I think I was wearing Nash’s sweatpants.
Kat had called a few times, but I just didn’t have it in me to talk to her. Right now, I wasn’t sure what I’d say to her. She’d given up and texted that she’d be out of the penthouse by this weekend, which meant my place would be mine again when I came back from Boston. I could take a week, or a month, and just recover from the last two weeks. Wasn’t like I had a tour.
That was out, and the label was giving me a little time to decide what came next. The question on their minds was whether or not I was done with music altogether. They’d made it clear there was wiggle room for negotiation if I planned to continue releasing music as a solo artist or with a new band. If not, well then, I was probably getting sued.
Problem was, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted anymore. I’d only ever been sure of two things. Abbigail Cross and my music. The latter had cost me the former. In a way. And I didn’t know how I was ever getting past that.
The only music I had in me right now was depressing shit. A notebook full of it, because that’s all I could do to keep from going crazy. Nash or Jesse took it because they didn’t understand that. They didn’t get it. They thought I was moping, and maybe I was, but this was the only way I knew how to process.
Finding Abel (Rebel Hearts Book 1) Page 17