by Tessa Teevan
With those words, he tore his gaze from mine. His head bowed and rested in my lap. When he looked back up, his eyes were shimmering with unshed tears. For him. For me. I wasn’t sure, but I knew I was about to find out. “I understand that. I swear, my intention wasn’t to keep anything about me from you.”
I frowned.
He used the pad of his thumb to trace my lower lip before standing up and holding his hand out. “Do you trust me?”
Even with as confused and as hurt as I was, I gave him the truth. Placing my hand in his, I met his gaze. “More than anyone in this world.”
Tucker led me back through the woods, and when we reached my parents’ back deck, I could see them both watching us through the window. We walked in silence up the stairs and into the house, where my mom opened the door for us. Both of my parents were waiting for us, and my father was staring at the floor.
As I was about to address him, Tucker stopped me inside the kitchen. “Just remember, I love you. And, moving forward, I will never, ever keep anything from you. No matter who asks me to.” Then he gave my father a sharp glare.
Though his cryptic words were confusing, dread set in.
“Jeremy, it’s time we told her everything.”
My mom placed an arm around my shoulder, taking me from Tucker’s side and leading me to the living room. Once I was settled on the couch, nerves twinged in my belly. The mood in the room was somber, and I had no idea what was happening.
Finally, after pacing across the carpet for several moments, Dad let out a long, drawn-out breath as his sad eyes met mine. “Ava, Tucker wasn’t the one with cancer. It was me.”
And then, unceremoniously, I fainted.
When I came to, I was flat on my back on the couch. Mom was hovering over me and waving smelling salts under my nose. I pushed her hand away and gingerly sat up. Tucker was sitting in a chair, his forearms resting on his thighs as he watched me. He had the decency to look ashamed.
Mom stroked sweaty hair off my forehead. “Ava, honey, are you okay?”
“Of course I’m not okay. But how can you even think to ask about me when you just told me Dad has cancer?”
“Had, Ava,” Tucker chimed in, but he quickly shut his mouth when I glared at him.
This was all so much to take in. I’d been so worried, thinking it was Tucker, but it was actually my dad? I didn’t know if I was relieved, terrified, or a crazy combination of the two. In a perfect world, it’d be neither of them. These were the two most important men in my life, whom I loved in entirely different ways, but I would be devastated equally if I lost either of them.
Mom grabbed my hand. I allowed the contact.
“Everything’s fine. Your father is fine. That’s why we didn’t tell you. I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”
“I haven’t found out anything! Someone please just tell me what’s going on!”
My parents exchanged looks before my dad cleared his throat.
“A couple of years ago, I had a bit of a scare. It’s a rather unexciting story, but your mom isn’t the only one in the family with a flair for the dramatics. Before we even knew if the cells were cancerous, I had my will drawn up and asked Tucker to hold on to it for safekeeping. The last thing I wanted was one of the boys to find it and freak out.”
Realization dawned on me. “When you were supposed to visit for Thanksgiving and you ended up with the flu?”
Dad nodded. The trip had been planned for months, and I had been thrilled about seeing my family again. At the last minute, Mom had called me to let me know Dad was under the weather and they couldn’t make it, and she had decided to stay home with him. My parents had transferred their plane tickets to my grandparents, who’d thought it would be fun to visit California and get away from the Ohio winter for a couple of weeks. I had been disappointed—I’d been a daddy’s girl all my life—but I hadn’t given it a second thought. We’d caught up in Tennessee nearly a month later for Christmas, and he’d seemed like his usual, boisterous, life-of-the-party self.
For the next few minutes, I was at the receiving end of information overload. I barely kept my composure as they explained that Dad had been diagnosed with an insulinoma, a stage-one pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor that was causing him to pass out from low blood sugar. Shivers ran down my spine as he described the original diagnosis and the fear he’d had at the time. Fear, he didn’t want to pass on to me. Each and every time his voice cracked, I understand more and more. Dad was the rock of our family. He always had been, and it wasn’t easy for him to suddenly be thrown into the unknown. I squeezed my mom’s hand, hating that she’d experienced this. That they both had.
She squeezed back, her eyes watery when Dad explained that they’d been fortunate to catch it early and before it had spread to any other part of his body. It was all so technical, the medical jargon going completely over my head. He had been recovering from a successful removal surgery—something they called a Whipple procedure—the week they’d been supposed to visit.
Mom had wanted to be there for the surgery and the subsequent ten days Dad had to spend in the hospital recovering. I couldn’t blame her one bit. Tucker, Aunt Lexi, and Uncle Jace took turns sitting with Mom, bringing her coffee and meals and forcing her to get rest. It was a win-win all around because they kept it quiet from the boys and me. My Aunt Jenna and Uncle Chris had also flown in from where they lived in Washington to be by his side. By the time my brothers returned home, Dad was up and out of bed. He wasn’t quite light on his feet, but he blamed it on a hockey injury. The boys weren’t old enough to question it.
Thinking back, I remembered noticing he’d lost weight, but Mom had chalked it up to his recent bout with the flu and his inability to keep anything down. The real truth was that it was a side effect from the surgery.
“That was three years ago, Ava. They got all the tumor during the operation. I haven’t been sick a day since. Every year, I undergo physicals, blood work, and CT scans to ensure I’m still in the clear. And Tucker… Well, I couldn’t have gotten through it without him.”
Tears welled in my eyes as the two of them exchanged expressions of mutual appreciation. It was a lot to take in, yet relief swelled because no one, not Tucker or my dad, was sick.
“Ava, please don’t be upset with Tucker. I asked him not to tell you,” Dad insisted.
Part of me wavered. The other part knew, after what he’d been through with his own parents, he should’ve told me regardless if we were speaking or not. My phone number never changed. My e-mail address was still the same. A simple text would’ve sufficed, but instead, he’d gotten to play Florence Nightingale when it should have been me.
My jaw clenched before I responded. “He betrayed my trust by not telling me.”
My dad gave me a firm stare. “Would you have rather him betray mine?”
He had a point, not that I’d let him know I thought so.
I pointed my finger at him. “What about you? How could you keep this from me?” I turned to Mom. “Or you?”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. We never should have hidden this from you. We were just trying to protect you,” Mom insisted.
I sighed. “And what about you, Mom? You’ve always been my support system. It’s a two-way street. I’m an adult now. I want to be that for you, too.”
Her mouth opened, but I held a hand up to stop her.
“I know I haven’t come home in years, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be here if you need me. Keeping me out of the loop only makes me feel guilty for not having been here. Just because I moved across the country doesn’t mean ‘out of sight, out of mind’ applies to me. You don’t have to tell me everything, but major surgery? With an extended stay in the hospital? I deserve to know. Can you understand that?”
My parents nodded in unison, but it was my dad who spoke.
“We were wrong, Ava. Can you forgive your dumb, dear old dad?” he asked.
I sniffed, but the way he fluttered his eyelashes had me giggling.
I rose from the couch and wrapped my arms around him tightly. “I forgive you. I love you, Dad.”
“And me?”
When I pulled away from my dad, Tucker had risen and was watching me intently.
“Can you forgive me as well?” he asked.
“Of all people, you should’ve known I deserved to know,” I told him. “But I understand. And yes, I forgive you.”
Tucker stood and gave my father a hard stare. “When I made you that promise, Ava was no longer in my life. Now, she is, and I love her. I will never keep anything from her in the future, so anything you tell me, she will also know.”
Dad nodded and even smiled a little. He rose and stretched his hand out for Tucker to shake. I watched as the two most important men in my life shook on an agreement. On the one hand, I understood why Tucker hadn’t told me. Dad was okay now and telling me wouldn’t have changed anything. I still couldn’t help feeling a little slighted that he’d kept it from me.
“You’re not sick?” I asked, suddenly terrified of becoming Abby in real life.
“Haven’t had so much as a cold in years.”
“You’re not hiding anything else? No more surprises?”
He crossed the room and knelt before me, taking me hand into his. “I promise you, Ava. There’s nothing else to hide. Your dad’s been fine, healthy for so long, I never even thought to bring it up to you. There was no reason to. I swear I wasn’t actively hiding it from you. It just never crossed my mind to bring up because it’s a closed book.”
“It’s okay, Tucker. I get. I promise, I really do. But if I found out you’re hiding anything else…” I leaned in close and looked deep into his eyes. “I’ll find Pacey and give him a dull knife.”
Instead of looking horrified, he grinned. “Yeah, she forgives me.” Then he risked the wrath of my father by leaning down and placing his lips on mine.
I’D NEARLY LOST MY SHIT when I’d walked in and seen what Ava had been reading. When Jeremy had sat me down and shocked me with the news of his tumor and upcoming surgery, the first thing I’d wanted to do was call Ava and apologize profusely while offering my own comfort. Jeremy, however, had put a stop to that when he’d informed me that he hadn’t told her.
While I hadn’t cared for the plan to keep it from Ava, I’d respected Jeremy and Sierra’s wishes. At least, I had up until the point Ava had appeared heartbroken at the thought of my having cancer. I’d completely forgotten that Jeremy had given me a copy of his will just in case, so I could be there for Sierra if the unthinkable happened. Fortunately, his surgery had been a success, and every year since, he’d gotten a clean bill of health. When Ava came back into my life, I didn’t even give it a second thought.
But when she looked at me with tear-filled eyes and thought I was the one with a life-threatening illness? I’d never felt lower. Never felt more heartbroken than witnessing the pain etched across her face.
It wasn’t until she joked about sending her brother after my junk that I knew she was okay. That we were going to be okay.
Thank goodness for it, too, because she was leaving in three short days, and the last thing I wanted was her not to trust me.
We said our goodbyes to her parents, and when I took her hand and led her from the house, she was still tense. Instead of going to my place, I led her to the tree house. Once we’d climbed up and hit play on the stereo, I encircled her waist and pulled her close to me. I whispered apology after apology as we swayed to the music. Her quiet sniffles hit my heart.
“I missed you so much when you were gone.” My hand rubbed the small of her back in slow, methodical circles. “Not a day went by that I wasn’t in this tree house, wishing you were here, replaying every memory we made that summer. You once mentioned I was the reason you stayed away,” I said.
She opened her mouth to protest, but I held my hand up.
“Let me finish. I was wrong. I was an asshole. I was hurt, but pushing you out of my life was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking of you every moment of every single day. The confliction between wanting to go after you and knowing I needed to be here nearly killed me.”
“Tucker, I know. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Oh, Ava. It matters. You have to know that it wasn’t easy to let you go. For months, I kept the house stocked with that ridiculous soap. My hands smelled like watermelon lemonade and I didn’t care when Tanner teased me about it. Because it made me feel close to you. Because, even if you weren’t here, I’d do everything in my power to keep your memory alive.”
“I missed you. I missed you so damn much I thought I’d go insane without you.”
I crossed the room and opened the trunk that had once held our favorite board games. Upon retrieving the package I’d placed there, I turned around and then handed it to her. “From the day you left up until the night you came back to me, I wrote to you. There are 1,867 letters in those journals. Some are short. Some are angry. Some are ten pages long, full of sappy poems and all the sweet nothings I’d wished I could have been whispering in your ear. I never went a day without wishing you were still with me.”
Her eyes were brimming with tears. “I…I don’t know what to say.”
I smiled. “You don’t have to say anything. This isn’t a wild romantic gesture to keep you with me. You’re already mine. It’s plain and simple. I just want you to read those and know you always have been. My heart was always with you. It always will be.”
She peered down at the unsent letters then pressed them to her heart. “I don’t need these to know those things, Tucker.” She grinned. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to enjoy reading every single detail. You’ve always been the one for me. You’re everything, you know that?”
I took a step towards her and brushed an errant lock of hair out of her face. “I was your first, Little Bird. I’m going to be your last. And you’re that for me, too.”
A small smile played on her lips. “Little Bird,” she repeated. Her eyes met mine. “So my dad… Is that why you killed Trevor off?”
I swallowed hard and toyed with the hem of her shirt. “Maybe… I don’t know.” I raked a hand through my hair. “I never actually intended on it. But, as much as I love a good happily-ever-after, the ending fit the story. It sent a message and taught me a lesson. It made even me realize time on this planet is limited. There wasn’t a second more I wanted to waste of it without you.”
“Good thing this isn’t our ending. It’s only the beginning,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “But you know you could’ve called me. I mean, I love the book. I loved playing Abigail… It’s just, this all could’ve happened a lot faster with a text.”
She had me there. Still, I cocked an eyebrow and grinned down at her. “Maybe…but it sure as hell wouldn’t have been as romantic.”
My leg was shaking restlessly beneath the Bankses’ dining room table. A hole was burning in my pocket, and I couldn’t wait to get Ava alone. That being said, I wasn’t ready for this dinner to be over, either. Because the quicker her last night in town went, the sooner she would be gone.
It was entertaining to watch every single member of her family pull out all the stops to remind her how great life was when she was home. Even Pacey was on his best behavior, not once threatening my male anatomy. He actually batted his eyes at his big sister and told her he’d leave my nuts alone forever if only she’d stick around.
Not gonna lie. That little bastard brought tears to my eyes.
“I don’t want you to go,” Eli chimed in softly, barely loud enough for his words to be heard.
That made two of us.
In fact, when I glanced around the table, I saw that we all felt that way. From the tears in Ava’s eyes, it was evident she was equally unenthused to leave. She reached across the table and grabbed Eli’s hand.
“It’s not forever, buddy. I promise.”
“That’s what you said last time.” Before anyone at the table could respond, he dropped
his fork and was out the room. A door slam echoed a few moments later.
Flynn threw his napkin down and pushed his chair back. “I’ll go talk to him.”
“Wait.” Ava’s voice stopped him. “Let me, okay?”
I rose and gave her quick kiss the cheek, glancing at Jeremy to make sure that wasn’t going against the rules. Luckily, he wasn’t even paying attention, as he was too distracted trying to get sugar from his own woman.
“Why don’t you spend some more time with your family and meet me at the tree house when you’re done.”
Her eyes found mine. “Are you sure?”
I nodded.
She rose onto her tiptoes and gave me a light kiss on the lips. Naturally, that got a throat clearing.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No problem, baby. I’ll see you soon.”
I left the house, hoping she could alleviate Eli’s worries and get some quality time with her family before she left us all.
I was done making my preparations well before Ava was finished with her family, so I decided to wait on the Bankses’ back deck. Jeremy joined me a short while later, handing me a glass of whiskey.
“Pacey’s reading her a bedtime story. As soon as he nods off, she’ll be out.”
I raised an eyebrow. “He’s reading her a bedtime story?”
“Oh yeah. That boy is so tired of being called a baby that he’s become entirely too independent. It’s like Sierra needs another baby around here…”
Whiskey shot out of my nose, no doubt burning all the hair inside.
“Are you suggesting I make you a grandpa?” I asked.
Jeremy’s widening smile answered my question. “Well, you know. First things first—you have to put a ring on it.”
“She’s leaving tomorrow.”
“And?”
I grinned. Leave it to Jeremy to put it all into perspective with one simple word.
“Tucker, it’s beautiful,” Ava gushed as I helped her climb into our special place.