Addie bit her lip and grinned. “Yeah, it’s a little bit surreal. First we’re headed to Geneva, where we’ll be for three to four months, and from there, it’s looking like either St. Kitts or possibly somewhere in the Dominican—”
“Wow. Yeah, the boys tell me how excited they are. It seems like they’re really looking forward to it.”
“Yeah. Partially, I think because Kelsey’s coming. They just love her. She’s the best nanny ever, I swear. But also because William is dead set on making it fun for them. Patrick seems to be doing okay with it all. And . . . I think that helps. Truthfully, if I felt that they weren’t on board with the whole thing, I wouldn’t be going. It’s pretty amazing how much life can change in a year, you know.”
Jessica smiled. “I do know. And Mr. H? How’s all that going?”
Addie hesitated before leaning in close and resting her chin in her hand. “It’s going—oh my God—beautifully. He’s just—I don’t know—everything I’ve ever wanted. It was rough after it all happened, you know. I mean I wasn’t sure whether I was making the right decision, starting a relationship with such a complicated man, especially because it’s all so different—being with him, I mean. But then while I was recovering, I realized that I made the best decision of my life, besides my children. These past few weeks have been incredibly hard and, still, somehow beautiful at the same time. He lost a real friend in Carl and he’s hurting. Plus, he’s dealing with his own recovery as well as mine too. Well, it’s just been a lot, but he really took care of me, and I let him. I guess I just gave into it. It’s crazy, but we’ve learned so much about each other in the past few weeks. And, fuck, the sex is amazing. I mean considering our injuries, both physically and emotionally, it’s been a little tricky but so beautiful. I mean it has always been amazing with him, but damn. There. Are. No. Words. For. It. He’s like a bad addiction, and I just can’t get enough.”
“Damn, girl, you’ve got it bad.” Jess winked. “I told you from the beginning that you were in so much trouble with that one.”
Addie beamed. “I know you did. And I am. But, you know, I think the key is to not completely lose myself the way I did in my marriage. It would be so easy to do it with him too. I just won’t let it happen though. He either loves me for me, or he doesn’t and that’s it. I’m not giving up what it is that I want any longer. And so far he seems to get that. I mean coming with me on this trip was all his idea. I thought he was crazy, but he really wanted it. He’s so goddamned smart about it all too. The way he thinks . . . His business acumen . . . I mean I never get tired of finding new things to love about him. It’s funny too because, well, obviously he’s been ultra-successful, but he doesn’t make me feel inferior about any of it. He asks my opinion about things, and he listens. He doesn’t shove opinions down my throat, either. He lets me come to my own conclusions about things. I don’t know. It’s all just so different. And the boys . . . They really like him. He’s so good with them. I mean so, so good. It’s a little scary though because I watch him with them, and I think about what a great father he’d make. I mean we haven’t talked about it or anything, but I just don’t think I want any more children.”
“You might change your mind.”
Addie sipped her coffee. “I don’t know. I’m not so sure.”
Jess shifted and lowered her voice. “What about his issues and your issues? How are you guys handling that? I can’t imagine giving him what he needs is easy.”
“You know we’re kind of handling it our way. I give him what he needs, and somehow, he just senses what it is I need. It’s a pretty adventurous learning curve; I’ll just say that. We’re vanilla when we want to be, but there’s not much that’s off limits, and it’s nice. I think the way we see one another is somehow making us able, or at least teaching us, to finally see the truth about ourselves. Kind of like a mirror, I guess.”
Jess furrowed her brow and downed the last of her coffee. “So you think you’ll ever marry him?
Addie snorted, choking on her coffee. “No. I don’t think so. I’m not sure getting married again is in the cards for me. Right now I’m just taking things one day at a time. We’ve . . . Well, he’s talked about it. He’s asked, but I keep saying no, and although he keeps asking and I keep saying no, I think he’s content with that. I’m not going anywhere, and I don’t think he is either.”
“Well, you’re going somewhere.”
Addie leaned back and took her friend in. “I’m going to miss you so much, Jess. I’m gonna miss our little dates. Sure, maybe we’ll Skype them from now on, but it won’t be the same.”
“No. It won’t.”
Addie raised her cup and pointed it in her friend’s direction. “I love you, Jessica. Here’s to friendship, to us, and to going somewhere and nowhere all at the same time.”
Twenty
A note from the storyteller:
One of my most favorite quotes says something about the fact that when you’re in the middle of a story, it isn’t a story at all; that only afterword does it begin to resemble something which makes any sense. I wholeheartedly agree, and as a reader, you should know that it took me a long time before Addison would agree to let me tell her story. Undoubtedly, it’s understandable why she would be protective of her little love story. Nonetheless, if it were going to be told, and it had been—it wasn’t long before it was splashed all over the gossip sites—she wanted it told as it was, as it had actually been, blemishes and all. But, before she finally agreed, names had to be changed, and in order to get it just right, the way she wanted it, it had to be written and rewritten, and quite frankly, it required a lot of research and hours upon hours of interviews to make sure everything was factual—aside from the actual identities of those involved. That’s the funny thing about stories, you know. What may be factual to one is almost certainly never factual to another. But, I digress.
Anyway, after I wrote and published the first part of this story, I was disappointed to hear so many of you say that you didn’t like Addison—that you couldn’t relate to her at all. When I heard that you’d called her selfish, it made me question my reasoning for telling her story in the first place. It’s hard to hear those things about someone you love so much. I mean, sure, a part of me could understand why you’d think that. For a good bit of time, Addison was pretty unlikeable, even to me. And I’ll admit that in the beginning I was disappointed in her too, not only for doing what she did with William but also for being so blatantly honest and in your face about who she was and what it was she wanted, once she had. Sure, she lied and she hid the affair upfront; and in doing so she let a lot of us down. And it’s hard for many of us to understand her exact motives and why she would make the choices she did. But in writing this story and in knowing Addison, I can tell you it wasn’t her intention to hurt anyone. What I learned from her is that love doesn’t have and off-and-on switch. Sometimes it just hits you, and there’s nothing much you can do about it. You just have go along for the ride and see where you end up. In addition, if you really knew her the way I do, then you’d know that she loved William from the beginning. She’d always loved him. And I believe that when you love someone that much, it’s hard to know what the right thing is because no matter what you decide, someone gets hurt.
But even I couldn’t see that at first. All I could see were my own fears about my own life, which I was admittedly angry with her about revealing, by the way. I realize now how silly that all seems, but it took almost losing my best friend to really get it. I mean if you stop and think about it how many of us are incapable of being truly brave when it comes to love? We all tend to hide a little bit of who we are: the parts of ourselves we don’t want anyone to see. Perhaps, it’s because we think it’s safer that way. What I realized though is that, too, is a lie we buy into. One day, shortly after that revelation, it dawned on me, during one of my meetings with Addison in the coffee shop, not long after she’d been released from the hospital, that perhaps I didn’t really do her story just
ice after all. Maybe there was more to the story than I was allowing myself see. There almost always is more to the story, you know.
The truth is, I’m mostly just a bored housewife posing as a writer. But what I know for sure is that watching Addison’s story unfold gave me the courage to tell it. Seeing her follow her dreams—even if it meant hurting people she loved—gave me the strength to follow mine, not because I’m a great writer or anything but because hers was a story worth telling. The thing about Addison that I think is so easy to hate—unless you love her, of course—is that she’s different. She’s bold, and she’s courageous, and she goes after what she wants. That’s an easy quality to despise in someone because there are a lot of people out there don’t. Take me, for example. We hide behind the facades we create for ourselves and pretend that we’re happy, that everything is fine—even when it isn’t. On the surface it was easy to tell myself that I was mad at her because she cheated on Patrick and split her up family or because she made dumb decisions and put life in jeopardy. But that wasn’t the whole truth.
You see it wasn’t until I sat down to write the continuation of her story that I really understood the half of it. It was then that I realized I hadn’t been mad at Addison for what it was I thought she’d done. I was mad at her for becoming unapologetically more of who she was meant to be. When she revealed who she’d become, which was incidentally not who or what I wanted her to be, and went after what it was she wanted, it in turn forced me to confront my fears about whether or not I was willing to do the same in my own life. Maybe, it takes a strong person, a person like Addison, I guess, to step out and shake things up. She’s someone who is willing to put it all on the line for love, to show the rest of us that it’s okay to do the same. All I know is that in the end, the strength she showed forced me to look at, to really see, the lies I’d been buying myself. Maybe someday, I’ll be brave enough to tell my own story. Who knows, maybe someday, we all will.
You see—truth be told—I think that there’s something about watching someone fumble, seeing them screw up, in all its glory that appeals to us, isn’t there? It gives us a false sense of security, it tricks us into thinking we’re superior, and sometimes it even allows us to believe we’re not so bad after all. From the outside looking in, it’s probably easy to say what we would’ve done had we been in Addison’s shoes—that we would, of course, always do the right thing. But who really knows. In the end, I think Addison did the right thing for her, not only for her but also for those she loved. What I know for sure is that her effort to go after what she knew to be true has in turn allowed me to realize my own truth. And I hope that after reading this you might think about yours. We all have secrets, even, and I would argue, especially those of us who appear to have it all together. You never know. You really just never know.
Thank you for reading,
Jess
Epilogue
Seven months later
Addison stared out the window, watching the lights twinkle in the distance as the plane slowly made its descent. That had always been her favorite part of flying, the descent. It was almost as though you were floating and then, BAM, at once, all of a sudden you were there. You’d arrived. Out the corner of her eye, she could see Connor stirring a little, and as she looked over at the greatest parts of her life, she smiled a little. They were excited to make the trip home, to see their dad and meet their new baby sister, and she was excited for them. Breaking her reverie, William squeezed her hand a little, nodded in the boys’ direction then back at her, leaned over, kissed her temple, and whispered in her ear that he was the luckiest man on the planet. She looked back at him and smiled. God, she loved that man. Glancing down at their hands intertwined, the diamond on her left hand caught her eye. She smiled and nodded back, raised her eyebrows, and squeezed. William had only asked her to marry him half a dozen times in the time they’d been away, and each time she’d turned him down. It wasn’t until he’d arranged a surprise trip for her and the boys, taking them back to Capri, Italy, where they’d first fallen in love, and knelt right there on that very same beach that she’d changed her answer to a maybe. It didn’t really matter, though. That man knew he had her right where he wanted her, and she loved him even more for it.
The five of them had had the time of their lives over the past seven months, exploring new places, taking it all in together, and finding more reasons to love one another by the day. It was just a really beautiful time for them all. The boys, aside from missing their dad—though they talked nearly every day and had visited back home twice for a week at a time—were the happiest she’d ever seen them. She couldn’t help but think that maybe it was because she herself was so happy. But now, it was time to stay home in Austin for a little while, to settle. William had purchased a home out on the lake, and Addie had agreed to give up her rental. She never really stayed there anyway and was looking forward to a new home base.
Later that day, as she entered the hospital corridors with the boys, it suddenly hit her that it wasn’t all that long ago that she herself had spent time there. Maybe it was the sights and the smells that made it all come rushing back, she wasn’t sure. The memories were fuzzy now; they had an aura about them, the nostalgic haze that memories sometimes get, and she couldn’t help but think how it seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d been there. So much had changed since then. They’d stopped by the gift shop for balloons and flowers when Addie noticed “the book” sitting on the shelf, and suddenly her thoughts turned to Jessica and how much she couldn’t wait to see her friend. There was a lot they needed to discuss, and quite frankly, she’d been incredibly worried about her—in addition to guilt she felt for not being there when Jess had very clearly needed her. The twins interrupted her thoughts as they tugged on her shorts, ushering her towards the cashier urgently, impatient to get upstairs and see the baby.
Addison couldn’t help but smile at the flurry of pink balloons as she led the boys up to the room on the postpartum floor. She knocked, and when Patrick answered, she hugged and congratulated him and explained that she’d be down the hall in the waiting area. He grinned and thanked her as Michele’s voice interrupted, asking her to stay. “We want you to meet her,” they’d said. And suddenly, once again, she felt life as she knew it ever so slowly shift, as Patrick placed that beautiful little bundle of pink in her arms. She realized something then that she hadn’t before. As she took it all in, watching her boys gently touching their sister’s tiny hand and peering at her toes, everything changed. For the first time, she thought yes. Just yes. This was it. She would finally say yes to William, not only because he wanted it or because she loved him but because she wanted this for the both of them. Suddenly, all at once, she wanted everything.
Acknowledgments
A big, BIG thank you to my friends and family for your support during the writing process and always for continually serving as personal cheerleaders along the way. Thanks for laughing with me—or maybe it was at me—either way. Nonetheless, I appreciate you being there.J
Thank you to Theresa Wegand for being so easy and efficient during every step of the copyediting and formatting process. Also, many thanks to Lisa Wilson of Pixel Pixie Design for being fantastic at all things design. And, a special thank you to Sebastian Kellas of Legstore for so generously providing the cover art.
With extreme gratitude, I would like to acknowledge my beta readers: Monica, Denise, Dara, Heather, and Hunter. Thank you for your input each step of the way, for making this book what it is, and especially for incessantly bugging and motivating me to send you more.
Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank the readers for every sweet note, for every review, for simply reading. You guys are everything. Thank you.
About the Author
Writer. Wife. Mama. Expert juggler. Britney lives with her husband, five children, two dogs, and a cat in Austin, Texas. You can find her blogging on her website, and she would love it if you’d connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.
www.BritneyKing.com
https://www.facebook.com/BritneyKingAuthor
www.Twitter.com/BritneyKing_
Breaking Bedrock (Book Two) Page 16