Saving Forever (The Ever Trilogy: Book 3)

by Jasinda Wilder

  Two single-dollar bills filled my vision. “Two bucks for your thoughts?” Carter asked.

  I smiled at him, and then shrugged. “Just…your family is amazing. They’re all so kind…and there’s so many of them. They’ve all made me feel welcome. I was kind of overwhelmed at first, but…it’s nice. Loud, and crazy and chaotic, but fun. And did I mention that there’s just so many of them?”

  Carter laughed. “So there’s a lot of them? Eden, babe. This is…maybe half of just my mom’s side. She has five siblings, and they all have kids. Dad is one of five, and they all have multiple kids. On his side, there’s an actual metric shit-ton of little kids. The people on that side are all horny bastards. There’s a dozen first cousins between Uncle Mike, Uncle Derek, Aunt Julie, and Uncle Brad. And all those dozen first cousins have at least one kid each—most of them have two or three.”

  That made me dizzy. “How…how many cousins and aunts and uncles do you have?”

  Carter leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest with his beer resting on his forearm. “Hmmm. I’ve never done an actual count. I don’t think we’ve ever had all of them in one place before. I’ve got nine aunts and uncles, and…god, like thirty first cousins? I don’t know. A lot. A lot.”

  “And you know them all?” I had to actually hold onto the counter.

  Carter nodded. “Well, sure. They’re family. One of Mom’s brothers is kind of a hermit, so I’ve only met him once. He lives in Alaska, I think. Somewhere far and cold.” He shouted across the room at his mother, who was perched on the arm of the couch with her fingers idly tracing through her husband’s hair. “Hey, Mom! Where does Uncle Rich live?”

  She didn’t even turn around to respond. “Nome!” she shouted.

  He turned back to me. “He lives in Nome, Alaska,” he said, as if I hadn’t heard.

  “Yeah. Got that,” I said, deadpan.

  He seemed oblivious to my sarcasm. “But, yeah, we have them over for holidays all the time. Mom’s family usually comes over for Christmas lunch, Dad’s family comes over for Thanksgiving, and we usually have a huge Fourth bash in the summer, and whoever can make it comes.” He looked at me inquisitively. “Your family’s pretty small, huh?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. Mom and Dad were both only children, and Mom’s parents died when I was really little, and Dad’s parents died not long after. It was just the four of us growing up, and then when Mom died Dad basically shut down. Then it was mainly Ever and me for the holidays.” I gestured with my head at the gathering of family. “So this is…just amazing to me.”

  Carter’s dad, Richard, came over just then, and the conversation shifted to other things, but I only partially participated. I was taking it all in, watching everyone interact, wondering what it would be like to belong to such a huge family. It would be incredible, I decided. I’d give anything to be part of this family. That was probably an idle wish, I realized with a pang of sadness. This escape to Traverse City was destined to be a temporary solution to a permanent problem. I just had no idea what would happen after the birth of the baby.

  I pushed those thoughts away as, seemingly without any kind of prompting, the huge dining room table was cleared off and places were set. Innumerable dishes were lined up down the middle of the table. People took seats where they wanted, and within minutes lunch was on, although four o’clock seemed awfully late to call it lunch.

  If the chaotic nature of conversation earlier in the day had overwhelmed me, then dinner was downright lunacy. Dishes were passed back and forth, shouts to pass this dish or that crossed the table constantly, conversations took place end to end, willy-nilly. Everyone talked to everyone, all at once. Jokes were told, ranging from idiotically funny puns to dirty and cringe-worthy, yet no one ever got offended, no one got angry, no one insulted anyone or, if they did, it was in fun and returned in kind. Carter and his brothers, in particular, shared good-natured ribbing back and forth nonstop, and at one point they even started hurling dinner rolls at each other, which wasn’t stopped until Tom started flinging mashed potatoes with his fork. Sitting next to Carter in the middle of the table, with Carter’s oldest brother Max on the other side of me, gave me a ringside seat for all the action.

  Midway through the meal, Max glanced at me with a curious expression on his face. “So, Eden. You gotta tell me how you did it.”

  “Did what?” I asked, biting into a biscuit.

  “Get Carter to start talking again.”

  Conversation stopped dead, going in an instant from full-roar to so silent you could hear a pin drop.

  The biscuit suddenly tasted like ashes. “I—I don’t know. I didn’t do anything.” I stared at my plate, barely able to manage a shrug. “I didn’t know he hadn’t spoken in so long. I just thought he was either an arrogant asshole, or painfully shy.” Everyone laughed at that, including Carter. “I didn’t try to do anything. Sorry I can’t make it more dramatic—I just…he just started talking to me.”

  Carter, despite laughing at my jibe, seemed equally as uncomfortable with the topic as I was. “So, did you hear the one about the priest and the nun?” he asked. As a topic-shift tactic, it was kind of lame.

  “Shut up, Carter. You suck at telling jokes,” Tom said. “You can’t change the subject.”

  “Yes, I can. I can also break your ugly face.”

  “Boys,” Karen cut in, her voice quiet, but they both silenced immediately. “You’re making Eden uncomfortable. Carter started talking because he was ready to, and now that’s enough of that. It isn’t appropriate conversation for the dinner table.” This from the woman who’d just laughed at a bawdy joke told by her own husband. Yet I was intensely grateful to her for taking the spotlight off me.

  Carter’s eyes met mine, pale blue and concerned. I smiled at him, trying to reassure him that I was fine.

  Conversation hadn’t really started up again, so I tried to break the tension. “I think it didn’t really have a lot to do with me, anyway. I think he was just sick of taking shit from you guys.” I gestured to each of his brothers with my fork. “He’s always telling me how mean you are to him.”

  The three brothers laughed, while Carter gave me a wounded expression, as if I’d betrayed him. I could see the gratitude and humor twinkling in his eyes, though. “You bitch! You sold me out!”

  There was a chorus of oooohs at that. I smacked his arm with the back of my hand. “You did not just call me a bitch. I know you didn’t.”

  “I think I did,” he said, arching an eyebrow.

  I glanced at Tom, who gave me a meaningful nod as he swirled his fork through his mashed potatoes. I hesitated, then summoned my courage and scooped a heap of potatoes onto my spoon, brought it toward my face as if about to eat it, and then flung it at Carter at the last second, getting him in the face. Everyone at the table cracked up, except Karen, who tried in vain to stop the food fight that ensued. It was only when Kirk threatened to dump the contents of the gravy boat onto Max that Richard cut through the uproar with a calm but firm, “Enough.”

  Everyone pitched in to clean up, and then a shoot-’em-up movie marathon was proposed, which brought the majority of the group downstairs, leaving Karen and me alone in the kitchen, with a few people in the living room playing a card game.

  I sensed a talk coming on when Karen poured herself a big glass of wine and pulled up a stool next to me. “I know you say you didn’t do anything, but I just…I just wanted to say thank you. I wasn’t sure Carter would ever really come back to us, and ever since he met you…he’s been his old self again, and then some.”

  I ducked my head. “I really didn’t do anything, Karen.”

  “Well, then, you being you was enough. And for that, I thank you. You’ve given me my son back, and I can’t ever express how much that means to me.”

  “Carter is amazing. He’s been there for me in ways I can’t ever repay.” I knew then as I looked into Karen’s eyes and saw the glimmer of hope that I had given her some element of the truth. “He to
ld me what happened. To Britt. He deserves happiness. And, Karen, I’m just not sure that I’ll ever be able to offer him that.” I rested one hand on my enormous belly as supporting evidence.

  Karen nodded, sighing. “I get what you’re saying. And although I am curious, that’s your business and your story. But let me offer you a piece of wisdom. You haven’t asked, but I’m a mother, and it’s our job to hand out unsolicited advice.”

  I laughed. “Okay, let’s hear it.’

  “Life is never simple. Never.” Karen ran her index finger around the rim of her glass. “I was a single mother when I met Richard. I had an eighteen-month-old daughter and a messy divorce that wouldn’t be finalized for another six months. It was complicated as all hell. I liked him, a lot, but I didn’t think anyone would ever be able to understand my life. Or that I’d ever find happiness again. Especially considering the circumstances that led to my divorce. I was so young, you know. Twenty-one, with a daughter and a divorce and a broken heart.” She glanced up at me, as if weighing how much to tell me. “My boys don’t know this, because I just…I just never knew how to tell them, but…my first husband was abusive. Mentally, emotionally, and physically. So on top of the baggage of my life, I had distrust and trauma and all this other bullshit. I decided I was too much for anyone—even someone as amazing as Richard. So I pushed him away. I did everything I could think of to make him leave me alone. To hurt him. Because I knew he’d hurt me eventually, and I didn’t think I could survive that.”

  “You had four kids together, so obviously Richard didn’t listen to you. What happened? How did you end up together?”

  Karen smiled, a small, private smile of reminiscence. “There’s one problem, sweetie. We didn’t end up together. We made choices. Richard told me something I’ve never forgotten: ‘You think I don’t know you have a messed-up past, Karen? Of course you do. Yours may be more complicated than mine, and you may be afraid.’” Her voice took on a tone that told me she was quoting words she’d had memorized for thirty years. “‘But the choice to love you is mine. Not yours. You don’t get to make that choice for me. You can choose to not let me love you, but you can’t tell me what’s too much for me to handle. That’s for me to decide.’”

  I sniffed away the tears that trickled past my nose. “God, Karen. And you let him, huh?”

  Karen stared at me incredulously. “Have you seen my husband? Of course I did! He’s a fox!”

  I laughed. I had met her husband and, for a man thirty years my senior, I knew he was attractive. I could see where the boys got their looks. Richard Haven, even at fifty or sixty or however old he was, was tall and well-built, with wavy auburn hair just starting to go silver at the temples. His sharp features and ice-blue eyes were passed on to his sons.

  Karen sobered. “Seriously, though. How could I deny what he’d said? I wasn’t pushing him away because I didn’t want him, but because I was afraid my baggage was too heavy for him. And he was right, Eden. We can’t make choices for other people.”

  I sat perfectly still, barely daring to breathe, holding back all the things I wanted to say and trying to prevent the gush of yet more tears. “You know what I hate the most about being pregnant? Being so emotional. Literally everything makes me cry.”

  Karen laughed at that. “Sure, blame it on the hormones. That’s a classic pregnant lady line: ‘I’m not usually so emotional, it’s just these damn hormones!’”

  I gave a mock-glare. “Well, in my case it’s true. I went the first twenty-plus years of my life rarely crying. A really bad breakup here and there, maybe. But suddenly, all I do I cry, and I’m sick of it, but I can’t seem to stop it!”

  “Oh, honey. I understand more than you know.”

  I doubted that. She couldn’t possibly understand the tangled web I was caught up in. No one could. I nearly snorted out loud at that, realizing I was doing the exact thing that Karen was warning me against.

  She must’ve seen the skeptical expression on my face. “All I’m saying is, try to keep an open mind. You never what’s possible until you try. Such an old cliché, but it’s true. Things always seem impossible when you’re on the wrong side of fear.”

  “The wrong side of fear?”

  “Well, sure.” Karen drained her glass. “Fear can either make you cautious and keep you from making stupid mistakes, or it can blind you and paralyze you. That’s the wrong side.”

  I nodded, understanding. “I’ll try.”

  “One more thing. I’m saying all this because you obviously need to hear it, but I have more selfish and ulterior motives. I like you. And I like who my son is when he’s around you. I’ve seen him change a lot, and for the better, and you can deny it all you want, but it’s due in part because of you. So, yeah, I want you for my son. Plus, there’re never enough women around here! I’m always outnumbered two to one…at least.”

  I sniffed while laughing. “You have a beautiful, amazing family, Karen. And, honestly, spending Christmas Eve with you guys has been the happiest I’ve been in—oh, god, years.”

  “We’ve all enjoyed having you here.”

  I blinked against the burn. “But I just can’t—can’t promise—” I bit my lip until the pain pushed away the turmoil of emotion. “You don’t know, Karen. You just—you don’t know.” I’d only known her for a few hours, but I already felt close to this woman. I wanted to tell her everything, but I just couldn’t. The words wouldn’t come out.

  She seemed to understand that there was nothing else to be said. Karen rose to her feet, extended both hands to me, and helped me stand up. “Come on. There’s something to be said for movies that feature a bunch of shirtless men blowing things up.”

  I laughed and joined her in the basement, finding a spot saved for me on the huge L-shaped leather sectional. Carter was beside me, his long legs stretched out, one arm resting on the back of the couch. I didn’t mean to sit so close to him, but the couch sucked me in, and his arm found its way around me, and somehow my eyes grew heavy. A heavily muscled man wearing a ripped white T-shirt wielded a machine gun with one hand, firing it with unlikely accuracy, holding on to a skinny blonde with absurdly huge tits with the other. Things blew up, including jet fighters and entire buildings.

  Carter was far too comfortable for his own good. I fought it, blinked, and tried to shift away from him, but it was useless.

  I fell asleep surrounded by his family, my head lolling against his shoulder. I missed the judging of the Ugly Sweater competition. It happened between parts two and three of the movie marathon, which meant I slept through an entire two-hour movie. When I woke up, all the guys were drinking Scotch and ribbing Carter about where he finds his sweaters, so I assumed he’d now won the title four years in a row.

  It was well past midnight when I realized I was staying overnight at the Havens’ home. Carter was tipsy, which made him the least drunk of anyone, yet for all that no one was obnoxious or rude, which had been my general experience with drunk people at parties. They were often just a little too loud, prone to slurring and making fun of each other for slurring and laughing at jokes that weren’t funny to me, but which they found uproarious.

  I watched Carter and his brothers as they got incrementally louder and more competitive playing Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots. They were playing the actual kid’s game, and were taking it very seriously, it seemed. I even saw a couple of cousins put money on the outcome of the individual matches. When the competition got a little too fierce, Karen stepped in with a quiet but firm command to stop acting like barbarians, or to take it outside.

  So Max and Carter did indeed take it outside, spinning and wrestling each other near the basement walk-out door. Tom, ever helpful, went ahead of them and opened the door so they could throw each other through it and into the piled-up drift of snow. I watched from my place on the couch, a little concerned and not a little shocked as the tussle turned serious. They were rolling around in the snow, and I thought I saw actual punches being thrown. Richard was at the op
posite end of the couch from me, watching as well.

  “Shouldn’t someone stop them?” I asked.

  Richard just waved a hand. “Those two do this every year. They’re boys. They won’t actually hurt each other.”

  “But they’re rolling around in a four-foot-deep snow drift!”

  He laughed. “They’re both drunk. They don’t even feel the cold.” He smiled at me. “Carter can hold his own. Trust me on that, my dear.”

  Max was huge. He was three or four inches shorter than Carter, but outweighed him by twenty or thirty pounds—all of it solid muscle. Yet, as I watched, I realized Richard was right. Carter was consistently on top as they rolled around, and I saw him get in a few hard hits to Max’s body. I cringed when Max returned them, but since no one else seemed concerned, I could only watch and hope no one ended up at the hospital.

  Eventually, Max and Carter went still, lying side by side in the snow, laughing and panting. Carter stood up first, then helped his brother to his feet, only to plant a fistful of snow into Max’s face, laughing and ducking as Max swung blindly. That was the end of the fight, though, both boys tromping in, soaking wet and breathing hard.

  Carter peeled off his sweater and T-shirt, and I had to bite my lip to keep from moaning in appreciation. He scrubbed his hand through his hair as he stood by the sink in the basement kitchenette, picking clumps of snow from his hair and tossing them in the sink. He had a fat lip and the shadow of a bruise on his jaw, and I saw more red spots on his ribs that would turn into bruises.

  I couldn’t help brushing my fingers over the worst bruise on his ribs. “Are you okay?”

  He snorted at me, smiling with amusement. “I’m fine. Not even bleeding.”

  “You guys fight like that often?”

  He shrugged. “When we drink, yeah. Usually someone ends up putting somebody else in a headlock, and then suddenly it’s a wrestling match.”