by Violet Duke
“No!” Abby backed away from Brian. “No. It’s not a symptom. It’s me. It’s me, Brian. She can’t—” Gasping for air, suddenly her lungs felt too small, the world too big. “She doesn’t have JHD. This isn’t a symptom. This is my fault. She just hates me is all. My fault. Just my fault.”
The whole world shifted on its axis and Abby found herself on the ground, the tiled floor ice cold against her cheek.
“Please… Please…”
Brian dropped to the floor beside her and pulled her into his lap, holding her until the words stopped spilling from her lips, until her breathing calmed and the tremors ceased. “Abby, none of this is your fault. And believe me, if I could wish it away, I would too. But we can’t ignore it anymore, we all have to face the reality that Skylar may have JHD.”
Shards of pain burst through her.
“We won’t know for sure for a while. And there are still a lot of variations to how they may present, but if Skylar does have JHD, we’ll do everything we can to help her. Give her the best possible life.”
The best possible life for Skylar.
Pulling herself up out of his lap numbly, she stood, a decision forming in her heart. “Can you show me the orchid house?”
Brian blinked, startled.
“Skylar told me about it. Could I see it?”
Brian held out his hand and led her out to the backyard. “There’s some broken glass out there so be careful.”
Abby felt like she’d entered the magical fairy kingdom she’d had as a child. Only this one was bigger, brighter, and infinitely more special.
“Brian, it’s beautiful.” Redwood slats and richly colored orchids filled her field of vision. She looked back at him. “I can’t believe you built all this for me.” She stepped into the gazebo and saw the broken beer bottle shards and took in the sharp scent of hops. Oh, Brian. You’re wrong. This is all my fault. In her mind, she could only imagine what Skylar had seen last night.
“Come out of there, Abby. Let me clean it out first. I don’t want you to see it like this.”
Abby took his hand and followed him as he navigated her around the puddles of broken glass littered around the yard.
There were so many.
Once back inside, Abby took in a deep breath and tried to pull herself together. Already her brain was planning out the next decade of her life. “Let me know when Skylar starts therapy. I’m not sure what my schedule is going to be but I’ll take her as much as I can.” She dragged in a stuttered breath. “I haven’t read up a whole lot about the genetic testing process but I will. And I’ll start looking into specialty tutoring as well because I know that’s going to become an issue soon. When we—”
Brian’s hands closed around hers. “No, sweetheart. Not we. Me. You need to go to California and take one of those professor positions. You can’t stay here just for us. Especially not now.”
“What do you mean ‘especially not now?’ I’m not going anywhere. End of discussion.”
A hard light entered his eyes. “So you’ve made your decision then is that it? Can you stand there and tell me that you want to spend the rest of your life with me?”
That was easy. “Yes.”
He flinched as if he’d been struck.
“Then can you also look me in the eye and tell me that you’re in love with me and not Connor?”
This time, it was Abby who flinched.
He let out a quiet, pained sigh. “Abby, I love you so much. And a part of me wants to let you do this. Because I meant what I said—I’ve dreamed up a lifetime of ways to love you, a lifetime of ways to make you happy.” He cupped her cheek gently. “But I know you, sweetie. Even though you’ll make the best of it, deep down, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t allow yourself to be with the one you really want.” Another sigh, but this one more resigned, resolute. But no less sad. “We both know that man isn’t me. You and I have a deep history together but Connor...he’s your future.”
That sounded like goodbye. “Brian, I don’t want to lose you,” she whispered, feeling everything she’s known for more than a third of her life seemingly dissolving right in front of her.
“Honey, you won’t ever lose me. I promise you that. Skylar and I, we will always be a part of your life, just like you’ll always be a part of ours.”
She looked back out into the backyard, at the orchid gazebo this wonderful man had built for her. To build a life with her. “But what if I stay?”
Brian shook his head softly. “Then you’d be settling for being my wife. Just so you could be Skylar’s mom.”
Her gaze shot back over to meet his. “Being with you would never be settling,” she argued firmly. “I love you, Brian.” But even as she said the words, she knew she could never love him the way that she loved Connor, and she knew also that what he’d said was the absolute truth—there weren’t many lengths she wouldn’t go to for Skylar. Was he right about all this? Was that why her heart and mind couldn’t agree on a decision?
“Connor told me about your son, Abby.”
A red hot blade of betrayal sliced her open in two. “He had no right—”
“Sweetheart, we’ve been best friends for over thirteen years. While I’d hoped it wasn’t the case, I’ve always suspected. I’ve heard your nightmares. And I’ve seen the way you clutch your womb without even realizing it...especially in the month of May.” He slid his hand over hers now and she looked down to see that she was doing it right now. “Tonight, while you were searching for Skylar, you kept saying over and over again to yourself that you couldn’t lose another one, that you wouldn’t survive if you lost another one.”
She didn’t remember any of that. But it was the cold, honest truth. The thought of losing Skylar in any way...terrified her.
“Abby?” a small voice called out from behind them.
They both spun around and saw Skylar, stricken, staring at Abby as if she’d never seen her before in her life.
“Sky-bug, you should be in bed. You’ve had a long night.”
Skylar ignored Brian and shuffled forward, tears running down her cheeks. “I didn’t mean it, Abby. I don’t hate you.”
Abby’s legs almost gave out. Hearing Skylar say the three pain-shredded words back at Connor’s house had blown a gaping hole in her chest. “It’s okay if you do, kiddo,” she managed, meaning it even as she said it, “I’d hate me too right about now.”
“I swear I don’t. It’s just... You’ve been the only mom I’ve had my whole life, Abby. When I heard you and Uncle Connor talking about a new family—”
“Skylar, what you heard wasn’t the full story.”
“I know that now.” Skylar nodded in that way she did sometimes whenever life forced her to grow up faster than she needed to, faster than it had any right to expect her to. “You would’ve been as great a mom to him as you’ve been to me,” she said softly, looking up with eyes brimming with more grief than Abby had ever seen in them.
And just like that, she felt the last paper-thin dam holding back the rest of her emotions crumble.
“Abby, I don’t think you should give up on those dreams you were making with Uncle Connor just for me,” whispered Skylar as she gazed down at the scar on her ring finger, rubbing her thumb over it. “I’m not stupid. I know you guys think I may have JHD. And I know it’s starting super early, so I might...” Her lower lip quivered and she dropped her eyes back to the ground, “...so I might never get to fall in love before I—”
Abby covered her hand over Skylar’s, covered the scar and everything it represented. “Don’t talk like that. Don’t even think it. You are going to have an incredible life, you hear me? Whether you have JHD or not.” Never before had she felt so helpless, wished so hard that she could make good on her words.
When Skylar’s tiny frame shook with silent sobs, Abby nearly lost it. There was no way she could do this. She couldn’t just walk away and effectively end the family they’ve built over the years.
&nb
sp; “You have to do it,” whispered Skylar, as if reading her mind. “Even if I don’t want you to.” Voice still teeming with emotion, Skylar clutched her hands to her mouth and ran to her room.
Abby tried to run after her, to tell her she wouldn’t, couldn’t ever leave. But Brian held her back. “Let her go. You have to let her go, Abby...just like she and I have to let you go.”
Every last wound in her heart, even the ones she’d thought were long stitched up and healed, burst open at the seams in that instant. She was losing everything she’d been holding on to.
All over again.
“Don’t look at me like that, sweetheart. You were never ours to keep. Not really. And I’m not anywhere near as strong as you think I am. If you don’t leave now, there’s every chance in the world that I’ll turn weak and let you stay. Let you give up everything for me and Skylar—your career, the man you’re in love with, and the family you’re destined to have...with Connor”
Connor.
Abby felt another sharp, crushing ache in her chest then at the thought of not being with him for the rest of her life. A different pain, but just as devastating.
How in the world was she supposed to make this decision?
“Even though you’ve always fit in my life and my soul, I don’t know that I was ever that counterpart for you. Not the way Connor is.” Brian pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Skylar and I, we love you enough to let you go. But we also love you enough that we’d let you stay as well. So don’t make us have to choose. Because that’s your choice to make. You just have to let your heart choose, Abby.”
“Let your heart choose the right man for you.”
Abby spent a day locked away in her house thinking about…everything. Everything she felt, everything she was afraid to imagine, and everything she hadn’t yet dared to say aloud.
To the one person who needed to hear it the most.
She smoothed open the note Connor had sent her all those months ago, and then picked up the short note she’d written out that morning.
Taking a deep breath, she picked up her phone and started texting, restarting over a dozen times because her fingers wouldn’t stop shaking. When she was done, her thumb hovered over the send button for a long while. Afraid. Brian was right; allowing her heart to love was a choice.
She hit send.
Then waited.
And waited.
She paced her living room all evening and into the night, feeling her heart drum in her chest every time she saw a pair of headlights come up her street.
Only to have it nearly stop completely when he didn’t come.
She shut her eyes and tried to stop herself from doing this. From torturing herself.
She’d made her choice. For better or worse. Risky or not.
But each passing minute on the clock was another ticking flick of doubt, another stab in her heart warning her that perhaps the one she’d chosen was going to be a stubborn noble ass and not allow her to make that choice.
The loud knocking at her door had her eyes flying open, her pulse racing with hope as she went to turn the knob.
“Are you kidding me with this text message, woman?” came the thundering, emotion-laden greeting.
Tears ran down her face and an almost hysterical silent laugh bubbled out of her.
“Do you know how long it took me to decipher the damn thing?”
“Didn’t you have your magic decoder ring?” she asked, her voice trembling worse than her limbs. How on earth she was managing to speak right now was beyond her.
Connor placed his hands on the doorframe and leaned in, piercing her with those ice blue eyes of his, both warmer and hotter than she’d ever seen them before. “Yes, but do you have any idea how many sentences can result out of those five number combinations you sent?”
“How many?”
“Too many,” he grumbled, his gaze roaming over her like he was memorizing, cherishing every bit of her. “It took me hours to decode!”
“Hours?” At this point, one-worded responses were the best she’d be able to get out.
“Well, about five minutes to translate it once I figured it out.” A loving timbre dropped his tone a vulnerable octave lower. “But it took me another two hours after that to try every other possible number-letter conversion just in case my first deciphering was simply wishful thinking on my part.”
Her heart soared.
WHEN CONNOR HAD FIRST OPENED the text message from Abby’s phone number earlier in the evening, he’d thought it was the cruelest butt-dial in the history of mankind. After what had happened back at the house the night before, after they’d finally found Skylar curled up in Abby’s guestroom, he’d been so sure…
He’d spent the entire day preparing his heart to let her go.
It was by sheer luck—and perhaps the fact that he’d been staring at the nonsensical string of numbers in her text like a lovesick pup—that he’d discovered the strategic spaces between the number sequences. Those four little spaces had sent hope rushing in his bloodstream like a drug, which he’d nearly OD’d off of when he started seeing the words unravel before his eyes.
I’m in love with you.
Trust Abby to put him through the emotional torture of translating a coded message using a magic decoder ring cipher.
The woman was going to drive him crazy for the rest of his life.
He couldn’t wait.
Shoving his phone back in his pocket, Connor stepped through the doorway, nearly stalking Abby as he edged her back through the foyer and into the living room. “Hours, Abby. I spent hours driving myself crazy when I could have been here driving you crazy instead. Doing this—”
In one hard swoop, he strapped a steel arm around her waist to pull her flush against him before he caught her jaw, and molded his mouth to hers.
An eternity later, which still felt far too soon to let her go, he pulled back, breathing ragged, heart stripped bare as he whispered against her lips, “I’m in love with you too, Abby.”
Seeing her face light up with such joy, such love, Connor steeled his heart one final time and asked, “Are you sure, sweetheart? Are you sure I’m the one you want?”
“Yes. A thousand times, yes.” Her voice overflowed with emotion. “Brian’s my best friend. I love him, I have for years. But you’re the one I’m in love with, Connor. In more ways than I can describe or define, in more ways than I’ve ever even imagined, and in more ways I discover every day. I’m in love with you.”
“Thank god.” He sagged against her. “You don’t know what it cost me to ask you that.”
When he smoothed her hair back and saw not just the shining love in her eyes, but the lingering sadness still in there as well, he tried to offer the only comfort he could.
“Skylar will come around, sweetheart. If it helps, she texted to tell me that if I ever hurt you, she and Brian would come after me and ‘go postal on my ass.’”
Abby’s eyes crinkled affectionately at the corners as her soft laughter filled the room. “Sugarplums, I love that little girl so much. I’ve been with her from the very beginning. I don’t know how not to be a part of her life. Raising her all these years, I felt like…”
“Her mom,” he said gently.
“Yes.” She looked up at him as if he held all the answers. “So how do I go backward from there? How do I become just her friend Abby after all that?”
Connor studied her expression and ventured cautiously, “You could meet her in the middle and be her favorite aunt.”
Abby chuckled. “Skylar’s too old to call me that. We stopped having her call me Aunty Abby when she was three.”
“Well, what if we have her call you Aunt Abby, instead?”
She froze on a silent gasp and he saw his words finally filtering through. She stepped back and searched his gaze, as if she were looking for another hidden message there.
“You’re never going to need another decoder ring to know how I feel, sweetheart. I meant it exactly as
I said it.”
“We can’t—” She bit her lip. “Yet. We can’t yet, Connor, it’s too soon.”
“I know it is,” he replied pulling her into his arms. “So I’ll wait. I’ve been waiting my whole life to find you, Abby. And now that I have, I’m not going anywhere. You tell me when you’re ready to be my wife, when you’re ready to be Skylar’s aunt.”
“And I’ll have a ring on your finger so fast it’ll make your head spin.”
CHAPTER TEN
Ten Months Later
“YOU ABOUT READY, Sky-bug? If we don’t leave now, we’ll be late for the ceremony.”
The faint, dull stab Brian felt in his gut when he said the word no longer wrenched at his insides as it had when he’d first learned that Abby and Connor were engaged.
But it still hurt.
Falling out of love always does, he imagined.
Skylar shuffled out of her bedroom looking equally torn about the day ahead. “How long is the drive up to Lake Powell?”
“About five hours. So you can bring your video games but you’re leaving it in the car when we get there, you hear me? This is a big day for Connor and Abby.”
A faint smile tilted her lips just a bit at the mention of Abby’s name, before a cloud of sadness passed over her expression again. “She’s never going to sleep over here again is she?” It was more a resigned statement than a question.
He hugged her close. “No, probably not, sweetie. But I’m sure you’re more than welcome to have a sleepover at your uncle’s McMansion. You’d have your pick of rooms.”
She sighed. “It wouldn’t be the same.”
No, it wouldn’t.
She gave him a look about ten years too old for her face. “Besides, part of the fun was watching Abby bash you in the face with pillows in the morning.” With a resolute shake of her head, she gathered her things and headed to the closet to get a jacket. “So if you’re not going to sleep over, neither am I.”