by Carrie Elks
“Jenny.” His dad shook his head and walked over to the bed, taking her hand in his. “Look at you, sweetheart.”
Jackson followed him, walking around to the other side. “How are you feeling?”
She turned her head from father to son. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Hush,” his dad said. “We know. Are you feeling okay? Does it hurt anywhere?”
“They gave me the good stuff. Nothing hurts.” She tried to smile. “Except when I laugh.”
“Got it.” Ryan winked at her. “No laughing.” He sat, his hand still holding hers. Jackson did the same, swallowing hard when he looked at his parents. How many times had he wished to see them together like this when he was a kid? How many times had he dreamed of his dad and mom being together again?
And now they were, for one night at least, and all he could think of was Lydia and how she was leaving tomorrow. Without him being able to say a proper goodbye.
“The nurse said you should be able to leave in the morning,” Ryan said, his voice upbeat.
“Yeah. I have two fractured ribs, but they don’t need surgery. Just lots of rest and recuperation. Hopefully my nose will be okay once the swelling goes down. They’ll check on that before they discharge me.”
“What happened?” Jackson asked her. “What are you doing in Anaheim?”
“I was driving down to see you.” She cleared her throat. “I thought it would save some time. I guess I did that, huh?”
“I told you I would call, you didn’t need to come.” He raised an eyebrow. “You need to start taking care of yourself rather than expecting us to do it.”
“I know.” She sniffed. “I’m so sorry, Jackson. I really am.”
He hated the way she always made him feel. Fury mixed with relief as he looked at her, taking in all the injuries she had. It could have been so much worse. She could have died, or hurt somebody else. The fact that she didn’t was more due to luck than intent.
“We’ll talk about your car in the morning,” his dad said, shooting Jackson a look. “You should rest now, that’s the only way to feel better.”
“I do feel sleepy,” she agreed, closing her eyes as her head rested on the pillow.
Strange, because Jackson felt completely wide awake. Maybe because his mind was a hundred miles south of here, thinking about a girl whose hand he already missed holding.
“I’m sorry,” Lydia said, wiping her eyes with a tissue. “I don’t know why I can’t stop crying. It’s not like I didn’t know I was leaving. We were going to say goodbye tomorrow, so why am I so upset it happened a few hours early?”
“Because it’s a shock,” Autumn murmured, stroking her hair. They’d left the party almost an hour after Jackson and his dad had driven away. Lydia had helped them clean up, thinking the work might take her mind off things, but it hadn’t worked. And now they were back at Autumn and Griff’s house, sitting on the sofa, Lydia’s head resting against Autumn’s shoulder as she tried to console her. “Shock always makes me cry. I don’t know why, but it does. Remember when the pier caught on fire? I was almost comatose.”
“I remember,” Griff murmured, from the easy chair on the other side of the coffee table. “I thought you’d end up in the hospital.”
A fresh trail of tears ran down Lydia’s cheeks. “Do you think his mom is okay?” she asked. She’d considered calling him, but he’d been adamant she should get some rest and he’d call her in the morning.
“I don’t know, honey,” Autumn murmured. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime, you should get some sleep. You’ve got a long journey ahead of you.”
“I don’t want to go,” Lydia admitted, crumpling the tissue in her hand. Her eyes met Autumn’s. “I want to stay here and make sure that he’s okay. But I can’t because I’m due to meet my clients at the airport on Monday afternoon. If I leave any later, I’ll miss them.”
“Jackson understands,” Autumn reassured her. “It’s not like he didn’t know you were leaving. Out of anybody I know, he gets that business has to come first. Your reputation is everything. You can’t let your clients down.” Her smile was soft. “Jackson will be okay. He has all of us to take care of him. I’m more worried about you.”
“I’ll be okay. I always am.” Lydia gave her sister a watery smile. “I just need to get on that plane. I always feel better when I’m traveling.” But she’d never left half of her heart behind before.
Another sob escaped from her lips, and Autumn frowned, hugging her again. “Sweetheart, I’m worried about you. I’ve never seen you cry like this.”
“I can’t remember the last time I did,” Lydia said honestly.
“Maybe you’ve never been in love before.”
Lydia blinked away the tears and looked at her sister. “If this is what love feels like, it sucks.”
“It only sucks when you’re fighting it.” Autumn looked over Lydia’s shoulder at Griff, her expression softening. “But when you both admit it and let it guide you, it’s the most amazing feeling in the world.”
“But if I told Jackson I love him, nothing would change. I’d still have to leave and he’d have to stay, and we’d both be miserable.”
“Maybe,” Autumn said, nodding slowly. “But maybe if you’d admit it to each other, you’d find a way to make things work. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You don’t have to give up traveling and stay in one place for the rest of your life to be together. You two could find a way to compromise.”
Lydia frowned. “But mom told me not to let myself be tied down. To travel and find what makes me happy.”
“What?” Autumn blinked. “When did mom tell you that? You were a baby when she died.”
“In the letter she left for me. The one I opened on my eighteenth birthday.”
Autumn stared at her, running the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip. “What exactly did the letter say?”
“I’ve got it in my overnight bag,” Lydia told her. “I carry it everywhere. I’ll go get it.”
A few minutes later, Autumn put the letter on the table after reading, and gave Lydia a soft look. “It’s a beautiful letter,” she told her. “Even more beautiful that you kept it with you all this time. Mom loved you so much. She loved both of us. But I don’t understand why this is stopping you from being with Jackson.”
“Because of this part,” Lydia said, pointing to the fifth paragraph. “Where she tells me to travel and keep searching for what makes me happy. I’ve lived my life by that. I did exactly what she told me to. I’ve traveled and found happiness.”
“I don’t think that’s what she was trying to say,” Autumn said carefully. “She wrote this almost twenty-five years ago. I think she was telling you not to get tied down to the New York way of life. To see what else is out there that makes you happy. I don’t think she meant that you have to travel forever otherwise you’ll be sad.”
Lydia stilled, staring at her sister. “She wanted me to change the world. How can I do that if I’m not traveling?”
Autumn took her hand. “Sweetie, you have changed the world. You change everybody you meet. Look at Deenie Russell, telling everybody how Instagram has improved her business. She wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t for you. And then there’s Eddie. You saved him and got him home to his owners.” Autumn squeezed Lydia’s palm. “And Jackson,” she said softly. “You changed his life, too. You don’t have to go far to make a difference. It’s you who makes things better. Not the fact you travel.”
“You think she’d want me to settle down?” Lydia asked, her voice low.
“I know she’d want you to be happy. In whatever form that takes. Doesn’t matter if it means traveling or staying in one place. This letter is all about you being open to things. Maybe you should think about being open to love, no matter how it comes into your life.”
Lydia opened her mouth and closed it again. All these years that she’d traveled, she’d thought she’d found
the one thing that made her happy. And for a long time, it did. But she hadn’t found what she was looking for then. Hadn’t found the thing that filled her soul.
It wasn’t places that made her soul sing. It was people. The people she met. The ones who became her friends and she visited over and over again. Her family, her sister, her niece, and her sister’s fiancé. Even her dad.
And now there was somebody else that made her whole body sing with delight. Who only had to smile at her to make her world feel full. Who knew how to touch her and kiss her in a way that made her toes curl with pleasure.
Happiness wasn’t about searching. It was about accepting.
“I have to go to Barcelona,” she whispered. “And then to France and Italy and South America.” She had no choice. She had clients and a reputation to keep. And there was no way she could ruin their vacations. Especially after they’d paid her so much.
“I know.” Autumn nodded. “And what happens after that?”
“After that?” Lydia repeated, pondering the words. “I choose happiness.”
28
“I’ll take her home with me,” Ryan said at six a.m. the next morning. The two of them had slept fitfully in the hospital room. The nursing shift was changing, and they’d taken the opportunity to walk to the hospital cafeteria to grab a caffeine fix. “I don’t want her on her own. Not the first few days. She can have my guest room. It’s not like anybody else needs it.”
That guest room used to be Jackson’s bedroom, a hundred years ago before he moved out. Like everything else in Ryan’s house – or his life for that matter – it was practically unchanged since Jackson was a kid. Sure it was clean, something he’d never managed to achieve in his eighteen years of living there, and the posters of surfers and bands had been taken off the wall. But the blue paint and the grey rug were the same, not to mention the single bed with a crochet bedspread.
“She’s not your problem,” Jackson told him, as they waited for the elevator. His back was aching from hunching over the bed, holding his mom’s hand as she drifted off.
“Of course she is,” Ryan said softly. “She’s the mother of my child.”
This conversation was so predictable. Jackson could probably say his father’s lines for him. How many times had they talked about this? And yet he still answered, the same way he always did.
“Your child is a grown up. And you’re divorced. The only reason I told you about mom is because I’d been drinking and couldn’t drive myself. This has to stop at some point, Dad. You’re enabling her. When are you going to stop pining after her and start living your life? It’s been twenty years since you divorced. All that time and you haven’t moved on.”
Ryan shifted awkwardly on his feet. “Yeah, well some relationships don’t stick to the rules, you know. Jenny will always be special to me. I’ll always love her. You can’t turn those feelings off, no matter how much you want to.”
Jackson would have laughed, but it wasn’t funny. He knew exactly what his dad meant. And for a moment, he saw himself in twenty years’ time. Would he pine after Lydia the way his dad pined after his mom?
The thought felt like a punch to the gut. He couldn’t live his life like that. He didn’t want to be like his dad, always hoping she’d come back. Living his life around the hole she left. Christ, he loved her, but he couldn’t keep saying goodbye.
This was killing him.
Anger surged up inside of him. At the situation he and Lydia had found themselves in. At his mom and her inability to be a grown-up, no matter how old she was. And for his dad and his refusal to move on from the love of his life.
“You need to let go,” Jackson told him. “This thing you have for mom, it’s unhealthy. Stop riding in like a knight in shining armor.”
“I can’t,” his dad said quietly. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”
Jackson gritted his teeth. “She walked away, Dad. She left us. Left you.”
“No, she didn’t.”
Jackson froze. “What do you mean? Of course she did. I watched her leave.” And the little kid inside of him still hurt over it.
“You saw what you wanted to see. She didn’t leave, I kicked her out.”
He blinked. That wasn’t true. His mom was the one who walked out of their lives. She was the one who’d wanted a divorce, to be single and free. Not his dad.
“I don’t understand,” Jackson said, his brow creasing.
“It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, asking her to leave. But she was making our lives a misery. She’d take you out of school and I’d get calls from them telling me you’d disappeared or hadn’t showed up at all and they had no idea where you were. Some days I’d come home and you’d both be in your pajamas. Other times you’d disappear for days, and come back wearing Mickey ears and telling me all about your great adventures.” Ryan looked down at his hands. “And then there were the days when she’d go off on her own, and I’d come home and you’d be eating beans from a can. The house would be a dumpster. She’d fling things around and leave them everywhere, then walk out for a day or two without telling me. I begged her to see a doctor, or for us to go to counseling, but she refused. So I told her she needed to go.”
Ryan looked up, his eyes full of sadness. “I didn’t want to do it. But it was affecting you. You were confused and angry, and a lot of the time your school work was suffering. They started talking about keeping you back a year, and that’s when I knew something had to give.”
“You didn’t tell me…” Jackson whispered. “Why didn’t I know this?”
“Because you were a kid. You didn’t need to be involved in grown up stuff. I didn’t want you to be. I wanted you to enjoy being a child.”
Jackson shook his head, trying to make sense of his dad’s words. “But all these years, you’ve still loved her?”
“Yeah. It’s a strange mixture of love and guilt. Once she left, she really went off the rails. There was a year or two that I was terrified for her.”
“So the money you give her, it’s guilt money?”
Ryan’s eyes met his. “It’s money I have and that she needs. That’s all it is.”
Another thought captured Jackson’s mind. “But you let me believe she was the one who left. All these years… I’ve blamed her. I’ve been mad at her.” His muscles stiffened at the thought. “You should have told me.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “You should have…”
“I know.”
The elevator arrived, the doors opening with a ping. But Jackson couldn’t get into it. Not when everything he knew was upside down. Couldn’t go to the cafeteria like nothing had happened with the two people who’d made him what he was – good and bad. Their relationship was messed up, the same way his childhood was.
“I need some air,” he said, turning on his heel to head for the stairs.
“Son, I—”
Jackson held up his hand. “Just let me be alone for a minute. I need to think.”
His dad nodded, lips turned down. “Okay,” he said softly.
The hospital was even quieter as Jackson walked down the stairs and through reception, heading out of the glass sliding doors to the parking lot. The air was cool as it hit his skin, and he took a deep breath, slumping against the wall of the hospital as he tried to make sense of his thoughts.
For as long as he could remember, he’d believed that his mom had been the one to walk out. He’d thought that some people were never supposed to be tied down. He’d built defenses around his heart to make sure he’d never be like his dad, pining for somebody he could never have.
If he was truly honest, that’s why his relationship with Hayley never worked out. Sure, he’d gotten engaged to her, but he’d never truly let her in. Never let himself be vulnerable to her. And when she’d met somebody else and gotten pregnant – he’d told himself that’s just what women did.
After that, the shields he’d carefully built around his heart had gotten stronger. Harder. He’d told himself he was fine being
alone. He had his business, his friends, and never wanted for female company.
Until Lydia.
He swallowed hard, remembering the way she’d looked before he walked away hours ago. Her eyes dark and full of clouds he knew he’d put there. Because he hadn’t been honest. Not with himself and not with her. He’d walked away without telling her how he truly felt about her, because he’d been too damn scared she didn’t feel the same way.
If he was truly honest, he was still scared. She’d found the tiniest chink in the armor of his heart, and burrowed her way in. And now that the barrier was breached he had no idea how to close it again. She was there, whether he wanted her to be or not. And when she left today, it would hurt like hell, because he’d let her in.
He stood there for ten minutes, but thoughts were still buzzing like flies in his head.
“I know you said you needed space, but I wanted to check if you were okay.” His dad stood next to him, holding two Styrofoam cups of coffee. He offered one to Jackson, who took it silently, lifting it to his lips and taking a mouthful of the bitter drink.
“I just needed to get out of there.”
“Most people feel that way about hospitals,” his dad said.
Jackson laughed, and Ryan smiled at him.
“I’m sorry,” his dad said quietly. “For messing you up with our relationship. I know things haven’t been easy for you. Not with Hayley leaving you and all.”
“That was years ago,” Jackson told him. “And she did me a favor.”
“I’d agree with that. To a point. She certainly wasn’t good enough for you.” Ryan sipped at his coffee. “But she also hurt you. Even if you pretended everything was fine. The same way me asking your mom to leave hurt you. It might have been for the greater good, but it doesn’t make it any less painful.”
