“But you love him.” It’s a pained whisper that I feel seep down into my bones. “And we can’t always control who we end up with.”
I take hold of his face and push the sunglasses off his nose and back on top of his head. I want him to look at me and feel the sincerity of my words. “Please don’t feel like I’m abandoning you. You’re my best friend. I love you.” No matter how many times I tell him, I’ll never mean it the way he wants me to.
We both know it.
His lips press against the corner of mine and the salt of my tears hit our mouths. “That doesn’t mean we won’t end. You can’t have us both, even if you and I are just friends. It hurts too much.”
“Please stop talking like this,” I whisper against his skin.
His hands are gripping my waist, digging into my flesh. “I’m sorry.”
“Are we okay?” I ask, because I’m not sure where we stand after this conversation. I wasn’t expecting anything like this when I came out here to look for him. This is a dangerous game we’re playing, deceiving his family. Hell, sometimes even fooling our own hearts into believing that we’re together.
He nods, but doesn’t give me any verbal reassurances. When we break away, we wipe each other’s cheeks, erasing the evidence of the difficulty of the conversation.
“I love you, Scarlett,” he whispers in my ear. I close my eyes and savor the words, cling to them, scared that I’ll never hear them again.
“I love you more.” I don’t know why I say it when I know it’s not true.
He gives me a sad smile. “I doubt that.”
My mind drifts to his brother’s I love yous, the hundreds of them we exchanged under starry skies, and it prompts more crying. I miss the lighthearted banter we would share each time we spoke those words.
Easton doesn’t ask about the tears; I have a feeling he knows why they started up again. Instead, he wipes the salty trail they leave on my cheeks and leads me back into the hospital.
***
Sitting at the table, sandwiched between Estella and Claudia is the last place I feel like being right now. Today’s conversation with Easton is running through my head on a continuous loop, each time it plays more painful than the last. Estella’s nonstop chattering is helping take my mind off it, but every time I glance across the table and see the two brothers sitting together, it’s like a knife to my chest.
“Can we go see the treehouse now?” she asks me for the hundredth time since we sat down.
“It’s dark out.” Her father saves me from having to come up with more excuses.
“But that’s when you and Squirt used to go in the woods. I want to get on the roof and look at the stars. I bet Virgo is awesome from up there.”
Every time she brings up the past, the muscles in Easton’s jaw jumps. Claudia sits beside me, sipping wine, eyeing the two brothers like she wants to devour them.
“We were much older,” I tell Estella. “Maybe tomorrow when the sun’s out your dad can take you back there.”
“I hate being four,” she whines. “I never get to do anything.”
Claudia stands up. “Would you like to do the dishes?” Estella replies with a pouty shake of her head, but it stops the whining. Claudia starts to pick up the empty plates and turns to me. “Why don’t you give me a hand and let Sutton and Easton spend some time together?”
A root canal sounds like a better time, but I stand up and follow her into the kitchen. She starts washing and I immediately hate that she’s so familiar and comfortable here. She shouldn’t even be here.
None of this should be happening.
“I’m so glad we finally have a chance to chat,” she tells me. “I’ve been dying to get to know the girl who managed to snag the two most handsome men I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
My back goes stiff. “It’s not like that.”
“Oh? Well, what’s it like then?”
“It’s complicated.” It’s also none of her business.
She takes her hands out of the soapy dishwater and dries them on the towel next to the sink, her hip propped on the counter and her eyes on the two brothers through the small opening separating the two rooms. “I don’t think I could pick between them if I was forced to. This must be torture for you.”
“I’m with Easton.” It’s hardly convincing. I feel like a horrible person for even saying it, knowing how I’m hurting him.
“But now Sutton’s back. You’ve got to realize he still has feelings for you.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does.”
“I think I’m done with this conversation.”
She’s still propped against the sink, smiling, when I walk out to the living room and sit beside Easton.
“Tired?” he asks.
Yes. Tired of the nanny trying to talk about things she knows nothing about. “Very.”
He runs his fingers through my hair a few times. “Why don’t you stay here with me tonight?”
I order myself not to do it, but I look to the other end of the couch to see if his brother is watching and listening to us. He’s holding a book in his hand and sitting with Estella, but his gaze is locked on us.
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
His hold around me gets tighter. “I need you here with me,” he says in my ear. “I miss waking up with you.”
“None of my stuff is here.”
“You don’t need anything.”
My cheeks heat at his words. We may sleep in the same bed every night when we’re back at school, the reason why sitting two feet away from us right now, staring us down.
“I’ll stay,” I whisper. As soon as I say the words his face lights up.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
“I changed my mind,” Sutton says to his daughter. “Ready to go see the treehouse?”
“Yes!” she screams, jumping up from his lap, despite the fact she was falling asleep mere seconds ago.
“Claudia, do you want to come with us?”
“I’d love to. Will you tell me about the stars?”
I hold my breath and wait for his answer. “Of course.” He takes her hand and the three of them walk out the front door. The betrayal stings. Those are our stars, our stories, our woods.
With tears in my eyes and heaviness in my heart, I slip out of the house and text Easton when I’m in the safety of my bedroom, telling him I have a headache and went home.
He doesn’t reply.
Chapter Twenty-three
“She’s coming home in the morning.”
I can barely swallow the coffee because of the churning in my stomach. It’s been four days since the dinner with Sutton, Estella, and Claudia, four days since Easton started to pull away from me, and four days since the scan. We were hoping for good news, but this morning Doc gives us the opposite.
“The chemo isn’t putting a dent in the cancer.” I sit in silence and listen to the harsh breaths being drawn by Easton and Sutton, the sounds of grown men trying to keep from losing it.
“It’s pointless to continue poisoning her with all those damn drugs.” He keeps going, giving us medical facts to back up his claims, but all I want to do is put my fingers in my ears and shout, just like I’ve seen Estella do when her father or Claudia tells her something she doesn’t want to hear.
“Have you gotten a second opinion?” Sutton asks.
“I’ve consulted with every oncologist in the state I know, son, and even sent the reports to some buddies of mine from med school.” He rubs the back of his neck a few times and shakes his head. “We need to bring your momma home and give her what she wants.”
“What about what we want?” Easton is up and pacing holes in the floor, none too happy with his father.
“This isn’t about what we want anymore. If I had my way, we wouldn’t even be having this goddamn conversation.” He gets up and clutches the edge of the table. “Now, I have some calls to make. We’ll have nursing staff here to help with he
r care. The plan is to keep her comfortable and out of pain until…” his words trail off but there’s no need for him to finish. His meaning is clear.
Both brothers are moving, doors are slamming and causing pictures on the walls to rattle, and I’m left alone with Doc.
“I don’t know what to say or do to make this better.”
His smile is tight and sad, solely for my benefit, and not quite reaching his eyes. I don’t know if he’ll ever smile like the old Doc again. “I don’t think there’s anything you can say or do.” He puts his coffee cup in the sink and stares out of the kitchen window. My eyes follow his and we both watch Easton pull out of the driveway. My guess is he’s off to the hospital.
“They’re both going to have a hard time with this. Hell, I am too but I know what’s going to happen. I’ve seen it happen many times in my line of work.” He turns from the sink and the wetness in his eyes triggers my own tears. “You’ve got to help them through this, Scarlett. I’m the bad guy in this situation. They think I’m giving up. My boys are going to hate me.”
I join him at the sink and wrap my arms around his waist. He’s frozen, grieving, dreading the pain that’s still to come. I don’t know what else to do so I just stand there and let him cry on my shoulder.
“Shit,” he says when he pulls away. “I’m sorry for falling apart like that.” He touches my cheek and lets his hand drop.
“I’m here anytime you need to.”
“I know, Scarlett. I don’t think you realize how important you are to this family.”
“I don’t think you all know how important you are to me.”
His smile is bigger, and it’s the most genuine smile I’ve seen from him since I’ve come back home. “I think we have an idea.” He clears his throat. “I’m going to make those phone calls. You need anything?”
He’s just like his sons, asking about me when his family is in crisis. “I’m fine. I’ll go check on Sutton.”
“Thanks.”
I search the house, but he’s not in any of the other rooms. I should know better. There’s only one place he’d go at a time like this.
For once, I don’t even think twice about going back into the woods. I haven’t been here with him since the night he told me about getting that other girl pregnant. That night seems like a lifetime ago.
I spot him on the roof of the old treehouse, but he’s zoned out, completely unaware of the fact that I’m back here. I climb the ladder to the inside, take a few gulps of air, and hoist myself out the window and onto the roof.
“When’s the last time you’ve been out here, Squirt?”
“The night you broke my heart.” It’s not true. I came here with Emily when she came to tell us about her engagement, but I’m hurting right now and I want him to hurt, too.
“I don’t regret my daughter, but I’ll regret what I did to you for the rest of my life.”
I lay back on the roof, as close to him as I can get without actually touching. “Why didn’t you ever come back for me?”
I wish it was night. I wish we had our stars to distract us from the weight of this conversation. Things are so much easier to talk about under the cover of those twinkling lights.
His face turns to mine and I do the same, staring into his hypnotic eyes. “It was so messed up. She’s not a good person, Scarlett.”
That stings. “But good enough for you to sleep with?”
“I don’t even remember it. I mean, I know it happened, but I was so fucked up from all the weed I smoked, I was devastated over losing my grandfather.”
“You never even told me her name.”
“Laura.” I swear he’s closer than he was a few minutes ago. “I’m not sure why she even told me she was pregnant. She had no intention of keeping the baby. I thought she was bluffing about an abortion, so I figured she was trying to trap me into a relationship. It became painfully clear that she wasn’t concerned about our child. I would find her high or drunk, partying, not a care in the world.” He rolls on his side and props his head on his hand. “I couldn’t sit by and watch that happen. I moved her in with me so I could keep an eye on her.”
I close my eyes, sick at both the notion of her acting so irresponsible and selfish while pregnant and at the thought of Sutton playing house with his pregnant non-girlfriend.
“Things went from bad to worse when she moved in. Laura was under the impression that we were going to be together once she was living with me. Every time I turned her down, she would threaten to have an abortion. A few times she even mentioned suicide.”
“My God.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I was out in California, alone, scared out of my mind, living with a crazy person whose parents refused to do anything to help her. So, I did the only thing I could think of to keep my baby safe- I promised her that we would try to work things out.”
“Did you?”
“I went through the motions, but it made me sick. I hated lying to her, hated betraying you, but I had to think about the baby. Right before Estella was born, I hired an attorney to get custody sorted. I knew it was going to get ugly, but I had no idea how ugly.”
“What happened, Sutton?”
“I broke things off. One of our fights got really heated one night, so I took Estella and went to Emily’s to give Laura a chance to cool down. I tried calling her several hours later but she wasn’t picking up. I left Estella with Em and went back home.” I watch his chest rise and fall with rapid breaths, and I think I have a pretty good idea of the direction the story is headed. “She was unconscious, a bottle of pills in her hand.”
“Sutton,” I exhale, but there’s nothing I can say to change the outcome of the story.
“I got home just in time,” he continues. “I called 911 and they rushed her to the ER and pumped her stomach. Her parents were notified, and that’s when I learned there was more to the story.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that she had attempted suicide several times in the past. Laura has a history of mental illness and had been diagnosed with several disorders. Her parents didn’t bother to tell me any of this when I talked to them about some of her strange behaviors. Come to find out she had been off her meds since right before she got pregnant.”
“Where is she now?”
“With them. She signed over all parental rights after she recovered from the suicide attempt.”
My heart hurts for that precocious four year old. No child should have to deal with a parent like that. I know what it’s like to have a mother that doesn’t want you. “Does Estella know all of this?”
“No. She just thinks she doesn’t have a mom.”
“She’s not going to buy your explanation forever. Estella’s too smart for that.”
“I’ll need to have some serious conversations with her when the time comes, but it works for us now. I don’t talk to Laura anymore, but she made it abundantly clear the last time we spoke that she never wanted to be a mother, and that is something that will never change.”
“Who wouldn’t want their own child?” There’s no need for the question, really, when I already know the answer.
He just shakes his head. “My point in telling you all of this is because I want you to know why I never came back. There was no way I could try to fix things with you when I had all of that going on in my life. When I did come back, when Estella was about to turn one, I never expected that you wouldn’t be here. You leaving with my brother was a harsh blow for me to take.”
“You getting someone else pregnant was no walk in the park, either.”
He reaches for me, his hand hovering above my cluster of freckles he was once fascinated with, but drops it before making contact. “I never thought it would be like this when I came back.” His words are a painful whisper.
“Like what?”
“Mom dying, you and Easton together. I wish I never would have left.”
“Then you wouldn’t have Estella. And your mom would still be sick.�
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His hand moves toward me again, so very slowly, and his fingertips barely graze my skin. “But I’d have you.”
I want to lean into his touch, but I move in the other direction. “I need to go check on Easton,” I tell him and leave the roof faster than I ever have.
Chapter Twenty-four
Mrs. Vera arrived home later the same morning and has been home for several days now. Word spread quickly that she was sick and back here with us, waiting for the inevitable, so the driveway quickly filled with cars of friends waiting to see her and say their good-byes. This got old really fast. Claudia became a guard dog, turning people away at the door, setting up appointments, only allowing visitors to come at a few designated times during the day. None of us could have been that firm with her friends, but Claudia didn’t know these people and had no qualms about turning them away at the door.
After about a week, Mrs. Vera was graced with a renewed surge of energy. It gave us all false hope, but Doc was quick to tell us that it was because she was home, resting better, and the chemo was working its way out of her system. We took advantage of this time, each spending one on one time with her. Through painful breaths and harsh coughing fits, she whispered stories and advice to each of her sons. After each of these conversations, I would watch Sutton and Easton disappear, teary eyed, for hours.
My time with her wasn’t as difficult. Mrs. Vera was determined to teach me all of her recipes so that I could master all of her cakes and cookies that I enjoyed when I was a kid. I welcomed these times, because I was able to spend time with her and could think about a happier time in my life. I often sat at her kitchen table after school and watched her bake for me, laughing and carrying on like I didn’t have a care in the world.
Every afternoon, Doc puts her in a wheelchair and brings her into the kitchen for my baking lessons. These small snippets of time became my favorite part of each day.
“Mmmm,” I moan around the sugar cookie. “These are much better than yesterday’s batch.”
“Thank you for letting me teach you. I always wanted a daughter to bake with. I couldn’t have picked a better one, Scarlett. I love you.” She wipes at the corner of her eyes and smiles. “Sutton and Easton were more interested in the eating part than the actual baking.”
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