Welcome to Pembrooke: the complete Pembrooke series

by Prince, Jessica

  “I do,” I finally admitted out loud for the first time. “But I shouldn’t. It’s not right.”

  The look on his face was one I hadn’t expected. I thought I’d have confused him, thrown him for a loop, but what I saw when I looked at him was understanding. He seemed to get it, which surprised to hell out of me.

  And when he finally spoke, and revealed the truth behind that understanding in his eyes, I was floored. “You know, Sarah’s not my first wife.”

  “What?”

  He nodded as a wave of sadness passed over his face. “Yeah. I was married once before, right out of high school. She was…” he trailed off, seemingly lost in thought. “She was my everything. Never thought I’d have something like that with anyone else. Connie was it for me.”

  My stomach dropped as I asked, “What happened?”

  The smile he gave me was full of pain. “Two years into our marriage, she got pregnant. Didn’t think I could be any fucking happier than when I saw those two pink lines, man.” He laughed lightheartedly at the memory, and I found myself smiling along with him. And then the memory appeared to turn bad, because the happiness disappeared as he continued. “It was a rough pregnancy, but we were just so excited to finally meet our baby that we didn’t let it get to us, you know?”

  “I know,” I said softly.

  “She was already in her ninth month when she woke up bleeding one night. I rushed her to the hospital, but the placenta had torn, and she was bleeding so goddamned much…” He stopped for a while and breathed deeply, dropping his head in an attempt to compose himself. It took a few minutes, but I let him be, gave him the silence he needed to get himself to a better place. When he was ready to finish his story, he looked up. “I lost them both that night. My wife and my son.”

  “Christ,” I breathed as my chest squeezed to an almost painful level. “Tony, fuck, I’m so sorry, man.”

  I couldn’t imagine going through the same loss Tony had. If it hadn’t been for Sophia, I don’t think I would have made it. But he lost both of them. The fact that he was able to move on from that spoke to the character of the man, and I had an entirely new level of respect for him. “I didn’t tell you my story because I wanted you to feel sorry for me. I told you because I get it. I know what you’re struggling with right now, Quinn. When I first met Sarah, I couldn’t imagine giving her that piece of myself that had belonged to Connie. It felt wrong. I felt like I was betraying her for falling for another woman. So I get what you’re going through.

  “But having been in your shoes, I have a perspective on the situation that you can’t see yet. And if telling my story can help you move past this, I want to do that. I was just as broken as you are now, but falling for Sarah when I was at my lowest was the smartest fucking thing I’ve ever done. After I lost Connie and our son, I was barely living. I didn’t want to feel for Sarah the way I did, but she’d gotten under my skin. She burrowed deep and wouldn’t let go.” He gave a little chuckle before going on. “She saw the pain I was in and she wanted to help me. It didn’t start out as something romantic, it was just her wanting to be a friend.”

  Christ, what he was saying was so much like what I’d gone through with Lilly. There’d been an attraction between us from the start, but it took a while for us to come to terms and act on it. We’d gotten to know each other on a totally different level first. We became friends. Best friends. She’d been what I hadn’t even realized I needed.

  “That friendship grew into something else, and that scared the shit out of me,” Tony expressed. “I was where you are now. I fucked it up and almost lost her for good. But it took doing that for me to open my eyes and realize something. Loving Sarah didn’t mean what I had with Connie was any less important. Connie was everything I needed back then. I became an adult with her, learned responsibility, learned what it meant to be a real man and put someone else’s needs and wants above my own. She helped me grow into the man that was worthy of a woman like Sarah. She gave me exactly what I needed when I had her, and being with her taught me how to give Sarah exactly what she needs now. I don’t think I’d be where I am today without the lessons I learned with Connie.

  “Some people aren’t lucky enough to find the love I had with Connie once in their lives. I was lucky enough to find that twice. How can that possibly be bad? If what you feel for Lilly is even a fraction of what I felt when I met Sarah, you need to grab hold of that, brother. Because I can promise you, Addy would want you to be happy. She’d want you to find a good woman who can take care of you and Sophia. If that woman is Lilly, don’t fuck it up and lose it because you’re scared. Every goddamned thing that matters in life is scary. Nothing worth having ever came easy. You and I learned that the hard way. But falling in love a second time doesn’t mean you’re devaluing the memory of your wife. It just means you’re one lucky bastard. Take all those lessons Addy taught you in the past and be the man Lilly needs today and every day in the future.”

  I felt like I’d just taken a fist to the gut. It hurt to breathe as I admitted, “I think I might be too late on that, man. I hurt her. I fucking hurt her too many times. She’s done with me.” Christ, saying that out loud burned something fierce.

  “She’s not done, Quinn.”

  I looked over at him, my heart aching with each beat in my chest. “She is. She told me we weren’t good for each other.”

  Tony stood and gave my shoulder a pat. “Then be good for her, man. She’s still here. She’s alive and breathing, and as long as that’s the case, it’s never done. Be the kind of man that’s good for her. Pull out all the stops to get that second chance, and I swear, it’ll be worth all the blood, sweat, and tears you put into it.”

  I was thankful when he headed out of the weight room. I needed time to process everything he’d just said, and I wasn’t sure I could do that in the company of others. It took an hour for the wakeup call to fully penetrate. By the time a call came in for a small kitchen fire, and I was pulled from my inner musings, the battle that had been raging inside me for months suddenly seemed to disappear. I felt a sense of calm I hadn’t experiences in years. Finally, I knew what I had to do.

  I had to be the man Lilly needed.

  When we got back to the firehouse, I found Tony in the locker room. “Hey, I need a favor.”

  He secured the towel around his hips and gave me a knowing grin. “Yeah? With what?”

  “Think you can cover my next shift for me?”

  That grin on his face grew into a full-blown smile as he answered, “I got you, brother. Go do what you need to do.”

  I fully intended to do exactly that. I just hoped I could fix the damage done from trying to hold her at arms-length for so long, because I finally accepted that I couldn’t imagine a life without Lilly in it.

  And I prayed that she felt the same.

  35

  Quinn

  My palms were sweating, the skin on the back of my neck tingling, as I made my way up the familiar walkway toward the front door. It had taken two weeks since my talk with Tony to set my plan into motion, but now that I was finally here, standing outside a house I’d come to know so well, I was second-guessing my decision.

  I had no doubt they didn’t want to see me. They probably didn’t want to hear a word I had to say, but if I had any hope in fixing this deep, bottomless hole inside of me, if I had any hope of fixing myself and getting Lilly back, I needed to do this.

  I closed my eyes and pulled in a deep calming breath. On an exhale, I reached out and pressed the doorbell, listening to the faint chimes echoing through the solid wood door.

  The door opened and her eyes grew wide with shock. “Quinn. This is a surprise.”

  “Janice,” I tipped my chin down. “How are you? I’m sorry to just drop by like this.”

  “Is everything all right? Is Sophia okay?” She fidgeted nervously with the necklace she’d worn every day since Addison and I gave it to her as a birthday present. The locket held a picture of Addy as a baby on one side
, and a picture of Sophia an hour after she was born on the other.

  “Sophia’s fine, she’s with my parents.” I swallowed around the mass in my throat and asked, “Is Garrett home?”

  She didn’t look any less confused as she stepped to the side to let me in. “Yes, of course. Come in. I’ll get him for you.”

  “I actually need to speak to both of you. If that’s all right.” Janice led me into the living room. It looked exactly the same all these years later, and memories of all the happy times I’d spent here as part of my wife’s family assaulted my senses. I hadn’t been back to this house, back to Seattle, since I uprooted mine and Sophia’s lives and headed to Pembrooke. Being back here, surrounded by pictures of Addy was both painful and comforting all at the same time. It had taken a lot for me to not let the pain of the memories debilitate me, and I still had so much work to do but, thanks to the therapist I’d started seeing three times a week, I was learning to remember the good times I had with my wife, and tried to look beyond the guilt.

  I didn’t want to let the past consume me anymore. And in order to do that, I needed to face this one particular obstacle. The biggest one I’d had yet.

  “I’m not going to lie, Quinn. You’re kind of scaring me right now. It’s not like you to just show up here. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  I offered a small smile to the woman I’d once loved like a second mother. To be honest, that love was still there, but I’d buried it under so much grief and despair, I’d forgotten how good it felt. “I’m trying to be,” I offered softly.

  Something about that statement seemed to hit Janice, and she jerked back a step. Then, slowly, her eyes tearful, she nodded her head. “I’ll just go get Garrett,” she whispered, and disappeared down the hall.

  As I waited, I made my way over to the mantle above the fireplace, studying the pictures I hadn’t seen in ages. I stopped when I came to one that made my heart squeeze in my chest.

  Reaching out, I picked up a photo of Addy and me at our wedding reception, bringing it closer to my face. God, we were so happy. I remembered it like it was yesterday. We were in the middle of our first dance as husband and wife. Everyone was watching as we moved across the floor, our heads bowed together as we whispered to each other, lost in our own little bubble. Halfway through the song, Addy gave me a playful smile and asked if I wanted to sneak any of the bottles of booze from the bar out under her skirts when the reception was over. I’d pulled back with a surprised laugh. She’d joined in seconds later, and the photographer captured the moment on camera.

  After losing her, I’d forgotten what it was like to be that happy. I’d grown so accustomed to carrying my sorrow with me, I couldn’t remember what it was like to have my shoulders free of that miserable weight.

  “If I remember correctly, you two stole away with about a thousand bucks of top-shelf booze in Addy’s dress that night.” My head jerked up at the sound of Garrett’s voice. I hadn’t even realized I was smiling, really and truly smiling, until I felt it slide from my face at the sight of him. I set the picture back on the mantle and turned to face my father-in-law. “Hello, Garrett.”

  He tipped his head at me. “Quinn. What can we do for you, son?”

  Son. Christ. I took a step back in shock at his casual use of that word. Son. I hadn’t heard that in so long. Hadn’t deserved it.

  I cleared my throat, hoping to dislodge the emotions welling up inside of it. “Can we… can we sit? There are some things I’d like to say to you and Janice.”

  He nodded, and he and his wife sat side by side on the sofa. I took the chair across from them, resting my elbows on my knees and wringing my hands together as I tried to recall the speech I had planned out for this very moment. But the words escaped me. I couldn’t even remember where to start.

  “Fuck,” I hissed, raking my hands through my hair in frustration. “I don’t know how to do this,” I said, more to myself than to them.

  “Do what, exactly?” Garrett asked, pulling me out of my head.

  I looked between him and Janice as nerves started to take over, and I began to rock back and forth in the chair. “Apologize,” I finally answered. “I came here to apologize to both of you, but nothing I can think to say is good enough. I want to tell you how sorry I am, but now that I’m here I’m fucking it all up.”

  Janice’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Apologize to us for what, Quinn?”

  I could hear the anguish in my own voice as I finally admitted, “Apologize for taking your daughter away from you. I’m so goddamned sorry for putting you through so much pain. I’ve wanted to say this to you for three and a half years, but I was too much of a fucking coward.”

  “You…” Janice trailed off and a lone tear breached her eyes and traveled down her cheek. She visibly struggled to find the words, but Garrett didn’t have the same problem.

  “You think we blame you for Addy’s death?”

  “It was my fault,” I rasped, losing the tenuous hold I had on my emotions. I hadn’t cried in years, not since I lost her, but now, sitting in front of two people who’d both earned my love and respect… well, it was all too much, and I felt the wet hit my eyes before I could do anything about it. “It’s my fault. If I’d have been paying better attention—”

  “It was an accident!” Garrett boomed. He stood from the couch and began pacing in agitation. “Jesus Christ, son. It was a goddamned accident. Is this what you’ve been thinking all these years? That we blame you for losing Addy?”

  My gut clenched in discomfort. “You could barely look at me…”

  “Because I was hurting. Christ, Quinn. No parent should ever have to bury their child. But I never, not once, blamed you for what happened that night.”

  I turned my wide eyes on Janice to see she was silently crying, her hand over her mouth. “Oh, Quinn, honey. How could you possibly think that?”

  “Because it’s the truth!” I shouted, shooting up from the chair. “You both know it, that’s why neither of you spoke hardly a word to me before I left. You know it’s true!”

  Garrett’s voice was suddenly so much lower when he stepped into my space. “Yes, I hardly spoke a word to you, except to fight with you when you informed us you were leaving, but not because I blamed you. Because I was pissed. We lost our daughter that night, our only child. No parent should ever have to feel that pain. But Janice and I were so goddamned thankful that you’d made it out alive. It was the only thing that got us through that time. But then you took yourself away from us, too. We didn’t just lose Addy that night, Quinn. We lost you as well. And that pissed me off. Maybe I should have handled it better, son, but I didn’t know what else to do.

  “You wore your grief around your neck like a noose. There was no pulling you out of it. Every day you slipped further and further away, and goddamn it, I resented you for that. I was mad you shut us out. Because you’re my son.” His own tears broke free and made tracks down his face as he put his hands on my shoulders and squeezed, giving me a slight shake. “You’ve been a part of this family since the first time Addy brought you home. You always will be. I’m so sorry we’ve let this go on for so long, that we led you to believe you carried the blame. That stops now, son. Right this goddamned minute, you hear me?”

  I let the tears run, unchecked as he pulled me into a crushing embrace. When we separated, Janice was right there for a hug of her own. She wept into the fabric of my shirt as I held her tightly.

  “We love you, Quinn,” she whispered against my chest before taking a step back and wiping at her eyes.

  My voice was ragged as I said, “I love you too. Both of you, and I’m sorry I put you guys through this.” I cleared my throat again and shook my head. “I don’t know how to let go of the guilt. I miss her every fucking day. It kills me a little more every time I think about her, but I can’t let her go,” I rasped. “I can’t let her go,” I repeated on a whisper.

  “Who said you had to?” Janice asked quietly. “You’ll never be able
to let her go completely. You had a life together, you two made a beautiful child. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be happy. It doesn’t mean you can’t move on.” She cupped my cheeks in her soft hands. “Honey, you can’t stay stagnant like this, it’s not right. She wouldn’t want to see you so miserable. You have to move on, sweetheart.”

  My throat burned like fire as I asked, “How? How do I move on?”

  She sniffled and her fingers clenched against my skin. “You start by forgiving yourself. If you can’t do that on your own, let me and Garrett help you, please.”

  I took her wrists in my hands, not to remove them, but to absorb more of her touch. “I want to try,” I whispered.

  Janice smiled so brightly her eyes glittered, just like Addison’s used to do. Her hands fell and she moved back to sit on the couch. Garrett joined her and wrapped an arm around his wife’s shoulder. I followed suit and sat in the chair. “Do you know I heard you laugh — really laugh — at Sophia’s birthday party for the first time in three and half years? That woman, Lilly? She whispered something to you and for just a second, you forgot to feel miserable and you let go.”

  I let out a little chuckle. “You’re a lot more intuitive than I’d like.”

  “Don’t feel bad for falling for her, son,” Garrett chimed in, surprising me that he’d noticed as well. “She was a beautiful woman, and for a brief flash, she seemed to make you happy. Addy would want you to be happy.”

  I rubbed my hands against the stubble on my jaw and admitted, out loud for the very first time, something I’d known in my gut and my heart for months. “I love her.”

  “Then we’re happy for you,” Garrett said. “And we’d love a chance to get to know her.”

  “Is she helping you?” Janice asked. “Is she the reason you’re finally here?”

  That familiar shame came back in full force. “Not for the reasons you’re thinking. I hurt her… badly. I want to make it right, but I knew I couldn’t do that until I talked to you. I couldn’t make an attempt to move on unless I fixed things between us.”