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She shook her head. “But everybody—”
“I know for a fact that the only person who thinks less of you for the choices you’ve made is Grant. That’s why you get your back up when anyone else says anything remotely close to you being a cat lady or on the shelf or whatever other hot-button terms you don’t like.”
Aubry had a point. She knew Aubry had a point, but it was so hard to agree with her with Adam’s words ringing in her ears. Stability. That’s what she’d always sought for herself. She’d known Adam wasn’t the most stable guy around, but… “He just walked away. He wouldn’t even talk to me.”
If there was one thing she learned from her parents’ twenty-five-year marriage, it was that people had to be able to fight in a relationship and still have the security to know it wasn’t the end of things. She didn’t have that with Adam. She wasn’t sure she ever would, even if their fight hadn’t happened today.
“Adam’s a broken individual. Trust me, it takes one to know one.” Aubry hugged her. “And, just like me, you can’t fix him through sheer force of will. The world would be a better place if your sunshine could drown out other people’s rainstorms—it just doesn’t work like that.”
But she didn’t want to change him. Not really. She liked all of Adam’s hidden depths and a thousand other little things about him. The only thing she wanted was for him to let her in, to let her help him shoulder the burden. If his mom really was terminal, then he’d need someone to lean on. He couldn’t do it alone, not without breaking, not when he obviously loved Amelia so much.
But he wouldn’t take help from her. She suspected he wouldn’t take help from anyone.
Or maybe he would…
Jules straightened. “I have to make a call.” She disentangled herself from Aubry and pulled her phone out of her pocket. It took all of a second to find Daniel’s number and call it.
He answered almost immediately. “Yep?”
“Adam needs you.” Her voice broke, but she charged on. “He won’t talk to me, but something happened, and he needs to talk to someone.”
“Does he know you’re calling?”
“No.”
Daniel was quiet for a long ten seconds. “We don’t talk about some things, Jules. It’s just the way it is.”
What was it with the men in her life who couldn’t deal with emotion? She took a deep breath and tried to keep the strain from her voice. “I know you have unresolved issues—all of you do—but if you let him shoulder this alone, it’s going to kill something inside him. Please, Daniel. Please at least try to talk to him.”
Her cousin sighed. “I’ll try. That’s all I can do.”
It would have to be good enough. “Thank you.” She hung up and turned to find Aubry staring at her. “What?”
“You really fell hard for this guy, didn’t you?”
Too hard, too fast, too much all around. She slumped back into the couch. “I really did.”
“I think this calls for a tea party.” Aubry stood. “And by tea party, I mean we’re going to drink vodka out of teacups and eat our weight in ice cream while we bitch about the men who’ve done us wrong.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“Aw, Jules, that’s where you’re wrong. You’re better than all of us—you’re just too good of a person to see it.” She disappeared into her room and came back with two fine china teacups on saucers. “Now, do you want to shoot some noobs, or is this the kind of hurting that requires a sappy romance movie?”
Jules’s eyes burned. “You’re the best friend anyone could ever ask for.”
“Just don’t go around telling people that.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”Chapter Twenty-FourAdam didn’t have a place in mind when he started driving after grabbing a six-pack from the market, but he ended up in the cemetery, winding through the narrow paths until he stood in front of his friend’s headstone. He opened a beer and finally made himself read it.
John Moore
Beloved son and brother
December 16, 1981—December 16, 2002
It’s been too long.
And somehow not nearly long enough.
He opened a second beer and, after a self-conscious look around, upended it on the grass covering his friend’s grave.
Adam sighed. His mama wasn’t talking to him, and Lenora had practically ripped out his throat when he tried to push the subject. As much as he hated to admit it, she was right—they both needed time to cool off. The problem was the truth wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how many laps he drove around town.
She’s really going to be gone for good, long before I’m ready to let her go. I don’t know that I’ll ever be ready to let her go.
His mama was the closest thing to roots he had in this life. What was he going to do without that? It didn’t matter that he didn’t see her all that often normally—knowing she was carrying on life in Devil’s Falls had always steadied him, just a bit.
