Page 77 of Three Months Yesterday

I don’t know what reaction I was hoping for, but utter silence wasn’t it.

Wyatt is still staring at the doorway they disappeared through. His body frozen in shock. Slowly he turns to me and pulls me into his side. His arm comes around my shoulder—heavy and warm—and he holds me there, his grip tight.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, his voice quiet—serious. No jokes. No deflections.

“Scared,” I whisper, my eyes burning. “But excited.”

He holds me tighter. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I smile, pulling back just enough to look at him.

Wyatt’s face changes. The shock melts into something younger and brighter. Something much more Wyatt.

“Do you want to see the ultrasound?”

“Yes,” he says without hesitation, the word coming out fast and breathless.

I reach into my pocket and pull out the photo, slightly bent in the corner from where I’ve been carrying it all evening. I smooth the crease and hand it to him.

Wyatt stares at the ultrasound, his mouth opening and closing a few times. He traces the edge of the photo with his thumb, and I watch as his eyes go glassy.

“That’s a baby, all right.”

“A boy,” I say through a watery laugh.

“Another nephew,” he says, his voice rough. He pulls me back into his side, the ultrasound held carefully in his other hand. “I love you, Mads. I can’t wait to be an uncle to another little boy.”

I press my face into his shoulder and let the tears come.

I have no idea what just happened with my parents and that’s something I’m going to have to face, but this reaction from my brother is exactly what I needed.

“It’s gonna be all right, Mads.” Aiden reaches across the table, taking my hand in his, a fierce look in his eyes.

There’s no doubt in my mind he’s telling the truth. Tucked into Wyatt’s side, holding Aiden’s hand, and having Beckett’s reassuring touch on my knee I know everything will be okay in the end. I just don’t know what that looks like right now.

This might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but that doesn’t stop me from pulling up outside the forest green house on Founders Way. The same house I’ve spent that last four Sunday nights at.

This isn’t my place.

The thought sits with me for a long moment, the engine ticking at it cools. I stare at the yellow front door like it might open on its own and save me the trouble of walking up to it.

I could turn around. Drive back into town, stop for a cup of coffee at Cobble & Cup Cafe, hit the gym. I could be anywhere else, but I’m not.

I keep telling myself I’d do this for any friend. If Ryan called me up, told me his world just cracked open, and his parents essentially ignored him, I’d be at their front door too. That’s what friends do. They show up.

The problem is none of my friends have ever found themselves in a situation like this. None of them have sat at a family dinner and watched their mother flee a room. None of them have announced a pregnancy to a table full of people they love who went silent in all the wrong ways.

So maybe I’m here because I’d do this for any friend. Or maybe I’m here because it’s Madison and I’m not capable of letting the people she loves hurt her.

I’ve spent most of my adult life being very good at staying away. From people, from places, from anything that might ask more of me than I’m capable of giving. I built an entire career around it. Write an album, record it, tour it, and then move on to the next one before anyone gets close enough to ask what’s underneath. It’s worked for a long time. Or at least, it worked well enough that I stopped thinking about it.

Until I parked outside an inn in Stonebridge Hollow and everything came back into view.

Madison makes it impossible to stay away. Not because she asked me to—she’s never asked me for anything—but because she’s made the idea of leaving feel like something I can’t survive. It’s not the physical act of driving out of town, because I know I can always come back.

It’s what it would cost me to close the door on whatever this is between us and pretend it never happened. I’ve closed a lot of doors. I know what it feels like. And I know the difference between a door I can close and one that’s impossible to shut.

This is impossible.