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The fury was a nice respite from the fear of this decision.
Something primal woke inside me, and the next thing I knew, I was being hauled off in a police car.
Yasmin bailed me out. As she had done many times before. She didn’t ask questions. Not when she saw me. Instead, she drove us to my favorite bar.
It wasn’t until I was settled inside a booth with a martini in front of me that I fully processed what had happened.
“Drink it,” she urged. “You’ll feel better.”
I stared from her to the glass then back again. “I can’t drink it,” I whispered.
Her face softened in understanding. “That’s why you were at the clinic?” she deduced.
I nodded once. “I wasn’t going to do it. But it was my first instinct. And then I saw them there, I just kind of…”
“Hulked out?” she offered.
I nodded once, vaguely remembering beating one man with his own sign. Not my proudest moment. Luckily, I didn’t do any serious damage, only to the fat man’s ego to be beaten by a woman. The same woman he didn’t believe should have reproductive rights.
Okay, I was pretty proud of that.
“I’m so scared,” I admitted through the tears. “This isn’t happy for me. I don’t feel excited. That was stolen from me. I’m not going to have any good feelings about this. Any hope. Not when I know how much more it hurts when you hope. When you expect it all to work out.” I stared at my friend. “I can’t survive another loss. I won’t.”
Yasmin stared right back at me, her eyes shimmering. She reached across for my hand. “I’m not going to tell you it’s all going to be okay,” she said, voice firm, familiar.
I used it as an anchor.
“I can’t know that it’s going to be okay,” she continued. “I can’t promise that. But what I can promise, as horrible as it is, is that you will survive another loss, if that’s what the world is going to throw at you. I don’t want you to have to. I wish I had some kind of magic to make it so you won’t go through another second of hurt, but I don’t. Not now, at least. I do know you have your own kind of magic. You have a strength inside of you that I marvel at. You have a man who will never give up on you. Friends who will never leave your side.”
Tears were streaming down my face at that point, the dam inside of me well and truly breaking.
“I was cruel to him,” I hiccupped. “Terrible. I was so consumed with everything I was feeling, I didn’t give a thought to his pain. He was there for me every moment, yet I wasn’t even there for him for a second.” Panic started to climb up my throat.
“I can’t do that to him again,” I whispered.
“You won’t,” Yasmin proclaimed with certainty. “I won’t let you. I’ll straight up fight you if you try.”
I choked out a laugh. “You know I’d beat you in a second.”
She folded her arms in front of her. “I don’t need to beat you. Just beat some sense into you.”
I smiled, panic receding slowly but not disappearing completely.
“This is a good thing, honey,” she murmured, reaching out to squeeze my hand. “I know it doesn’t feel like it. I know what happened before is going to taint it, but you have me. Stella. Zoe. Even Jay—although full disclosure, I totally don’t get your friendship with him.”
I smiled through my tears.
“Most importantly, you have Karson. I may not have approved for a long time, but I’ve never seen a man more dedicated to you. More unyielding. He is your partner, Wren. You don’t have to shoulder this alone. He is with you. We are with you.”
“You really think I’m brave enough to do this?” I asked in a small voice.
She crossed her arms again. “Bitch, I have seen you face up against some of the most dangerous and powerful people on this earth. You’ve jumped out of planes, escaped military coups… I know you’re brave enough to do this.”
I stared into her eyes and found my strength there.
He had been watching me carefully since I got home.
That’s what the cottage was now, home.
