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Chapter Twenty-Three
Payton
Will things ever get back to normal? No. A week after we bury my sister’s fiancé, the Summer family is having to navigate a new normal. One that still involves tears and a huge void where one person once was. Everything has changed, and none of us really know where to start.
First off, there’s Meghan. She’s not our Meggy right now. She’s grieving something none of us ever hope to experience, and if I could take her place in this traumatic turn of events, I would in a heartbeat! I would do it for any of my sisters, and know they would do the same for me.
Even if it hurts.
I haven’t spent the night with Dean since the night of the visitation. Not because he didn’t ask, but because I needed space. It would be so easy to get caught up in the magical bubble he wraps around me. You know the one where everything is cozy and comfortable and content. He and his daughter and the way they make me feel like a part of their little family.
And that right there is the problem.
I can’t be a part of their little world. Yeah, sure, in theory, when I close my eyes, I can see myself sitting on the couch with both of them, wrapped up in a blanket and watching a Disney movie. Or all of us seated at the dinner table enjoying a meal I cooked. Or what about bedtime where Dean and I tuck Bri into bed before slipping into his room, where we fall into our own and make love until we’re both sweaty and exhausted.
Those are dreams.
No long reality.
Reality for me is lonely, and while I might be able to gloss over it with time with him and his daughter, it won’t hide the truth forever. He’ll want more kids.
And that’s where I would come in.
But I can’t give them to him.
One thing I’ve learned in the last week is that love hurts, painfully so. And while I’d gladly take the place of my sister so she doesn’t have to feel an ounce of this heartache, it’s also made it brutally clear that there is no happy ending in store for Dean and me. As much as I’d love to see it happen, it can’t. It won’t. He’ll be disappointed in me just the way Cole was all those years ago when we finally broke up.
I know what I have to do, and it hurts.
I don’t sleep because when I close my eyes, I see their faces. I don’t eat because my stomach can’t handle it. I can’t breathe because the ache of knowing he won’t be there when I want to talk makes it too painful to do something as simple as moving oxygen in and out of my body.
The agony is coming and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
* * *
It’s Friday night and the shop closed a little over an hour ago. I’m in my office, working on an order to be delivered next Wednesday when I hear a knock on the back door. My phone has been in my purse much of the day, and I’m sure it has texts and messages that have remained unseen.
Reluctantly, I get up and head to the door. My gut tells me it’s Dean, which wouldn’t surprise me since I haven’t seen him much in the last week. With taking much of last week off for Josh’s funeral, I’ve been playing catch-up like crazy at the shop. Rachel helped keep it running, but not the behind the scenes stuff. The office and clerical part, as well as the inventory and ordering is all me.
So when I open the door and Abby is there, I’m a little surprised.
“Hey,” I say, holding it open so she can enter.
“Am I interrupting much?”
“No, no. Just going over some of the order forms that need to be sent in. My next shipment is coming Wednesday, and it couldn’t be soon enough. Since I wasn’t here last week, I didn’t get anything this week. I’m dangerously low on my staples.”
She follows me into my office and glances around at the stacks of papers on my desk.
“Have you eaten?” she asks before turning those mirroring green eyes on me.
“No,” I say, just as my stomach growls.
We laugh together while she digs out her cell phone. “I’ll order pizza.”
“Sounds good,” I sit down behind my desk and shuffle the papers that need to be filed.
“Oh, wait. You don’t have plans with Dean tonight, do you? Am I messing something up?”
