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“Twenty-nine is not that young, and I swear this kid is all Julian. Stubborn, demanding, doesn’t ever listen to me.”
“Sounds like your brother.”
She lovingly smiled. “How are you holding up?”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“Well, I mean, you guys do go before the judge this afternoon, right?”
“Four o’clock.”
She looked down at her watch. “So that means you have six hours to change your mind.”
“Autumn,” I coaxed. “Not you too.”
“Kinley, Christian is miserable. He’s not sleeping, he’s barely eating, he’s drowning himself at the hospital. He leaves before dawn and doesn’t get back to the ranch until midnight, sometimes later.”
I wiped down the counter. “That’s just Christian, Autumn. He’s a workaholic.”
“I know.” She sighed. “He gets it from my dad. He’s just trying to provide for you, though. He means well. You know how much he adores you. He always has. When I was a little girl, I used to admire you guys’ relationship so much. I wanted what you had.”
“And look, you ended up with his best friend.”
“Yeah … who would have thought, right?”
“I did.”
“What?”
I nodded.
“No way.”
“I never told you this, but on your seventeenth birthday, I saw him follow you out into the woods.”
She gasped. “You did?”
“Who do you think kept Christian away from you?”
“Oh my God! Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“We didn’t really get close until you had Capri, and by then I didn’t want to bring him up.”
“I can’t believe you never told me.”
“Julian thinks he was all sly when it came to you, but he wasn’t. I could always tell he loved you.”
“Really?”
“Of course. What’s not to love?”
“Well, the same goes for you and my brother, Kinley. I know you don’t want this divorce. The whole family knows you don’t want this divorce. You guys are just going through a rough patch.”
“It’s more than a rough patch.”
“Marriage is a lot of work—I don’t have to tell you that. Especially with a man like my brother. He’s bullheaded and super aggressive, but he loves with all his heart and soul. You’ve been together for twenty years. That’s a very long time to be with someone, and trust me, half the time I want to kill Julian. Especially now with all these hormones, and he thinks I’m the world’s most beautiful pregnant woman.”
“You are.”
