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“Just family.” The words razor through my heart, through memories of extended family dinners where Brandon’s large family gathered around our table and gave toasts and laughed and welcomed me as one of their own. A stark contrast to the quiet dinners at my house—where my mom did her best to be two parents while Tessa and I did our best to let her know she was doing a good job.
“Oh, God.” She closes her eyes. “That’s not what I meant. Of course, you’re still family. I just—” Her eyes snap to mine. “We all know how hard the wedding was for you. I’d be in an absolute shame spiral if I embarrassed myself like that. We just thought ... a baby shower? So much harder, right? I mean, we know how much Brandon wanted to be a dad.”
She continues rambling, and her wordsBrandon,dad,familybegin to lose meaning. Brandon wanted to be a father.
The reason he wasn’t—me.
“Hope, you’re so strong. We all think so. But this—honestly, I’m trying to protect you from another ... you know.” She sucks in a breath through her teeth, as if the memory of that night physically stings.
The fight-or-flight instinct that has always bent toward flight freezes, shifts. Will’s words echo through my thoughts:I just wanted her to find her voice.
“You used my wedding song!” I blurt out. “I pushed my grief aside for your wedding because we’re ... we were ... family, and then that song begins to play. Do you know what that was like? You had a thousand songs to choose from, and you chose ours.”
Too easily my mind summons the way my throat tightened as the first notes of our wedding song began to play through the room.
“Oh please. It’s a song. It’s not sacred just because you and Brandon danced to it. News flash, Hope, not everything you and Brandon touched is off limits now. You two weren’t some, like, perfect couple that turned everything to gold. Everyone else might think so, Kingsette’s own star-crossed lovers. But I know the truth. Brandon told me everything.”
Inside my chest, my heart goes silent as the meaning of her words registers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Selena takes a step toward me. Her nostrils flare. “I think you do.”
“Selena.” Brandon’s aunt emerges from the restaurant and startles when she catches sight of me. “Where did you—Hope, you’re here. What a surprise.” She looks between her daughter and me with a deer-in-the-headlights expression.
“I was just leaving.”
I speed walk as fast as my legs will allow. Tears burn behind my eyes, blurring the sidewalk. My heart has resumed its rhythm with renewed ferocity, and my lungs strain to keep up.
I need air.
I need space.
I need—a friend who will listen without making me feel worse.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I dial Will. At his half-swallowed “hello,” a broken sound escapes my throat.
“Hope, what’s wrong?”
“I found my voice.”
22
WILL
“Come on. I have a good feeling about this place,” Hope says as she drags me into a bar with a view of Newport’s fishing pier.
I pull a face but follow her, for the second time, into a bar with bad lighting and questionable cleaning protocols.
How exactly we went from Hope’s phone call to a bar in Newport is a mystery. There was a phone call from a friend who co-owns Sunshine Bakers, followed by a whirlwind of a meeting, during which Hope agreed to a ridiculously expensive birthday cake for her brother-in-law, and then—two tequila shots at the first bar we walked into.
Throughout it all, Hope just seemed to need to keep moving. The instinct to flee was familiar.
The kindest thing I could think to do was to give her space to run, and make sure she didn’t fall.
The way once, a decade ago, Darren let me.
Memories of that hazy afternoon play in the back of my mind as Hope waves down the bartender sporting a shock of blue hair.
Darren was at the gas station with a few buddies, guys who’d graduated years before Darren, who were well known for all the wrong reasons. He saw my car, nearly exploding with all my worldly possessions, and knew.
