AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I laughed. “Hard not to be on a day like this.” No one in my family was watching, so I gently nudged her toward a large tree off to our left. When we were out of sight, I pressed her against the tree trunk and cupped her face, stealing a soft, lingering kiss. “Does that mean you’re happy too?” I asked against her mouth.
Her eyes were still closed, her fists tight in the front of my shirt, and her chest heaved on great gulping breaths. “Maybe.” Then her eyes opened, those great long lashes around the deep, deep blue, and I felt that look like a dart through my ribs, landing unerringly on one of the few places she hadn’t already gutted me thoroughly. “What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” she whispered.
I dragged my thumb over the bottom curve of her lip. “I don’t think I can answer that for you.”
Her heart was in her eyes, shining out so fiercely that it yanked the breath from my lungs.
“When I watched you with your brothers and your dad, I had tears, Cameron.” She tightened her grip on my shirt. “Actual tears,” she said accusingly.
I leaned down and kissed her again, my mouth fighting a smile as I did. My tongue teased the seam of her lips, and she opened them on a sigh.
Gently, I pulled the painting she still had clutched against her side and dipped at the knees to lean it against the tree, tugging her more fully into my arms.
A throat cleared to our right.
I pulled back, and Parker was watching us with a shit-eating grin.
“Sorry to interrupt.”
I glared at him. “No, you’re not.”
“Dad wants a couple of family pictures while we’re all here.”
I blew out a slow breath and stepped back from Ivy. “I’ll be right there.”
Ivy watched him walk away with a thoughtful look on her face.
“You weren’t mad at him when he arrived,” she said. “I was watching you.”
“No.” My hands coasted up and down her upper arms. “I never was.”
“Why not?”
No one had ever asked that.
“Remember the day we met?” I asked. “I told you I only remember a few things about my mom.”
She nodded.
“I don’t remember much about her,” I started. “But everything after is really clear in my memory. It was hard. Parker, Ian and I were so sad. Dad was sad. Our family was incomplete, you know? We were missing something anchoring the middle of it, and we all felt that. Dad did an amazing job talking us through it, but even as a young kid, you don’t forget what it’s like. All you’re trying to do is breathe, go to school, play with your friends, do your chores, and all of it’s happening with a giant hole in your chest.” I inhaled slowly. “It doesn’t go away, but you kind of grow around it. You get bigger. You age. The hole stays the same. But you learn to function with it there. And we did.”
Ivy stayed quiet, the earnest look in her eyes almost my undoing.
“When my dad met Sheila,” I continued. “And when we met the other three—Erik, Greer and Adaline—they had their own hole in their chest from when Sheila’s husband left.” I stopped and shook my head. “We all grew together. Those big empty spaces in our life … they didn’t define us quite like they did at first.”
I looked beyond the tree that shielded us, at my entire family—sitting on blankets in the sun and eating too many donuts. Trading stories. Taking pictures. Laughing.
“We never got back what we lost,” I said. “But this new family … we became each other’s anchors. Staying close didn’t feel like a hard choice to be made, because everything hard we’ve all faced in this life—we’ve done it together.” That invisible fist was wrenched tight around my throat again. “Parker doesn’t really remember saying goodbye to our mom. I think he was grateful for that for a long time. But he’ll remember this. And he didn’t know how to deal with it. I’m not going to get angry because his grief looks different from anyone else’s.”
At first, she didn’t say anything, just stared up into my face with that slight furrow in her brow. Then she pulled in a quick, fortifying breath.
“I’m very tempted to make some snarky comment,” she admitted quietly. “Because I don’t know how to comprehend a family like this. I don’t know how to look at things the way you do.”
My chest ached for her. “I know you don’t.”
“And you don’t hold that against me,” she added.
I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”
