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Will looks around, making sure we are alone, and turns back to me with a resigned grimace on his face.
“I didn’t leave her. Avery left me.” He drops that bomb and waits for it to explode, but I saw the look on his face when I brought her up. He still cares about her. “She left after the accident, and everything that happened… after.”
“You love her still?”
He narrows his eyes at me. “Not like that. Not anymore.” He sighs, his shoulders slumping, and he runs a hand through his blond hair. “I would have given all of it up for her if she had asked. That’s how much I loved her. But she didn’t ask. She made the trip to see me and went to every home game. I thought I’d marry her when she was ready. You know Avery and her rules, though. She wanted to make sure our life was perfect first. She wanted to get a start teaching.”
Hearing Avery’s life planned out with another man cuts even deeper, and I want to fucking run out the door. I keep my ass planted on the stool, though, and force myself to listen to the information I’ve so desperately wanted.
“We got into the accident all because I was an idiot. I picked a fight, again, about her moving in with me down in Boston. But she didn’t want to. And when the drunk driver came at us, I didn’t have enough time to swerve because I’d been glancing at her while we fought. I got this,” he says as he rubs the almost invisible scar on his face. “Avery, though… lost everything she ever wanted.”
I don’t get it.
Not for so long that it’s almost embarrassing.
The scar on her abdomen.
“Oh shit.” Every single time I have seen Avery rub her scar flashes in front of my eyes. The longing way she stares at little kids. Or when she talks about her future. Or when I brought up having babies. “I think I fucked up.”
“You get it now, don’t you?”
What kind of cop am I? I can’t even see the pain she must feel, and I rubbed salt in that wound by talking about children she can’t have. I had chased her away. No wonder she ran. “I can’t… She doesn’t deserve-.”
Will’s eyes flash, and he punches me harder than I’d expect from a shortstop before I can finish my sentence. “Shut your fuckin’ mouth, jackass. Don’t you dare say that shit to me. You don’t get to decide how she deserves to be loved. That’s her decision. Not yours. Not mine. Not anyone’s, but hers. Do you understand? That’s how I lost her. I tried to force her into my fuckin’ bubble. I tried to force my life on her. The life that I wanted, not the life that she wanted. She’s a strong woman. Determined and willing to fight when she thinks she’ll win.”
“I told her I wanted to have kids with her,” I whisper, unable to say it any louder.
“She left you, didn’t she?” Will steeples his fingers around his beer. “She left because you told her you wanted something she could never in a million years give you. Even if she wanted to. She did the same thing to me. And then, because the world knowing she couldn’t have kids was a worse thought than having her heart broken, she let everyone think she was heartbroken. Which is ludicrous because in all the years that we were together, Avery never shied away from anything. She was my best friend, and we loved each other. But I don’t think Avery was ever in love with me. Not the way it matters.”
“I’ve gotta fix this,” I tell him honestly. “I don’t give two shits about having a biological child. We can adopt. Hell, I’m already a foster parent. I don’t care about having a kid. I care about Avery. I need her.”
Will opens his mouth, but my phone starts to ring with an emergency alert from dispatch. I hold up a hand for silence.
“Matthews,” I snap into the speaker.
“There’s an incident at Birch Harbor Elementary.”
My heart drops out of my chest.
Please don’t say it. Please.I’ve never prayed so hard in my life.
“It’s Avery.”
22
AVERY
It’s been a week of complete and utter misery.
“I miss you being there at night, Miss James.”
I look up from my depressing lunch of a salad to see Lucas standing in front of me, biting his lip.
“I know you guys are adults and all that stuff, but Carter isn’t happy with you gone either. He lets me eat as much ice cream as I want for breakfast, and he doesn’t know how to make waffles the right way. And the house doesn’t smell like strawberries.” Lucas rambles, making sure to give me his sternest expression. “So, when are you coming home?”
Even as he says the words, I had already realized that I’d messed up. Carter doesn’t know that I can’t have children, and I shouldn’t have just run out when he said he wanted to have them. I should have given him the chance.
“I’m going to talk to him today,” I reassure Lucas. “Maybe when you’re in your meeting with Mrs. Keller this afternoon.”
