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Damn. I sighed and pressed my lips to the top of her head. Her visit with Ms. Ames hadn’t been a lighthearted one. I regretted not going now. She had needed me for all this. I wish I’d been told before so I could have been there.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her as she leaned heavier against my chest and clung to me.
“You don’t think I’m broken, do you? Because I can’t love her or feel something?”
“Fuck no. She killed anything you could have felt for her years ago. She was never your mother, Willa. Nonna is your mother. She’s what a mother is, not that woman. She just gave birth to you.”
Willa nodded, her head against my chest. “That’s what I keep telling myself. But my heart is heavy. For Chance especially. He never told me about his dad leaving and that Mother didn’t take care of Bella. I didn’t know all that. I knew he adored Bella, but Chance loves big. It’s his thing. I missed a lot from our visits and phone calls. I ignored it.He had no one, and I didn’t know. I should have known. I should have checked. I should have put my feelings for my mother aside and gotten to know my sister. If I had, then I would have known the other stuff.”
I barely knew her brother. She saw him maybe twice a year, and I’d only been with them three times. They normally met up and spent time just the two of them. I thought it was what she wanted and they needed. As for the little sister, not even Willa knew her. She did send presents to Bella for her birthday and Christmas, but that was all. I had wondered if one day she would regret the time she lost with her and now I felt as if I should have said something. Seeing her like this was breaking my heart.
“Chance did what he thought he should do. He knew bringing you into the situation wouldn’t help anything. That woman would say the wrong thing to you and I’d have had to shut her up. It would have gotten ugly.”
Willa let out a small laugh as she sighed. “Maybe, but he needed me. My brother needed me and I did nothng.”
“First of all, there’s no ‘maybe’ to it. If she’d have lashed out at you with her nasty mouth, I’d have shut it for her. No one talks to you that way. I don’t give a fuck who they are. And second, you love your brother and he knows that. He also understands why you are the way you are about your mother.”
Willa tilted her head back to look up at me. “You realize you can’t protect me from the world.”
I scowled. “The fuck I can’t!” I replied, annoyed. Because yes, I could, and I was going to spend the rest of our lives doing just that.
She smiled then. “I love you. You’re crazy, but I love you.”
Hearing her say those words while she gazed up at me with eyes that reflected how she felt made my world right. It warmed me and reminded me how damn lucky I was.
“I hear crazy love is the best kind,” I replied.
She nodded. “Definitely.”
CHAPTER THREE
WILLA
“There’s something else,” I told Gunner as we walked back toward the house with the treats Nonna had sent with me.
“What?” he asked, stopping to look down at me.
“Chance is coming today. He should be at Nonna’s by five. He’s… he’s bringing Bella.” That was what I knew was making me emotional. Every time I thought about seeing the sister I had never met and had only seen pictures of, it did something to my chest. I wanted to see her, but after all these years it was also terrifying. Then there was the guilt that had set in for not knowing she was being treated the same way I had been by our mother.
“I’m going with you,” Gunner said.
I nodded. “Yes, I want you to,” I assured him. He had looked ready to argue with me.
He relaxed a little then. “You’re scared.”
“Yeah, I am,” I admitted. “And regretful, angry at myself.”
“Why?”
I shook my head and then shrugged. I had explained all this to him. Just because he didn’t agree did not make me feel it any less. He shifted the food in his hands to one arm and took my chin between his two fingers.
“Bella is not your mother. She’s a little girl. One who has heard nothing but good things about you from Chance. She’ll love you, Willa. Don’t let the shit your mother has put in your head mess with you.”
I felt my eyes well up with tears. How was it Gunner could put what I was feeling it into words for me even when I couldn’t.
“You think?” I asked him, my voice raspy with emotion. Would she blame me for not being there? How could he be sure she wouldn’t?
“I fucking know,” he said, leaning so that his face was only inches from mine. “You’re so damn easy to love.”
