Only the knowledge of how much misery could be waiting for us just around the corner, when our families implode, keeps me from pulling her into my arms and kissing the sadness away.
Kisses can’t fix everything. No matter how much we wish they could.
“When will we see you?” she asks.
“Let’s meet up after I get off work on Friday. I’ll come here, and we can talk.”
“Okay. We have an event Friday afternoon, but I’m free Friday night. I’ll leave Felicity with my mom so we can have some privacy.”
“Sounds good,” I say, though it doesn’t really. A day ago, a night alone with Aria would have been enough to keep a spring in my step all week, but now…
Friday could be the night we end it all, the night we decide that the love we’ve found can’t make up for everything we stand to lose.
“All right,” I say, my voice thick. “I’ll see you then.”
I bolt from the room, suddenly feeling like a prisoner in my own house. I need to get out, to get some distance from everything that happened this morning. Ten minutes later, I have a small suitcase packed and am heading for the door.
“Didn’t you forget something?” Aria’s on the floor in the living room, playing blocks with Felicity as I stop to grab my wallet and keys from the entry table.
“I’ll shower at the station,” I say, reaching for the door. “Might as well get going.”
“Okay,” Aria says softly. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” I echo as I step out into the summer heat, hating how final the word sounds as it hangs in the air.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Aria
I spend most of Monday—my one day off this week—trying not to burst into tears in front of Felicity. I succeed, mostly, until bedtime, when Felicity crawls out into the living room after her bath, looking for Nash, and gets fussy when she can’t find him.
Nash has become a part of our bedtime ritual, and Felicity doesn’t like her rituals disrupted.
I don’t either.
By the time she plops down in the middle of the living room and bursts into tears, I’m already sniffling. I try to comfort her as best I can, but even after three books and a long rock in the chair by her crib, she still isn’t completely calm. She fusses as I lay her in her crib and hurls her bunny to the end of the mattress instead of settling down to chew an ear the way she usually would.
My daughter is clearly displeased with the way things are proceeding at present.
“Join the club, sweetie,” I whisper as I turn out the light and start down the hall to the big, lonely bed in Nash’s room.
It might truly be Nash’s room again soon, if he decides Felicity and I aren’t worth the sacrifices he’ll have to make to keep us in his life.
That’s not what he’s worried about, and you know it.
I sigh and grab my toothbrush, so exhausted from crying I figure I might as well go to bed early.
The inner voice is right. I know why Nash is worried and he’s right to be concerned. We’re both very close with our families. The thought of being estranged from my dad for more than a few days is enough to fill me with dread. And panic. Each member of my family is a part of me, a limb I could probably live without, but I don’t want to.
The loss of any one of the Marchs—Mom, Dad, Lark, or Melody—would haunt me for the rest of my life.
And Nash is just as close, if not closer, with his clan. And what about Felicity and the other kids Nash and I have been dreaming about? What if their relationships with their extended family suffer because a few key players aren’t thrilled by our marriage?
I have so many wonderful memories of summer parties and winter holidays and long Saturday play sessions with my cousins, Emily and Elsbeth, my Aunt Tina’s daughters. They were like sisters to Melody, Lark, and me when we were growing up. I was devastated when their dad took a job at a software company in California when I was in middle school. Seeing them only two or three times a year wasn’t enough. They were family, a part of me, members of my tribe I would do anything to protect.
What if Felicity never knows what that’s like? All because I picked the wrong man twice?
“No,” I mumble around a mouthful of toothpaste before spitting emphatically into the sink.
Nash isn’t the wrong man.
The idea is ridiculous. He could never be wrong. He’s all right. He’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a partner, and more wonderful with Felicity than I imagined a man could be with a child who isn’t his by blood. Nash is the real deal, one in a million. I don’t need a week to know I want to be with him, no matter what hardships or sacrifices are involved.