Worse yet, I feel very empty. Going to bed feeling bad, and now dreaming about that time… I roll over and face the wall, curling around my pillow.
It isn’t fair. Ten years ago, Lily was born and Polly was gone. Ethan came to me for comfort and I was stupid enough to believe that one night would be enough for me. I had expected Ethan to apologize the next morning, hard as it had been, and I had half hoped that getting that one night would help me finally get over Ethan.
Except it didn’t. I just wanted him even more, and my heart broke over and over and over. I must be a masochist to do this to myself; I’ve spent over ten years at the side of the man I love, watching as he never once looks my way.
I can’t keep doing this to myself. The thought comes abruptly, and it feels huge and terrifying. But I know, without a doubt, that it’s true. I love Ethan and Lily…but I can’t do this anymore. Don’t I deserve to be happy? I know Ethan doesn’t ask me to stay at his side, that it’s a choice I made long ago, so I’m not angry at him for doing this to me.
I sigh and close my eyes. There has to be a solution, somewhere. I just need to find it.
Chapter Three
Ethan
I yawn widely, stretching my arms over my head. It was a long time before I managed to get to sleep last night, thoughts still whirling in my head. Then, when my alarm clock rang out that morning, I almost fell back asleep.
Thankfully, Lily had come in to jump on me, shrieking about being late for school if I didn’t get moving. From there, it was a flurry of activity as the two of us rushed around the house, and I barely remembered to grab the thermos of coffee that Georgia had put by for me before she left the house that morning. Once I got to work, I sent my friend a quick message of thanks.
Sometimes I really don’t know what I would do without her.
“Long night?” Trevor Reynolds asks with a grin, lifting a wooden beam.
“No, just thinking a lot,” I say with another yawn. “Georgia was over; I got home later than I meant to, and I didn’t want to send her home that late.”
“Doesn’t she live a few streets away?” Trevor asks teasingly.
I shoot him a glare, not answering. Trevor likes to tease me about the nature of my relationship with Georgia Turner, who has been around for most of my life. He doesn’t seem to understand how a woman can be one of my best and oldest friends, yet the two of us aren’t fucking.
There’s no way I’ll ever tell him what happened between us ten years ago when I was desperate for comfort some months after Polly left me. I’d never hear the end of it.
“She was babysitting for me,” I say frostily.
“That woman is more a mom to Lily than her own mother,” Trevor says, shaking his head. “You might as well make it official.”
“I don’t look at Georgia like that, or her at me,” I say tiredly. Why do I have to keep saying the same things over and over again? “We don’t have that sort of relationship.”
Trevor just snorts. He and Georgia get along very well and, oddly, he started teasing me about her after the first time we all went to dinner with some of our other co-workers. No matter how many times I insist that Georgia and I will only ever be friends, he just doesn’t seem to get the hint.
It could be worse, though. I put up with his teasing because I know it isn’t mean-spirited. Trevor is one of the few friends that I have outside the Roughshod Rollers, though he gets along well with both Kyle and Grant. Often, he laughs that he’d like to join us…except he’s deathly afraid of motorbikes and wouldn’t be able to keep up with the rest of us on his bicycle.
“Well, anyway, you look like death warmed over,” Trevor says. “Are you sure you’re alright for today?”
In response, I pick up another beam.
“I’m fine,” I say. I pause and sigh. “Or, rather, I really need the money right now.”
“Having trouble with bills?” Trevor guesses.
“Worse,” I say gloomily. “Lily’s birthday is in two months.”
Trevor blinks at me as we carry the wood toward the building. Several other workers are scurrying around it as we put up the frame. One man is standing on the roof frame, his harness firmly connected, reaching down for the beam someone is passing up to him. It’s a hive of activity.
“Shouldn’t that be a good thing?” Trevor asks, frowning. Then his expression clears as he understands. “Ah. She’s asked for something you can’t buy her?”
“Bullseye.” I groan. “She wants a new computer. I can understand; the only thing we have now is on its last legs, and we’re lucky we can connect to the internet at all on it. When she has assignments, I have to take her to the library to do the research. She can’t play any of the games her friends are playing. She’s usually a good sport about it, but she’s getting older now, and she probably feels like she’s being left behind by her tech-savvy friends.” I scowl. “That fucking Maddison has probably been in her ear, too.”
Maddison Brown is ten years old, very clever and very cruel, at least to my daughter. Coming from a fairly rich family, she often teases Lily about the things she doesn’t have because I can’t afford them. When all the children were playing the new Nintendo handheld systems, and Lily was forced to borrow a friend’s, she came home in tears because of Maddison teasing her about it. Complaining to her parents never helped either; they just shrugged as though to ask what I wanted them to do about it.
“Poor Lils,” Trevor says sympathetically. “I can understand not fitting in. It’s a hard burden for a child to bear.”