“Love you, too.”
“Me, too,” Sage echoed.
“Right back at you, Buttercup.”
Birdie tilted her face up so she could meet my gaze. Her mouth curved into a smile. “Since you love me so much. Can I get a skateboard?”
I barked out a laugh. “You have no shame.”
“Does that mean yes?”
“That means I’ll think about it.”
“That’s not a no…”
I tossedmy towel into the hamper and grabbed a pair of pajama pants from my dresser. Pulling them on, I stared at the photos on top of the dresser. It was full of them. From the day the girls were born to last Christmas. Happy memories peppered the space.
I zeroed in on one photo in particular. I’d taken it years ago. Hadley and the twins had gotten into a tickle battle. Birdie and Sage had teamed up on Hads, attacking her. Hadley’s head was tipped back as she laughed, her blond hair cascading down her back.
There was so much life in her face. Freedom. Joy. I didn’t get to see her like that much anymore. It killed to think that she was hiding it from me. Stealing that piece of magic.
The thought had me moving to my closet. I tugged on the chain to the light, illuminating the space. I scanned the shelves up above until my gaze landed on a familiar shoebox. Reaching up, I plucked it from the shelf.
I set it on the bed, staring at my fingerprints in the dust. Had it really been that long since I’d looked at the contents? Long enough that dust piled on the surface?
I grabbed a t-shirt from my hamper and wiped off the surface, then tossed it back in with the dirty clothes. I reached out for the lid, but my fingers stalled as they grasped it. I forced myself to flip open the top.
Photos and mementos from what felt like a different lifetime were piled inside. The image on top had my back teeth grinding together. Jackie in a white dress. Me in my best suit. Hayes at my side. A friend whose name I couldn’t remember at hers. Jackie’s belly swollen under her dress.
She’d been seven months pregnant when we went to City Hall and promised our lives to one another. To love, honor, and cherish had been a part of those vows. It had been a lie. I hadn’t been in love with Jackie. She’d been a one-night stand after blowing off some steam with the guys from the station.
I’d thought that I could grow to love her. That if she birthed my babies, there was no way I wouldn’t fall. And in that moment, when Jackie had given me the two greatest gifts of my life, I’d seen the possibility.
But that spark of hope had been doused eventually. In lies and betrayal. In deceit and destruction.
I shuffled through the stack of photos with her face, flipping them upside down on my bed so I didn’t have to look at them for longer than necessary. I slowed as I reached what I was looking for—a ticket stub for a BMX competition in Portland. Hayes, Hadley, and me, grinning at the camera, arms wrapped around each other, dirt smeared on our clothes.
The photos came one after the other. Memories slammed into me along with the images. I swore I could almost feel the rush that accompanied them. The feeling of freedom.
My fingers stilled on a photo of Hadley. It was the one I was looking for. The picture had been taken a few years after the girls were born. Mud covered Hadley from head to toe. She’d taken a spill off her bike and landed in what had turned into almost a marsh after a good rain.
I could still feel the way my heart had stopped in that moment. Hadley had sailed over her handlebars but had somehow managed to tuck and roll, coating herself entirely in mud. She’d come up laughing as I’d rushed over to her.
That laugh. I hadn’t heard it since that day. The uninhibited and free one. The joy that always hit me right in the rib cage and twisted.
Once I’d known she was unharmed, I’d snapped the photo with my phone. Hadley looked so damn beautiful. Somehow managing to appear wise beyond her nineteen years and yet full of an innocent joy at the same time. So determined to live every moment to its fullest.
Hadley and those moments where we’d silenced the world to race the wind had kept me going when I felt a ten-ton weight on my shoulders. She and that rush of adrenaline had kept me sane. Until it had all come crashing down around me.
The accident had happened one week later. Months afterwards, when I’d found this picture on my phone, I couldn’t resist printing it out. I’d needed the reminder. Until it had become too much temptation, and I’d had to lock it all away.
The memories. And everything I felt for Hadley Easton.
8
Hadley
My fingers curvedinto rock as I hoisted myself up to another plateau. This mountainside fell off into a sheer rock face in one section, disappearing into a lake below. It was hell making it out here. You had to take an ATV or come on horseback, but the views were breathtaking.