Even when it sucked.
I glanced at Aster where she sat in the passenger seat of my car as I drove in the direction of Eden and Trent’s place. I squeezed her hand, and she sent me this adoring smile that sailed through my spirit like eternity.
And I knew, sometimes fate took favor on you, scooped up the dice you’d rolled, and tossed you a pair of snake eyes for the fucking win.
Contentment lapped in the bare space between us, peace and joy wrapping us in a blanket of comfort as we drove into the quaint neighborhood to celebrate Christmas Eve with my family.
Night had fallen, and the houses were decked out in lights, decorations glowing from porches, families tucked inside the warmth of the walls.
And I wanted to keep it. Wanted it with every part of me. To make it ours.
I pulled to a stop at the curb in front of Eden’s house and killed the engine. Silence descended. The only sound was our deep, rasping breaths as our attention hooked on the huge window that fronted the house.
The drapes were open, and my family was inside. Eden laughed at something Jud said to her, and Trent held her from behind, Baby Kate in my sister-in-law’s arms. Salem walked through, holding Juni, and the two of them stopped to look at an ornament on the tree.
Gage appeared below them, his caramel hair bouncing when he jumped and pointed.
It was this perfect picture that sent my heart angling in a direction I’d spent the last seven years convincing myself that it couldn’t go.
“Do you want that, Aster?” I realized it was close to a plea. “Children? Family? A home?”
I knew my saying it was ripping a wound wide open.
But if I peeled back the exterior?
The walls I’d built—the façade I’d lived in for the last seven years?
That was a wound that hadn’t come close to healing.
It was raw.
Throbbing.
A fucking hole that ached with confusion and tumult because I still couldn’t understand how Aster had done it.
Her spirit roiled. I felt it flow, whisper and moan on a ripple of grief.
Yearning struck me, so intense that I was inhaling every veiled question that lingered between us.
Aster stared out the window, bobbing in a turmoil that’d caught her unaware.
“I’m sorry, Aster, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot, especially tonight. It just—”
“Hurts,” she filled in, not looking my way.
“Yeah, it fucking hurts.”
The dreams, the plans, the promises we’d made.
But she was the one who’d had to exist on the other side, and I was the one who’d done the very thing she’d begged me not to do.
“It’s a pain that won’t ever go away, Logan.”
Grief rose high, threatening my windpipe, but I forced myself to push for more.
“You said you’d never allow it to happen…that you’d never put a child in the same position as you’d been put in. That you refused to have Jarek’s children because—”
She cut me off by whipping her attention my direction. “You asked me if I wanted it, Logan.” Her voice had gone haggard. Hopeless and hopeful. Fueled by her own misunderstandings. She touched her chest. “I’ve always wanted it. I just wanted it with you. I wanted to run away with you. Live with you. For you. For us. A family and a home and our child.”