“Ava, I love you,” he says. “And I thought you loved me.”
“I do!” My chest squeezes. “Of course I do. But if I have feelings, I should . . . It’s not fair to you.”
“He’s manipulating you to control you.”
I blink at Harrison. That doesn’t sound like Jake at all.
Harrison rubs the back of his neck and leans back in his chair. “I didn’t want to upset you, baby, but maybe you need to know. After you told me what happened, I confronted Jake.”
“You did?”
His eyes meet mine, and he nods slowly. “He kissed my girl. I couldn’t do nothing.”
“Harrison, what did you do?”
He draws in a long breath. “I didn’t hurt him. Don’t worry.” He sh
akes his head and looks away. “I went to the bar, ready for a fight. I was so angry. I called him on what he did. What he said to you. And do you know what he said to me?”
My heart is in my throat. I haven’t talked to Jake since I sent him away three days ago. “What did he say?”
“He said you were his best friend, but his feelings stopped there. He told me you are nothing more than a sister to him, but he’d have said anything to you to keep you from marrying me.” He holds up a hand. “I’m not discrediting your feelings, but I think you need to understand his.”
Nothing more than a sister. My gut twists around the blade of those words, and the pain makes my breath shudder.
“I’m not saying he doesn’t have feelings for you, but I don’t think they’re the feelings you want him to have,” Harrison says. “Before you break my heart and walk away from our life together, I want you to think about the fact that this guy never looked at you twice before I put a ring on your finger. I want you to think about his words. He admitted he’d have said anything to you to keep you from marrying me. What kind of friend is that, Ava? Are those the words of a man going after the woman he loves, or are those the words of a selfish child who thinks his playmate is being taken away?”
The blade twists again and again in my stomach until there’s nothing left. I feel empty inside, hollowed out. I push my plate away. My appetite is gone. “How can you still want to marry me after all this?” I ask. “I love you, Harrison, but I don’t want to misrepresent what I’m feeling right now.”
“You’re confused,” he says.
I nod. Hot tears roll down my cheeks. I’m so confused.
His chair squeaks against the tiled floor as he pushes it back and steps to my side of the table. He turns my seat so I’m facing him but stops me when I try to stand. Lowering himself to his knees in front of me, he cups my face in his hands and looks up into my eyes. “We love each other,” he says. “I’m not going to pretend this hasn’t hurt me, but I don’t want to lose you either.”
My head bobbles as I nod. “I don’t want to lose you.”
His big thumbs swipe at my cheeks, wiping away my tears. “Then marry me, Ava. Set a date. Make me the happiest man in the world.”
Jake
Present day . . .
Ava: Thank you for this weekend. I was looking forward to it all week, but then it was even better than I’d hoped. You know how to make a girl feel special, Jake. Let me know how Mom’s doing.
The text came sometime this morning while I was passed out in a chair in Mom’s hospital room. Levi and I arrived around three a.m. I made Ethan go home to be with Nic and convinced Shay she needed sleep if she was going to help with Mom today. Carter had gone back to the station to finish his shift before we arrived, but Levi, Brayden, and I have lingered at the hospital all night, unwilling to leave Mom alone despite optimistic reports from the nurses.
It’s just me and Mom now—Levi and Brayden went down to the cafeteria to scrounge up some breakfast—but any minute, the room will be flooded with my siblings. I take advantage of these last moments of peace and let myself read the text over and over again.
“You look like you’re trying to solve the world’s problems over there,” Mom says.
I look up from my phone and blink at her. She was awake when Levi and I made it into town last night, and thank God for that. I don’t think I would have slept a minute if I hadn’t been able to hear her voice and see her smile. By the time I got here, she was laughing about her fall. She’d been changing a light bulb in the bathroom and hopped off the stool and landed wrong.
“Forgot I wasn’t sixteen anymore,” she said with a laugh.
The doctors thought she suffered a mild concussion from hitting her head on the counter when she collapsed, and they wanted to keep her overnight for observation. This morning, they’ll take her into surgery to set the ankle and put in screws to make sure it heals right.
I smile at Mom. She might be in a hospital bed and have a colorful bandana covering her bald head, but she looks healthier than she did after her last treatment four weeks ago. There’s more color in her cheeks—less misery in her eyes. She has more energy. Now, if we could just get her appetite back so we could put some meat on those bones, I might feel the optimism I keep reaching for and missing. “Good morning, Mom.”