Chapter Nineteen
Present Day
The next evening, after I knew the kids would be in bed, I drove to Devon’s house. It took me all day to work up the nerve, and I wasn’t even completely sure what I was going to say to him when I got there, but my conversation with Nate had struck a chord.
I stood on the front porch and sent him a text message, not wanting to wake the kids by knocking or ringing the doorbell.
**I’m on your front porch. Can we talk?**
It took a few minutes, but eventually I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and then the door opened.
Devon looked just as incredible as he always had. His blond hair was still pushed back, pink lips fuller than most women’s but still irresistible, but his eyes were missing the spark he’d had for most of the years I’d known him. He’d lost it by the time Liv passed, but I hoped the dimness behind them was also attributed to my absence as well. I didn’t want him to hurt, but I wasn’t too proud to admit that I wanted him to miss me. It wouldn’t change anything, but it would have been the first time I would have felt that from him and a part of me wanted that desperately, even if it was fleeting.
“Evie,” he said, his voice sounding so different than I remembered. It’d only been a week, but he seemed like a new person to me. His face looked almost pained, as if I was doing injury to him by merely standing on his doorstep. “I was beginning to think I wasn’t ever going to see you again.”
I was starting to think you’d never seen me from the beginning.
“I’m sorry I disappeared. I just needed some time to think and sort things out in my mind. Can I come in?”
“Of course,” he said, stepping backward into his house and giving me more than enough room to enter without brushing past him. I noticed he didn’t smell the same. Or rather, he did, but it didn’t catch me at all. The scent didn’t grab ahold of me, as it usually had, and remind me of all the times I’d smelled him and wanted to bottle his personal scent. He just smelled like Devon.
I walked past him and sat on the couch, my eyes darting up the stairs, wanting badly to sneak into Ruby and Jaxy’s room. To kiss their heads and run my fingers through their hair. I’d missed them terribly throughout the week, but knew it had been best to take a step back.
“How are they?” I asked, still looking up the stairs. I heard him take in a deep breath and the sound was like a vice grip around my heart. I’d never wanted to hurt the children.
“They were a little confused at first, Jax especially, but by Wednesday, they were mostly back to their old selves again.”
“Did you have a hard time managing?” I didn’t want to add ‘without me’ at the end of my question, but it was implied. The idea of asking if he’d managed without me was more pain and torture than I wished to endure.
“It took a bit of shuffling, but I found a solution. In fact, Evie, I’m glad you’re here. I need to tell you something-”
“Devon, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to go first. Otherwise, I’ll lose my nerve and I really need to get this out.” He didn’t say anything, but he did nod his head and then took a seat in the club chair just opposite me.
I took a deep breath and then started the speech I’d gone through a million times in my mind.
“I met Olivia on the first day of high school. I was fourteen and she was the first person to speak to me. She went out of her way to make me feel welcome and comfortable in a notoriously uncomfortable situation. From then on, she was my very best friend. I never could have dreamed up a better friend than her, Devon. She was sweet and loyal, beautiful but not vain, outgoing and inclusive. She was friends with everyone and everyone loved her. I loved her. Even when she started dating the guy I’d fallen for at first sight my freshman year of college, I still loved her.” I took another deep breath, trying to keep calm even though speaking about Olivia always brought me tears. “I watched the two of you build a life together, Devon. I was here throughout everything. And even though I always had those feelings for you, always knew that if given the chance, I could make you so happy, I never once wanted that.”
My eyes lifted and met his gaze and I was flooded with warmth. His eyes held only sympathy and compassion. Of course, he probably already knew everything I was telling him, but he could have easily stopped me before either of us became uncomfortable. But no, he knew it was important for me to say what I had come there to say and, perhaps, he was feeling the same thing I was; as if Olivia’s death hadn’t been the end we’d all built it up to be. I had thought her death might be the end of suffering, or the end of heartache. Liv had mercifully been relieved of all her pain and struggles, but the rest of us remained to trudge through what was left behind in her absence. And I’d taken that as the perfect opportunity to lock myself in the same cage I’d been circling for years.
I looked at my, arguably, inappropriate and, definitely, unhealthy relationship with Devon, and clung to it, hoping it would keep me afloat.
All I wanted now was to be able to float on my own.
“Liv asked me to look after your family, and I’ll never regret the time I spent here with Ruby and Jax. I’ll always love them, but I have to move on, Devon.”
I’d tried so hard not to cry. I wanted to sound firm and certain during my speech, but the way my voice warbled and broke on his name, only made me sound weak and unstable. He quickly moved to sit next to me on the couch, wrapping both his arms around me, pressing my face into his neck, trying to comfort me.
“She told me to be happy,” I cried, both my hands pressing against his big shoulder blades. “She told me to be happy, and I just don’t think that’s possible with you.”
My fingers cinched the soft cotton of his t-shirt, and I burrowed my face farther into his neck, trying to inhale his scent and commit it to memory, my body trying to imprint the feeling of his against me on my skin forever. This was it. It was all we would ever have. A decade of longing and a few months of angst-ridden uncertainty.
I felt his hands move up my arms and then his neck was gone, only to be replaced by his face so painfully close to mine. We were breathing the same air, my hands still on his shoulder blades, but his gently gripping my face on both sides. Then, suddenly, he was kissing me.
I knew, as it was happening, it would be the one and only real kiss I would ever share with him, so when it didn’t stop at a polite, “Thank you for taking care of my family” kiss, and moved more toward an, “I’ve been waiting to kiss you for a decade,” kiss, I didn’t try to stop it. I let his tongue move over the seam of my lips and I opened for him, letting myself take that first – and last – glorious taste of him. He tasted exactly like he smelled: of skin and sweat and soap. He tasted magnificent.
A small groan left me as his hands gripped me just a little tighter and tilted my head to get more of me. He wanted more, so I gave it to him. I tried to give him every part of me in that kiss I’d been trying to keep from him for years. Every pass of my tongue was one I’d been hoping for. Every tug at his shirt I was trying to get him as close to me as I’d always wanted. I inhaled his scent. I took note of the way he tasted, trying to ingrain it in my brain. I let my hand wander through his blond hair, realizing it, indeed, did feel as soft as it looked. The sounds he made as he kissed me were a lullaby I’d play that night as I tried to fall asleep, hushed groans and strangled moans, not wanting to wake the children.
It was the kiss to end all kisses.
When he pulled away I wasn’t quite ready, but I might not have ever been. For him to kiss me was like coming out of a dark room to a world lit with prisms. Then again, there was a time when I was sure I’d never want a kiss from Devon to end. Kissing him wasn’t the end though. No, this felt more like a beginning. He’d taken off my blindfold, let me out of my darkened room, and given me the colorful light I’d need to make the next step in my life. No, it wasn’t an ending. However, his next words had the power to end me entirely.
He pulled his face away, only far enough to press his forehead flush against mine, and whispered, “I’m leaving, Evie.”
My heart halted, stuck halfway between beats, unsure of its next move and all my blood froze in my veins.
“Leaving?” I whispered, my mouth so close to his I could nearly feel the magnetic pull between us bringing me closer.
Then, in that instant, the spell was broken.
He let go of me, took his hands off my skin, moved to the other side of the couch, and left a wide, gaping, crevasse between us.
“What do you mean you’re leaving? You mean on a business trip?” I asked hopefully. I’d come over with every intention of telling him we’d never be together, but not in a million years did I expect that kiss and then those words. It was like a one-two punch. He faked left, and then jabbed right. Direct hit. Total knock out.
He ran his hands through his hair with frustration, and then heaved out a big breath. “No, not on a business trip. I put in my letter of resignation today. I’m quitting my job, selling the house, and moving to Florida to be near my parents so they can help with the kids. That was the rearranging I did while you were away.”
“You’re leaving?” I whispered, still unable to completely process his words. I’d heard him, understood him even, but refused to think about the fact that he was leaving with Ruby and Jax.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. He dropped his head into his hands and I could tell he was just as emotionally wrecked as I was, and that tore me up. I didn’t want him to hurt. In fact, I wanted the hurting to end. I wanted him and me both to be happy again. He had a bumpy road in front of him, but I knew he could find happiness. I also knew, me being there every day, reminding him of Olivia, of her absence, was like pouring salt in his wounds. And I loved him enough to let him go.
“You don’t have to be sorry. I’m glad you’re going to be near your parents. That will be good for Jax and Ruby. I’m just really going to miss them.” Even though my throat felt as if someone was making a slice right through it, I kept the cries in. I was not going to make him feel worse by crying in front of him about missing his children. No. I would cry in my bed for weeks, alone, about that.
“It was unfair of me to lean on you all this time. I apologize for that, Evie. I really do. But pretending like she isn’t here isn’t helping any of us. And, when you disappeared, it forced me to think about our lives realistically. I need help. Help you aren’t obligated to give me. I never want to feel like an obligation to you.”
“You don’t. You couldn’t. Ever. I love them.”
“I hope you’ll come see us. After some time though. After the kids have settled. I want you to be a part of their lives, a big part. I just want it to be healthy for everyone.”
“I’d really like that,” I said, damning the lone tear that slipped away down my cheek.
A silence fell between us as we looked at each other.
I didn’t know myself without Devon. My entire adult person had been built around him, Olivia, and the weirdly beautiful, although ultimately destructive, relationship we’d all had. And, decidedly, that was the problem.
“I could never wish I’d never met her,” he finally said, quietly, almost as if he wasn’t talking to me, but more to himself. “I’ve thought about what would have happened if we’d done things differently. If I’d asked for your number, or broken up with her when I found you again. We all could have taken so many paths, even ones that didn’t end with Olivia’s death. But even with that alternative, I can’t imagine ever going back and doing anything differently, Evie. The path we all went down brought us Ruby and Jax. So, as bad as I feel about what happened between us, and that we all had to watch Olivia suffer and die so tragically young, I can’t, not even for one second, wish it were any different.”
“I know.” I swallowed over a large lump, not wanting to think about a world without those two beautiful children. “I agree. And I know Olivia would too.”
Then, as if on cue, we both turned our heads as we heard Ruby’s voice drift down the stairwell.
“Daddy, I can’t sleep.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the sounds of her sweet, sleepy voice. It washed over me and made me feel a peace I hadn’t known in years. Devon was going to do what was best for his children, and if I didn’t love him before, I loved him now.
He looked at me with apology in his eyes, and I smiled, silently telling him I understood. Ruby couldn’t know I was there, then she’d never go back to bed. I watched as he stood and walked up the stairs to help his little girl fall asleep. And when all was quiet, I snuck out the front door, feeling lighter than I ever had.
Devon stayed in town until the kids were done with school. So I had three glorious weeks of just being Aunt Evie. I took them to movies in the evenings and to the park on Saturdays, but never showed up to get them ready for school or to make them dinner. They never asked why, and I never offered an explanation. The time we spent together was bittersweet because we all knew, soon enough, they would be moving. But it didn’t stop me from spending time with them and showering them with affection.
The day they left, I stood in their driveway blowing kisses at the back of their SUV, waving and shouting, “I love you.” Then I sat on their porch and cried.
When I heard my cell phone ping, I picked it up from the passenger seat and saw an alert that, at first, didn’t make any sense. I saw the word “Nate,” flash across my screen. Then, all at once, I remembered. I found the nearest exit, pulled into a parking lot, and then stared at my phone.
His name kept flashing, over and over again, and it came with an alert that sounded a lot like a hurricane siren. That was fitting, actually.
When that alert comes up on your phone, decide then. And I promise, whatever you decide, I’ll be okay with, as long as it’s your first choice.
I closed my eyes and tried to listen. I tried to hear that inner voice that would guide me, tell me the right thing to do. I sighed, and then, dragged my finger across the screen, dismissing the alarm. I gently tossed my phone on to the passenger seat again, and then rested my head against the headrest. I took in a few deep breaths, and then gripped the steering wheel. I checked my mirrors, making sure I could see all the way to the end of the U-Haul trailer I was pulling behind me, and then I pulled back onto the freeway and left my old life behind.
I did not call Nate.
I’d done exactly as he’d told me.
He wasn’t my first choice.