I answer the door to Jillian standing there with a gallon of chocolate salted caramel ice cream from my favorite creamery in the city. She holds out the container, I take one look at it and burst into tears.

She sighs and envelops me in a hug.

We stand there, the coolness of the ice cream in the center of my back as I clutch at her.

She lets me cry and I give in to all the loss and sadness I’ve held at bay since I left Jackson’s house.

For the first time in my life I’m in love and he doesn’t love me in return.

We stay like that, for I don’t know how long, until we make our way to the couch. I sink into the plush cushions and she moves around my kitchen, returning with two spoons, holding one out for me.

I shake my head.

This is something food can’t solve.

“Come on, take a bite.” She digs into the creamy ice cream and puts the spoon to my lips.

Because she’s gone through the trouble I oblige her.

It cools my mouth and dry throat as I swallow, hitting my hollowed-out stomach, but it brings me none of my customary pleasure.

“Good girl,” she says, smiling at me.

I wrinkle my nose. “Don’t Leo me.”

She laughs and sits down next to me before patting my knee. “Why don’t you tell me all about it.”

“I hate him.” I sniff, rubbing my cheeks. “He’s such a bastard.”

“They usually are.” She gets up and goes down my hall before returning with a box of tissue. She plucks one out of the container and holds it out to me.

I take it from her and rub it over my face. “I want to be angry, but all I am is sad.”

“The righteous anger will come soon enough.” She settles into my couch. “Wanna talk about it?”

I blow out a breath. “It’s my own fault, I knew what I was getting into. Knew the risk. And did it anyway.”

“Love’s not always logical.”

“Well, it should be,” I wail, all pitiful and weepy.

“Yeah, it should be.”

I look at her, sitting across from me all glowing and healthy and vibrant. She’s so beautiful with long dark hair, hazel eyes and warrior stature. She looks strong and unshakable.

I used to be like that.

I want to be like that again.

I wonder if I will be. I straighten my shoulders. No. Fuck that. Of course I will be. I am down, but I will not let him break me.

Jillian’s presence makes me stronger, and I make an attempt at strength. “This will not beat me.”

“It won’t, that’s not who you are.” Her voice is filled with such conviction I believe it.

It’s a glimmer of hope and I latch onto it. I give her a shaky smile. “Thanks, I needed that.”

We’re silent for a bit before she sighs. “I have to ask, is there any hope?”

I think of the last time I saw him, that cold look in his eyes. The anger that I dare question his parenting. The words he hurled at me. Like he hated me and couldn’t wait to get rid of me. Which I guess isn’t far from the truth.

The second we were alone he turned on me.

Well, that’s not entirely true, at first he held me like he never wanted to let me go. I’d thought, for one brief second, maybe somehow we’d work out. It had been such a warm, comforting moment.

And then it was gone.

I shake my head. “No, it’s over. He kicked me out.”

“He did what?” Her tone turns angry as her expression goes fierce. Jillian is about as loyal as a person can be, and if anyone threatens someone she loves, god help them.

I blow out a breath and tell her the entire story. Every single detail of our last day together. Saying goodbye to Natalie. Which was tearful and heartbreaking. Saying goodbye to him, which was the same, only different.

Crueler.

I wipe the tears from under my eyes. “I can’t believe I’m never going to see her again.” I shake my head. “Jilly, she’s the best. She’s so sweet and smart and perfect. I already miss her.” My chin trembles and I admit something to my best friend I’ve barely admitted to myself. “I can’t help feeling like she needs me, like I’m supposed to be with her. Is that crazy?”

Jillian tilts her head and her long hair falls over her shoulder. “And what about Jackson?”

“Him too. Even though I hate him. I love them. I want them.” My chest squeezes. “I need them. They feel like they are mine, you know?”

Jillian looks off in the distance, staring at something behind me before shifting her attention back on me. “I’d never be married to Leo if I didn’t push him, you know that, right? The man fought me every step of the way, and I had to be relentless.”

I frown. “This isn’t the same thing.”

“Why not?”

I bite my lower lip. “He doesn’t want to let me in.”

“Neither did Leo, I had to force his hand.”

“Once Leo took that first step, you had him. I gave Jackson everything I could, everything I had, and he sent me away.”

She rests her head on her open palm, her lips tilting. “You’d know better than me.”

Frustrated, I rake my hands through my hair before standing up and pacing around the room. “Even if he did, we don’t live in the same state. It’s impossible.”

Jillian shrugs. “People move every day, Gwenie.”

“With Natalie, she needs almost constant care. There’s no way for him to get the same kind of support system here. He’s surrounded by family that helps him take care of her. My building’s a walkup.”

“What about you?”

“My life, family and business are here. Am I supposed to give that up?”

“I’m just pointing out that it’s an option.”

“I can’t. You know that. After all I’ve built.”

“I think you’d be successful no matter where you are. And you’re bored, isn’t that why you wanted a new challenge to begin with?”

I do a lap around my living room, my mind spinning. Because everything she’s saying are all things I’ve thought about, dreamed about, usually with Jackson at my back, his arms around me. Because she’s right. We could find a way.

I’m willing to find a way. We could make it work.

I want to make it work.

But he doesn’t.

I admit the truth to her, just to say it out loud. To make it real and let go of the fantasy I’ve been entertaining quietly, but insistently, in the back of my mind. I sit back down on the couch. “I would, I’d find a way, but the truth is he wants me, but he doesn’t love me. I don’t think Jackson is capable of loving anyone except Natalie. I can’t fight because there’s nothing to fight for.”

“Are you sure?” Jillian meets my eyes, her expression searching.

“I wish I wasn’t, but I am. I told him, Jillian. I laid it all on the line. I told him I loved him. He didn’t say it back. I tried to discuss his daughter with him, and he kicked me out of his house because of it.” I look at the clock hanging on the wall. “He didn’t say goodbye. Didn’t chase down my plane. I’ve been home for forty-eight hours and he hasn’t even sent me a text message. He’s made it abundantly clear he doesn’t want me in his life.”

“I’m sorry.” Her brow furrows. “I want you to be wrong.”

“I want that too, but I’m not.”

“What are you going to do?”

I blow out a deep breath and find that inner resolve I’ve always possessed when life’s knocked me down. “I’m going to pick myself up and move on.”

Turns out moving on is much easier said than done.

I remember a quote from Albert Einstein, “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute — and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.”

I’ve never understood that more acutely than now. When every minute feels like a day and every day a lifetime.

It’s been two weeks, and they have been the longest two weeks of my life. No matter how busy I am, no matter how frantically I try to fill the space, time is a slow crawl.

I feel like I’ve aged ten years.

I go through the motions, say and do all the right things. Laugh in all the right places. But I’m suffering. My only consolation is that I don’t think anyone but Jillian can tell.

I’ve always been good at hiding my feelings. At soldiering on. I suppose that’s a blessing.

It’s all I have.

Every day I tell myself it will get easier.

And it will, eventually. All I need is time.

I open my email and there’s one from my assistant with the subject line: I think this is for you.

I open it the message that came through the contact form on the restaurant’s website.

My eyes instantly well with tears. It’s from Natalie.

Dear Gwen,

Auntie Cat helped me set up this email address so I could talk to you. Daddy doesn’t know. I drew you this picture.

Love, Natalie

With a heavy heart, I open the picture. It’s the two of us, me with my red hair and her with her blonde, holding hands. Across the bottom she wrote in bold colorful letters, I miss you.

I put my head down and cry.

---

I’m impossible to be around.

And that suits me just fine, because all I want is to be left alone. To keep everyone away from me.

The only person I don’t take my bad mood out on is Natalie. My one ray of sunshine in this dark and dreary existence.

I’m currently nursing my hand after punching an unruly customer that wouldn’t stop harassing one of the waitresses. The sheer aggression made me feel better for about thirty seconds.

That’s what my life has come down to, incremental seconds of respite.

Beau walks into the office and I steel myself for whatever bullshit he’s about to throw my way.

He sighs and takes a seat in the chair across from me, putting his elbows on his splayed knees and giving me that disappointed look he’s been wearing since I was six years old.

He raises a brow. “You’ve got to stop this.”

“Stop what?” My voice is hard, cold as ice. “I took care of the problem.”

“Beating the shit out of people isn’t going to bring her back.” His words are even, pragmatic.

I shake my head. “I didn’t beat the shit out of him. It was one punch.”

“You leveled him.”

“He deserved it.” The hardness of my voice matches my mood.

He scrubs a hand over his jaw. “Are you going to go get her?”

“No.”

He gives me a narrow-eyed stare.

I do my best to hold it, but eventually I’m forced to look away because I’m afraid of what he might see there.

My utter desperation for her.

My longing.

My need and fear that I’ll never get back to that numb place I existed before her.

Finally he says, “You know I was in love with your mother.”

“Yeah.” He’s never said it before, but we’d all known it. “So?”

“You know I love you like you were my own son.”

I shrug, unable to speak because my heart feels too full.

“You’re lucky, the woman you love loves you back. And she loves your kid. You have a chance to be happy if only you weren’t such a chicken shit.”

“It’s not the same.” My voice is like gravel.

“Yeah, I spent those years of my life loving a woman knowing I was merely a substitute for the man she really wanted.”

For the first time I really think about that, something I’d always taken for granted, and never had much sympathy for.

Now, with my emotions all over the place, it sinks in deep, in a way it hasn’t before. What that must have been like for him? To constantly be wanting and loving a woman that would never feel the same way. It must have worn on him constantly, but he never wavered in his devotion to her. To us.

I drop my guard and say sincerely, “It was wrong of her. You deserved better.”

“Life isn’t always about what you deserve, and you’re old enough and smart enough to understand that.”

I clench my teeth. “What exactly are you getting at?”

He laces his fingers and gives me that dead-on stare he probably developed back in his law enforcement days. “Jackson, you’ve got to let go of the way you thought your life was supposed to go, stop resenting it. Stop being a spoiled brat about it. You’ve got to let it go and embrace life as it is. Not what you expected.”

Anger and defensiveness rear up inside me, letting me know he’s right, but I’m too fucking stubborn to admit it.

I glare at him. “You don’t think I have? I left behind the life I wanted, I did the right thing. Now I bartend in this shithole, and don’t do anything unless it’s for Natalie. How exactly is that not accepting my lot?”

Always too fucking stubborn.

Beau’s head tilts. “You resent it. Every fucking day. It’s not good for you and it’s not good for your daughter. If you want to be happy, stop feeling sorry for yourself, stop putting in your time and do something except bearing it.”

“I do what I have to do.”

“That’s bullshit.” He shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “Your problem is that everything has always come easy to you. You’re too fucking smart, too good looking, and too gifted. Until you got sideswiped you never had to work for shit, and you lack survival skills. You run. That’s your way.”

His words are like a knife in my gut that just keeps twisting deeper and deeper. It’s everything I’ve ever thought about myself, everything I’ve ever feared, put out into the world where I can’t escape the reality.

So I put on the only defense I have. I scoff, shrug one shoulder. “Like father like son.”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” He’s unrelenting.

Twisting and twisting.

“Then I guess I’m doing Gwen a favor, now aren’t I?” It’s the first time I’ve said her name in two weeks. I’ve missed the flavor of it on my tongue. It’s like the balsamic I make, thick and rich. Complex and sweet with just a hint of bite.

She’s like that knife Beau is twisting, an ever-present ache.

“Yeah, I guess you are.” He gives me a disgusted look. “Go home, Jackson. Take some time.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you’re not good for business right now and you should leave.”

A slice of panic beats through me. I need this place to stay sane. To fill the time, so I don’t have to think. “I’m fine.”

“I’m not asking. I’m telling.” He juts his head toward the door. “Go.”

Well, fuck him.

I get up and storm out like the spoiled brat he’s accused me of being.

I peel out of the parking lot on my bike, racing down the highway in the opposite direction of home.

I don’t know where I’m going; I just drive like the devil himself is chasing me.

Faster and faster.

My driving more and more reckless and out of control.

If I got hit now, that’d be it. I’d be dead.

It doesn’t slow me down.

I’m going over a hundred, reckless.

All of Beau’s words are flying at me, whipping over me like the wind.

I think of Gwen, all that red hair over my pillow.

The way her smile made everything seem right.

The way she colored the world.

Made me laugh.

Made me think.

Engaged me.

Made me present.

Faster and faster I ride.

I think of how she made me feel, like I had when I first starting cooking, alive and stimulated and full of that creative genius everyone said I had.

I think of her hugging my daughter.

The press of Natalie’s blonde head against her chest.

Faster and faster.

The road’s a blur.

The way Gwen kissed her temple.

The way Gwen treated her like she was the most special girl in the world.

The way Gwen acted like she wasn’t disabled at all.

All at once, in a hot rush of blinding panic and crushing need, it swells over me.

She’s in me now.

The way cooking is in me.

The way Natalie is.

Gwen has seeped into me and become part of my flesh and bone.

Everything about her makes me better.

A better father.

A better brother.

A better man.

My fingers lift from the full throttle of the accelerator and the bike immediately slows.

As the machine decelerates, and the whine of the stressed motor fades, my heart rate begins to even out. My skin loses that tightness. My pulse stops its rampant pounding and all the fight drains out of me.

I coast, for how long I don’t know, but a strange peace flows over me.

A calm unlike any I’d ever known.

And I know what I need to do.

I turn the bike around and drive to the house. It’s late and everyone’s asleep. It’s dark and silent as I move up the stairs.

But I am sure and calm.

It’s like a buzz I hadn’t known was in my head is silent. A new quiet taking its place.

I make my way down the hall and into Natalie’s room. She’s sleeping, and in the moonlight she looks like an angel.

I stare down at her, her lashes resting against her cheeks, all my secret pent-up resentment at her unexpected arrival into my life, and her broken body fades away, leaving an empty space inside me I fill up with love.

Love for her.

Love for the gift that she is.

Of course, Beau’s been right. I’d dedicated everything I had to her, but I resented it. Blamed this one event for everything that was wrong in my life.

I sit down on the edge of her bed and gently shake her awake.

Her lashes flutter open and she blinks up at me. “What’s wrong, Daddy?”

I shake my head and a tightness fills my throat. She’s a gift. My gift.

I shake my head. “Nothing’s wrong, baby.”

“Okay.”

I brush her hair from her face. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” She holds out her hands. “Hug.”

I lean down and let her thin arms envelop me. I whisper in her ear, “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

She nods against me.

It kills me because I know it’s not going to be easy for her. That she’ll suffer. That people will be cruel. That it will stretch her more than she can ever imagine.

But I know it’s the right thing to do.

They’ve all been right. I have to let her have a life. I can’t protect her from everything. “You can go to school in the fall. As long as the doctors say it’s okay.”

She pulls back to look at me, her eyes shine bright and excited. “You promise?”

“I promise.” Someday, she’ll come home from school with tears in her eyes and it will slay me, but I’ll have to deal with it. I stroke her hair. “You need to make me a promise in return, okay?”

“Yes. Okay.” Her voice is small and light.

“I have to go away for a bit, so you have to promise me you’ll be good for Uncle Wyatt, Aunt Cat, and Mrs. Potts, but we’ll talk every day until I get back. Do you promise?”

“Where are you going?” Her chin starts to tremble because she hates when I go away.

But I’m pretty sure this will make her happy. I smile down at her. “I’m going to get Gwen.”

She beams and screams in excitement.

And, for tonight, all is right in her world.