more. He straight out said that, too. He said he’s been fighting it since we first met. He asked me to stick with him and explore what’s between us. I don’t know what that means.”
When I stopped speaking, Hadley’s smile split her face and I realized then that Delaney wasn’t the only dreamer in our family. My twin had found her happily ever after, too. She was now shrouded in the love of a good man she’d worked to get, and seeing her smile I knew she wanted that for me, too. Which meant she wouldn’t be much help.
“Stick with him,” she told me, not surprisingly.
“Did you miss the part where I said I don’t know what that means?”
“It means he’s got something ugly inside of him. Something that hurts you to see. And, Addy, it wouldn’t hurt you if you didn’t care about him. What he’s asking is for you to stick with him while he works that out. But what that really means is, he’s asking you to stick with him so you can work that out of him.”
That was what I was afraid it meant. Something I very much wanted to do, even if that meant losing myself while I was doing it.
“That scares me.”
“It should.”
I felt my jaw drop at my sister’s honesty. I figured she’d sugarcoat the battle I’d have on my hands and tell me I could handle it. What I hadn’t expected was for her to agree with me. And that didn’t just scare me—it scared the pants off me.
“Hadley—”
“Wait.” Her hand came up and I did what she asked. I waited. Then I waited longer, until the silence was uncomfortable and I’d thought about all the reasons I was scared.
“I see you planning your retreat, Addy. But that’d be a mistake. Brady had so much ugly buried inside of him. Thinking back on it, it’s a miracle he got through the day. It was hard to hear, it was harder to witness. But if I’d given up, I wouldn’t have him. And, sister, I cannot imagine my life without him. There’s one thing I know for certain, Trey would not lie to you. Not about thinking you’re beautiful—which, duh, of course he’d think that because you’re gorgeous.”
Hadley’s compliment wasn’t a compliment as such considering she was my identical twin, therefore, her telling me I was gorgeous was really self-serving because she was calling herself gorgeous. But I didn’t call her out on it when her smile faded and she pinned me with a serious stare. “He wouldn’t ask you for more if he didn’t mean it. Actually, I don’t believe he would’ve nailed you unless he intended to make an honest woman out of you.”
Nailed me? Honest woman out of me? I wasn’t sure which quip sounded worse. Again, I found myself rolling my eyes to the ceiling, this time wondering how it was possible that Hadley and I could be so different.
“He’s a man,” I pointed out.
“A man who respects you, his friends, his job, our family. A man who wouldn’t fuck you, then roll out of your bed and walk away.”
I cringed at Hadley’s vulgar description of what Trey and I had done. There was no arguing it had been rough and deliciously dirty, but there was something more to it. Tender didn’t quite explain it, but that was the best I could come up with. It was in the way he’d looked at me, the way he touched me—even though it had been anything but gentle, it had been done with reverence.
“I don’t think Trey knows what he wants. I think he’s struggling with a lot of stuff and he’s confused.”
“I agree, he’s struggling. But he’s not confused. He reached out to you because he sees in you what all of us know.”
“What’s that?”
“Adalynn Walker isn’t shy and she isn’t a sweet wallflower. She’s strong and fierce and loyal to the end. He sees it, recognizes it, and knows if there is someone who can heal what he’s got inside of him, it’s you.”
“I think you’re describing yourself,” I whispered.
“I’m impulsive and loud and unrelenting. Your strength is quieter. You bring peace where I bring mayhem. You’ll coax and soothe whereas I’ll force and demand. We are the same in so many ways, different in others, but one thing that cannot be denied is, we are Emily Walker’s daughters. She taught us how to love hard, how to be strong, to be smart. But just like Mom, the two