an excuse to get out of listening to my mom’s opinion on bridesmaid dresses. You’re doing me a favor, I promise.”
“You’re getting married?” How did I not know that?
“Six months to go,” she said, her smile shining through her voice. “I’ll be there soon, just hang tight.”
We hung up as Beckett walked in with a familiar white and green cup.
“You are a god among men,” I said, taking the cup and holding it between my hands, hoping some of the heat would transfer to my skin, would wake up my nerves. Numb seemed to be my default state lately.
“I’ll bring you coffee more often,” he promised, pulling up a matching chair to sit next to me. “How’s she doing?”
“No change. I’m not sure what I’m expecting. Instant results? Her to pop up and be magically healed from an infection I never saw? How did I not see it?”
“Because you’re not a walking blood test? You’ve got to be a little easier on yourself, Ella. If the doc said there was no way to see this coming, then you need to believe him. Beat yourself up about your choice of baseball teams, or the fact that you’re about two thousand miles overdue for an oil change, but not this.”
“What’s wrong with the Rockies?”
He shrugged. “Nothing if you like losing.”
“Hey, they’re the hometown team, and I’m not a fair-weather fan.”
“That’s what I love about you,” he said with a smile as he watched Maisie. “Your unwavering loyalty, even to a team that clearly sucks.”
“Just because you’re a Mets fan…” I motioned to the baseball cap he had on.
“Guilty as charged.” He looked at me and winked, and it became instantly clear: he’d distracted me from guilt-tripping myself.
I shook my head and sighed, grateful for the coffee and the split second I’d had to clear my head from going down the path of self-loathing that wouldn’t do Maisie any good.
“I’m scared.”
“I know.” His hand covered mine where it rested on my lap.
“This is bad.”
“Yes.” His simple acknowledgment meant more than any well-meaning platitude. With Beckett, I didn’t have to put on the brave face or smile when someone told me that they were sure Maisie would be okay when they really knew nothing of the sort. I could be horribly, bluntly honest with this man.
“I don’t want to bury my daughter.” I watched the rise and fall of her chest under the patterned hospital gown. “I don’t know how to plan for something like that, or even consider it. I don’t know how to look at Colt and tell him that his best friend…” My throat closed, denying the rest of my words the release they so desperately needed. I’d kept them inside for so long that they felt more powerful, like I’d fed the monster by keeping it hidden away.
Beckett squeezed my hand. Everything about him dwarfed me, including those long, strong fingers that held mine with such strength and care.
“From the moment they told me her odds, I refused to plan for that. Because planning for it felt like admitting defeat, like I’d already given up on her. So I didn’t. I simply refused to believe that could even be an option. And then…”
I closed my eyes as the memory slid over me, stabbing at me with a grief so sharp I should have visibly bled. Lowering his casket. The guns from the shore. The stern face of the soldier who had handed me a folded flag.
“Then I buried Ryan. What kind of God does that? Takes your only brother while toying with the thought of taking your daughter?”
Beckett’s thumb stroked over my knuckle, but he stayed quiet. There wasn’t anything he could say—we both knew it.
“Were you mad? When he died?” I asked, tearing my eyes away from Maisie to look at Beckett.
His focus shifted downward. “Furious.”
“With God,” I assumed.
“With myself. With every soldier in our unit who hadn’t saved him, taken that bullet. With the government for sending us there. With the…” He swallowed. “…insurgents who pulled the trigger. With everyone who lived after he died.”
“How did you get past it?” He was so calm, like the lake at five a.m. before a ripple of wind disturbed her surface.
“What makes you think I have?” His eyes met mine, and I saw it there, the pain he kept meticulously concealed. How deep was it? How much damage had been done to him through the years?
Beckett Gentry knew almost everything there was to know about me, and yet I knew nothing