Bittersweet (Redemption #3) - Jessica Prince Page 0,79

mopey mood, so I went with it. My hair was tangled up in a sloppy knot on the top of my head, and I was currently working my way through a gallon container of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

Brantley was curled up on the couch with me, his eyes focused on the television where Iron Man was currently battling it out with the rest of the Avengers in the middle of Manhattan as he distractedly spooned ice cream into his mouth.

I was having a pity-party; he was excited we were getting ice cream after dinner.

After I got back from Jensen’s office, Caroline had stuck around, hovering over me to make sure I wasn’t going to break. Naturally, I’d lied through my teeth when she asked what had happened, but instead of letting it go like she normally would, letting me work through it on my own, she’d pushed, so I gave in.

We sat out on my teeny front stoop, watching as Brantley raced back and forth on his bike—something he’d now mastered without training wheels thanks to Jensen—and I laid it all out for her. I gave her the full story, every ugly detail.

She’d gone quiet once I finished, staring off into nothing, and I could only assume she was doing the same thing I’d been doing since I found out the truth, trying to wrap her head around it all.

Finally, I couldn’t take the silence anymore. “Will you please say something?”

“I just can’t—” She gave her head a shake, like she was clearing out the cobwebs. “That poor boy. That just breaks my heart.”

My mouth fell open in shock. “Poor boy? What are you talking about? He made these decisions about our future without even talking to me because he didn’t trust I’d stick by him if I knew the truth. He ended us, he walked away when he didn’t have to. I would have stayed.”

“Would you have?” she asked as she turned back to me.

“Of course!”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t leave the people you love,” I declared passionately. “You don’t abandon them. You stay. When you love someone, you fight for them.” She nodded like she was pleased with my answer. “Why are you grinning like that?”

“No reason in particular.” With that bewildering answer, she rose to her feet and slipped the strap of her massive fringed purse over her shoulder. “Well, I best be off. Things to do, people to see and all that jazz.”

And just like that, she left me sitting there feeling more confused than ever.

I sulked my way through doing a bit of laundry. I pouted as I prepared dinner, and now I was brooding through quality time with my kid. God, I was a mess.

The screen door creaked loudly, alerting me to a visitor just before the front door opened.

“Aunt Caro!” Brantley exclaimed, jumping off the sofa and flinging ice cream everywhere as he swung his spoon around and lunged at her like he hadn’t just seen her a few hours earlier.

“What are you doing here?” I mumbled through a mouthful of ice cream.

She looked at me in that stern way she’d only used a handful of times while I’d been growing up. “You asked me to babysit this little munchkin tonight because you have that thing,” she replied, arching a brow like she and I were in on a secret while ruffling Brantley’s hair.

“But . . . that’s not happening anymore. You already knew that.”

She hit me with a pointed look that made me sink down into the couch. “Well, I think that would be a mistake.”

And there it was. She hadn’t said anything earlier because she was waiting for just the right time when she could catch me off guard and lay one of her wise, all-knowing, Caroline the Magnificent life lessons on me. And she’d timed it perfectly.

“Do your old aunt a favor, kiddo,” she said to Brantley. “Go pack a bag for my house. Uncle Scoot got the stuff for us to roast marshmallows so we can make s’mores. We’re gonna stay up really late watching movies and eat tons and tons of sugar.”

“Yeah!” he shouted, fist-bumping the air before taking off down the hallway. A crash sounded a second later, quickly followed by, “I’m okay!”

I shoved my spoon into the melty goop and put the container on the coffee table. “What do you mean you think that’s a mistake?”

Caroline moved to the couch and took a seat on the opposite end. “I think it would be a mistake for