Don't Need You - Lilian Monroe Page 0,58

I thought was opening up to me.

I don’t know if it’s goodbye forever, but I don’t see how I can leave my family behind when something like this happens. Willow gives me one last sad smile, then turns around and gets back in her car.

I walk through the sliding glass doors and into the airport, heading for the first available desk to book my flight. The airline staff member is kind, and she manages to bump me up to the top of the standby list, booking me on two connecting flights that will have me landing just before seven o’clock in the evening. I’m in such a daze, I don’t even know if I thank her. I just check my bag, sling my carry-on over my shoulder, and head for security.

The thing about airports is that there’s a lot of empty time. Waiting in line at security. Waiting at the gate. Waiting to board the plane. Being on the plane itself. It gives me time to dissect the past few weeks of my life, and even back to the months that led up to where I am now.

I think about Kit. Angelo. Robbie. About my mother and grandmother, and everything I left behind in New Haven. My heart stings and I’m not sure why.

Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Don’t they say everything happens for a reason? Whoever they are? Maybe things with Kit and me were going too fast. They were too intense. He said himself he wanted to slow things down—maybe he could feel something was going to happen.

I need to heal. I need time to myself, without an attractive, strong, sexy man clouding my thoughts with lust. Whenever he’s near, I can almost feel my uterus crying out for a child with him. That, in itself, terrifies me.

I’ve known the man less than a month, and he makes me want to bear his children—even when my miscarriage is the most painful memory I have. I’ve felt like my body has malfunctioned in the most basic way, and I don’t know if it’ll ever happen for me again. I’ve shut that door in my mind for years, knowing that opening it up again would be far too painful.

But with Kit, I crave it. It’s a deep, constant yearning that tugs at my heart and soul and womb. But my mind screams at me, reminding me of the awful, black grief that tore me apart.

I need to get out of here. My family needs me.

My thoughts are a jumbled mess, but the only thing I know for sure is that I need to go home. At some point, maybe on my first layover—or is it the second?—I manage to type out a text for Kit. I just tell him about the stroke, and that I’m going home. I’m sure Robbie will have heard, too, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Then, I reenter my daze and let the plane carry me back across the country, to the place I was trying so hard to escape.

When I land in Connecticut, it’s snowing. If it sticks, we’ll have a white Christmas in two weeks’ time. Usually, that would fill me with joy. Right now, though, nothing can shake the dread and heartbreak that clings to my every pore. I let a taxi take me back to my mother’s place.

My mother opens the door when I ring the doorbell, wrapping her arms around me as tears stream down her face. She pulls me into her embrace, welcoming me back into the warmth and comfort of the life I’ve always known.

Maybe I’m weak, but I feel almost relieved. I lock my time in Woodvale in a box inside my heart, and I let my mother carry a part of my grief and sadness. I enter her house and bring my bag up to my childhood bedroom, staring at the four walls around me, knowing that if I stay, I’m giving up a lot more than a temporary teaching position.

But if I go, I’m turning my back on my family.

Right now, when my grandmother is in the hospital and my family feels like it’s been ripped apart, this is exactly where I need to be. It’s more important than teaching, more important than my new friends, and as much as I hate to admit it, it’s more important than Kit.

I don’t know if he’ll understand. I don’t know if he’ll wait for me. I don’t even know if he should.

I let my feet