Rock Wedding (Rock Kiss #4) - Nalini Singh Page 0,14

acknowledgement that Aaron had been born even if he’d never lived. Putting the photos away with care when Abe returned them, she took a deep breath, then directed him to the place where the babies lay, sleeping under the sheltering wings of a guardian angel.

She’d come here first thing this morning. Of course she had. She might not like seeing her child here, but she would never leave him alone. “Hey, baby boy,” she said, kneeling down to the lush green grass and straightening the furry blue-and-yellow dinosaur she’d gotten to keep him company. She didn’t leave flowers. Babies didn’t care about flowers. They liked toys and colorful balloons.

Sarah had brought him bright orange ones this morning, gently anchored the strings in the ground beside the small headstone. They bobbed in the breeze as Sarah sat and talked to her baby as she did at least once every week. Abe sat beside her, a big, quiet, patient presence. It was getting dark by the time she rose to her feet.

“Good night, Baby Boots,” she whispered before bending to press a kiss to Aaron’s headstone. “I hope you’re making mischief up in heaven.” That was the only way she could bear this—if she believed that her baby’s spirit had flown away and this gravestone was only a place for the living to grieve. He wasn’t here any longer.

“Good night, Aaron.”

Abe’s words made her lower lip quiver. “Thank you,” she said through the rawness inside her. “For treating him as if he existed.”

Abe put his arm around her shoulders. “He did.”

She didn’t shrug off his hold, instead soaking in his warmth, his strength. “Were you okay last year? On the anniversary of Tessie’s passing?” It had always been the worst time for him, and when the date had rolled around, she’d worried, watched the tabloids, only breathing a sigh of relief when she saw no mention of Abe indulging in self-destructive behavior.

“I hung out with the guys,” he told her now, “stayed the night at David’s place.” He stroked his thumb over her bare upper arm as he said, “I take her balloons too. She always loved chasing them.”

It was the first time he’d ever shared anything about how he mourned for his sister. “You visit her often?” Sarah knew Tessie had been laid to rest in Abe’s hometown of Chicago.

Less than a year later, Diane and Abe had buried Abe’s father beside her, the physically fit man dying of a sudden heart attack. “A broken heart,” Diane had said to Sarah one day. “These Bellamy men, when they love, they go all in. And my poor Gregory, he couldn’t survive losing his baby girl. It was the helplessness that got to him—not being able to fight her dragons for her, slay them.”

Like father, like son, Sarah had thought at the time, already starting to understand that Abe, too, was haunted by how helpless he’d been made by the disease that had taken his sister’s life.

“Whenever I’m in the city,” Abe said now. “Mostly I only go to support my mom. I carry Dad and Tessie here.” He touched his heart, right on the spot where he bore a tattoo of a tiny wood sprite peeking out through long reeds. Such a delicate tattoo for this big, tough man, but Sarah knew it was his favorite.

“The wood sprite tattoo,” she said, “it’s in memory of your sister, isn’t it?”

To her surprise, Abe shook his head. “No, it’s not in memory. It is a memory—Tessie’s the one who chose the design,” he told her. “While she was in hospital that last month, I used to read to her and I asked her what my next tattoo should be.” A smile in his voice. “She never blabbed about my tats to our folks. They didn’t know back then, thought I was the most clean-cut rocker on the planet.”

Sarah held her breath, not wanting to break the moment, not wanting to lose this instant when Abe was trusting her with a piece of himself. It was far too late for them… but it still mattered that he would.

“So Tessie picks up the fairy book I’d been reading to her and says, ‘This one.’” He laughed. “I got it that week—she saw it before…” His smile faded, his hands fisting at his sides. “It fucking sucks that assholes get to live and Tessie and Aaron didn’t. That my dad didn’t.”

The blunt words were so what Sarah felt that hearing them unexpectedly eased her grief. “Yes, it