Heartbreaker (Unbreakable #1)(88)

Our gazes locked. Brother to sister. Guardian to charge. Family.

As I stared into expressive eyes that held experience beyond their years, I let out a slow breath. “You need this.”

“I do.” She put her hand on my forearm. “You need this too. I need you to be whole for me. You need to realize that you can’t stop living to take care of me. You have to live for you first.”

“I will, Lo. Just not yet.”

“Now, D. You have to live for you now. We don’t get chances at happiness often. You need to take yours.”

“We’ve been over this. I…I can’t do both.” I pinched my eyes shut for a beat. “Not well, anyway. Look what happened.”

“Shit happens, D. We know this. But you can’t control everything, so stop trying.” She squeezed my arm. “Come to Tuesday’s meeting. Promise me you’ll be there. You’ll see that you can do both.”

I had no idea how she had all that confidence about something I couldn’t see past. All I knew was Logan needed me—all of me. I thought that meant centering all of my focus only on her. She insisted there was more to it than that.

And I would do anything for her—especially when she looked up at me with that pleading look in her eyes.

“All right. I’ll be there.”

But I’m not promising anything.



I’d never been to one of Logan’s SSL meetings. Not as a participant. Sure, I’d watched a couple of times for a few minutes from the back. Had walked by the door once or twice, glanced in the windows. But I’d never actually attended from the beginning, become a part of the group.

The room felt hot and I plucked my T-shirt from my chest for a split second as I took a seat in the chair nearest the door. My heart thumped faster than made sense while I glanced at the other fourteen people as, one by one, they each claimed a seat in the circle.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm the f*ck down.

It’s just a harmless meeting, D. Get your shit together.

I’d come for Logan. Not for me.

Near a dry-erase board at the front, Logan spoke in hushed tones with a large middle-aged man who glanced toward me. Then he gave Logan a nod and a pat on her shoulder before she sat in the empty seat beside me.

The man she’d talked with addressed the group once the last person was seated. “Hi, I’m Ron.”

“Hi, Ron,” the group replied, me included.

“Some of you have heard my story, others haven’t. Helps me to share it once in a while. Because, when I lost my baby girl, Denise—just fourteen with everything to live for, gone in an instant—I shut down for a few weeks. Then? I centered all my focus on my boy, Dillon, a senior in high school.

“Drove that poor boy nuts. I was all up in his business and worried about everything: his friends, what he did at night, how his grades were, if he drank or doped. Whenever he went out, I agonized about him coming home. Even tailed him a couple of times.”

Ron shook his head. “Crazy, I know. But I” —his voice cracked— “felt like I’d failed my daughter. I refused to fail my son. Except…I was doing just that when I began to smother him. We started fighting, bad.”

His voice lowered. “And I put all that focus on my son at the expense of my wife—our marriage. She kept quiet the whole time. Suffered in silence at the loss of our girl even though she needed me.

“One day? I just stopped. Stopped trying. Stopped overmanaging my son. I just let go. Once I did, an enormous weight lifted. Took a while, couple of weeks maybe, but eventually, my son started smiling again. So did my wife. Because I made time for her too—for us.”

He pegged a hard look at the woman directly across from him, then scanned his gaze across the circle until it landed on me. “Took a lot of heartache to realize the best gift we can give those we love is ourselves—whole and happy. We have to let them breathe, let them live and make mistakes. And we need to live too. We owe it to ourselves and to them.”

My head buzzed at Ron’s story. The parallels…the lesson…hit me hard.

When I glanced left, Logan stared at me with a soft expression. Then determination flashed across her face. She grabbed my hand and tugged me out of my seat and toward the corner of the room while the group continued, murmuring in the background.

She stared up at me, compassion in her eyes. “You said you can’t do both. You don’t have to. We will. I’m not thirteen anymore. You don’t have to handle everything alone. We do this together. I need you to live for you.”

I gave a weak nod, unable to speak with the cramp locking up my throat.

Logan needs me to be whole…and happy.

And f*ck, I needed Kiki for that.

But first, I had to get my head screwed on straight.





Kiki…

Race day came without any fanfare.

And yet, I’d hit a major achievement before I’d ever stepped foot on the trail.

I’d finally begun to stop mourning the devastating loss of Darren; self-preservation demanded it.

In small increments, while pushing my limits with daily trail running and immersing myself in several new sculptures, I’d painstakingly stripped the “we” out of my head—and heart—and had slowly become a “me” again.

But the new me turned out to be profoundly different. I’d become a better version of independent me: brighter on the inside, ready to face whatever challenges awaited me on the outside. All because I’d loved and been loved. Because of Darren.