Open Doors (Suncoast Society #27)(30)

The room tittered with nervous, grieving laughter. Kaden had anticipated that and paused for a moment before speaking again. “Frankly, I didn’t want to put myself through seeing my friends grieving. That might make me a coward, and I’m sorry about that, but y’all know what a control freak I am.”

Another pause for more laughter, this round coming a little easier, now that he’d broken the ice.

“And what I’ll ask of all of you is to be there for them, now that I can’t be. I don’t mean overwhelm them, because, frankly, that would be worse than not doing anything. Ask Seth what, if anything, he needs from you. Let him guide you with talking to Leah. She’ll need to laugh, she’ll need to live.

“In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have to be here today, the doctors would have come up with a miracle cure, and Seth, Leah, and I would be living the dream as a happy triad. Unfortunately, this isn’t a perfect world.”

He clasped his hands together in front of him, his intense grey gaze boring directly into the camera, focusing on each and every one of them.

“I’m here to tell you, right now, to quit stalling. Quit waiting. Quit making excuses for whatever is holding you back, good or bad. If you have been forgetting to pick up the phone and call someone and tell them how you feel, do it. If you haven’t made a clean break because of fear of the unknown, well, guess what? One day, it’ll be too late to start again and you’ll never have a chance.

“My biggest regret is that I was too afraid for too many years to admit that I loved my best friend. That I would have been proud and glad to have him as my partner with Leah. I was scared of what ‘people’—” he used finger quotes, “—might say about it. I was afraid, for some stupid reason, that people might not approve of my choices. It wasn’t until all of this fell in on me that I realized since when did I give a flying f*ck what people thought about me? I don’t. And I never should have.”

He leveled a finger at the camera, at all of them. “Quit being afraid. I get it, some of us have jobs and families we need to placate. That’s the cost of living, for some of us. But we don’t need to let it rule every aspect of our lives. We can mitigate. We can figure out ways around it. My greatest regret, besides not being here for Leah and Seth, is that I wasted a lot of great years that the three of us could have been living happily as a triad. And that Seth, as a result, ended up in marriages that he could have avoided had I simply opened my freaking mouth a lot sooner.

“Stop living in fear. You always hear that, but maybe it’ll have more impact coming from a dead guy. There is no more fear once you’re dead, folks. There is no more living, either, I don’t care what your particular faith or beliefs tell you about the afterlife. You’re not here, with the people you love, or the people who love you. And that f*cking sucks.

“So live now. Love now. Don’t settle for getting by. Don’t settle for anything less than what makes you happy. If you think you’re doing someone a favor by settling, you’re not. Because if you’re not fully happy, you’re only giving them a less-than version of yourself, and frankly? That’s a consent violation. You’re not letting them choose the real you.

“I’ve seen a lot of you when you first got into the lifestyle, until now, how you’ve grown and changed. Those changes never stop unless you’re dead. Sometimes they’re small changes, sometimes they’re large ones. Sometimes they make us laugh, and sometimes they make us cry.”

He pulled off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes.

“I know some of you are aware of all the preparations I’ve made. Yes, I’m filming this, along with a lot of other stuff, early on. I’m making my preparations now, so I can live what numbered days I have left in relative peace. I’ve already lived through my death, and my funeral, and my wife and best friend getting married. I’ve done it. I’ve done it so I can be as free as I can in the times that will matter most, the time I spend with them, until I actually take my last breath.

“Can any of you say that? That you’re free? You should live your life freely. In such a way that when you go, you’ve left nothing unsaid. That’s why I wanted this video played today. For those of you who I did leave things unsaid to, please accept my apologies. You all have no excuse, however, not to leave here today and get those things said to the people closest to you. Burn the bridges or repair them, whatever needs to happen.

“Time is short, and it only gets shorter every morning we wake up. Even the time you’re spending here today—and thanks for coming, by the way—is eating into the time you could be living. This is the longest you will ever have for the rest of your life. Life only gets shorter from here on out. Beyond those doors lies the rest of your life. Don’t let the door stay closed. Open the damn thing. Remember that. Don’t forget it. Believe me, I spent a lot of years forgetting it. It wasn’t until this happened that I managed to really understand how valuable time is. How valuable love is. How valuable the people I love are, and how much I cherish them.

“You guys are free to stand up and say something, if you want. I told Ed to let everyone there determine that. I wanted you to have a good meal on me, be able to smile as you recalled good memories about me, and wanted to give you all something to think about and carry with you.

“And, seriously, thank you again, all of you, for being a part of our lives. Thank you for welcoming Seth into the community, and thank you for helping him and Leah out through this time. I appreciate that more than you’ll ever know, or that I’ll ever be able to tell you. And remember that family—and I consider most of you family, in a way—isn’t about blood bonds. Family is about who you adopt into your tribe, your pack.