NICE GIRL TO LOVE (THE COMPLETE THREE-BOOK COLLECTION)(82)

“But she was still my wife. Just because she no longer loved me or even recognized me didn’t make my love for her just cease to exist. So if all I could do for her was sit and be her nameless friend and give her a fleeting day’s worth of happiness, I was willing to do it. Even though it broke my heart every time.”

Brian looked down at his ring finger, the tan line still there though his wedding band was long gone. “She motioned to my ring one day and I figured out that the stories she wanted to hear the most were about my wife. At first, I felt a glimmer of hope; I convinced myself that a part of her remembered our life together. But when I tried to share our memories with her, she became so upset, so confused, I just had to stop.”

He glanced up. “Then one day, she ‘met’ you.”

Abby could barely breathe for the emotions she saw in his eyes.

“Beth was so convinced you were my wife, she wouldn’t let it go. And after an hour of trying to figure out what she was asking of me, I realized she wanted to hear our story—the story of how you and I fell in love…” A bittersweet smile crossed his features. “She always was a romantic.” He sighed. “And she was also insistent. But I just couldn’t get myself to exchange your name with Beth’s and relay her own stories that she could no longer remember, with you in her place. I couldn’t. So I made up new ones, fake ones to chronicle the epic romance that was Brian and Abby’s life together.”

He scrubbed a wary hand over his face. “I’d planned only to do it that one day, figuring when I became her nameless friend again the next day, it would never come up again. But it did. It kept coming up, over and over again. It became clear that those stories made her the happiest, the most content. So I kept doing it. The days you weren’t with me, you usually didn’t come up. The days you did come by, she would ask for the stories without fail. Not through words obviously because she couldn’t speak, but with cards and a chart we came up with that she could point at.”

Abby remembered that chart. And the cards. “‘First date’ ... ‘The day you knew’ … ‘Romantic Getaway’ … ‘Proposal’ …” Abby recited the cards she could recall. “I never knew what they meant. I thought they were a part of some sort of therapy or something,” she said softly, looking up into his eyes. “So you came up with stories for all of that?”

“Yes.”

“But what promise was the nurse talking about?”

“That happened way before. Right after I’d first admitted Beth into the care facility, in fact. She’d been shockingly lucid that day and though it took a while—a lot of cards and questions with yes/no grunts and exhausting trial and error guesses to understand what she was trying to say—eventually, I got everything Beth was wanting to express down on the white board. When I stepped back to read all the sentences out loud, Beth cried and nodded frantically.” He sighed. “And that’s when nurse Jen came in.”

“What did the sentences say?” she whispered.

Brian gazed into her eyes and recited the stilted sentences as if they were burned into his brain. And though she hadn’t heard Beth’s voice in years, Abby could practically hear Beth speaking the sentences aloud: “I don’t have much time left. I love Skylar. She’s the best little girl. She deserves a wonderful mom. I wasn’t able to be that for her. But Abby was. Promise me that after I’m gone, after Skylar loses her mother, promise me that you’ll do everything you can to make sure she doesn’t lose her mom, too.”

A flood of hot tears blazed down Abby’s cheeks. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Because I didn’t want to burden you with it. It’s not exactly something I could just walk up to you and ask you to do, to be.”

True. “Well, then why didn’t you tell her no?”

Brian gave her an are-you-kidding-me look. And Abby almost laughed.

“Beyond the fact that this is Beth we’re talking about here. If you were in my shoes, would you have said no to a request like that?”

No, she wouldn’t have.

“You still should’ve told me. It wouldn’t have been a burden.”

“It would’ve been more than just a burden. It would’ve ruined everything.”

Abby frowned. “What do you mean?”

He hesitated and then said softy, “Even though my heart wasn’t free to love you yet, a part of me couldn’t bear the idea of you feeling obligated to be with me because of a promise to Beth, or even because of Skylar.” He stared into her eyes. “I wanted you to want me for me. Be with me because you loved me…the way that I loved you.”

Abby felt her heart flip right over.

“That’s why I kept it a secret. Not to lie to you, and not because I’d brainwashed myself into believing I wanted to be with you to fulfill some promise to my dead wife. But because I loved you.”

He gazed at her sadly as she sat there silently. “Please say something.”

Abby’s brain was on overload. She didn’t know how to begin processing, where to begin processing. And for some completely bizarre reason, her curiosity was overriding her need to analyze the situation.

“So in the stories you came up with…what did you say was our first date?”