The Last Letter(70)
“Huh. Seems like you already believed him, then, doesn’t it?”
“Ugh.” I let my head roll back and sighed my exasperation to whoever wanted to take my side. “You’re on his side.”
“I’m on Maisie’s side. And that side looks a lot better when she’s living.”
Well, when you put it like that…
“I don’t know what to do. I can’t marry him, Ada. It’s only a matter of time before he gets bored. Guys like Beckett don’t play house.”
“He’s not your father. He’s not Ryan. He’s not Jeff. You have got to stop convicting him of their crimes.”
She was right, and yet my heart still wouldn’t accept it, my head wouldn’t surrender. “Even if he sticks around long enough to get Maisie through treatment, eventually he’s going to check the ‘saved Ryan’s sister’ box and move on.”
“And that’s bad because…”
“Because it will break the kids’ hearts.”
“Funny thing about broken hearts—only the living have them.”
I shot her a glare. “Yeah, I get it. At least she’d be alive to have a broken heart, right? But what if he walks out midtreatment? What if the insurance cancels and the hospital ceases her therapy?”
“Then she will have had more treatments than she’s getting now, and we’ll cross that bridge if we ever get there. Sometimes you just have to show a little faith, even if he is a veritable stranger.”
“I don’t know how to trust him with my kids.” I reached for another cookie and broke it in half.
“That’s a load of crap.” She wagged her finger in my direction. “You already trust him with the twins. He takes Colt to soccer, and he’s stayed with Maisie in the hospital with the privileges you gave him over her care.”
I shoved another piece of cookie in my mouth and chewed slowly. Ugh, she was right. Hadn’t I already admitted to Beckett that I knew he’d do anything for the kids?
“You know what I think?” Ada asked, taking advantage of my full mouth. “You’re not scared to trust him with the kids. You’re scared to trust him with you.”
The cookie scraped my throat as I forced a quick swallow.
“What? I don’t even factor into this. He said the marriage would just be on paper.” Which—okay, I could admit—had actually hurt a little.
“But you care about him.”
Too much.
“Any feelings I might or might not have don’t matter. This isn’t one of your Christmas romance movies where they fake-marriage themselves out of a conundrum, break into snowball fights, and fall in love. There’s no happy-ever-after here.”
Of course that knowledge hadn’t stopped me from falling for him, anyway.
“Ella, it’s June, there is no snow.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Are you honestly going to sit there and tell me that you’re going to draw a line on what you’re willing to do to keep Maisie alive?”
And there was the kicker.
Shit. What wouldn’t I do for Maisie? With a cool enough head to get some perspective, I knew there wasn’t a line. I’d risk hell and damnation for her. I’d sell my very soul.
Beckett could potentially save Maisie. The only obstacle was my own stubbornness and fear.
But what if there was a way to leave my fear out of the equation? To directly link Beckett to the kids without my baggage getting in the way?
“I guess I have to talk to Beckett.”
…
Colt flew through the front door after practice, flushed and happy. “Hi, Mom!” He was a blur, kissing me on the cheek and then racing up the stairs to his room.
Beckett stood in the doorway, his baseball hat in his hand. His shorts rode low on his hips, and that incredible expanse of abs and chest was covered up with a Pearl Jam concert tee. His eyes widened when he took in my sundress and the bare expanse of my legs, but he quickly looked elsewhere. “He has a game tomorrow, but I know Maisie is supposed to go in for chemo.”
“We’ll leave after the game. She doesn’t start until Monday, and they’ll need to see if her platelet levels are high enough to even do it. The infection screwed up a lot of stuff.”
“Okay, just let me know. I can take him, of course.” He started backing out of the house, and I nearly cursed.
“Thank you. Look, Beckett, about yesterday?”
He stopped, slowly dragging his eyes to mine and keeping them there instead of on my bare shoulders or the sweetheart, strapless neckline I’d chosen just to get his attention. Sure, the dress was old, but at least it still fit.
When it became apparent that he wasn’t going to speak, I forged ahead.
“I trust you with my kids.”
His eyes widened slightly.
“I needed to say that first, for you to know that everything we fought about last night…most of that isn’t about the kids. It’s about me. You’ve done nothing but prove yourself since you got here, and it was wrong of me to ask you to tell me about Ryan when I know it would cost your integrity. Ironic really, right? I was asking you to prove your trustworthiness by breaking your word. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” he answered quietly.