Unbreak My Heart (Unbreak My Heart #1)(8)

I wished Shane would just walk away while my emotions were so close to the surface, but of course, he didn’t.

“Sorry I snapped at you,” Shane murmured, sitting down in the vacated spot next to me.

“It’s fine.”

“You’re just here a lot. I know you had your own life before this—”

I snorted before I could stop myself, cutting off his words. I’d barely had a life. I’d been with his wife every single day he wasn’t.

“—but we need to talk,” he finished.

“About what?” I asked, stomach turning.

“Deployment’s coming up,” he said quietly, glancing down at Sage to make sure she was still asleep.

“I thought you were going to try and get out of it?” I hissed back in surprise, looking over to find Gavin peeing in the grass. Ugh.

“I can’t, Katie,” he replied softly, the old endearment making me jolt. “I can’t send my guys without me.”

“So you’re just going to leave your kids here instead?”

“You don’t understand—”

“Nope, I don’t.”

I finally turned to look at him, and I wanted to slap the determined look off his face, but I didn’t have a chance to say anything else.

“Look who’s awake!” Aunt Ellie called cheerfully, carrying Gunner out the back door. Oh my God, had he grown in the day I hadn’t seen him? He looked bigger.

“Sage, wake up, baby,” I called, jostling her a little on my lap. “Brother’s awake. It’s time to do cake.”

She woke with a jerk, the same way she’d been waking up for the past year, and looked around in confusion.

“Cake time, princess,” Shane told her with a small smile, climbing to his feet.

When we got to the patio table, I stole Gunner from my aunt.

“Look at you, big boy,” I said quietly as he stuffed his face into my neck. “Is it your birthday?”

He pulled away and smiled up at me, and my heart stuttered.

“When did the top tooth come in?” I asked Shane, glancing over to find him staring at us.

“I noticed it last night.”

“Shit, I missed it,” I whispered, smiling at Gunner. “Look at that chomper, dude, you’re going to be asking for steak soon.”

“I think we have time before that happens,” Shane joked, scooting around me with a hand at my back so he could get to the table.

I closed my eyes against the small touch. It was times like these, simple conversations when he used the word we, that I had to steel myself against. As much as I loved them, and as much as I took care of them—those children were not mine. I had to remember that.

*



I left the house at three, just like Shane had asked me to.

I knew he was having a hard day, and frankly I was, too. I didn’t want to get into it with him.

We’d had a sort of uneasy truce going on for the past year. While Shane was good with daddy stuff, he knew his limits, and I liked to think that he knew how much he relied on me even though he’d never acknowledged it. I wasn’t the babysitter—our roles weren’t that simple.

I was there while he worked, that was a given, but I’d also stayed over all night when Keller and Sage had a stomach bug. We ate dinner together as a family at least once a week, and a few times we’d even taken the kids on day trips to the zoo and the beach.

I knew I wasn’t his favorite person—that had become pretty clear when Rachel was alive and I’d been completely ignored. Hell, I’d known it the first time I brought Rachel home with me from school and he’d wooed her while acting as if I didn’t exist. The friendship we’d formed as kids had deteriorated without my knowledge, and all I’d been left with was a stranger who ended up married to my best friend.

But over the past year, we’d become partners of a sort, taking care of the kids, and I figured that was probably the closest we’d ever get to being friends again.

I dreaded the day that he found someone new, which he eventually would. As the years went on, he’d want someone to spend his life with, and I knew that when that day came, I would no longer be needed.

I shook my head and stripped out of the jeans I’d been wearing. I wanted to be at the house with the kids, but I forced myself not to think of how fussy and tired they probably were. They were fine with Shane and my aunt. I just had to learn to let go a little.

A few hours later, as I was bingeing on episodes of Call the Midwife on Netflix, my phone started ringing next to me on the bed.

“Hello?” I answered around the large bite of chocolate in my mouth.

“Hey, sis,” my aunt said with a laugh. I loved how my family called me “sis.” It reminded me of when I was a kid and things were so much simpler.

“Hey, how are the kiddos doing?”

“They’re all down for the night,” she answered with a sigh. “And I’m pooped.”

“I bet. Where’s Shane?”

“Well, that’s what I was calling about.”

I sat up in bed and brushed the chocolate crumbs off my chest. “What’s going on?”

“He left, Katie, and I’m not sure where he was going.”

“He’s a big boy, Aunt Ellie, I’m sure he’s fine.”