Hold on to Hope

But I saw it today.

I saw that look on your beautiful face.

I saw more pain than any person should have to suffer.

I saw the childless.

I saw a widow.

I saw a life of unreasonable sorrow.

I can’t be responsible for that. I can’t hold you back. I can’t stand in your way.

Loving you will always be my greatest treasure.

Letting you go my greatest pain.

Soar to the stars, Unicorn Girl. And don’t ever, ever let anyone clip your wings. I won’t let that be me, anymore.

Evan

Clutching the letter to her chest, Frankie Leigh dropped to her knees.

Finally conquered by the pain.

Nothing left to give.

No hope left.

“Evan. Evan. Evan. I need you. Oh God, I need you.”

She whimpered his name again and again. Praying for him to come back to her. To wrap her up and tell her it would be all right. To remind her where they had been written in the stars. Her constellation.

Emptiness howled.

Vacancy echoed back.

Frankie Leigh alone. Abandoned. The way Evan had warned.

Only he was the one who chose it.

* * *

When she awoke in the middle of the night, she knew. It was the quietest kind of heartache. The kind she waded through slowly. The kind that hitched her soul up in a surrendered sort of agony.

The stillness that echoed inside of her.

The little soul she could no longer feel.

Tears streamed silently down her face, everything numb except for her heart.

Her mind and her spirit and her body that felt like they had floated out into the universe, chasing after what was lost.

She didn’t change out of her pajamas. She just slipped into her flipflops, took her purse, and eased out the door.

She moved right toward Evan’s parents’ house.

She’d crossed that road a million times.

But tonight—tonight the sky was starless.

As if all the constellations had fallen.

Pure darkness taking its place.

She rapt at the door, listened to the creak of the stairs and squinted when the porch light flickered on overhead. Her uncle Kale slowly opened the door.

He looked like he’d aged fifteen years in the six weeks since Evan had left.

Depression taking hold.

Frankie couldn’t even bring herself to look in the mirror.

Couldn’t bring herself to see the hollowness staring back.

“Frankie,” he murmured urgently.

She set her hand on her belly, and she whispered, “She’s gone.”

She’d thought that maybe she could handle it all.

Had thought maybe she was strong enough.

But that splintered Heart of Stone that couldn’t be broken?

It finally completely split in two.

Thirty-Two

Evan

I dropped to my knees.

Reduced to a puddle of tears and heartbreak and apology.

I buried my face in her stomach, held her by the hips like I could breathe healing into her body, into her soul, while Frankie Leigh just kept weeping.

Though I could feel it.

She was detached.

Hovering somewhere in the periphery.

Gone to the story she had just told.

Swept away in the grief.

“Oh, God. Frankie. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I tried to gather her closer, but her head shook, her knees week. Girl so distraught I could feel the pulses of misery shuddering through her shaking body. Or maybe it was only mine ricocheting back.

Pain searing through the atmosphere.

More than either of us could bear.

I’d been responsible for the one thing I’d sworn I would never be.

Reckless with Frankie.

Reckless with life.

It was an affliction that was supposed to have ended with me.

I never should have let it happen.

A child. Our child. Our little girl.

“Frankie,” I begged again, trying to get her to focus on my face. To look at me. To see me.

But she’d retreated.

Withdrawn into herself.

Everything going dim and dark.

“Frankie, please, look at me.”

Her head shook, her eyes distant as she tried to back away.

“I’m so sorry, Frankie. Fuck. I never meant to hurt you this way.”

I watched her mouth, her lips moving slow, like she was speaking from someplace faraway.

From three years ago when I’d betrayed her.

Left her when she needed me most.

“I was so mad at you for leavin’ me, Evan. So angry, and still, I totally understood why you did it. Accepted it. Forgave you a long time ago.”

Sorrow trembled on the edges of her gorgeous mouth that was soaked with her tears.

An apology written in this smile that ripped me in two. “But this mornin’? I think . . . I think I’d buried it, never really dealt with the grief of it. I just stuffed it down and let it fester and thought it would get better. And today it got loose. And right now, I don’t know how to handle it.”

Shame eclipsed her light, and she fumbled to step back.

Agony filled her movements, the closest she’d let her spirit come to me since she’d started confiding the truth I should have been man enough to hold then.

WHAT IF I’M TOO AFRAID TO LOVE HIM RIGHT? WHAT IF I’M NOT ENOUGH? I . . . I CAN’T BREATHE, EVAN . . . CAN’T BREATHE AT THE THOUGHT OF LOSING A CHILD ALL OVER AGAIN.