Much Ado About You

The sound of a car engine broke through the peaceful silence, and I turned my head, surprised to see Roane’s Land Rover. The beam of his lights blinded me for a second as the SUV turned toward the center of the village.

But then suddenly he stopped, reversed, and swung left toward me.

He’d obviously caught sight of me.

My heart began to beat just that little bit faster.

Roane pulled up against the curb and jumped out. He strode unhurriedly toward the garden and jumped over the small gate rather than open it.

“Evie?” He took the steps two at a time down into the garden.

“Hey.”

“What are you doing up so early?” Roane sat down on the bench beside me, resting his arm along the back of it, almost cocooning me.

That’s all it took.

The man did something to my defenses.

Obliterated them.

An ugly-sounding sob burst out of me.

“Fuck, Evie.” Roane wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into his warm strength. I burrowed into him, my tears soaking the front of his sweater. “Shh, angel.” He rubbed my back. “I’m here, I’ve got you.”

He did. Nothing felt safer than his arms around me, and I wondered if anything ever had. More confusion flooded me, so big it got stuck in my throat, the emotion choking me. I burrowed harder into Roane, fighting for breath through my tears, and wished for the feeling to pass.

When my tears eventually subsided, I panted a little, trying to catch my breath, and neither of us moved for a minute.

Turning my face on his chest, I looked up to the sky. It was lighter, almost completely blue, and cloudless.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

At Roane’s gentle query, I straightened, lifting my head. His hands smoothed down my back as I moved, one falling away, the other settling on my hip.

I met his concerned gaze, knowing I was probably a snot-nosed mess.

“My mom is an alcoholic,” I confessed.

Concern gave way to sympathy. “Evie.” He squeezed my hip.

I proceeded to tell him the things only Greer knew. The things I’d kept from previous boyfriends because Chace had used the knowledge as part of his arsenal in his cold war against my self-esteem. He’d used it to support the idea that I was ungrateful trash.

“My dad died of a heart defect when I was eight. One day he was there, the next he was gone. No one knew about the defect until it was too late. I only have a few memories of him that are sharp, clear, as if they happened yesterday. The rest are just impressions of him as a dad, as a husband. I was so young. But he was the kind of dad who sat patiently removing gum from your hair when you had a little-girl freak-out at the idea of the gum being cut out.” My smile was watery. “The kind of dad who cheered you on at Little League like you were the next Frank Thomas when in truth you couldn’t bat for shit. And he was the kind of husband who kissed his wife every morning before he left for work and every evening when he got home. The kind of husband who dried the dishes she washed and made her laugh when she’d had a bad day.”

“He sounds like a good man.”

“He was. The best. And when he died, Mom started drinking to cope. She went to rehab when social services got involved, I was in foster care during that time, and then she got me back a few months out of rehab. But she fell on and off that wagon for a few years. Then when I was thirteen, she met Phil. My stepfather. That’s when she got help again, and she was sober for a long while. I was lulled into the idea that it was over.

“But then when I was nineteen, at college, Mom had a breast cancer scare. Nothing came of it, but it screwed with her head. She started to drink again.” I knew what Roane could see in my eyes. Despair. Pure and simple. “She’s been in and out of rehab for fourteen years. Her sobriety can last years and then something happens—losing a job, a friend dying—and she starts drinking again. Anytime life gets a little bit hard.

“Phil adores her. He’s a great guy and has been a wonderful stepfather, but he seems to have this unending reserve of patience and support for her.”

“And you?”

“I’m tired.” I smiled sadly through the tears that slipped quietly down my cheeks. “I’m tired of disappointment. For years it’s been a cycle of picking her up off the kitchen floor and putting her to bed, or getting a call from some stranger in a supermarket because my mom is so far gone, she can’t even remember how she got there. And then her remorse, her determination to get sober.