For Lucy

Her enthusiasm dissipates like I just poured a bucket of water on her flames of hope. “Have you ever wondered about me? That maybe I need this?”

“I can’t think about anything or anyone but you at the moment. And I want you to concentrate on you too. As happy as I am that you’re in relatively good spirits after an accident that has left you temporarily in a wheelchair, I know you have some very challenging days ahead of you. Both physically and emotionally.”

“What if there’s a reason I didn’t die in that accident? What if my time here wasn’t over for a reason?”

“The reason you didn’t die in that accident is because you have a bright and promising future, and the world needs you in it.”

“But the world didn’t need Austin in it?”

As hard as I try not to visibly recoil, I can’t help it.

“The truth?”

Lucy nods once.

“I don’t really believe there is a rhyme or reason for what happens in life. I think I believe in God, but I don’t believe He dictates our lives. I believe we have free will which means our actions are based on instinct and impulse. Events are random. And luck is unpredictable and unbiased. The same mistake on any given day can have drastically different consequences. What’s a close call one day can be utter devastation on another day. Luck wasn’t on our side the day Austin died. I’m not even sure it was on our side the day you had your accident, but that’s just differing degrees of unluckiness. For … no particular rhyme or reason.”

Lucy glowers. “But you said you thought meeting Mom … stealing her was fate.”

I shrug. “I like to think that. I also like to think that donuts won’t give me a big gut and that we all get sports cars in heaven.”

She doesn’t want to smile. In fact, the grin she relinquishes is one of frustration. Much like her mom, she hates that I make her laugh when she’s hell-bent on being pissed off about something. And she hates when I use such crazy examples to make my point. However, they are usually poignant.

“What’s for dessert?”

I grin. “You name it. I know there’s cookies, cake, ice cream, some sort of pudding and whipped cream concoction your friend’s mom made.”

“I’ll try a bit of everything.”

“Now we’re talking.”

Chapter Fourteen

I sleep on the sofa so I can hear Lucy and Tatum if they need me, but in the middle of the night, a glass clinking in the kitchen wakes me.

“Sorry,” Tatum whispers. “I forgot to take a glass of water into the bedroom. And I’m parched.”

Sitting up slowly, I rub my eyes against the light she turned on above the sink. “It’s fine. Lucy sleeping okay?”

She takes a sip of her water. “Mmm-hmm.”

When my eyes focus, I catch her gaze planted on my bare chest, and it makes me pause for a moment. Is she meaning to look at me like this? Or is she just really tired, and it’s simply an absentminded look like when one spaces out? I choose to think it’s the former, and I let my gaze take in her short nightshirt and toned legs.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

So fucking typical of her.

I lift a brow and pin her with a pot-kettle-black expression.

“I don’t have my contacts in or my glasses on, so if you think I was looking at you, I wasn’t,” she says.

“Well, I don’t have my glasses on either, so back at ya.”

She chuckles, setting her water glass on the counter. “You have twenty-twenty vision.”

“Not at night.”

Rolling her eyes, she pads her bare feet toward me and curls up in the chair, shoving her legs up into her nightshirt. “Every time I wake up, I have this brief moment where I think everything isn’t what it seems. There was no accident. Lucy is spending the night at a friend’s house. And my biggest concern is making up a new routine for my dance students. Then I blink and the weight of my reality hits so hard I can barely breathe. So I close my eyes and try to get back to sleep where my dreams involve Lucy not in a wheelchair.” Her gaze lifts from the floor between us to meet mine. “Do you ever have moments like that?”

I nod slowly. “I think the first time I remember feeling disoriented about reality upon waking was after your miscarriage. Sometimes I’d start to reach across the bed to rest my hand on your belly and catch myself at the last second.”

Tatum looks away.

“I think when we sleep, our minds try to fill in the holes. The emotional wounds. And for a split second when we wake, everything doesn’t hurt. For a few breaths, things feel right and normal. Then we blink and it all shatters like illusions do. Everything starts to hurt again.”