“You wouldn’t choose us.”

“Every day I choose you,” Jeremiah insisted. “Every day I stay.”

“You don’t make it feel like a choice, Uncle J.” Ben helped Casey to his feet, but he tripped over the blanket. Jeremiah leaned forward to keep the five-year-old on his feet, but Ben was already there, and then he was pushing Casey up the steps.

“You should leave.” Ben was giving him permission, calm and cool, as if he had no heart in it anymore. And then they were gone, up the stairs, and Jeremiah stood there, chest heaving, shoulders slumped.

Defeated.

Lucy sat back on the coach and grabbed her socks, pinpricks of anger on behalf of those boys making her clumsy.

“I’ve made a mess,” Jeremiah whispered.

“It’s a bit worse than a mess,” she said, stomping into her boots. “Those boys don’t deserve your resentment.”

“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t wake up every morning—” his hands clutched at his shirt “—wishing I felt differently?”

She gaped at him, shocked to hear him say it so baldly. She’d had her suspicions, sure, but this was real. “Maybe you should leave,” she said.

“Yeah, and what will happen to the boys?”

“There are a lot of people who would step up. It’s that kind of community.”

Immediately, he shook his head. “I’m not leaving my boys to be raised by some other family.”

My boys, that was a first.

“Do you love them?”

“Of course I love them.” He snapped and snarled, as if offended she would ask, as if she hadn’t just stood there and watched Ben’s too-adult face say otherwise.

“Well, they don’t seem to know that, Jeremiah. You could probably start fixing this disaster by telling them that. Tell them you love them.” She grabbed her purse, swinging it over her shoulder.

In the far reaches of her mind she knew the pain was coming. It was building force and steam. It had been a mistake to come here.

“You’ve got a good life here, Jeremiah. And what’s going to ruin it isn’t this place, or the boys. It’s you. Figure this shit out before you put those boys through any more pain.”

She walked into the dark foyer, her boots clicking hard against the stone floor, each step the sound of something breaking.

He touched her shoulder and she whirled away, out of reach.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Back home.”

“What…?” The poor man looked so lost, so alone, and she almost took pity on him, but he had some work to do, work that didn’t involve her. “I want to ask if you’ll come back, but it sounds ridiculous. I don’t know why you’d want to come back to this mess.”

“I…I like you. A lot. I like your boys and your mess. And I want to be a part of it. But you have some work to do. And more importantly, just like those boys, I want to feel chosen.”

She left him standing there, in the foyer of his sister’s home, lost and without a map. The pain was starting to settle in her chest, her arms were heavy, tears burned behind her eyes, but she kept walking, got into her car and left Jeremiah behind her, hoping, hoping with all of her heart, that he would figure out how to follow.

Jeremiah stood outside Aaron’s door, his forehead pressed to the wood. The boys were all in there, talking. He could hear the muffled exchange, but no specific words.

He was trying to figure out what to say, how to make this all right, or if not make it right, make it forgotten, but he didn’t know how. He had nothing left. No actions to pull them from the wreckage.

Tell them you love them. Lucy’s voice rang in his ear, like the scent of her perfume lingered in his house. The ghost of Lucy was going to haunt him for a long time.

Until he figured out what she meant by choosing her, anyway.

Tell them you love them. He’d start there.

He knocked on the door, and after a long silent moment Aaron finally turned the knob and opened the door a crack. He could see Ben and Casey sitting on Aaron’s bed. Casey could barely keep his head up, but Ben sat there, clear-eyed.

Somehow that boy had figured out how to pull himself from whatever brink he’d been near a few weeks ago. And Jeremiah found himself deeply envious of a nine-year-old.

You’re amazing, Ben, he thought and then realized the kid had no idea he felt that way. How could he? Jeremiah had never said it.

“Can I come in?” Jeremiah asked. Aaron nodded and stepped back, and Jeremiah walked into the den of an eleven-year-old athlete, complete with hockey posters and dirty socks.

He sat on the ground, cross-legged, and the boys looked at each other, unsure of what was happening.

That makes four of us, he thought. Four of us. That sounded like a good place to start. The four of us.

Tags: Molly O'Keefe Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net