Tucker (The Family Simon 1)

“I met Marley in college and uh, I think it’s pretty safe to say that she didn’t like me at first. Mainly because I was an arrogant shit, but mostly because I put the moves on her while being involved with someone else. I was young and stupid and kind of wild, but I saw something in Marley. Some intense and focused part of her that somehow fit.”

For a few moments, there was only the wind outside. Only Tucker’s long, steady breaths.

“Our families didn’t want us to get married. Especially my mother. They thought we were too young. And when I think back now, I can see why. We were too young. Just out of college. But Marley always had this way of talking people into accepting her point of view. She was relentless. It’s why I could never win an argument with her. I would give up, and she’d spend the next hour talking. God, that girl…she liked to argue.”

He kissed the top of Abby’s head. “I guess that’s something you have in common.”

Abby didn’t say anything, she just settled in to listen. She knew in her heart that Tucker sharing all of this meant something. It meant that he was finally letting her inside the one part of him that he’d closed off. And she couldn’t lie to herself. It hurt to hear him talk about a woman he’d loved. A woman who had been his first love.

It hurt to think that if Marley was still here…that if her young life hadn’t met a tragic end, the two of them would still be together.

“It’s been over three years, and I’ve had time to think Abby. Time to remember things. And one of the things I loved most about Marley was that she lived life like there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow. Everything that she did, she did full tilt. One hundred percent all in. It’s as if she knew that she wasn’t going to be around for long, and I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that it could be exhausting at times..”

His hand tightened, just underneath her breast and his breathing changed. “She wanted a kid. As young as she was, she wanted a kid real bad.”

Abby bit her lip. She heard the pain in his voice and it seeped into her.

“That was one argument I didn’t let her win. Hell, we’d only been married a few months when she first brought it up. I wanted to live without the responsibility of a kid. I wanted us to do things. Travel. Go to Europe. Snorkel off the coast of Australia. Spend some of that damn Simon money sitting in the bank, but…”

“Tucker we don’t have to…you don’t have to tell me this stuff.”

“No,” he said, voice rough. “It feels good to get it out. There are things I haven’t told anybody. Not even Teague and he pretty much knows everything.”

He paused.

“She lied to me. She stopped taking the pill, and she didn’t tell me, and she got pregnant.”

Abby stilled. This was big. It was big and heavy, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

“No one in the family knew, because I was so fucking angry that I didn’t tell anyone. We fought about it, a lot, and at first she denied everything. Said it was an accident. That we were that one percent it happened to. But Christ, I knew. Looking into her eyes, I knew and that was the one time I wasn’t giving in. No way was I letting her win that one. After a while, she realized the lie was useless and she finally came clean. But the damage was done, you know? How could I trust her after that?”

He sighed. “In the end, it didn’t really matter. She lost the baby at fourteen weeks. It was a little boy.” He was quiet for a second. “Shit, I didn’t know I wanted him until he was gone.”

“Oh, Tucker,” Abby whispered, burrowing into him. Wrapping her arms around his and holding him.

“Things weren’t exactly settled afterward. I was still trying to figure her out. Figure out how she could lie like that. About a month after she lost the baby, she got that call to head out with a team to investigate a bunch of beached whales. It was early. A Sunday morning. I remember she tugged on my arm. Wanted me awake. She asked me to give her a lift to the airport. But I’d been out with a couple of the guys the night before, something I’d been doing a lot of that last month or so. My head was pounding, and I was pissed off that she’d woke me up.”

His hand was in Abby’s hair.

“That’s all I remember. I didn’t look at her. I didn’t kiss her goodbye. She mumbled something like, ‘we need to talk when I get back’. And that was it. That’s the last time I heard her voice, other than in my nightmares.”

Abby slowly turned around, her heart aching with the pain that she saw on his face.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” Abby said softly.

“No,” Tucker replied. “But sometimes it feels like it.”

“Do you…” God, was Abby really going to go there right now? “Do you still love her?”

Breath held, Abby stared up into the eyes of the man who owned her heart, waiting for him to say something. But moments ticked by, long moments filled with a heavy silence.

“I…” He blew out a hot breath.

Say something.

Tucker looked tortured. There was no other word for it.

She whispered, “it’s okay.”