Hold on to Hope

Shit.

Damn.

Hell.

This was gonna be the end of me.

“What color is your favorite, Everett?” Aunt Hope all but sang, leaning down so Everett could pick.

“Dis.”

He basically pointed at the entire tray, that tiny finger jabbing at everything he could see.

A little laugh escaped the turmoil.

Aunt Hope giggled, too. “Only one, sweetheart. How about blue?” she asked, reaching in and grabbing one of the pops so she could hand it to him.

Everett squealed and kicked his feet.

“Can you say ‘thank you’?” she asked in that encouraging way.

“Fank ooo,” he cooed with his nose all scrunched up. His voice a balm and the steely blade of a knife. He shoved the cake pop into his mouth, his chubby cheeks instantly smeared with frosting.

Pure affection filled Aunt Hope’s face. I didn’t want to be jealous of it. I didn’t. But God did it feel impossible to stand there and not get all busted up watching it.

She looked back over the counter at Evan who was standing there, invading my space. “How about you, Evan? It’s been so long since you’ve had one of my treats. I have some of those strawberry cupcakes you always loved so much . . . even have a few A Lick of Hope lollipops. Of course, they’re not the same now that you haven’t been around to help me make them.”

My attention went to the lollipops that were on one of the cute display tables set up at the front of the lobby where we featured A Drop of Hope merchandise—cups and T-shirts and aprons and trinkets.

But the lollipops? They were the focus of it all—one-hundred percent of the profits from each sale went to the nonprofit Hope had started up when Evan was just a little boy—A Lick of Hope.

Hope had poured her heart and soul into the organization that supported children with heart defects—Evan such a huge part of it that I was sure a piece of him had been ingrained in each one.

Let me tell you, every single time someone came up with one of those lollipops over the last three years, it’d been brutal. A constant reminder of what we’d lost.

Evan watched his mom and Everett and somehow simultaneously watched me.

As if he were wielding some more of his special super powers. His hearing deficit only amplifying his awareness of everything happening around him.

Reading.

Calculating.

Then his attention dragged across the selection, to the lollipops and back across the glass display at the danishes and cookies and every kind of treat.

That gaze climbed to me when he said, “Actually, think I want one of those unicorns.”

His voice was jagged and low, the way it always had been. Raspy. The syllables always a bit clipped or elongated.

Shivers raced.

The out-of-control connection we’d always shared fired and blistered and made it all sorts of crazy-hard to breathe.

Because I knew what he meant.

Knew exactly what he was referring to.

My hand instantly went up to fiddle with the necklace he’d given me, the words engraved that had meant so much and the unicorn that dangled from one end.

Unicorn Girl.

Why was he doin’ this to me? How could he walk out of my life and then come ridin’ back in and stand there and imply these things?

Like nothin’ had changed?

Like he hadn’t left me completely shattered and crushed and alone. Those wounds were barely scars. Just flimsy patches he was threatening to rip right off.

“You’re sure that’s what you want?” I asked, unable to keep the hurt out of my voice. The accusation.

“Yeah.” His response was hard.

Huffing out a disbelieving breath because it was a whole lot easier to give into the anger that was threatening to rise than the sorrow that scraped below the surface, I quickly plated the stupid unicorn cupcake that was a rainbow of candy and sparkles and a cookie horn for the topper.

They were pretty much a boon for adorable little girls who came in with their parents and immediately gravitated toward them and were sold out half the time.

If I would only have been so lucky today.

I set the plate on top of the display, hand shaking like mad, getting jolted by a blast of that energy when he reached over and touched the tip of my finger when he took it.

Like I’d been burned, I stumbled back, but that didn’t mean I could tear myself from the intensity of that gaze as he continued to stare at me from over the counter.

Pinning me to the spot.

Heart going frantic and wild and my skin feeling sticky.

God, I was gonna burn up right there.

I needed a good jump in the lake.

Maybe that would wash away all this insanity.

I forced out a smile and tried to smooth out my hair. “Well, since it looks like y’all have things under control, I think I’m gonna . . .”

Run, flee, get the hell out of Dodge.