The Last Letter (Page 37)

“Jeff isn’t coming back.”

“Exactly.”

“What if he’s a serial killer?” I asked, reaching for another cookie.

“He was Ryan’s best friend.”

“So he says,” I muttered with my mouth full. Well, so the letter said. Ryan had never shared personal details about the guys he served with. He barely told me anything about Chaos when he asked me to be his pen pal, just that a guy in his unit needed mail. I missed my brother. I wanted my brother. I needed to hear his opinion, why he’d never talked about Beckett if they’d been best friends.

I missed Chaos, too.

Chaos. If he’d shown up at my door in January, everything would be different. I knew it in my soul. Maybe I was the psycho one. After all, I’d fallen for two different men in the span of what? Eight months? Pregnancy lasted longer than that.

But Chaos was dead. Ryan was dead. Mom and Dad were dead. Grandma? Dead, too.

Was I really going to add my daughter to that list?

“Didn’t he have Ryan’s letter?”

“Yeah,” I begrudgingly admitted. “Maybe if there was a picture of them, or something. Anything.”

“Did you ask?” She tilted her head and stared at me like I was ten all over again.

“Well. No.”

“Huh. Seems like you already believed him, then, doesn’t it?”

“Ugh.” I let my head roll back and sighed my exasperation to whoever wanted to take my side. “You’re on his side.”

“I’m on Maisie’s side. And that side looks a lot better when she’s living.”

Well, when you put it like that…

“I don’t know what to do. I can’t marry him, Ada. It’s only a matter of time before he gets bored. Guys like Beckett don’t play house.”

“He’s not your father. He’s not Ryan. He’s not Jeff. You have got to stop convicting him of their crimes.”

She was right, and yet my heart still wouldn’t accept it, my head wouldn’t surrender. “Even if he sticks around long enough to get Maisie through treatment, eventually he’s going to check the ‘saved Ryan’s sister’ box and move on.”

“And that’s bad because…”

“Because it will break the kids’ hearts.”

“Funny thing about broken hearts—only the living have them.”

I shot her a glare. “Yeah, I get it. At least she’d be alive to have a broken heart, right? But what if he walks out midtreatment? What if the insurance cancels and the hospital ceases her therapy?”

“Then she will have had more treatments than she’s getting now, and we’ll cross that bridge if we ever get there. Sometimes you just have to show a little faith, even if he is a veritable stranger.”

“I don’t know how to trust him with my kids.” I reached for another cookie and broke it in half.

“That’s a load of crap.” She wagged her finger in my direction. “You already trust him with the twins. He takes Colt to soccer, and he’s stayed with Maisie in the hospital with the privileges you gave him over her care.”

I shoved another piece of cookie in my mouth and chewed slowly. Ugh, she was right. Hadn’t I already admitted to Beckett that I knew he’d do anything for the kids?

“You know what I think?” Ada asked, taking advantage of my full mouth. “You’re not scared to trust him with the kids. You’re scared to trust him with you.”

The cookie scraped my throat as I forced a quick swallow.

“What? I don’t even factor into this. He said the marriage would just be on paper.” Which—okay, I could admit—had actually hurt a little.

“But you care about him.”

Too much.

“Any feelings I might or might not have don’t matter. This isn’t one of your Christmas romance movies where they fake-marriage themselves out of a conundrum, break into snowball fights, and fall in love. There’s no happy-ever-after here.”

Of course that knowledge hadn’t stopped me from falling for him, anyway.

“Ella, it’s June, there is no snow.”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Are you honestly going to sit there and tell me that you’re going to draw a line on what you’re willing to do to keep Maisie alive?”

And there was the kicker.

Shit. What wouldn’t I do for Maisie? With a cool enough head to get some perspective, I knew there wasn’t a line. I’d risk hell and damnation for her. I’d sell my very soul.

Beckett could potentially save Maisie. The only obstacle was my own stubbornness and fear.

But what if there was a way to leave my fear out of the equation? To directly link Beckett to the kids without my baggage getting in the way?

“I guess I have to talk to Beckett.”

…

Colt flew through the front door after practice, flushed and happy. “Hi, Mom!” He was a blur, kissing me on the cheek and then racing up the stairs to his room.

Beckett stood in the doorway, his baseball hat in his hand. His shorts rode low on his hips, and that incredible expanse of abs and chest was covered up with a Pearl Jam concert tee. His eyes widened when he took in my sundress and the bare expanse of my legs, but he quickly looked elsewhere. “He has a game tomorrow, but I know Maisie is supposed to go in for chemo.”

“We’ll leave after the game. She doesn’t start until Monday, and they’ll need to see if her platelet levels are high enough to even do it. The infection screwed up a lot of stuff.”

“Okay, just let me know. I can take him, of course.” He started backing out of the house, and I nearly cursed.

“Thank you. Look, Beckett, about yesterday?”

He stopped, slowly dragging his eyes to mine and keeping them there instead of on my bare shoulders or the sweetheart, strapless neckline I’d chosen just to get his attention. Sure, the dress was old, but at least it still fit.

When it became apparent that he wasn’t going to speak, I forged ahead.

“I trust you with my kids.”

His eyes widened slightly.

“I needed to say that first, for you to know that everything we fought about last night…most of that isn’t about the kids. It’s about me. You’ve done nothing but prove yourself since you got here, and it was wrong of me to ask you to tell me about Ryan when I know it would cost your integrity. Ironic really, right? I was asking you to prove your trustworthiness by breaking your word. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” he answered quietly.

“There’s someone I’d like to have dinner with tonight.”

His eyes narrowed.

“With you,” I quickly corrected. “Dinner with you and the someone.”

“You want me to chaperone a date?” His voice dropped to that low, sandpaper-rough tone that woke up my body in parts that had been asleep since Jeff.

“No. I want to meet with my lawyer, and I’m hoping you’ll go with me. About”—I glanced over to where Maisie was napping on the couch—“what you offered yesterday. Kind of.”

Surprise widened his eyes for a second, and I savored the reaction. I didn’t have many opportunities to shock Beckett.

“Kind of?”

Hope flashed in his eyes, catapulting my heart into my throat. “I want to ask some questions first before I say anything. I don’t even know if what I’m thinking about is possible, but I’d be really grateful if you went with me to figure it out.”

“Of course. What time?”

I looked at the clock and then forced a smile. “In about forty-five minutes?”

Instead of scoffing, or snipping that it was too short notice, he simply nodded, saying, “Okay,” and walked out.

I used the time to pack a little for our trip, force Colt into the bathtub, and throw dinner for the kids into the oven. I took Maisie’s temp when she woke up and sighed in relief at the beautiful 98.5 reading as Ada arrived. Then I generally puttered in nervousness before putting on what little makeup I had, which meant a swipe of mascara and a little lip gloss.

Not that this was a date or anything.

Beckett arrived exactly a half hour after he’d departed, his scruff shaved off, smelling like soap and leather, and him. Unh.

“Ready?” he asked after hugging both the kids.

“Yep,” I said, grabbing my purse and a white cardigan.

We walked down the steps, and he opened my door for me. At the moment, in his dress pants, open-collared shirt, and dark blue blazer, he looked more gentleman than special ops soldier, but I knew it was just icing. He might look all fluffy and frosted, but under the clothes he was devil’s food, period.

And I really, really, really liked chocolate.

I climbed up into the truck, and he shut the door, but not before he let his eyes linger on my legs for a moment longer than necessary. Good choice on the heels.

Our drive into Telluride was quiet, accompanied by only a little classic rock streaming through the speakers.

“This was Ryan’s favorite,” he said quietly, catching me off guard. “Used to drive me nuts with it.”

Thunderstruck.

“Yeah, it was,” I agreed. “Did he still play—”

“A wicked air guitar?” Beckett asked with a smile. “Oh yeah. Every chance he got. Between this and Poison, I’ve had my fill of watching him fingerpick at nothing. Did he ever tell you we got to meet Bret Michaels?”

“What? No way!”

“Check the glove box.” He motioned with his head, and I eagerly fumbled with the latch until it opened. “Under the manual.”

I pulled out a white envelope thick and distorted with pictures.

“I think it’s about halfway through.”

I flipped through the pictures, seeing Beckett all over the world, with other soldiers like him, like Ryan. Until I looked closer and saw that it was Ryan in a group photo. My breath caught, and I ran my thumb over his familiar face, an all too familiar ache settling in my chest.

“I miss him,” I said quietly.

“Me, too.” His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “It’s a good thing, though. Missing him. Grief means you had someone worth grieving.”