6. Addison

“It’s a pretty ring.” The timid voice carries across the large kitchen. “Blue under it; that’s unique. Is it a blue diamond?”

I didn’t even hear her walk in. As I stirred the sugar into my coffee, watching the white swirl of steam, I was focused on the ache between my thighs and the memory of Daniel kissing me all over last night.

He only left me to get the ring from my nightstand and to put it on my finger. If this ring ever comes off my hand, it’ll be because someone took it from my grave.

“It is. It reminds me of forget-me-nots,” I answer her. “That’s why we went with this one.”

“You picked out your ring together?”

“I know it’s not traditional?—”

“What is anymore?” she says and shrugs. “If you haven’t guessed, I’m Bethany.” The smile she gives me reaches her eyes.

I laugh, short and with a single breath. It’s genuine. “I guessed as much,” I answer her with a smile.

It’s only us in the kitchen and as she pulls out one of the tall chairs at the island, the sound carries through the open space.

“First, I want to say hi. Second, I want to say I’m sorry. Jase told me…about the baby.”

My little piece of heaven splinters, but only slightly as I take my seat.

“Thank you,” I answer her.

Holding on to my mug of coffee, I pull it up to my lips to keep me from saying more. The warmth billows into my face as I take a long sip, praying for composure.

I don’t want to break down. Especially not in front of her, someone I don’t know. This…Bethany Fawn. I don’t know that I’ll ever be okay with losing our baby. Especially if we never get pregnant again, if we never have a little one to hold. I don’t see how it’s possible. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that either.

“I heard you got a ring too,” I say as I lift a brow and when her gaze catches mine, I make a note of staring down at her ring finger. She pulls her hand into her chest with a blush rising to her cheeks.

“It was a shock, to be honest,” she answers but the content note in her voice and the smile on her face remain the same. “We’re quite different…Jase and I,” she adds when I look questioningly at her.

“Yes, they are…different. That’s a word for it.” We could write a book about the Cross brothers and how different they are. There’s a time and place for that conversation though. “So Jase told me your last name is Fawn?”

“It is.”

“Mother or father?” I ask her and then shake my head as I let out a sigh at my ridiculousness. “This isn’t an inquisition. I’m just… I’m very curious.”

“It’s fine,” she responds and then she leans forward on the chair to rest on the counter. Her thin cream sweater is pushed up to her elbows. Paired with her dark blue jeans, it’s a simple look, but something about this woman screams that she’s anything but simple.

“My father’s last name, but he didn’t stick around after I was born.”

“My father’s last name as well,” I tell her and feel a chill sweep over my skin.

“You’re a couple years younger than me, right?” she questions me and I nod. Daniel told me what he knew of Bethany.

“A little over a year younger.”

“What’s your father’s first name?” I ask her as my gaze sweeps over her facial features. She doesn’t look like me, nothing but her lips. My father’s lips.

“Jeremy,” she answers, and I tell her the middle name, “Nathanial. Jeremy Nathanial Fawn.”

“This is weird.” Bethany pushes out the same thought I have.

“I think your dad left your mom because my mom was pregnant with me.” The years make sense. “That’s why you didn’t grow up with him.” Not that I grew up with him either. He left my mother and my mother left me.

“So he knocked up my mom and had my sister. Married her and they had me. Then he left us when I was a baby, because your mother was pregnant with you?” Bethany fills in the blanks.

“He got around, as if I needed another reason to hate the thought of him.”

“My mother had substance abuse issues; I always thought that was why he left us,” Bethany muses. “He was good at leaving,” she comments with a crease in her forehead, as though a bad memory is creating a groove right there. “That’s what my mother used to say.” She doesn’t try to hide the bitterness as she turns her back to me, leaving her seat so she can go to a cabinet to get herself a mug. I note that she already knows where they’re kept and where everything else in the room is too.

“If it makes you feel any better, he didn’t stay long and what I knew of my mother and the men she was with, it’s probably best you grew up without him.” With another sip of coffee, the room’s quiet except for the muffled hiss of the coffee machine. I don’t comment that I was a child when I knew them. Either of them.

“Yet we both received his last name,” Bethany says as she leans against the cabinet and then offers me a half smile curved with sarcasm before lifting her mug and telling me cheers. “Lucky us.”

“If we hadn’t, we never would have known.”

“We’re sisters. Same father, different mother.”

“Right.” I nod in understanding. Curiosity nags at the back of my mind, but I can’t bring myself to ask her any questions. That part of my life is long behind me. I wish it would stay in the past. I don’t want to think about my father or how many other children he had.

“Do you have any other siblings?” she asks me and I shake my head no as I reply, “All I had growing up was a rotating address until I met…” I pause and wave my hand in the air. My throat’s dry but I shake it off. I’m stronger because of what I went through. But that doesn’t mean I want to relive it with this woman. Biological sister or not. My curiosity can wait until I’m better prepared and in a more stable state. Everything is chaos now and it doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere anyway.

“The Cross brothers,” she answers for me. “So you knew them before all this? Back when things weren’t so…”

“Yeah, but I left. I left before a lot of things happened. I left when things got bad. What a wonderful mother I’ll be.” All of our past history hits me at once and the same thoughts I had before, the ones that tell me I don’t deserve Daniel, I don’t deserve a happily ever after, and I don’t deserve to be a mother come back. Weaker than before, they’re only whispers and not screams. Nonetheless, they’re back.

“Don’t say that. You were young and you didn’t know. You’ll be a great mother. I hardly know you, but I know that. We’ll be better than our parents.”

“How can you know?”

“One, because you’re already thinking about it. Already wanting more for your children. And two, because we’re loved. Love does… Love changes a person.

“The best thing you can do for a child is to love them. You can ask anyone that. It’s the thing they need most. If you love Daniel and he loves you, you’re already off to a better start than our parents.”

“God knows one thing these men do is love hard,” I comment, agreeing with her and hoping she’s right. “Even with all the shit they’re in.”

“They do,” she agrees with me, casually reaching in the fridge for creamer. As if this is only a mundane conversation and not the turning point in my life that I feel it is in my bones.

“So you’re going to try again?” she asks me.

I want to tell her I’m scared. Scared to try, scared to lose. Scared I won’t be good enough. But I save those sentiments for Daniel. If I tell anyone, it should be him.

So I answer simply, “Yes.” I want a baby with him. A life. I want to grow old with him and be surrounded by a loving family. To love and be loved. “We’re going to try again.”