“Babies you still haven’t met,” she grumbled.
“Soon, I promise.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she snorted, and then her voice turned serious. “How are you, really?”
“I’m okay,” I lied.
“Liar,” she accused, and I smiled. Leave it to Devlyn to always know when I needed her. Even when she was states away. “You ever going to tell me what happened?” she asked carefully.
Devlyn Never and I had been best friends since kindergarten. She knew everything about me. Well, almost everything. I’d kept a few secrets from her. The most important ones. The scariest ones. The painful ones.
And she let me keep them.
She didn’t push me to share my hurt, knowing that the day I was ready to speak, she would be the first person I told.
“Someday, maybe.”
After I graduated from the University of Arkansas, I hadn’t planned on coming back to Rosewood, not to live anyway. My life was supposed to be there, with Jude.
With our baby.
But everything changed in an instant, and I came home. That was seven years ago. September was always a hard month for me. I’d lost my husband and my son in the span of a week and was left feeling so alone.
Devlyn picked up on it right away. That first year after I came home, I was quiet. Subdued. I’d tried to put on a brave face, but Devlyn knew something wasn’t right. She’d asked me about it, and I told her it was nothing.
She didn’t press. But she never held it against me. She stood by my side, helping me learn to live again without ever knowing why I didn’t want to. On the first anniversary of my husband’s and son’s deaths, Devlyn held me in her arms as I sobbed on my kitchen floor. Every year since, she planned something to keep me busy. Getting me through my grief and never asking what caused it.
That was what a best friend did.
“You know I’m here for you. Only a phone call away, day or night.”
I laughed out loud then. “I’m sure Gator would love it if I called in the middle of the night because I couldn’t stop crying. Or worse”—I lowered my voice—“during sex.”
Devlyn cackled out a laugh. “Girl, nothing will stop that man once he gets going. Even while on the phone, listening to my best friend pour her heart out.”
“Eww.” I scrunched my nose and shivered at the thought of talking to my best friend while she was having sex with her man. “How is he surviving the healing period?”
Devlyn and Gator had triplets that were only a few weeks old. They’d been born early, but not too early as to leave us worried about their health.
Devlyn laughed again. “He’s enjoying the reprieve. I swear, pregnancy hormones are no joke, then times that by three. I don’t know how his dick hasn’t fallen off.”
I’d never experienced that. I hadn’t been pregnant long enough for the hormones to really kick in. Not that I would have had someone to maul, anyway. Jude was already gone by the time I’d lost our son.
“How are you really, Morgan?”
“I’m okay. Every year it gets a little easier.”
It was true. Every year I held it together a little stronger. Every year I made peace with my loss. The loss of my husband, the loss of my son, and the loss of the future I’d envisioned.
“This is the first year I’m not there with you,” she said quietly.
Devlyn didn’t do serious. It was why she and Gator were such a great match. They both loved to have fun and experienced life to the fullest.
I was that way once.
I shook my head. I refused to break down. Not this year. This year I would be stronger. This year I would let go of my grief a little more. I’d never forget Jude, or our baby. But I had to letthem go. I had to find a way to be content with what my life was now.
“I’m okay, Dev. I promise.”