Page 235 of Boyfriend of the Hour

She sobbed.

And I squeezed her as tightly as I could.

It was the only thing I could do. For years, this sister had given me support in the best ways she knew how. All I wanted now was to give it back to her. Especially now that I had any inkling of what she might be feeling.

Over Lea’s keening shoulder, I met Nathan’s eyes as he rose to speak with the surgeon, presumably to get the other details Lea was too upset to gather. That chocolatey brown gaze was filling with a deep, abiding acknowledgment of the same thing I was thinking: what if this were us?

It had been so close.Soclose. The bullet could have hit Nathan instead of Mike. Those goons could have captured him too and beat him within an inch of his life. It could have been me who had lost the love of my life, only I wouldn’t have had four children to care for without him, a wholelifelived together before he was gone.

I couldn’t bring myself to wish Lea and I could trade places, but I could, maybe for the first time, reallyfeelmy sister’s pain. Maybe a bit more of the burdens she had carried so long, so willingly. All for the love of Michael Scarrone. Her first love. Her only love.

One who was gone forever.

Matthew and Kate joined us, both of them wrapping their arms around the nucleus of grief Lea and I formed. Then a few more hands and and arms. Smaller ones, looking for their mother, wriggling their way into the cocoon of our family. The only safe place for them in this world.

We stayed like that for minutes. Hours. I honestly couldn’t tell. But I knew I wouldn’t move until Lea wanted.

Everything that had ever seemed more important than family faded away in that waiting room.

There were only the people in this room. A few more on the other side ocean who I knew would be right here with us if they could.

This was what mattered in this life. Not dance. Not independence. Not even love, not until it was with someone who could be family too.

Someone like the man behind me.

The Zola family rocked together into the wee hours of the night.

Even after we let go, there were days I thought maybe we would always remain that tight in spirit.

Because bonds like that can’t be broken by something flimsy like a few miles.

I just wished it hadn’t taken a good man’s life for us to figure that out.

FIFTY-ONE

WAYS TO GET HOME AGAIN

Whatever. I dont care anymore

It took days for us to leave Atlantic City. I never even left the hotel room across the street from the hospital. Kate brought the kids back to Lea’s house in Belmont so they could have an escape and also so Lea could have some time to figure out how to talk to them more completely about their father’s death. Matthew stayed in Atlantic City to deal with the police reports and other legal matters so that Lea wouldn’t have to.

Nathan and I stayed mostly for hugs. Well, and to talk to doctors (at least, Nathan did). And to curl up together in our hotel room, murmur into each other’s ears about how we loved each other, and try not to think about all the loss and trauma that we’d just endured.

There wasn’t much I could really do to help other than be there, but that I would do. And Nathan wasn’t about to leave me.

Eventually, though, the paperwork was finished. Too many statements to count were given, especially after the Coast Guard apprehended the yacht just before it crossed into international waters. Mike’s body was en route to New York to be buried,followed by Matthew and Lea in a rental car. We’d been through so much in the past few days that I hadn’t even thought about where we were going until I followed Nathan to a rental car in the hotel’s garage and saw that the plate was from Virginia.

I stopped in front of it and looked up. “Oh—oh no.”

Nathan looked up from where he had just opened the driver’s side door. “What’s wrong?”

I pointed at the plate. “You’re going back to…Nathan, I can’t go back to Virginia. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”

He frowned. “I never said we were going there. I assumed you’d want to follow your family to New York.”

“I–yes. But even after that.” Sadness wrapped around me. Why did this have to be so hard? “I’m going to have to stay. I don’t know what the future is going to look like, but Lea has no one but me and Kate there to help her. And with the kids, and the shop…” I drifted. The whole situation felt hopeless to me. I couldn’t imagine what Lea was feeling. “She’s been there for me my whole life. I have to be there for her now.”

Nathan examined me for a long moment, then rounded the car to take me in his arms and framed my face with his hands so I had to look up at him. “Of course, you’re going,” he told me. “And so am I.”