I wiped the crumbs off both of us. I had no excuse for being a messy eater. Then I let Brinley lead me to her room. She crawled into her little bed, and I curled beside her, my ass hanging off the end.
“Nigh, nigh.” She kissed my cheek and left half her muffin behind.
“Sleep tight, sweetheart.”
She closed her eyes like the tiny princess she was, and only moments passed before her little lips puffed open. She was fast asleep.
I had a lot of favorites being an aunt, but this topped everything. I got to cuddle and snuggle my nieces and nephews—even Chance would let me crush him in a smothering hug. I didn’t have the full range of parent experiences, but did I need them to be happy when Ihad a guy who made me feel like his world revolved around me?
I’d known going in that Jonah had hang-ups. So did I. Yet I’d pushed him. And when he’d refused to budge, I’d walked. Tears pricked my eyes.
God, I was still a mess.
I carefully rolled off the bed, which wasn’t hard. It was barely a foot off the floor.
I found Scarlett in the living room, curled into the corner of the couch with her legs tucked under her. She had a cup of lemonade in her hand, and a second full glass was sitting on the opposite end of the coffee table.
Dropping to sit on the other end of the couch, I grabbed the cherry lemonade and downed it like it was spiked with two shots of Summer’s Summit. Wynter and Autumn had actually come up with a mixed drink that included one of our lines of bourbon and Scarlett’s lemonade.
“Something on your mind?” she asked softly.
I licked my lips, snatching every last drop of sweetness. I needed the energy to untangle my thoughts. “I think I fucked up.”
She set her glass down. “How?”
“I’ve been so intent on getting married and having a family that I was willing to settle with a guy like Boyd. And when that didn’t happen, I gave up a really good man I fell hard for because he wasn’t ready and he might never be ready.” The admission was cathartic. I had fucked up. But what did I do about it?
She narrowed her eyes as she considered me. “I don’t think that’s it.”
Surprised, I turned to face her, crossing my legs under me. Other than my sisters, Scarlett knew mebetter than anyone. Sometimes, I was more transparent with her than with my sisters. Scarlett was a friend. I never had to be her role model. “How so?”
“I guess... it’s not the whole picture. When you told me about Eli, I thought ‘that makes sense.’ You weren’t the Summer I knew with the guys you dated.” At my confused look, she gave me a sheepish smile. “You never pressed for what you wanted, and given what happened to Eli after you were honest with him, I can’t blame you.”
“I led him on.”
“How long were you friends with him?”
“Since middle school.”
“And how long did you date him?”
I wrinkled my nose. Sometimes the sum of my teen years felt taken over by Eli, but just because he’d been a part of it, didn’t mean he’d dominated it. Just that, once, we’d been an item. “Almost a year. He asked me to homecoming and I knew if I said yes, he’d take it as a date. But I liked him and thought maybe there should be more.”
“So, a year, maybe, that you gave it a shot? Yet you were with Boyd for how long?”
“Two years.”
“And the guy before that?”
“A year and a half, but he’d moved away for the last six months and it was long distance.”
“And the relationship before that?”
I had to dig into the vault of my memories. I’d dated guys. Often, they ghosted me. Sometimes, they broke things off, citing my work. Not enough time for them. A complaint Jonah never made. Usually because I wasn’t working to keep from having tospend time with someone I was mediocre at best about.
“Let me ask a different way,” she said. “When did you know, viscerallyknow, that these guys weren’t the one, but you thought ‘maybe there should be more’?”
Oh my god. The lemonade soured in my gut. “I led them all on. All of them.”
