“With Molly and Abigail. Molly wants to shop after,” I said.
"Of course she does," he smiled.
The glass door slid open then, and Abigail appeared in her silk robe with her own cup of tea.
“Do me a favor,” he said, angling his body toward mine. “Find out if Molly is sleeping with Colin. I feel as though I should get to know him better.”
“Planning on treating him to the good old ‘treat my daughter well, or else’ talk?” I mocked him.
“Probably worse than that,” Abigail said as she joined us. She sat beside John and curled herself into his open arm, laying her head on his shoulder.
A soft smile appeared on her face then that was reserved only for her husband. It usually emerged in the brief moments when she thought no one was looking, or when she hadn’t had a chance to stress over what was happening that day, and what she needed to get done. When it was only them.
I was envious of it.
John leaned over and kissed her forehead, and I heard him quietly tell her how beautiful she looked in the sunrise before asking her if she slept well.
My broken heart ached watching them, a fantasy entering my mind of sitting outside at sunrise and being looked at like that, talked to like that. And it wasn’t Tyler who I saw seated beside me.
I looked down at my phone, somehow expecting to see a text from Gavin—like I could summon him with just the idea of him. I don’t know what I thought he might say. I don’t know if I was waiting for an apology or something that told me he still wanted to talk to me. I was so confused about everything.
“—in a couple of hours,” I heard Abigail saying. “Chloe?”
I snapped out of the daze, realizing she was talking to me. “Hm, what? Sorry, I zoned out for a minute,” I said sheepishly.
“I said we’re leaving for the city in a couple of hours,” she repeated. “I wanted to give Molly time to get the children up and ensure Colin had everything for their day. He’s taking them to some dirt biking trail up the road.”
“I might join them,” John said. “Sounds fun.”
“No, I think your son has a few things he wants to talk to you about before you can play with your grandchildren,” Abigail said.
John lolled his head back in a comical manner and groaned. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll give the second-born attention.”
I snickered behind my mug, and John winked my way.
“I’ll start getting ready,” I said as I finished the last of my coffee.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - CHLOE
“FIRST, WE HAVE our bananas foster cake,” the baker, Demi, said as she set the cake slices before us.
We sat outside beneath a vine-covered pergola that looked out onto the sprawling gardens of one of Abigail's friends. She’d paid for the bakery to bring the cake tasting there instead of us going into their shop simply because she wanted her friend’s opinion on the selection, seeing as Diana was a food critic.
“The key to these tastings is to spit it out after you’ve tasted it,” Molly said, pushing her straight black hair off her shoulder. She looked much more like her mother than Tyler. However, Molly had inherited their father's olive-toned skin, unlike her brother.
One thing she hadn’t inherited from her father was his gentle spirit.
“Exactly right,” Diana, Abigail’s friend, said.
“That’s a great idea,” Abigail agreed. “We all want to fit into our dresses, don’t we?”
There was a brief glance my way, and I almost laughed. It was cute that they thought they could say something disguised as a basic insult as if I needed reminding that I would be in a custom gown within six weeks and shouldn’t overindulge.
I asked for another glass of sparkling Moscato and dug my fork into the bananas foster cake, intending only to make a point to show that I wouldn’t be bullied into spitting out a perfectly good bite of cake, but fucking hell. It was so tasty that I wanted to eat the entire piece.
“How many more slices do we have to try?” Molly asked.
“I asked for five flavors,” Abigail replied, and I could feel her eyes upon me.
