I sat and went through the motions, pretending to listen to my sisters chatter on, while in actuality I couldn’t concentrate on anything but Hudson. On him leaving. On him asking me to leave with him.
On him telling me I wasn’t needed in Havenbrook.
Those words had cut deep. Sliced my heart right in two. It was one thing to have your insecurities staring you in the face, whispering in your ear every chance they got. But it was something else entirely to have the person you loved more than anything confirm them aloud.
I knew he hadn’t done it maliciously. He probably had no idea that what he said had hurt me as badly as it had. Hudson didn’t do cruelty, and certainly not to me.
Hell, for years, he’d been attempting to atone for a stupid accident when we were just kids. The night I’d told him it was over, I’d found yet another marble on my kitchen counter after he’d left. No note. No fanfare. Just him, thinking about me. Loving me.
“Okay, seriously,” Nat said, poking me in the side. “What the hell is wrong with you? We’ve been talkin’ about my alien abduction for five minutes, and you haven’t so much as blinked.”
I looked up, finding all three of my sisters staring at me. Concern blanketed Will’s face—which meant Avery hadn’t spilled to her best friend, thank God—Rory was irritated, and Nat just looked amused. As much as I would love my sisters’ perspectives, I still wasn’t so sure I could give voice to my deepest insecurity. Not when each of them had an active role in its inception in one way or another.
“Mac?” Will asked, placing a hand over mine and squeezing. “Is it about Hud? Are y’all okay? I noticed y’all didn’t talk much last night.”
“Yeah, what the hell was that about?” Nat sat forward, resting her folded arms on the round table. “I figured y’all would’ve been fucking like crazy since it was his last night. Or was it some role-play thing? Y’all pretend to be strangers andthenfuck like crazy?”
“Natalie,” Rory hissed, shooting surreptitious glances over her shoulder to make sure no one overheard. From the looks our table was getting, everyone in the shop definitely had.
Nat just rolled her eyes and waved a hand. “We’re all adults here, Rory. I thought Nash extricated that stick from your ass? I’m gonna have to tell him his technique needs a little work if you’re still this uptight.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort! He…techniques me just fine.”
Nat and Will burst out laughing, and even I couldn’t stop a soft chuckle from spilling out. Rory just shifted in her seat, her face turning a lovely shade of red as she attempted to glare at us.
“Y’all are the worst,” she said.
“Thebest,” Nat corrected, then turned to me and poked me in the side. “Now, unless you wanna hear more about how well Nashtechniquesour sister, you’d better start talkin’.”
I met each of my sisters’ gazes, finding nothing but underlying concern even if they tried to pull it off as something different. They may’ve had a tendency to overlook me, but Inever doubted they cared for me. Loved me. Okay, maybe Rory, but that was history and had been for a while.
So, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes briefly, and then said the one thing that had been plaguing my heart for as long as I could remember but I’d always been too scared to voice aloud. “I’m not needed here.”
Will’s brows drew in, her head tilting to the side. “What do you mean? Like, right now? Town hall’s gonna be crazy in about an hour. Give it time.”
I breathed out a laugh and shook my head, staring down at the table. “I’m not just talkin’ about town hall, but no one can deny I was the last person y’all thought about for that job.” I met each of my sisters’ gazes and watched the dawning recognition, along with underlying guilt, in their eyes.
I didn’t want them to feel guilty, but Ididwant them to understand.
With a shrug, I said, “I’m the last person y’all think about for anything. It’s always been my place in the family, and I thought I’d made peace with it. But then Hudson…” I swallowed down my words and crossed my arms over my chest, donning my only means of armor. “You know what? Never mind. It’s dumb. It’s my issue, and I’ll deal with it.” I pushed to stand. “Y’all ready to eat?”
“Um…no.” Rory yanked me back into my chair by the hem of my sweater. “I’m ready to hear what the hell you’re talkin’ about.”
God, how did I even begin to explain to my sisters all the times they’d left me behind—both figuratively and literally? All the times they looked to the others for what they needed, but not to me.
Never to me.
I could chalk some of it up to being the natural course of things that evolved over the years. We were all adult women andhad our own lives, our own friends, our own support systems. But both Hudson and Will had been mine, and they’d both left me at one time or another—Will doing it twice, too wrapped up in Finn to pay attention to much else. Very clearly not feeling the same need for me as I did for them.
To my horror, tears stung the backs of my eyes. As much as I tried to swallow down the lump that was suddenly in my throat, it just grew and grew until my chest felt so tight, I was sure there was no place left for my emotions to go but out.
What a perfect time to have an emotional breakdown—while in the most hopping morning location in all of Havenbrook. A place that just happened to be owned by the love-of-my-life-but-not-boyfriend’s family. A not-quite-boyfriend who was leaving in mere hours.
The thought of that only amped up my emotions, and it took all my focus to hold my shit together. My sisters were speaking to me and someone’s phone rang, but I couldn’t pay attention to anything else but trying to hold myself together.
Unable to do it any longer, I stood again, my chair sliding back and scraping against the floor in my force to escape. “I need to?—”
“What?” Rory asked, her voice high-pitched and laced with panic. She held her phone up to her ear, her eyes wide. “How long ago?”
