She took a few steps toward him.“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.I’m not going to make this about me.I just wanted to come and tell you I am sorry.I had no idea, and I can’t believe I didn’t know.”He ran a hand down his face.
Katie knew this couldn’t be easy for him.
She closed the distance and placed a hand on his arm.“It’s okay.Adam had ...strange requests and ways of dealing with everything.”
“He did?”
“Yeah.Some people might think I’m the biggest bitch around because I moved out of the home we shared, but the truth was, he arranged it so if I didn’t move, I’d get kicked out.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope.Adam wanted me to be strong.He wanted me to ...move on.”
Hawk took hold of her hand, where the wedding band lay.“But you haven’t moved on?”
“Yes, I have.”She looked at the ring.“This ring and this shop is all I have of him.”
“It is?”
“Yep.I had to get rid of everything else, no exceptions.”
“I hate to say this, but I think that was a dick move,” Hawk said.
Katie burst out laughing.“Adam even said that to me in his letter.He left me a letter.”
This was so damn strange.Over the years, she and Adam had talked about the past, and the one thing her husband had said was that he had found it easy to talk to Hawk.She had never really spent any time with Hawk, and yet here she was, just talking.
“He’s a great guy, Katie.You don’t know him like I do, and trust me, that guy is sharp as a fucking whip, and he’s a lot of fun.Once you get past the fact he can be a jerk, he’s a lot of fun.”
“A letter?”Hawk asked.
She nodded.“Yeah, a letter, explaining that he loved me and wished he could have given me the life I always wanted, but it wasn’t meant to be.Twenty-eight was too young to become a widow, and I wasn’t going to have a dead husband around my neck.”She smiled at him.
“You know, it’s crazy, but that so sounds like Adam.”
She laughed.“Yeah, it did.I hated him for a bit, but I did what he asked, and now I have this place, which he helped make successful before he left.There was a lot he did for me.”
“Did you guys ...have any kids?”
“No,” Katie said.
She was not about to tell Hawk that Adam refused to have them.After his first diagnosis, and defeating it, Katie had thought they would have kids.
“I can’t do it, Katie.I’m so sorry, baby.My mom died of cancer.My dad died of cancer.”
“But you defeated it.”
“It’s going to come back,”Adam had said.
“Don’t say that.”
“I know me.I know my family.I’m not going to give this to my kid.I love you, Katie.I love you more than anything, but we can’t have kids.I can’t do that to you.You’re going to bury me, and that is going to be awful.I can’t have you burying one of our kids.”
She pulled out of the memory.
Less than three years later, the cancer came back, and this time, it was worse than before and had taken her husband.They had no kids, but they had this shop together, lots of memories, and she had the wedding band to remind her she had loved.She had loved Adam so deeply, but it had been hard.
