“Everything.All the hard stuff no one else wants to hear about.”
“I want to hear about that stuff.”
“You’ve got enough of your own.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t be there for you the way you’ve been for me.I mean… you gave up your whole life for me.”
“Temporarily.”
“For five years.That’s not nothing.”
“I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
“Did I ever say thank you?”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, Denny, I really do.What would’ve become of me if you hadn’t stepped up?”
Their parents had both been only children, and their grandparents had died years before their parents did.She would’ve ended up in foster care without him.
“It was never a question that I’d take care of you.”
“But it meant putting your own dreams on hold for five important years.”When their parents died, he’d been playing with a band that had gone on to secure a recording deal, without him.They were still together and opening for some big acts these days.
“Eh, whatever.If I hadn’t stepped up for you, I wouldn’t have met Kath and had my kids.Things work out the way they’re meant to.”
“Do you believe that?Really?”
“I want to.I mean… Everything in life is so fu?—”
“Denny!”
He grinned at her.“Freakingrandom.I like to believe there’s some sort of higher power at work.Otherwise, most of it would never make sense.”
“I can’t believe Mom and Dad dying was meant to be.”
“The thing about believing in meant-to-be is that you have to take the bad with the good.It’s all preordained, before we’re even born.”
“When did you get all deep and philosophical?”
“I’ve always been that way.”
“How did I never know that?”
He shrugged.“We haven’t seen as much of each other lately as we used to.”
“Because of G.”Isla glanced at the kids, who were watching a movie on an iPad.
“I never wanted that.I hope you know…”
“Yeah, I do.I didn’t at the time.I thought you’d be an AH to any guy I brought home.”
“I wouldn’t have been.I liked Aaron.Remember?”
Isla hadn’t thought of her high school boyfriend in ages, so long that it seemed he’d been in another lifetime.“Yeah, I do.”Aaron had gone to college out of state, while Isla stayed in LA, trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life, working in bars to pay the rent and chipping away at college one or two classes at a time.She’d met Gabriel through work friends and had fallen madly in love over the course of that first heady week together.
“I might not have married him if things hadn’t happened the way they did.”
