Page 75 of Saving Wyatt

“You don’t have to. You love him. You shouldn’t have to do something you don’t want to,” he insisted.

It was sweet. There was no hint of jealousy in his tone or any insincerity, like he was parroting something he thought I wanted to hear. He was being genuine. And that made me want to do this all the more.

Because if I was going to start something with this man, if we were going to be more than just a hookup, I needed to give myself to him. It wouldn’t be fair to him to have to compete with a dead man.

“I want to. I need to,” I said. “It’s only right. I should have done it a long time ago, but you…you made me realize I was stuck. I have to let go. It’s not him anyway. It’s my image of him. My words I typed as if I were him. It was my comfort for a while, but this isn’t healthy. This is wrong. He’ll always live in here.” I pointed to my heart. “The real him. The memories we made together. I don’t need these fake words every morning.”

Wyatt nodded gently and licked his lower lip but didn’t say anything else, and I finished logging into my account.

I disabled the service without a twinge of guilt and then logged back out, setting my phone down on the bedside table and turning my attention to him.

“Now,” I said, smiling. “Where were we?”

Wyatt reciprocated, and we wrapped our hands around each other, my body alight with need and passion, and a little admiration for the man and how he was handling everything. How he was handling me.

There was no doubt in my mind Wyatt was special. That I was destined to meet him. Destined to be with him, even if only for a little while.

The problem was I didn’t want him for a little while. The thought alone sent me spiraling. How could I be so attached to someone I’d only just met? How could the thought of losing him—of this thing between us not working out—make me so absolutely terrified I could cry.

I held on to him tighter, I kissed him harder, gazed deeper into his eyes, as if any of this could stop whatever was meant to happen.

I didn’t know if I had any control over this, over us, but if I did, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I would fight for him as if he was my everything.

Just before I started work, I went on a little walk along the waterfront, on the boardwalk by the harbor and ducked into Bubble Bubble to grab myself a sweet milky tea and try to cast my day with Wyatt out of my head. So far it had proved impossible.

“Doctor, good morning,” Parker said when I approached the counter, and I rolled my eyes, laughing.

“Please just call me Ari,” I said.

The man in front of me nodded and ruffled his hair with a smile.

Behind him, in the back room, was his fiancé, Hwan, on the phone looking dejected and worried. It was quite the stark difference to the usual, chirpy, happy Hwan. Especially with Parker being the one smiling.

“Everything okay?” I asked, nodding toward Hwan’s direction.

“The usual?” Parker asked before he answered my question while preparing my drink. “It’s fine. He’s just trying to find a new venue for the wedding, but it’s not going well so far.”

“Oh,” I said. “You don’t have a venue?”

Parker shrugged. “We did. But the first one burned down, and the second one…well, it burned down too,” he said, and he didn’t need to say the quiet part out loud. Someone had also died at the second potential venue.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not long now, is it? Until the big day?”

Parker shook his head. “Just under a month. Hence the panic. Hwan is starting to say this wedding is cursed. He thinks we’ve caused these incidents with our insolence for daring to get married when everything is shit.”

I reached across the counter for Parker, and even though his hands were busy, he did look down and smiled appreciatively at the gesture.

“This isn’t your fault, guys. You know that, right?”

“I do. Hwan does too, but…he can’t help but feel upset. He’s tried to postpone it because of what’s going on, but I keep telling him we shouldn’t. I have to remind him we’re not just doing it for us but for little Levi too.”

Five-year-old Levi had been placed under their care last November, and it had been completely unexpected but more than appreciated. There was still a long way to go before they could adopt him, but neither of them seemed bothered with fostering the young kid until there was a decision on reunification with his bio family.

“How’s Levi doing? How are you all getting on?”

Parker’s smile deepened. “He’s doing great. He’s still not talking, but we’re trying to find other creative ways to help him communicate with us.”

“Let me know if you need any help. I can find research and resources to help. Is there talk about autism assessment?”