Hard Fall by Brenda Rothert
Chapter Eighteen
Hadley
“That one is Mommy’s favorite,” Annalise said as I picked up a bottle of perfume from Lauren’s bathroom vanity.
Miss Dior. She’d sent me a bottle of this perfume a few years ago, and I’d thought of her whenever I saw it sitting on my bathroom counter, or when I’d spritzed it on.
“Squirt it on you,” Annalise said.
As I put Lauren’s perfume on, I realized Wes was right. Living here and leaving everything as it was had been the best move for Annalise right after Ben and Lauren died. But we couldn’t do it forever.
A couple weeks ago, Nina had told me she and Drew would come over and pack up Lauren and Ben’s clothes and personal things whenever we were ready, and I’d thought I could never be ready. The things Lauren had left behind comforted me. I couldn’t ever be her, or raise her children as well as she would have, but I could use her handwritten blueberry muffin recipe. I could bake those muffins in her muffin pans, and arrange them on her favorite stoneware platter.
But would I still be doing that six months from now? A year from now? Wes and I still hadn’t had a decisive conversation about the future. In their will, Ben and Lauren had asked us to decide who would raise the kids, but that was an impossible decision. Wes and I both loved them dearly.
What had started out as scratching an itch—sleeping with Wes—was becoming something more for me. We were going out on a date tonight. Nash and Lars were coming over to babysit.
There were difficult decisions that had to be made—eventually. For now, I was getting ready for my date and spending time with Annalise.
“I look pretty,” she said, admiring herself in the mirror.
I glanced at her and laughed. While I’d been concentrating on applying my fake eyelashes, she’d opened one of my eye shadow palettes and rubbed a dark green shade on her eyelids.
“You always look pretty,” I said. “Makeup or not.”
“Will Thor like it?”
I shook my head and laughed again. Annalise was developing a serious crush on Lars. She’d gotten her nails painted turquoise on their “date” and slept with her new stuffed bear every night.
“I think Thor prefers your natural look, baby,” I said, putting makeup remover on a cotton pad and removing the eye shadow.
“You should wear a dress,” she said as I finished putting on the rest of my makeup. “Mommy wore dresses when she went on dates with Daddy.”
“I might. I have three outfits to try on, and one of them is a dress. I’m going to wear whichever one you like best.”
“I love you, Aunt Hadley.”
My heart melted. It was the first time she’d said that, and it moved me so much tears welled in my eyes.
“I love you, too, baby.”
Her lips turned down in a frown.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She looked away, not saying anything. I got down on my knees so I was at her level and asked again.
“What if you and Uncle Wes don’t come back? Will Thor take care of me and Benny?”
It hit me all at once. Date night. Ben and Lauren had been on a date when a drunk driver hit their car. I closed my eyes, feeling like an asshole.
“We’ll be back, Annalise,” I said, holding her gaze. “We will. We’ll just go out for dinner and then we’ll come right back home.”
“Mommy and Daddy didn’t come back,” she said softly.
“That was a terrible accident, and—” My voice caught, and I cleared my throat. “And it makes sense that you’d worry about the same thing happening to me and Uncle Wes. But you can call us while we’re gone, as many times as you want, to make sure we’re still okay.”
She nodded, and I hugged her. My first instinct was to call off the date. To curl up in bed with Annalise and watch the Disney Channel where she could see me and know everything was okay.
I couldn’t be with her all the time, though. It was brutally unfair for a four-year-old to worry about losing the people she loves, but it was Annalise’s reality.
“Why don’t you let me do your hair before it’s time to leave? We’ll do something really fancy.” I said. “I can put some sparkly pins in it.”
“Yes!”
She was excited as she sat on the stool in front of Lauren’s vanity and watched me work. I pinned her curls up loosely and finished the updo with a bit of hairspray. After that, I tried on each outfit I’d considered for tonight, and she tried on three of her own dresses for me.
We went downstairs hand in hand. She was wearing a replica of the dress Anna wore in Frozen and I was wearing a little black dress that Annalise chose for me. I was a half hour late meeting Wes in the family room for the start of our date, but when I met his gaze, I saw he was smiling.
“My girls look spectacular,” he murmured, kissing my cheek.
“Sorry I’m so late,” I said in his ear. “She needed some girl time with me.”
“It’s all good,” he said. “Nash is having a crawling race with Benny and Lars is picking up pizza.”
I arched my brows in question. “A crawling race?”
“Yeah, and knowing him, he’ll pull ahead at the finish line and trash talk Benny for being so slow.”
Benny crawled everywhere these days. We had to keep him in his baby jumper or the playpen anytime we turned our backs for even a minute. Every day, he grew a little bigger and a little cuter, displaying his two bottom teeth when he smiled. When I combed his dark hair over to the side, he looked like a little man and all I wanted to do was snuggle with him. Now that he was crawling, though, he didn’t like to be held long.
“There’s your giraffe!” I heard Nash say from the dining room. “I’m gonna get it, Benny! That giraffe’s gonna be mine if you don’t pick it up, my dude.”
I cringed, laughing, just as I heard Annalise chiming in from the other room.
“It’s not fair to race him, Uncle Nash. He’s a baby!”
Wes kissed my forehead. “Let’s get out of here while we still can. We might want to leave Annalise in charge, though.”
“I didn’t even thinkabout that,” Wes said an hour later over drinks at a downtown St. Louis steak house. “Poor kid, worried she’s going to lose us just like she lost her parents.”
“It broke my heart. I did my best to reassure her.”
He reached across the small table and took my hand. “I’m sure you did great. You’re good at that stuff.”
Wes was wearing dark gray dress pants and a light blue dress shirt, the shirt making his eyes look even bluer than usual. I remembered the first time we’d sat together at a nice restaurant—dinner with Ben and Lauren in New York five years ago. I’d considered him an irredeemable playboy back then, a guy who just wasn’t that deep and never would be.
Everything was different now. I’d been forced to see the real Wes—the man beneath the facade. He was everything Lauren had always told me he was—hardworking, generous, and loyal.
“Have we changed?” I asked him.
“What do you mean?”
“We used to be like oil and water. I thought you were…well, you know what I thought.”
He grins. “Yeah, you were never shy about making sure I knew.”
“Was I…wrong?”
He laughed and squeezed my hand. “It was hard for you to even say those words, wasn’t it?”
I smiled. “A little.”
“You were both right and wrong. I was an asshole to you the first time we met—like I told you, I’d had too much to drink and I was used to hearing yes from women. I was a young professional athlete, and I enjoyed the hell out of all the perks. But I’ve never been a bad guy. I had some maturing to do—hell, I probably still do. I’m not letting you and the kids down, though. I’ll never do that.”
I tucked my hair behind my ear and took a sip of my wine.
“Do you think, if Ben and Lauren hadn’t…died…that we’d still argue every time we saw each other?”
“Oh yeah. You’d still be calling me an overgrown frat boy at Annalise’s wedding someday.”
“And you’d be asking me if hot flashes were melting the icicle stuck up my ass.”
He hangs his head. “Not my finest moment, Hadley. I’m sorry I said that.”
I shrugged. “I’ve said worse about you. We always just brought out the worst in each other.”
Wes released my hand to take a sip of his whiskey, and he was grinning when he set the glass back down.
“Can I tell you something I think we’ll get a good laugh out of, now that it’s way in the past?”
“What?”
“Remember when I was late to Ben and Lauren’s wedding, and you…disapproved of my existence?”
“I do.” I interlocked my hands together and propped my chin up on the fist I’d made. “I owe you an apology for that.”
He put both hands up. “No, not at all. Being late when you’re the best man is a dick move. But the truth is, I was the first one at the church that morning.”
“How?” I furrowed my brow. “You came rolling up the parking lot ten minutes after the ceremony was supposed to start; I was waiting for you.”
“With a warm greeting, as I recall,” he said with a wink.
I cringed at the memory.
“I was at the church that morning, but I had to leave because Ben forgot the rings back at our hotel. He was so pissed at himself. I’ve never seen him so upset about anything. So I went back and got them.”
I was completely speechless as I processed this new information.
“Why didn’t you tell me that?” I finally asked. “I wouldn’t have called you all those names, or considered taking off one of my heels and beating you with it, if I had known.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t letting Ben take the fall. I’ve got broad enough shoulders to take a little browbeating from the bridesmaids.”
I covered my face with my hands and laughed. “God, Wes, I feel awful.”
“Don’t. I didn’t tell you to make you feel bad. I think it’s pretty funny, actually. And you were right a lot of the time when you busted my balls. That’s why it bothered me so much. I never should have brought that woman to Annalise’s first birthday party.”
I laughed at the memory. “Oh, that’s right! What was her name?”
He gave me a sheepish look. “No idea.”
“You were right about me, too,” I admitted. “About me being too uptight and not having a life. And about me being nothing like Lauren.”
Wes’s face turned down, his expression going from lighthearted to serious. “No, I was wrong about that, Hadley. You’re a lot like Lauren.”
“I’m not, though. Lauren was sweet and funny, and she made everything look effortless. She always made people feel good when she was with them.”
“You make me feel really good,” Wes said, his gaze loaded with meaning.
“I think most women have that effect on you in bed,” I quipped.
“No, that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about when you fold my laundry and don’t say anything about me not doing it. When I get home from a road trip and see you left me a plate of dinner in the fridge. When everything with the team feels like shit and you’re the only one I want to talk to about it. When I overhear you telling the kids stories about when they were born, and when you take such great care of them even though you’re tired and stressed from your own job. You’re a lot like Lauren.”
My heart pounded and my eyes stayed locked with Wes’s. I knew we were compatible in bed and we’d learned to get along, but what he’d just said to me felt like…more. And it felt good. It felt damn good. Other men had told me I was too harsh, too honest, too independent. Wes had been the first man to see the caring, nurturing woman I was deep down.
“Thank you,” I said, looking away so he wouldn’t see the tears threatening to spill over.
Wes smiled at his phone screen and turned it to face me. There was a picture Nash had sent of him, Lars, Benny and Annalise in the playroom. Nash was wearing a dark red wig and Lars, with a stone-faced expression, was getting his hair brushed by Annalise. She looked like she was having the time of her life.
“Oh.” I smiled and put a palm on my chest. “I needed this night out so much, but I still miss them.”
“Let’s get dinner and then we can pick up stuff for ice cream sundaes and take it home.”
“Really?”
Wes nodded. “I’d love to spend the entire night with you at the nearest hotel, but with Annalise worried we might not make it home, I think we need to keep our time out short.”
My shoulders relaxed with relief, because I felt the same way.
“Excuse me, Wes Kirby?” a man said from beside our table. Wes looked over and the man continued. “I’m sorry to bother you, but my dad’s a huge Mavericks fan. He’s eighty-three years old and about to go into hospice. Could I get you to maybe write a short note to him?”
Wes smiled and said, “Sure, no problem. I wish I had a puck I could sign for him, but I don’t have anything, even in the car.”
“That’s okay. Just a quick note signed by you will mean a lot to him.”
Wes took the pen and paper the man held out and started writing. It hit me once again how very wrong I’d been about this man. And then I felt a pang, because I knew this was the moment when Lauren would say that she told me so.