Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 86706 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86706 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
“Start from the beginning...”
She blew out a shaky breath. “I have to think about what that is...”
I placed my hand on her shoulder. “There’s no rush. It doesn’t have to be tonight.”
“It’s not going to be any easier tomorrow.” She swallowed. “How long are you in town anyway?”
“A few days? But it can be longer if you need me.”
“Give me a second,” she said, moving over to the other side of the room. Staring up at the ceiling, she said, “It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve rehearsed this. I just don’t know how to tell you.”
I watched as she paced some more and muttered something under her breath, as if she were practicing what she was going to say. I hated that she was so tormented. She’d seemed so honest about other aspects of her past; it was hard to understand why it was so difficult to open up about this one thing.
“Just start from the beginning,” I suggested again. “One step at a time. It’s okay…”
Emily finally shook her head and joined me on the couch. “Okay...” She took in some air. “From the beginning...” She nodded.
My heart raced. It seemed her nervousness was contagious. I was nervous for her.
“The beginning is Jacob,” she said.
I nodded. “Your boyfriend who died.”
“Yes.”
A bunch of theories floated through my mind. She’d said she wasn’t who I thought she was. Did she lie about how he died? Was she driving the car that killed him? Before I could continue hypothesizing, she spoke again.
“Jacob was my best friend from a young age. Even though we tried dating when we were older, first and foremost, he was my closest friend. I loved him with all of my heart and soul, and when he died, he took a piece of me with him.”
“You told me he died in a car accident…”
“Yes. He did.”
“You said you were away when it happened?”
“That’s correct. I was at college.”
“Okay...” I gulped.
“After he died, his mother gave me a box of his personal belongings. She said she was too distraught to go through them, but wanted me to have them.”
I nodded to encourage her.
“One of the things it contained were a series of journals. He’d never told me he journaled. I didn’t read them right away. But more recently, I finally had the courage to go through them. There were things about Jacob I never knew. I’m not sure his mother would’ve given them to me so freely if she’d known how personal they were.”
“She obviously felt you could be trusted with them.” What does any of this have to do with Emily or her character? “What did you find out?”
She hesitated. “When Jacob was sixteen, his mother told him he was adopted. That was devastating for him. Apparently, his parents had agreed to tell him on his sixteenth birthday. He’d talked to me about that back then. But he hadn’t told me he’d taken steps to find his birth mother. Apparently, he found her about a year before he died. He’d gone to see her, and he’d written about it in those journals.”
“Wow.” I blinked. “That’s so sad. I mean, that he’d found her and then died not so long after.”
She teared up. “It is...so sad.”
The pain she felt for her friend—ex-boyfriend—was palpable. She seemed to have a lot of trauma she hadn’t dealt with when it came to him. I moved in to hold her, but she quickly stepped away. Taking the hint, I returned to my spot across from her at the other end of the couch.
She looked into my eyes for what seemed like a full minute. Was she having second thoughts about sharing all this? My mind raced as I tried to figure out where this was all going. Then she uttered the words I didn’t know would change my life.
“His mother’s name is Cheyenne.”
CHAPTER 24
EMILY
Tristan jolted as if I’d punched him in the stomach.
“Cheyenne…” he repeated.
I nodded. “Cheyenne Benson.”
I could see the transformation in his face as realization dawned. His eyes slowly widened to a blank stare.
This was the moment I’d been fearing for so long.
I wanted to explain why I’d let things develop between us, but that was last on the list of items that needed to be addressed.
Tristan placed his hand over his heart as if he might collapse. “I don’t understand,” he whispered, shaking his head. He turned to me, his voice shaking. “Are you implying what I think you are?”
Holding back tears, I nodded. “When Jacob went to meet Cheyenne, she told him she’d gotten pregnant with him when she was a teenager. She admitted that she’d never told the father. She said at the time she was scared and worried you would quit everything and ruin your career to stay back home. She also knew she wasn’t ready to raise a child, so she made the difficult decision to put the baby up for adoption.”