Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 125866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 629(@200wpm)___ 503(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 629(@200wpm)___ 503(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Whatever the future held for us, we were family. All of us.
I found so much hope and comfort in that fact alone.
One Year Later
Kyle
“I can’t believe you managed to wait so long for this,” Mom said, messing with the lapels and tie on my suit even though I knew it looked perfect. My guess was she just needed something to do with her hands to keep from crying.
“That makes two of us,” I said. “But, then again, I guess it wasn’t fair of me to expect Madelyn to want to get into a wedding dress less than three months after giving birth.”
Mom chuckled. “The only thing I was wearing three months after birth was compression leggings and you. You loved being wrapped up tight to my chest.”
She smiled with the memory, her eyes going misty the way they had often over the last year since she’d shown up on our doorstep.
I didn’t know if things would ever be normal between us — then again, I didn’t know what normal was when it came to my parents.
All I knew was that things were better.
I knew it wasn’t easy for her to leave my father. I knew she was scared out of her mind those first few months, thinking he’d show up and drag her out of my house by her hair. He would have had me to answer to if he so much as tried — and maybe that’s why he never did.
Eventually, she flew back to file for divorce, and surprisingly, Dad didn’t fight her on it.
That hurt her worse than anything.
He didn’t fight to keep her. He didn’t fight to have a relationship with me. He was perfectly content to let us both go.
While it broke my mom’s heart for us, it broke mine more for him — because all that told me was that he was hurt, and he had no intention of healing. I would never know the reasons my father was the way he was. I would never know what happened to him, or what dark secrets he held onto.
But sometimes, that’s just the way it is. You can love someone and never understand them. You can care for someone, and also have to draw boundaries with them. You can wish someone well while also realizing that in order for yourself to be well, you have to let them go.
“Let’s get you to that altar, shall we?” Mom said, tugging on my tie one last time.
I bent and kissed her on the forehead, looping my arm through hers, and then we made our way outside.
The venue Madelyn and I had settled on was simple, save for the views it offered. Nestled atop a cliff on a beautiful gorge with the Pacific Northwest spread out in all its glory, the altar was nothing more than three old pieces of wood nailed together by someone hundreds of years ago. But the view made it grand, luxurious, and breathtaking.
We’d needed only one look at it to know it was the one for us.
It was such a small ceremony, Madelyn and I had opted not to have the traditional bridesmaids and groomsmen next to us. Instead, I walked past my friends seated on either side of the aisle, smiling as they shot out jokes and one-liners at my expense.
Clay and Giana were attempting to wrangle Atlas, who was eager to show off his new skill of walking. Riley and Zeke sat next to them, Riley smiling despite the fact that I was sure she was still battling nausea as Zeke rubbed her back soothingly. She was in her first trimester — a secret she shared with us only so we would know if she ran out of our wedding to puke, that it wasn’t because of us.
Holden, Julep, Mary, and Leo sat in the row across the aisle from the previous group. Holden seemed to sit a bit taller now — something I was sure winning the Super Bowl did to everyone. He’d taken a team that had virtually zero chance of even making the playoffs three years ago all the way to the end.
I had a feeling he’d go down as one of the greatest, and I was all too eager to be in the same category.
Just behind them sat Braden and Emily — his arm draped around the back of her chair, and her smirking and leaning into him. She and Mary had spent most of our welcome dinner last night planning out Emily’s next tattoo, all while the rest of us reminisced with Braden about the bumpy road they’d had that led to where they were now.
But that’s a story for another time.
Once I was at the altar, Mom wrapped me in a light hug before taking her seat in the front row. Instead of sitting on a certain side of the aisle, she sat right next to Madelyn’s mom — who had become a great friend to my mom in this trying time in her life.