Page 42 of Silver Lining Love

I nodded.

“What’s your job now?”

Taking care of you and your brother and sister.

“I’m between jobs. Just trying to figure out what I want to do. What do you want to do when you get older?”

He looked down at his hands and he was quiet. My impulse was to ask again and try and coax it out of him, but I knew if I did that, he’d just shut down. I’d noticed that when Wyatt and he were talking, Wyatt would patiently wait for him to answer, and then nine times out of ten, he would. I figured since my method wasn’t working, I’d give Wyatt’s way a try.

Wyatt.Just the thought of him had my entire body heating up. I feared last night had ruined me for other men. But more than that, I feared that I was totally, completely, madly in love with Wyatt Briggs.

I’d had my suspicions before, but now I knew. The problem was, I knew that I wasn’t what he wanted. Well, the package I came with wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t want kids. It’s why none of his relationships had worked out.

All morning I’d been thinking about how this thing between us was going to play out. There were a few possibilities, and none of them ended up with my heart in one piece. We could hook up for a while, I would fall deeper in love, and then he would inevitably get bored, or meet someone else and end things. My heart would be broken.

We could stop whatever was happening between us,nothook up again, and go back to how things were with him being around all the time, I would grow even more dependent on him, inevitably fall deeper in love with him, and get my heart broken.

I could not foresee a scenario where my heart wasn’t going to be broken.

The only solution that I had come up with was cutting things off and limiting the time that I spent with him. He could still take Mikey to practice and Alice to ballet, if he wanted to. I wasn’t going to limit Wyatt’s interactions with the kids, but as far as dinners, and especiallyafterdinners, I was going to need to start standing on my own two feet. That was the only way that I could protect myself.

And I had to protect myself. I was all these kids had and my heart couldn’t take another break, not after losing my sister.

“I want to be a baseball player.”

Mikey spoke so quietly, and my mind was so busy overthinking everything that I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him correctly.

“What?” I glanced over at him.

He shook his head. “It’s stupid.”

“No, it’s not. What did you say?”

“I said I want to be a baseball player,” he mumbled.

“Cool!”

He lifted his head, his eyes were wide. “You think that’s cool? Mom always said that it wasn’t realistic and I should focus on something that was stable.”

Shit.Right…that was probably the correct answer. Maybe I should have said that?

I cut my eyes to him, and when I saw the flicker of hope in them, I couldn’t bring myself to put it out. “I think it’s cool. If you work hard, I think you can do anything. And baseball players go to college, so it’s not like you can’t get a degree, too. I say, go for it!”

He reached across the seat and threw his arms around my neck. “I love you, Aunt Whitney.”

“I love you, too.” I patted his hand and kept my eyes on the road.

As much as I appreciated the outburst of affection, I had a sick feeling in my stomach. Had I just betrayed my sister by telling him what I had? Should I have backed up what she’d told him? She was his mom, not me.

I’m sorry, Addi. I silently apologized.I’m sorry.

18

WYATT

“Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.” ~ Gamma Mary

Bases were loadedand Michael was coming up to bat. It was the top of the ninth inning and the Tigers were two runs away from winning the game. My hands were sweaty, and my stomach felt the same way it did when I was at the top of Dead Man’s Drop at the fair right before the click of the machinery releasing the chairs to drop 250 feet.

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