Page 122 of One and Only

Poppy sighed, squeezing my hand before she stood. Lydia took Erik’s hand as she got off the couch, and Cameron gave me an encouraging look before he followed them out of the room.

Then he pointed at the skin under his eye. “You’ve got a little mascara under there. You’re gonna scare the baby if you look like that when she wakes up.”

I flipped him off, and he left the house with an amused chuckle.

My mom shook her head. “Your kid,” she told Tim.

He grunted. “I do have the worst ones, don’t I?”

I watched them laugh, my chest aching from the force of how much I loved them.

“I already apologized, right?” I asked my parents.

Tim nodded. “A few times. It was hard to tell exactly how many through the sobbing, but I counted four.”

“Five,” my mom corrected.

Tim hummed. “Five is a nice number. I might not have forgiven you so easily if you’d only done four.”

I let out a watery laugh.

He gave me a soft smile. “My sweet Greer, you were never going to learn this lesson any other way than the hard way.”

“What lesson is that?”

Before he answered, he took my mom’s hand in his own. “The hard comes in life, whether you do something to lessen the blow or not. And you can’t make it disappear because you hate seeing the people in your life suffer through it.”

I tucked my knees up to my chest, setting my chin there as I stared at him.

“When I get to sit down with your brother, which I hope will be soon, I’m gonna have to tell him the exact same thing. Parker doesn’t want to look this in the face either because he feels helpless or angry, or whatever the case may be. But so do you. You just let it show in a different way than he does.”

I rolled my lips together and nodded.

“You can’t take the blow for Beckett with Josie because he walked into thiswithyou,” he said gently. “You tried because your heart loves so big and so fierce. For Olive and for him. And you can’t make this last part of my life any different, any better, by trying to fix the hard parts of what’s coming.”

Tears slipped down my chin.

“I just wanted…” My voice trailed off. “I just wanted to give you something to make you happy.”

His eyes were red. “I know. And it did. But there’s no single moment in this world that tops what you and your brothers and sisters give me every day. Not a single one, Greer.”

I could hardly see the room through my tears when I pushed off the couch and wedged myself next to him on the cushion while he wrapped me into his arms.

Tim held me while I cried. As he did, I heard a few quiet sniffles from him and my mom. When I opened my eyes, I saw him holding her hand.

After a few long minutes, I was spent. Drained of all huge, coursing emotions from the day. The past couple of months, really.

And my heart hurt.

Despite my parents’ forgiveness, there was still reparations to be made with Josie. And with Beckett.

When I knew the tears were done, I got off the couch and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. In the front yard, Erik and Cameron were playing a game of driveway basketball with Poppy and Lydia. Lydia simply wrapped her arms around Erik’s neck, hitching her legs around his waist and clinging for dear life while he attempted a shot.

I smiled.

My mom joined me, laughing at the sight of them.

“What’s next?” she asked quietly.

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