Chapter 27
Two days later
Levi: Trying to give you the space you need, but I went back to grief group today, and you weren’t there. Just tell me you’re okay.
One week later
Levi: Come on, Haddie. We have to talk about this. Are you at least seeing Hope privately? Should I? I get that you don’t want to see me, but I know group is important to you. Are you staying with Emma? Text me something. Anything. Plz.
Two weeks later
Levi: Went to your game last night. Just to see that you were okay. You looked happy when your team won. My team lost our last one, but no one was offside. Silver lining, right?
Levi: It’s supposed to storm tonight. I hope you’re with Emma so you don’t have to wait it out alone.
Levi: So I guess this is it, huh? Message received. I wanted to fight for us, but I can’t do it alone. I’ll stop texting. You know where to find me for at least the next couple of weeks.
During one particularly violent crash of thunder that night, he flung himself out of his bed like a slingshot, rushing to Haddie’s room only to be reminded that she wasn’t there.
So, being wildly inexperienced with love and heartache and everything in between, he crawled into her bed rather than go back to his alone.
He could still smell her shampoo on her pillow, could still imagine his legs tangled with hers like tree roots planted so deep and for so long that they couldn’t possibly be unwound.
His chest felt like it had been carved out, leaving him with nothing but a raw, hollow ache.
He’d been running ever since college, trying to outrun any and all pain. And here he was in Haddie’s bed alone, effectively proving his theory that home equaled hurt. Yet more than a decade later, the running hadn’t solved a single thing.
***
Levi had finally gotten used to talking about his mom with a bunch of people who weren’t exactly strangers but also weren’t exactly friends.
He’d even noticed the painful feelings of loss giving way to the unexpected joy of keeping her memory alive.
But when he walked in for his final session before the wedding, he stopped in his tracks when he saw his father and Matteo already sitting in Hope’s circle.
Wait, was this why she’d asked him to pop in ten minutes before the group actually started?
“Levi!” Denny Rourke called to his oldest son, then patted the metal chair beside him. “Come on over!”
Levi made it there in a series of halting steps. He knew, according to Tilly, that his dad and Matteo showed up to the grief sessions every now and then. But when they hadn’t come the past couple of weeks when he’d finally started showing up again, he thought he was in the clear.
“Dad!” Levi replied with something mixed between enthusiasm and dread. “Teo,” he added, parking himself in the chair next to his brother rather than his father who he suddenly didn’t trust.
“Is this an ambush?” he asked sarcastically.
Denny laughed. “Not exactly,” he replied, but it still felt like an admission.
Matteo held up his hands. “I have no idea what he’s talking about. He just texted me and said, ‘We’re going to group.’ So I came to group.”
Hope appeared in the meeting space from a side door Levi hadn’t noticed before and nodded toward the three Rourke men. “Okay, Denny,” she began. “Only for you would I arrive ten minutes early. What did you want to talk about?”
Both Levi and Matteo spun to face their father, who had the decency to look chagrined.
“Busted!” Denny said. Then he produced a blue velvet box from his pocket, opening it to reveal a pretty sizable diamond.
“Aww, Dad. You shouldn’t have!” Matteo held out his hand as if their father was about to slide the ring up his finger.
He swatted his son’s hand away. “Knock it off, jackass. I’m asking Tilly to marry me, but I wanted to run it by you guys first. I wanted to make sure…you know…”
Levi knew. His father wasn’t alone anymore. He’d been given a second chance at having love in his life, and he still wanted to put his sons’ needs before his own. How could he possibly have any problem with that? He did, however, question the venue.
“Here?” Levi asked, eyes wide. “You’re going to ask her to marry you in the same place you’ve been coming to work on your grief for your last wife?”
Denny stared at his two sons, shaking his head with a laugh.
“Tilly loved your mom too, boys. And she knows that I don’t need to stop loving what your mom and I had to be able to love her today.
” He scratched the back of his neck. “Is that all you guys are worried about? Where I’m going to propose? ”
Matteo shrugged. “She makes you happy.”
“Yeah, Dad,” Levi chimed in. “Little Teo and I have grown up a bit recently. And seeing as how you’re not that old yet, we’d be selfish a-holes if we expected you to be alone for the rest of your life.
If, according to young Teo, Tilly does make you happy, then I think we are more than happy for you.
” He laughed. “Man, that was a lot of happy in one sentence from a guy who is anything but.” He playfully backhanded his brother on the arm.
Hope cleared her throat. “Remember me? The woman who apparently only showed up to unlock the door?”
Denny Rourke offered her the same apologetic smile he’d given his sons.
“Tilly is always one of the first ones to arrive to any gathering, so we needed to beat her to it. I also wanted you to be here when it happened,” he told her.
“You’re part of the reason Tilly and I work like we do, Hope. And I can’t thank you enough.”
Hope blinked and then swiped a finger under her eye. “Wow,” she said with a loud sniff. “Bad day for allergies, am I right?”
Levi watched his father wink at his group grief therapist, and he couldn’t help but laugh to himself. Only in Summertown did a man plan a proposal to the second love of his life at a group grief meeting.
There was so much he’d forgotten that he loved about this place, having been away for so long.
“And Levi…?” Hope added. “You can talk about more than just your mom here too. Grief comes in all shapes and sizes, and people experience different kinds of losses every day.”
Levi swallowed. Had he really lost her? He had tried to fight for her, for them. But Haddie bailed without giving him a chance to make things right.
“Does that mean you’ve talked to Haddie?” he asked.
“I can’t talk about other patients I may or may not see privately,” she explained. “I’m just saying that I’m here to help with all kinds of loss.”
“Doesn’t talking about it mean it’s real?” he asked.
“It does,” Levi’s father chimed in, clapping his son on the shoulder. “But it also helps you let go.”
Levi turned to face both his father and his brother.
“I’m sorry,” he told them, his voice thick with years of being so afraid of those two little words.
“For what?” Denny Rourke asked, his brows furrowing.
“For running back to school the second I finished PT for my knee and never looking back.” He turned to Matteo. “I’m the big brother, Teo. But I let you shoulder the burden of holding things together when Mom died. I should have been there for you.”
Their father let out a shaky breath and blinked away what looked like the threat of tears. “There is no rule book for how we deal with this kind of loss or for how long it takes to heal.”
“Yeah, man,” Matteo added, bumping his shoulder against Levi’s. “You weren’t able to be there for me then, but I don’t fault you for it. You’re here now, aren’t you?”
Levi’s eyes burned, and he tilted his head toward the ceiling in a feeble attempt to collect himself. But when he met their eyes again, his lashes were damp.
“All these years, I’ve been so sure you resented how fucking afraid I was to be…to be…here.” He motioned around the empty room but hoped they understood he meant home.
“If I might interject…” Hope suggested, and the three men nodded in unison. “Maybe here won’t be so scary anymore if you forgive yourself, Levi.”
He pressed the heels of his hands against the dam that was his tear ducts and cleared his throat. “For what?”
“For waiting until you were ready to come home.” She nodded toward his father and brother. “They’re happy you’re here. You’re the only one who has ever thought you don’t deserve to come home.”
He swallowed, but before he could agree or disagree with her assessment, they were all interrupted by Tilly Higginson strolling through the door and Levi’s nervous father immediately dropping to his knee.
Tilly yelped and then slowly approached the center of the circle.
“Denny…what are you doing? What if you tweak your back trying to get up again?”
Levi bit back a laugh, grateful for the immediate mood shift, and he could see his brother trying to do the same.
“Then say yes,” Denny told her. “Say you’ll marry me, and I’ll get off the floor before I do some real damage here.”
She let out a tearful laugh and nodded her head.
“Of course I’ll marry you!” She held out a hand, not for the ring yet but to help her new fiancé off the floor, and Levi knew from this moment forward that his father would be loved and cared for unconditionally for the rest of his life, and there was no way he couldn’t be happy about that.
The thing was, though their mom had been sick for a long time before she passed, she never lost her youthfulness.
Because of that, Levi couldn’t imagine her as an almost sixty-year-old warning her husband about tweaking his back.
He couldn’t imagine a lot of things about her anymore now that she’d been gone so long.
What he did remember was his parents’ love and the hope that one day he might have what they had.
And now, because the universe had the good thought to smile on his father twice, Levi found himself wanting this too—someone who worried about processing his grief ten years after the fact or who patched him up after cutting himself on a broken window.
And maybe, if he could find it in his heart to forgive himself for still not knowing how to fully process that grief, he might want those things in a town where he could plant roots.
And focus on a new team. And maybe even earn a spot on a favorite things poster one day.
But Haddie had to want him too. And she either didn’t or wouldn’t let herself want what could possibly cause her pain. Because it already had. Levi had.
Despite his promise to leave her be, he fired off one final text before they had to come face-to-face at the wedding tomorrow.
Levi: Last text. Promise. But I need to say what I should have said that night. I’m sorry I hurt you, Haddie. But it’s not because I don’t love you. I do…love you. I messed up, and I own that. Just thought you should know.
He held his breath, allowing himself to hope. He counted the seconds, the time it took before he had no choice but to exhale and fill his lungs again. He made it more than a minute, staring at his screen and willing those three dots to appear.
But they never did.