Chapter 1
ONE
KARI
APPROXIMATELY ONE AND A HALF YEARS LATER
The box Jada handed me felt light in my hands. It jingled as I turned it over, the contents clamoring inside. It was the size of a shoebox but held enough memories to fill a Mack truck.
A sharp pain tore through my chest at the realization that my secrets had been in someone else’s hands.
I looked up at my sister. Jada’s long brown hair was in a knot at the top of her head, her round cheeks pink.
She looked a lot like me, only my hair was a lighter shade of brown and falling across my shoulders.
Our noses were identical, our eyes a bright shade of green.
We had our mother’s dark complexion, although Jada was much more like her than me.
My eyes settled on her growing belly.
And, right now, she’s a lot more like Mom than I’ll ever be.
“Did you look inside?” I tried to keep my voice even. The thought of her possibly knowing the items buried at the bottom of the box made me queasy.
At one time in our lives, I would have told her my secrets.
I needed to tell her. But she was dealing with her then-husband Decker at that point and didn’t need any more stress.
When I called her that day to tell her what was going on and she was already crying, I choked.
I masked the pain from my voice and worked her through her problem.
Sadly, even to me, that was something I was pretty good at. It was a coping mechanism I’d learned at a young age. Things were sometimes easier to deal with if you just kept them to yourself.
Our mom died when I was eleven, Jada fourteen. Mom was pregnant and died from an ectopic pregnancy. It was hard on all of us, but Jada seemed to pick up the pieces faster than I did.
Dad had done his best to keep things from falling apart.
His secretary at his realtor office, Alice, came to the house a few days a week to help out.
Alice was great and did our laundry, made cookies, and tried to talk to us the best she could.
But our mom was perfect and, as much as I loved Alice, she always seemed like a fill-in.
I remember watching her mill around Mom’s kitchen one afternoon a few months after the funeral, Jada sitting at the table peeling an orange.
Alice was making plans to take her to a play she wanted to see.
I sat and sketched on a notepad, drawing little doodles of arrows, and felt so utterly alone.
I just wanted to scream that everything was wrong, pound my fists on the table and yell at Alice to get out!
To stop touching all my mom’s things. Every item she moved made things a bit farther from the way Mom had left them.
It destroyed me, but I felt trapped. I didn’t know what to say.
When I tried to bring it up to Jada later, she shushed me. She told me that I didn’t need to be so hateful and that we were all doing the best we could. That we were in it together.
Over the next few years, I mastered the art of being “in it together,” yet being absolutely alone.
I realized that saying how miserable I was only made Jada more miserable, too. So I learned to keep my mouth shut and deal, to not spread the pain. Let happy people be happy—why ruin that?
It was a life lesson I learned way too early.
Pick your heart up off the floor when it was smashed, put it back together as best you could, and paste on a smile.
You could be a mess on the inside but still look put together on the outside.
As long as things looked okay, everything was fine.
Smoke and mirrors wasn’t just acceptable, it was preferred.
Sad but true.
The sunlight streamed through the windows of Jada’s bedroom and I turned to look at my sister. The light made her even more radiant.
“I didn’t go through it or anything,” she said. “As soon as I saw the cassette tapes, I knew it was yours so I closed it back up.”
I released a heavy breath and walked to the window looking over the base of the mountain.
Cane Alexander, Jada’s husband, had positioned their bedroom for optimum viewing pleasure.
They could literally lie in bed and watch the lights twinkle below.
He hadn’t missed a single detail, which was a testament to how much he loved my sister.
Cane typically did things with wider brush strokes.
But when it came to Jada, his attention to detail was relentless.
The thought of Cane being so caring and considerate to Jada was endearing.
When I met him originally, he was the ultimate bad boy.
I had been at Max’s house one night and Cane had swung by.
He had given me a smirk and made more vulgar comments about his evening than I cared to remember.
He was the opposite of Max in so many ways.
Although Max’s moves in the sheets outdid the tales Cane was telling, Max would never say that.
Not in front of me, anyway. He was too thoughtful, too sweet.
Cane, on the other hand, was giving us a play-by-play.
Max really liked Cane and there was something about their interaction that night that cut through Cane’s vulgarity, something that gave me a clue that there was more to Cane Alexander than the man whore he portrayed himself to be.
That’s the only reason I didn’t object to him meeting my sister when she returned to Arizona after her divorce.
If Max trusted him, I trusted him, and obviously it was the right choice.
Cane had become the best husband I could ever imagine for my sister.
“Thanks for not throwing this out,” I laughed nervously, tucking the box under my arm.
I turned to watch Jada struggle to get off the bed. Her belly had begun to pop, swelling with the growing baby inside. She put a hand on the bed and the other on her stomach and slowly got to her feet.
“You okay?” Jada asked me, rubbing her belly.
I smiled, walking to her and rubbing it, too. “I am. I’m excited to meet the little jellybean.”
“I’m so excited, Kari,” she confessed. “I mean, I have quite a bit of time left, but I’m already sad thinking about it being over. It’s just that once you find out you’re pregnant, everything changes. Silly, I know, but it’s true.”
“It’s not silly,” I said weakly, feeling a lump form in my throat. “You were made to be a mom.”
“Well, I don’t know about that.”
“I do.” I heard Max and Cane in the other room and figured Max was about ready to leave.
I knew he had to work the next day and he’d want to get home before it got too late.
“I think we should probably get going, but I’ll be by later this week.
I found some of your things when I was cleaning your old room yesterday. I’ll bring them with me.”
She gave me a puzzled look. “I don’t remember leaving anything. What was it?”
“Just random stuff. A phone charger under the bed and a pair of boots. Oh! And a tube of red lipstick called Ruby Woo by MAC.” I furrowed my brow as I recalled the fiery color. Jada and I were both a darker complexion and I couldn’t imagine her wearing it.
“Red? That must be yours because I don’t wear that color. You know that.”
“Well, it isn’t mine. Maybe it’s Lara’s,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. Lara hadn’t been over for months, but the tube was dusty when I pulled it from behind the plant by the back door.
I let out a sigh and turned back to the glass. My house felt so empty without Jada. She had lived with me after her divorce from Decker and I missed having her around. I found myself spending less and less time there...and more time with Max.
But the more time I spend with Max, the messier things get.
“I’m not prying, but is everything okay? You just seem...off. I know I’m married and having a baby, but I’m still your sister. And I also know that I’ve not always been there for you like I should have been, but I want to be now.”
“Everything’s fine. I’m not going to burden you with my stuff.” I turned to face her.
“You are never a burden to me.”
I blew out a breath. “I just think all this marrying and baby making from you and Cane is putting ideas in Max’s head.”
Jada laughed. “And the problem with that is what again?”
“Things with Max were never supposed to get to this point.” I let out a sigh. “It’s not that I don’t want to live with Max, I just don’t want him to get the wrong idea. But it’s Max, so he would. He’d have a nursery painted before I got my boxes unpacked.”
“I don’t get it. Why in the world would you not want to settle down with Max Quinn? He’s gorgeous and charming and successful and adjusted-”
“He’s perfect. I get it. I know.”
“So? What’s the problem, Kari?”
“Max comes from this big family. He wants a wife in the kitchen, babies at his feet, Sunday family dinners. It’s just,” I swallowed and looked away, “not something I see for myself.”
Jada touched my shoulder. “You might not want that right now and that’s perfectly okay. But...”
“But what?”
“But you need to figure out what you want. If you’re sure you don’t want Max for the long-term and he does, then you have to consider that.
” A frown touched her lips and I could see she was torn.
She was trying to be honest with me, but knew it wasn’t the easy answer I wanted to hear. “Have you talked to him about this?”
“Constantly. He asks me to move in nearly every day. And I would, Jada, I really would. But then that leads to the next step and that’s the one I don’t want to take.”
She tilted her head and frowned deeper. “You don’t want to get married?”
I looked at my sister’s hand on her tummy. “I don’t think I’d mind getting married.” I took a deep breath. “But I don’t want to have a family.” The words came out softer than I would’ve liked, but saying it too loudly would’ve given my voice too much room to crack.
”I never knew you didn’t want kids,” she breathed, looking at me like I was a stranger. Whether she realized it or not, she was right. There were things about me she had no clue about.