Page 162 of The Complete Truth Duet
I gave her a squeeze, pulling her in, and touched my lips with hers. “Yep. She said her dad already gave you the stars. I can’t let him show me up, Cora.”
She smiled, those tears breaking free. “And what do I get to give you?”
I stared down into her sparkling, blue eyes, my chest so full that it was almost painful in the most incredible way possible, and I told her the truth. “A reason to breathe. One in. One out, Cora. Nic may have put those words on your ceiling, but I’m gonna be the man to make sure those breaths come easy and often for all of us. From here on out. All you gotta do is…” I dipped low for another lip touch and whispered, “Breathe.”
Cora
Ten years later…
“Oh my God, is it broken?” Savannah cried.
“Relax, it’s not broken. It’s just stuck.” And maybe broken. But, since we were approximately twenty minutes before her wedding was supposed to start and we couldn’t get the zipper on her dress up, I spared my eardrums the pain of her shriek and kept that information to myself.
“Move. Let me try,” River said, squeezing in front of me. She was wearing a long, purple maid-of-honor gown she hated with a passion. That, I suspected, was the reason Savannah had picked it out in the first place.
After we’d moved to Seattle, Penn had followed through on slipping a ring on my finger. First, a freaking rock of an engagement ring. And then, three months later, at a quiet ceremony in our giant, picturesque backyard, he slipped another ring on and made me Cora Pennington.
A few days later, when I’d gone to the DMV to get a new driver’s license, I’d burst into tears at seeing something other than Guerrero as my name. I’d loved Nic, but Penn was right. He’d left his diamond in a junkyard. And I had been stuck there every day, waiting for someone to find me. I’d fought and struggled to stay at the top of the heap. But, if it hadn’t been for Penn, I’m not sure I would have lived long enough to get out.
One day, they would have caught me stealing the money.
One day, Marcos’s backhand would have landed wrong.
One day, Dante wouldn’t have stopped.
And, one day, I’d have died, leaving my diamonds—River and Savannah—in that junkyard too.
Instead, I’d found a gorgeous man who loved me and my girls unconditionally and gave me a last name I could feel proud of. And then, two years later, he gave our daughter, Hope, his last name too.
I’d once said nothing had disappointed me, broken me, or destroyed me quite like hope. But that was before I married Penn. Hope no longer felt like the impossible. It felt like the future, and that’s exactly what that little girl gave us all. She was eight now, and she had my blue eyes, her father’s brown hair, and all of River’s attitude. She also had a pretty pink bedroom, a warm bed, and not a single lock on her bedroom door.
“Mom,” River called, fighting with the zipper. “Can you get me some tweezers? Maybe I can use those to tug it up.”
I hurried to my mother-of-the-bride emergency kit and found three different pairs—you know, just in case. Then I carried them all back to her.
For the first few years before Hope was born, River seamlessly alternated between calling me Cora and Mom. There was no rhyme or reason for what she called me or when. It wasn’t like she had to hide it anymore. But as soon as Hope was old enough to talk, I was never Cora again. And it wasn’t until then that I realized how much I’d missed by letting her call me Cora for all those years. But no more. I was mom. Just mom.
There was a pop before Savannah’s dress sagged.
“Oh my God, what was that?” she yelled
“Oh, shit,” River breathed, lifting the metal zipper tab hanging off the end of the tweezers.
“What did you do!” Savannah yelled.
While my girls still fought like cats and dogs and loved like sisters, they were all grown up now.
River was twenty-three, taking the slow path through college, living in an apartment across town, and majoring in graphic design. She’d yet to bring a boyfriend home, but she made no secret of leaving her birth control on the bathroom counter so I knew they existed. This could be because she’d learned from Savannah’s mistakes and gained a healthy respect for Penn’s twitching forehead vein.
Savannah had met a guy her first year at the University of Washington. He seemed nice enough to me, but Penn wanted to string him up by his grungy jeans and long, unwashed hair. Luckily, that guy ended up screwing her over. Obviously, that was not the lucky part. Through heartbreak, she buckled down and focused on her schoolwork, and she ended up falling in love with her professor’s dashing teaching assistant, Matthew Lintz. I mean, I couldn’t blame her. He was a handsome kid. The problem was that he wasn’t really a kid—he was a twenty-two-year-old pre-med student heading off to dental school in the fall. Which, hey, good for him. They were both in college, so I was fine with it. Penn, however, wanted to string him up by his khaki slacks and preppy crew cut.
