Page 50 of From This Moment (After We Fall 4)
“My front hallway. Abby was at his mother’s. And afterward I had a massive panic attack.”
“Oh my God. Wait, I have to go into the laundry room so the kids can’t hear me.” A moment later, I heard a door shut. “Okay, tell me everything.”
While I watched my innocent little daughter sing to herself and play on the swings, I filled Tess in on what I’d done. “I feel horrible about it.”
“You do?”
“Yes,” I said loudly, because wasn’t it obvious? “Wes is Drew’s brother.”
“That’s true,” she said gently, “but Drew is gone, Hannah. He’s not coming back.”
“I know.” I squeezed my eyes shut, and voiced the more complicated, more shameful feeling. “But I also feel horrible because I liked it. And I can’t stop thinking about it. And I wish we could do it again.” There. I’d said it out loud.
“Was it that good?”
“It was amazing, Tess. He made me feel…” I closed my eyes as chills swept down my arms and legs. “Like a different person. But somehow still myself, only more myself. Like I’d recaptured something. It was effortless and liberating.”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
“But it’s so wrong.”
“Hannah. I fucked the tree man, remember? A complete stranger.”
“That still doesn’t seem as wrong as what I did. Or why I did it.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“Because I wanted him. Him, not Drew.”
“I suspected as much the other night when you were talking about him. Your face changes. You light up. You have feelings for him Hannah, and it’s okay.”
I cringed. That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “No. It isn’t.”
“What about him?” she challenged. “How does he feel?”
“He says it’s not about Drew for him. And then I lied and told him it was for me.”
“Why? You didn’t do anything wrong. You guys are two consenting adults who feel a connection to each other.”
“But I feel like I dishonored Drew’s memory,” I said, resting my forehead on my fingertips.
“A memory can’t keep you warm at night."
I squeezed my eyes shut against the seductive thought of Wes keeping me warm on cold winter nights. “I don’t want this, Tess. I don’t.”
“Don’t want what?”
“These feelings for him. I have to get rid of them somehow.”
“How the hell are you going to do that? You can’t put feelings out like a bonfire.”
“No, but I can stay away from him until they die out on their own.” I remembered sitting in the grocery store parking lot, making that same plan. I should have stuck to it.
“And if they don’t?”
Straightening up, I turned around and looked for Abby out the window again. “They have to.”
“There’s nothing wrong with moving on, Hannah. It’s healthy.”
