Foolproof Love(61)
Or maybe he would…
Jules straightened. “I have to make a call.” She disentangled herself from Aubry and pulled her phone out of her pocket. It took all of a second to find Daniel’s number and call it.
He answered almost immediately. “Yep?”
“Adam needs you.” Her voice broke, but she charged on. “He won’t talk to me, but something happened, and he needs to talk to someone.”
“Does he know you’re calling?”
“No.”
Daniel was quiet for a long ten seconds. “We don’t talk about some things, Jules. It’s just the way it is.”
What was it with the men in her life who couldn’t deal with emotion? She took a deep breath and tried to keep the strain from her voice. “I know you have unresolved issues—all of you do—but if you let him shoulder this alone, it’s going to kill something inside him. Please, Daniel. Please at least try to talk to him.”
Her cousin sighed. “I’ll try. That’s all I can do.”
It would have to be good enough. “Thank you.” She hung up and turned to find Aubry staring at her. “What?”
“You really fell hard for this guy, didn’t you?”
Too hard, too fast, too much all around. She slumped back into the couch. “I really did.”
“I think this calls for a tea party.” Aubry stood. “And by tea party, I mean we’re going to drink vodka out of teacups and eat our weight in ice cream while we bitch about the men who’ve done us wrong.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“Aw, Jules, that’s where you’re wrong. You’re better than all of us—you’re just too good of a person to see it.” She disappeared into her room and came back with two fine china teacups on saucers. “Now, do you want to shoot some noobs, or is this the kind of hurting that requires a sappy romance movie?”
Jules’s eyes burned. “You’re the best friend anyone could ever ask for.”
“Just don’t go around telling people that.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Adam didn’t have a place in mind when he started driving after grabbing a six-pack from the market, but he ended up in the cemetery, winding through the narrow paths until he stood in front of his friend’s headstone. He opened a beer and finally made himself read it.
John Moore
Beloved son and brother
December 16, 1981—December 16, 2002
It’s been too long.
And somehow not nearly long enough.
He opened a second beer and, after a self-conscious look around, upended it on the grass covering his friend’s grave.
Adam sighed. His mama wasn’t talking to him, and Lenora had practically ripped out his throat when he tried to push the subject. As much as he hated to admit it, she was right—they both needed time to cool off. The problem was the truth wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how many laps he drove around town.
She’s really going to be gone for good, long before I’m ready to let her go. I don’t know that I’ll ever be ready to let her go.
His mama was the closest thing to roots he had in this life. What was he going to do without that? It didn’t matter that he didn’t see her all that often normally—knowing she was carrying on life in Devil’s Falls had always steadied him, just a bit.
“So what’s brought you out here looking for answers?”
He took a long pull of his beer and turned to where Daniel approached. He wasn’t ready to talk about it. He didn’t know if he’d ever be ready to say it aloud. So he went with something easier to bear. “You know, John was one of my best friends, and I’ve never come out here to visit him.”
“He’s gone. Visiting his grave doesn’t make him any less gone.”
The words didn’t sit well with him. There was nothing more final than a gravestone, and the thought that in too short a time he might be standing in front of a different gravestone made his throat burn. “Have you been out here?”
“Yeah.” Daniel tipped back his head and closed his eyes. “I share a six-pack with him once a month.”
It was becoming startlingly clear that Adam had well and truly fucked up when he left town—and he’d been fucking up ever since. “I should have come back sooner. I should have been here for you and Quinn.”
And for Mama.
“We were all fighting our own demons in our own way. You did the best you could.”