"Because I'm not sure I want one husband I love, much less three."
Piper frowned. "You don't want to get married? There's nothing wrong with that, but I always thought you wanted a family."
"I do. I do want a husband and kids. I simply don't want to lose my soul to some man. I don't want to die if he leaves me or something happens to him, and I'm really afraid that's how things would end with those brothers. So I think I should walk away."
"Do you love me?" Piper asked in a quiet, almost halting voice.
"Of course." Did she even have to ask?
"But in a distant way, right? You hold yourself back so if anything ever happens, you won't miss me too much."
Tears welled in Tori's eyes. How could she make her sister understand? "That's not true."
"I think it is, at least a little bit," Piper said with a sad sigh. "Now that I look at it, I can see how you hold yourself back. You do the same with your job. You train people how to handle the worst, how to put on a good face and move on. But you deal with the superficial, smoothing things over so no one has to see the truth underneath the façade."
"The truth is rarely as pretty as we want it to be." And the truth was, she'd made a mistake. She'd thought she could have one night with them. She'd thought she could sneak around the whole love thing.
If she never loved anyone, she never had to lose them.
Had she held her sister a bit at arm's length? Had she treated her more like a role model to worship and less like family?
Piper stared, shaking her head gently, as if she had no idea who Tori was. "Don't have children, Torrance. It's not fair if you can't love them with every bit of your heart and soul. If you can't give them your all, you'll ruin them."
It was the first time her sister had called her by her professional name. Tori felt the distance she'd always tried to maintain widening between her and her sister. And it terrified her.
"I love my nephews." Her stomach was in a knot. It was so much less painful not to think about the depth of her relationship with Piper. Couldn't they just be friends? Did they really have to talk about profound stuff?
Wasn't it enough for her to be kind to the people around her? She didn't have to be tangled up in their hearts and their lives if they were just "friends."
Piper narrowed her eyes as she studied Tori. "Do you? I think you think they're safe because they're young, but children can die, too, and if you think for a second you wouldn't be utterly destroyed by losing one of your babies then you haven't thought this plan out."
God, she'd never thought about it. She'd thought about being friendly with a husband-she could get by without really needing a man-but she'd always wanted kids. The idea of anything bad happening to little Sabir and Michael flattened her with agonizing grief-and they weren't even her babies.
The world could be a terrible, sometimes intolerant place. No one was guaranteed forever. No one was guaranteed joy and happiness. What happened if something unspeakable happened to one of her children? How could she go on living? How would she endure the pain?
"Are you all right?" Piper asked.
She shook her head. "No. I'm not. I can't stand the way you're looking at me. Please, Piper. I'm not some kind of monster."
Piper crossed the room and hugged her tight. "I love you, but you have to figure out what you want and how much of yourself you're willing to risk to have it. You have to look at what happened to our parents through different eyes. You're still seeing it like a child would."
"I don't understand." She didn't understand anything.
The night before had been so beautiful, and now she felt as if she stood in a maelstrom of emotion. She wanted the Thurston-Hughes brothers. She ached with terrible desperation, yet that very ache told Tori that she should walk away now. If she didn't, she could be left in pieces someday. Already, she could feel tears of sorrow and loss rolling down her cheeks. If the worst happened and she started crying, would she ever stop?
Piper slanted a gaze her way, compassion in her blue eyes. "You are taking that loss as the sum of their lives. You aren't looking at all the joy they had before. I don't believe Dad killed himself. He was mourning her, but eventually he would have come out of it. He would always have missed her, always have loved her, but he would have found a life again. I get that you're scared, but it's time to move past it. You don't honor them by living a life where nothing and no one can touch you. You were blessed with two parents who loved each other. Learn from them. Grasp love and joy and happiness with both hands. God, Mindy, you have to let yourself feel because there's no life worth living that doesn't also involve loss. If you don't ache sometimes it's because you have nothing inside."