Page 66 of Hero for the Holidays

He would never treat Fia that lightly again.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THEDAYOFthe party they were working at being sneaky and also getting everything together as efficiently as possible. Fia was ferrying a cake over as soon as Landry came to get Lila, and she had a free moment to be sneaky. She had managed to shape the cake into a gecko, and that had been a whole feat of sculpture. Piping the little scaly bumps onto him had been fun.

And he looked amazing if she said so herself.

They were doing a little bit of a complicated dance. Lila had spent part of the day with Fia, and then she would be going back to Landry’s, but then also thought she was going to the King farmhouse for dinner, which was where the party would actually be. And that was where Fia would meet them all.

Landry pulled into the driveway, and Lila rushed over and gave Fia a quick hug.

Fia just stood there and then watched as her daughter ran out the door to the car.

“Bye,” she said, processing that feeling. The hug. Which hadn’t been the first time that they had ever hugged, but had been the first time Lila casually initiated the contact.

Fia still felt...like everything around her had to be temporary. Like this couldn’t be real.

Like the cake she had made might vanish, no matter how much work she had put into it. No matter how much work she had put into making the process feel real.

Because how could it be real?

Lila being here. Her and Landry working together. It felt like it might all evaporate. The truth was, the last time she’d been this happy, it had all evaporated.

It was so easy for her to cling to the toxic parts of her relationship with Landry. Because it was the toxic parts that had killed them in the end.

But he had also made her into someone confident. Someone who had felt beautiful. He had given her stretches of happiness in a time when she had been happy at home.

She knew that she had done the same for him. That what they had done for each other wasn’t small.

It was just that it had gotten lost. In hurt feelings and anger. She had likened their experience to toddlers playing with knives. And in the end, they had been two teenagers trying to defuse a bomb. There had only been one way that it could end. In an explosion.

One that had devastated them both. One that had left fallout that had long-lasting implications.

So she held on to the hug, because there was still all the other stuff. Because even though things were progressing, she still felt...

Was there ever a point where you felt adequate?

And in this circumstance, was there ever going to be a time when she felt secure, or like she wasn’t...

She closed her eyes.

Lila patently hero-worshipped Landry.

She seemed to enjoy Fia.

But it was difficult to get a real read on her.

Landry carried the wound of what felt like abandoning a child deep inside of him. And even though he said he understood everything now, she wondered if that was still there. And it also made her wonder if Lila might carry around some resentment of her too.

No matter what she said.

She had gone through so much.

What-ifhad been Fia’s enemy for a very long time. It was very, very hard to stay away from asking what-if right now.

The truth was, she had wanted to spare Lila from going through any pain. But she hadn’t done that, had she?

It made her feel like she’d failed. Even though in many ways she felt like she had succeeded, this end point made her feel like she’d failed. Having Lila back here made her feel like she had failed. And at the same time she wanted her here.

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