Page 19 of Because You Loved Me

“Are you going to tell me I should be smiling?”

“Pfft. It’s your day. You smile if you want to. You can do anything you want to today, Noa.” She grew serious and looked her straight in the eye. “Anything,” she repeated. “I hope you know that, Noa. Today should be about you. Whatever it is that you want. Not what anyone else wants. Do you understand?”

Noa nodded, although she wasn’t sure she did. At least not completely.Did her grandma know the truth about her and Ryan?

Before she could let her thoughts travel any further down that path, Grandma Rose reached her hand out and dropped a thin necklace in her hand. “I don’t know about the whole borrowed, new, blue, and old superstition, but I wanted you to have this.”

Noa opened her hand to see what her grandmother had placed in it.

“Your grandfather gave it to me on our wedding day,” she said.

Noa held up the familiar necklace. A dainty gold rose, on a delicate chain. Her grandmother never took it off.

“I can’t?—”

“You can. I want you to have it, Noa. Every day wearing that rose reminded me of the love I had with Frank. Even after he was gone, I knew how deeply loved I was and always would be because of the way he loved me.”

“So why give it to me, Grandma?”

She smiled softly. “As a reminder of the love that you deserve, my dear.”

* * *

“I wasn’t sure I’d hear from you today,” his baby sister said the moment she picked up the phone.

“Technically, you reached out to me.”

She laughed before turning serious, matching his tone. “How are you doing, Asher?”

He looked from the window, back down to the countertop in front of him. “You want the truth?”

“Always.”

“I’m pissed.”

“I know.”

Asher couldn’t help but chuckle. “Then why did you ask?”

“I guess I was hoping you’d tell me you were excited.”

They both knew that was never an option.

“Did you open the letter?” Kat asked before he could respond. “You’re the first one who got their letter early, you know? Everyone else had to wait. I wish I could have my letter right now. That’s the only part of all this that?—”

“Wait. What?” Asher shook his head and tried to keep up with his sister’s ramblings. “What letter?”

“Asher! The envelope Steven gave you last night right before you took off. It’s a letter.”

“A letter?”

Asher turned slowly in his small kitchen, as if the envelope would appear. He’d forgotten all about it and only now had a vague recollection of his father’s assistant handing him a manila envelope after he and the lawyer finished telling him he’d basically have to leave his life for the next six months.

In his ear, his sister was still going on and on about how could he have possibly forgotten to open such an important letter while he moved through his suite to where he’d hung his jacket the night before.

“I had a few other things on my mind, Kat.”

Like a sexy woman in the elevator.

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