Page 95 of Wish You Were Mine
“I know it’s kind of expected,” she went on with a small shrug, “that family drops everything when someone needs them. But if it’s not something you can handle, you shouldn’t feel bad about that. You’re allowed to protect your peace, too. You’re only human. And from the sounds of it, you’ve already carried a lot.”
I met her gaze again, and somehow, her eyes were even softer than before.
She gave my hand a gentle squeeze.
And in that simple touch, I felt something loosen in my chest. Like she understood. Not just what I was saying, but the weight of it all. Completely.
“I guess I’ve still got several months to figure out what I’m going to do with that,” I said. “And who knows, maybe my mom can stay with her sister while she figures out her next steps. My aunt Vivian helped Asher out a lot when things got rough hisjunior year of high school. Maybe she’ll be willing to step in again—fill in the gaps that Asher and I can’t.”
“Might be worth looking into,” Lucy said. “Even just having a few options to offer your mom could make the transition a little easier on all of you.”
I nodded slowly, my thumb brushing over the side of her hand. “Thanks for being so cool about this. I didn’t really know what to expect when I dropped the whole ‘my mom’s in prison for manslaughter’ thing. But somehow you made it feel easy. Which is probably crazy, since we barely know each other.”
“I’m glad you felt safe sharing it with me,” she said softly. “I know how difficult it is to talk about the hard stuff. I’m not exactly great at it myself.”
And there it was again—that flicker in her eyes. A shadow of something tucked away. Quiet. Private.
The kind of pain you learned to live with but didn’t talk about.
And I couldn’t help wondering…what was Lucy not saying?
28
LUCY
“Well…”Owen glanced across the table at me when we were done eating, his smile a little crooked in that way I was starting to love. “We still never got around to talking about that party-planning thing, did we?”
“Oh. Right.” I let out a small laugh. “Guess we didn’t.”
But that was okay. The party planning was just our backup excuse for having dinner together anyway.
I appreciated him letting me in tonight, though. That he’d trusted me with those hard parts of his story.
It couldn’t have been easy. But then, it sounded like Owen was used to hard things.
Losing his dad and sister in the same moment.
Watching his mom disappear into addiction.
Taking care of his younger brother after everything fell apart.
Carrying more fear and responsibility than any kid should ever have to.
I could just picture a twelve-year-old Owen sitting by hismom’s bed, counting her breaths, just hoping she’d still be alive in the morning.
How did you even survive that kind of reality? Living in constant fear yet being helpless to actually fix anything, never knowing if one day everything would finally fall apart?
Which…it had.
A couple of times.
His mom had overdosed at least once. And then, just when they thought things were going okay and the nightmare was behind them, she relapsed, and two people he loved were gone in an instant because of it.
It was a miracle that Owen turned out as well as he had.
And the fact that he was sitting here now—calm, kind, and offering to help me plan a party when he had so much on his own plate—spoke volumes about the kind of man he was.
The kind of man any woman would be so lucky to have.
