With each step I took up the walkway of Cara and Trace’s house, dread built in my stomach like a snowball rolling down a mountain in an avalanche. It’d been gaining momentum from the second I’d seen the 911 text on my phone, not even five minutes ago. Destiny, Cara and I reserved that code for real emergencies.
Well, at least Cara and Destiny did. I’d been known to abuse that power every once in a while when something was just really important, like when my brother JJ, who Destiny had been in love with since she was five, moved back to town and I didn’t think that Destiny knew…she did. But, before I was privy to that information, I’d sent out an emergency text to Cara to meet me at Destiny’s so we could tell her.
The group text that had been sent out just minutes ago had been from Cara and she never abused that power. Which meant this was urgent. It was from Cara and it was urgent!
The second the code had lit up on my screen, tears began streaming down my face. Hudson, who had stayed the entire night and made about fifty percent of my recurring fantasies a reality, was at the stove making pancakes. When he noticed I was crying he’d shut off the burner and rushed to my side. Kneeling in front of me, he wiped my tears away before the first one had even had a chance to hit the floor.
When I told him I needed to leave, he offered to take Romeo out for his morning walk before he headed to the station. I nodded, threw on sweats, grabbed my purse and here I was.
And I was pretty sure I was going to throw up.
I paused and pressed my hand to my rolling stomach. How could this be happening? Cara had been through so much. She’d just really started her life with my brother.
Oh, God. I hadn’t even thought about Trace. This would destroy him. Cara was his whole world, his life, his everything. They just found each other. They were getting married in six months.
Anger started mixing with the fear and sadness.
This wasn’t fair. How could this be happening? How was I going to face this again?
No. I shook my head.
This was not about me. The only thing that mattered was Cara. Cara and Trace. I needed to be strong for them.
Lifting my hand, I wiped my cheeks, which once again had trails of tears covering them. In an effort to shake it off I blew out a breath and shook my shoulders.
“It’s going to be okay,” Destiny’s shaky voice sounded from behind me.
I turned, and when I did, I saw that she wasn’t doing that much better of a job holding it together than I was.
“Wanna rock, papers, scissors to see who’s going to be the strong one?” I teased.
She grinned as a tear fell down her face. “Sorry. I just had a baby. My emotions are all over the place. You’re going to have to take the L on this one.”
Just having Destiny by my side was already making me feel stronger. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it. Cara’s strong. Everything will be okay.”
I hoped…
“Wow,” Destiny sniffed. “That was pretty good. I almost believed you.”
“Almost and pretty good are going to have to work, because that was my A game.”
We took a moment, drawing strength from each other, before we nodded and made our way up the steps of the front porch to the door.
“Remember, just be normal. Natural,” Destiny reminded me. “That’s the rule.”
After about a year into Cara’s diagnosis and treatments, she’d called a meeting in which she’d forbidden us to treat her any differently because she was sick. She demanded that jokes still be made at her expense, that we called her out when she was being too sappy or na?ve—and that we never, under any circumstances, look at her with pity. She told us that as long as she was breathing, it was a good day. The rule Destiny mentioned was that we were to treat her exactly the same as we had before she was diagnosed. She was still Cara. Not sick Cara.
We’d all been thirteen at the time, so I hadn’t appreciated just how wisely and gracefully she was handling the situation. Now, as an adult, there was no way I would handle it anywhere close to as well as she did. We might’ve nicknamed ourselves Charlie’s Angels, but Cara truly was an angel.
“Right.” I nodded as I tried to get back in that headspace.
I’d given some Oscar worthy performances over the years of her illness. Now, I was out of practice because, thankfully, she’d been in remission for five years.
After two knocks, the door opened and Cara smiled sweetly. She didn’t look upset or happy. She looked…blank. Kind of like a Stepford wife.
Showtime.
“This better be good, I left a man in boxers making me breakfast at my house.”
Shit!
I had not meant to divulge that information. It had just slipped out when I tried to come up with something witty and “natural” to say.
Both Destiny and Cara stared at me. Or, more accurately, gawked.
“So, what’s the emergency?” I brushed past Cara and the damn declaration I’d just made.
We all took “our” places around Cara’s front room. Cara in her corner chair. Me on one side of the couch and Destiny on the other.
“We will be circling back around to the boxer-clad man in your house,” Cara promised before taking a deep breath and sitting up straighter. “So last night, Trace forced me to go the hospital—”