“I watched you watch Lex die and know how much you suffered, Haddie. How much you still suffer. I saw you hold Danny while he fell apart and then try to fill in what’s missing for Maddie as best as you could. I saw you internalize it, refuse to deal with it. I watched my best friend lose herself with the worry and the fear and the grief. And that’s more than understandable.” I hear her sniffle, and I feel relieved that she is emotional right now because it’s taking everything I have to hold my tears back. I grit my teeth, and I’m sure she thinks it’s because I’m angry at her, but it’s because I’m trying to prevent the confession about the biopsy on my lips.

“I’ve witnessed you drag your feet to take the first gene test and then refuse to take the second one when it could ease all of this fear inside you. Fear that you have cancer too. Fear that you can’t let anyone love you, fall in love with you—make a life with you—because you’re going to die like Lex did, and you’re going to leave him devastated just like Danny is.”

It’s like hearing the words aloud validate my feelings and also makes my own stubbornness sound ludicrous all at the same time. I bite my bottom lip as she sits patiently, giving me the time to absorb her on-target commentary. She’s right on every level of course, but the catch is that Becks was able to coax out from its hiding place the part of me that was afraid to engage. It just didn’t last long before the fear of my fated future had me wanting to hold back again.

I can’t speak quite yet, so I just nod my head as I brush away the lone tear that’s escaped.

“I think the reason you snuck out was because Becks scares the hell out of you.” Her voice softens with compassion. “He’s making you think and feel things you don’t want to feel, so if you leave, then it just makes it easier for you to ignore something you both sure as hell deserve. He sees the fire in your eyes and wants to play with it … and that? That’s hard to find since most men would consider that a challenge to their manhood.” Rylee reaches out with the bottle of wine and refills my glass as I finally look up to meet her eyes. I nod ever so slightly at her, letting her see the fear in my eyes and telling her she’s hit the nail on the head. “Haddie, you can’t close yourself off forever. A life without passion and love is like slowly freezing to death.”

I exhale a shaky breath, her words like a vice squeezing my heart and an exorcist relieving the acrid fear tearing apart my soul. She has no clue how dead-on she is, how she is speaking to the parts of me drowning in fear right now—and I love her for it, but I also want to forget about it if I can. Not think about any of this for the day. Shove it away and feel normal again.

“Shit, I have passion.” The comment is a knee-jerk reflex on my part, my habit of defensive deflection. I realize my mistake the minute it’s out of my mouth, but she continues before I can correct myself.

“A one-night stand is not passion. It’s a quick fix.”

I laugh nervously, not liking the magnifying glass turned on me. “Well, see, I’m already showing growth because at least Becks wasn’t just a one-night stand. He was a twofer.”

She smiles and just shakes her head. “I’m feeling a nostalgic déjà vu but with roles reversed here,” she says, making me laugh sincerely as I think back to a day when we discussed her and Colton’s one-night stand. The one-night stand that I joked was going to be a thirty-night-stand but that never ended after all.

“God, Ry … I like Becks.” It’s not much but it’s a start.

“He’s a hard guy not to like, but he’s hardly your type….”

“No,” I tell her, not sure if she understands what I’m saying, “I like Becks.” I emphasize the word again in a way that causes her eyes to widen and her mouth to form the shape of an O momentarily before a satisfied smirk ghosts her lips.

And I don’t quite know why I’m telling her this since I’m not going to allow anything further to happen between us. Maybe I’m giving her something since I feel so guilty about neglecting to tell her about the biopsy.

“Okay …” She draws the word out, prompting me to continue.

I struggle to put my thoughts into words. “He really is a great guy,” I try to explain. “I mean, my head’s messed-up, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cried or yelled at him, and he just … he just stays there so I know he’s there, but not in that ‘he’s a pushover’ kind of way.” Tears well in my eyes, and I hate the blatant tell of what my heart feels. “But right now … it just might be the ‘right person but at the wrong time’ kind of thing.”

She takes a sip of her wine and then looks at the liquid in the glass before meeting my eyes, her mouth turned down at the edges. “Humans are drawn to each other’s rough edges. Look at Colton and me.” The look in her eyes reinforces the words she speaks.

“Well, screw the rough. I’m more jagged as of late.” I try to defuse things with humor. Broken shards of slicing glass is more like it. Come too close and you’ll get hurt by association alone.

“And yet he still called.” She’s relentless now.

“And I still ran.” I hang my head in shame.

“Haddie, look at me.” She waits patiently until I lift my eyes to meet hers. “I love you both. You’re both a huge part of my life, so, of course, it would be awesome if something worked out here … but you have to do what’s best for you. I just know that Becks is the type of guy who’s patient enough to help you face your fears if you let him….”

“Yeah,” I say, but right now she has no clue how close I’m coming to seeing my worst fears realized. She sits patiently, expression impassive as I think, collect myself to keep from blurting everything out, knowing she’s right but not ready to admit it yet. “I just can’t yet. It’s wrong to walk into something knowing your head is not in the right place. That’s just not fair to him.”

“I kind of think that’s for him to decide,” she says, chewing on the side of her cheek momentarily before she rises from her chair and heads to the pantry. She returns with a bag of Hershey’s Kisses and throws them on the counter in front of me. “Eat some. They help.”

“That’s the fix for all of this? Eat Kisses?” I laugh, wishing life were just that easy: all things fixable with chocolate.

“Fix? No, but it helps … and I think I’m going to quote a very dear friend of mine,” she says with a smirk on her face, and I know my own words are headed back at me. “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone, Had. I know you’re scared, but push through it. You just might miss the opportunity to live again.”

I glare at her momentarily and curse myself for giving her the ammunition to fire that comment back at me. Her grin just grows wider, and I know what will knock that sarcastic smile right off her face.

Ready.

Aim.

Fire.

“I retook the test yesterday.” And a biopsy. The words are on the tip of my tongue, but I bite them back. I can’t ruin her first day back and posthoneymoon bliss with something that might be a nothing.

The chocolate she’s just unwrapped drops to the counter as her eyes widen and her mouth falls lax.

“You did?” Her eyes meet mine, and I can tell that with my admission she realizes just how much Becks has the potential to mean to me.

“I did.” My voice is barely a whisper. She’s on her feet in a beat and has her arms wrapped around me, squeezing me tight, no words needed. We stand like this for a few seconds.

“Well, hell, if you guys are going to finally get into the girl-on-girl thing, I get first dibs on watching, being the husband and all.” The voice at the doorway behind my back has both Rylee and me laughing through the emotion clogging our throats.

“Nah,” Rylee says as she releases me, a smirk on her face and love in her eyes as she looks at her husband. “I’ve kinda got a thing for baseball players. They’ve got big, hard sticks,” she teases, eliciting a deep laugh from him over some inside joke I obviously don’t get.

“Oh really? We’re back to that now? Just remember it’s not the size of the stick, sweetheart, but how you use it.” His smile grows wider as he saunters into the kitchen, the epitome of how arrogance can be sexy, and he owns her attention even before he kisses her softly on the lips.

“Size matters, Donavan,” I tell him, earning a scoff and a raise of his eyebrows in argument. “If it didn’t, they’d be selling four-inch dildos, now, wouldn’t they?”

He throws his head back in laughter as he closes the distance and kisses me on the top of my head. “Point made. Good to see you, Had.”

I look up at the devastatingly handsome husband of my best friend—the ever true bad boy who’s been claimed and is completely smitten with her. His board shorts ride low on his tanned, toned torso, but it’s the way he’s looking at his wife that is the most attractive thing about him. “Hey, Colton. Marriage looks good on you.”

He smirks, his lone dimple flashing and his eyes sparkling with mirth. “My wife on me would look better, but I’ve gotta take what I can get, right?”

The laughter comes easier this time, the emotional burden of the moment lightened by this man, who’s such a mixture of contradictions and turned out to be so much more than what I ever expected him to be for Rylee. And it was exactly what she needed.

“Should I leave?” I ask, feigning like I’m going to get up from my chair as Colton skirts around the island and grabs a beer from the refrigerator. “I know you newlyweds need your privacy and all.”

A blind man couldn’t miss the quick look between them, which has Rylee’s cheeks flushing and my mind whirling about what they got up to somewhere without privacy on their honeymoon. And my heart swells with love for the two of them. After everything they went through, they deserve all of the happiness in the world.