Emmett laughed.
I wanted to bottle the sound up, keep it tucked away for a moment when I needed something to warm me up. Such an unhelpful thought.
“How have we never crossed paths all these years?” he asked.
Because I obsessively checked when he’d be in town and made damn sure I wasn’t in the vicinity of any Wards when that happened, but I couldn’t exactly tell him that. I had a boyfriend, and being around Emmett—to be perfectly honest—wasn’t fair for any guy. Not with how I felt about him for so long.
Nick knew it too. One wine-buzzed night, I’d admitted it to him when we were talking about people from our past.
It was a petty admission too, coming on the heels of him telling me that his ex was a Playboy centerfold.
Naturally, I told him that once upon a time, Emmett Ward had been my absolute ideal. Not something he’d liked to hear.
“Well, when I started planning parties, I wasn’t ready to hire staff. If I wasn’t working on the weekend, I was here.” I swallowed. “Or I was traveling with Nick, if he asked me to come with him.”
“Did you do that a lot?”
I nodded. “More than I wanted, to be honest. But that was mainly at the beginning of our relationship.”
He listened quietly, giving an occasional sliding push to my back.
“Tim was just back into good health then,” I continued. “But he was weak for a while. His immune system wasn’t the same for close to a year. That spring, just after baseball season started, my mom got sick. The flu absolutely knocked her on her ass, and because she was so busy taking care of him and Poppy and everyone else, it turned into double pneumonia.”
With my feet dragging along the ground, I slowed the swing. He settled his hands around the curve of my waist to bring me fully to a stop, only lingering for a moment before he lowered onto the swing next to me. Emmett angled his body so that he could see my face, and once I’d stopped, I mirrored his position.
“You were gone when she was sick,” he guessed, eyes unwavering on mine.
Slowly, I nodded. “She didn’t even tell me she was going to the hospital. I got a call from Poppy; she was in the parking lot sobbing because she got so freaked out seeing Mom on oxygen and getting her vitals monitored.” I closed my eyes and felt the familiar pressure on my chest when I thought about that phone call. “We’re so used to Tim being the one who’s sick that I kinda forgot that my mom is mortal too, you know?”
“Where were you?”
I pulled in a slow breath. “Boston.”
“So you flew back.”
Again, I nodded. “Before the first pitch was thrown, I sent Nick a message so he’d know where I went. Took a taxi from the ballpark and flew home with only the clothes on my back.”
His eyes were steady, unblinking as he listened.
“He understood, though?”
I let out a quiet laugh. “Yes and no. He thought I should’ve been able to watch the game and fly home with him the next day because I had more than one sibling here to help.”
Emmett’s brow furrowed, his mouth firming into a slight frown. Saying the words out loud now, I couldn’t believe that I didn’t break up with him right then. Anyone who stood a chance with me had one unyielding truth to deal with—I’d always be there if my family needed me. I didn’t need them to understand why I couldn’t delegate this one thing in my life, or why it didn’t matter to me that I had other siblings who could help.
I needed them to respect it and support me when things were hard.
Taking care of my family now was the greatest responsibility in my entire life.