My face fell slightly as I contemplated my answer. “He didn’t overdo it, did he? I mean, he knows he doesn’t have to always offer up these crazy romantic gestures. I’ll love him no matter what.”
She hung the bikini back on the rack and took a few steps closer. Wrapping her arm around my shoulder, she ushered me toward some chairs in the corner of the store. Luckily, no abandoned husbands or boyfriends were left in the store today, so the spot was all ours.
“What do you mean?” she asked as we took our seats.
“I just worry sometimes, after everything that has happened—the heart surgery and his guilt over not being there—that he feels this overwhelming need to make up for it. I don’t ever want to be a burden to him, Grace.” Feeling like I was confessing a horrible sin, my hands nervously wrung together.
Jude was the most amazing person I’d ever met. Admitting that I thought he could somehow be acting out of guilt rather than a place of love felt like the worst kind of crime imaginable.
“Lailah, I know the two of you have been through more in two years than most couples experience in a lifetime, but please believe me when I say, these grand gestures that you consider so monumental are nothing compared to the love that man has for you. When he called me last week and asked if we wouldn’t mind flying out for the weekend, there was nothing but excitement in his voice. I remember the old Jude. He was so filled with remorse that there was no room for anything else. This isn’t him. Let him love you the way you deserve to be loved.”
I let her words settle between us, feeling them sink in and solidify. It was exactly what I’d needed to hear. The confirmation pushed away any lingering doubts.
I’d spent the first twenty-two years of my life believing my life would be spent within the walls of a hospital room, only to find an entire world just waiting outside its doors. Jude had made that possible. He’d made me possible, and I’d never felt more confident in myself.
But that little girl, the one who never got to experience the thrills of learning to ride a bike or jumping into a pile of leaves, often wondered if those around me noticed the subtle differences between me and the rest of the world. Did they pity me? Did they feel the need to make right the wrongs my damaged heart had taken from me? It was something I’d wondered and struggled with since the scars across my chest had closed up and healed, and life had moved on around them. As time had gone by, these feelings would ebb and flow like crashing waves on the ocean.
And I’d always come back to this one simple conclusion. My family, Grace, Jude—they all loved me for me, and that was all that mattered.
“You’re right. I’m being silly—once again.”
“It’s not silly, Lailah. You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t worry about others. It’s just who you are and one of the many reasons I am proud to call you my friend.”
I couldn’t help but smirk. “Well, now, you’re just buttering me up.” I laughed.
“I am. Can we continue shopping? Or at least pretend to? Zander is about to go AWOL with the lack of movement.”
“Of course, but on one condition.”
“Anything.”
“Can I hold him for a bit?”
She smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“WHERE THE HELL is he?” I roared, slamming my hand hard against my desk.
My secretary, Stephanie, cowered in the corner, unfamiliar with my strange behavior, which instantly stilled me.
“Forgive me, Stephanie.” I cringed, holding my hands out in a silent plea for mercy.
She nodded and took a paltry step forward. I loosened the tie around my neck in a desperate attempt to allow the free flow of oxygen to my lungs again. Although standing in a room so large that it could dwarf many New York apartments, I felt like I was suffocating.
Is this how Lailah felt all those times when she couldn’t breathe because her heart wouldn’t allow it?
I gripped my chest and realized that it wasn’t my heart that wasn’t working. It was my brain. I needed to calm myself and take a deep breath.
Just like my father before me, I wandered to the large windows overlooking the city below and began to count. By the time I reached ten, the blood in my veins began to slow as my breathing returned to normal.
“Find him, please,” I said.
Stephanie still stood near the doorway, probably too scared to leave without orders.
“Quickly,” I added.
She scurried away as I stood stoic, looking at the street below.
I’d practically grown up in this office. From the time I was a young child, I’d been raised to take over the family business. My father had been a hard man to love. So driven to succeed, sometimes, all he had seen was a way to move ahead rather than noticing the sons he’d left behind.
He’d loved us in his own way. I knew giving everything he had to this company was how he’d shown us the depths of his heart. Standing here and looking out at the same view his own eyes had settled on year after year, I understood that, now more than ever—unlike him—I couldn’t let it consume me.
I wouldn’t.