Letting Go

Dedication

To anyone who has lost someone: Don’t ever stop moving. That doesn’t mean you’re moving on or forgetting, it simply means you’re still living. One step at a time, and one day at a time. This is for you.

Contents

Prologue

Grey

May 10, 2012

“
T
HEN OVER THERE
is where the girls and I will be waiting before the ceremony starts,” I said, pointing to the all-season tent standing just off to the side. “I think the coordinator said she’d get us in there when the photographer is taking pictures of Ben and the boys on the other side of the house so he won’t see me.”

I glanced behind me to my mom and soon-to-be mother-in-law talking about the gazebo, and what it would look like with the greenery and flowers, and I smiled to myself. They’d been going back and forth on whether we should keep the gazebo as it was or decorate it ever since Ben and I had decided on The Lake House as our wedding and reception site. And from the few words I was hearing now, they were still undecided. I honestly didn’t care how it was decorated. I wanted to be married to Ben, and in three days, I would be.

“Grey, this place is freaking
gorgeous
. I can’t believe you were able to get it on such short notice,” my maid of honor and best friend, Janie, said in awe.

“I know, but it’s perfect, right?”

“Absolutely perfect.”

I grabbed her hand and rested my head on her shoulder as I stared at the part of the property where the reception would be held. Ben and I had promised our families that we wouldn’t get married until we’d graduated from college, but that had been a much harder promise to keep than we’d thought. School had let out for summer a few days ago, and we wanted to move off campus for our junior year . . . together. That hadn’t exactly gone over well with my parents. They didn’t want us living together until we were married. I think in my dad’s mind it helped him continue to believe I was his innocent little girl.

I’d been dating Ben since I was thirteen years old; the innocent part flew out the window over three years ago. Not that Dad needed to know that. After a long talk with both our parents, they agreed to let us get married now instead of two years from now.

That was seven weeks ago. Even though Ben had asked me to marry him last Christmas, we’d officially gotten engaged once we’d received the okay from our parents, and had started planning our wedding immediately. Seven weeks of being engaged. Seven years of being together. And in three days I would finally be Mrs. Benjamin Craft.

Given how the last few weeks had dragged by, it felt like our day would never get here.

My phone rang and I pulled it out of my pocket. My lips tilted up when I saw Jagger’s name and face on the screen, but I ignored the call. Putting my phone back in my pocket, I kept my other hand firmly wrapped around Janie’s and walked over to where the rest of the bridesmaids were standing around and talking. My aunts and grandma had gathered around the gazebo-debating duo, and were helping them with the pros and cons.

“So what are we going to do tonight?” I asked, hoping to get some kind of information about the bachelorette party.

“Nice try.” Janie snorted. She started saying something else, but my phone rang again.

Glancing down and seeing Jagger again, I thought about answering it for a few seconds before letting out a soft laugh and ignoring the call a second time. I knew why he was calling. He was bored out of his mind and wanted me to save him from the golf day Ben and all the guys were having before the bachelor party. Normally I would have saved him from the torture of golfing, but today was about Ben. If he wanted to go golfing with all his guys, then Jagger just had to suck it up for his best friend.

Almost immediately after ignoring the call, I got a text from him.

Answer the goddamn phone, Grey!

My head jerked back when the phone in my hand began ringing just as soon as I’d read the message, and all I could do was stare at it for a few seconds. A feeling of dread and unease formed in my chest, quickly unfurling and spreading through my arms and stomach.

Some part of my mind registered two other ring tones, but I couldn’t focus on them, or make myself look away from Jagger’s lopsided smile on my screen. With a shaky finger, I pressed the green button and brought the phone up to my ear.

Before I could say anything, his panicked voice filled the phone.

“Grey? Grey! Are you there? Fuck, Grey, say something so I know you’re there!”

There was a siren and yelling in the background, and the feeling that had spread through my body now felt like it was choking me. I didn’t know what was happening, but somehow . . . somehow I knew my entire world was about to change. My legs started shaking and my breath came out in hard rushes.

“I—what’s happ—” I cut off quickly and turned to look at my mom and Ben’s. Both had phones to their ears. Ben’s mom was screaming, with tears falling down her cheeks; my mom looked like the ground had just been ripped out from underneath her.

Jagger was talking, I knew his voice was loud and frantic, but I was having trouble focusing on the words. It sounded like he was yelling at me from miles away.

“What?” I whispered.

Everyone around me was freaking out, trying to figure out what was going on. One of my friends was asking who I was talking to, but I couldn’t even turn to look at her, or be sure who it was that had asked. I couldn’t take my eyes off the only other women currently talking on a phone.

“Grey! Tell me where you are, I’m coming to get you!”

I blinked a few times and looked down at my lap. I was sitting on the ground. When had I sat down?

Janie squatted in front of me and grabbed my shoulders to shake me before grabbing my cheeks so I would look at her instead of to where my mom and Ben’s were clinging to each other.

“What?” I repeated, my voice barely audible.

Just before Janie reached for my phone, I heard a noise that sounded weighted and pained. A choking sound I’d never heard from Jagger in the eleven years we’d been friends. The grief in it was enough to force a sharp cry from my own chest, and I didn’t even struggle against Janie when she took the phone from me.

I didn’t understand anything that was happening around me, but somehow I knew everything. A part of me had heard Jagger’s words. A part of me understood what the horrified cries meant, the cries that quickly spread throughout every one of my friends. My family. Ben’s family. A part of me acknowledged the sense of loss that had added to the dread, unease, and grief—and knew why it was there.

A part of me knew the wedding I’d just been envisioning would never happen.

Chapter 1

Two years later . . .

Grey

May 10, 2014

I
N
A
F
O
G
,
I dressed, and sat down on the side of my bed when I was done. Grabbing the hard top of the graduation cap, I looked down at it in my hands until the tears filling my eyes made it impossible to see anything other than blurred shapes. I knew I had to leave, but at that moment I didn’t care.

I didn’t care that I’d done my makeup for the first time in two years and I was ruining it. I didn’t care that I was graduating from college. I didn’t care that I was already running twenty minutes late before I’d sat down.

I just didn’t care.

Falling to my side, I grabbed the necklace that hadn’t left my neck once in the last couple years, and pulled it out from under my shirt until I was gripping the wedding band I’d bought for Ben. The one he should be wearing but I hadn’t been able to part with—almost like I’d needed to keep some part of him with me.

The last year had been easier to get through than the one before it. I hadn’t needed my friends constantly trying to get me to do my schoolwork. I hadn’t needed Janie pulling me out of bed every morning, forcing me to shower and dress for the day. I’d even taken off my engagement ring and put it away a few months ago. But exactly two years ago today, I’d been showing off the place where I was going to marry Ben. Completely oblivious to anything bad in the world.

And Ben had died.

At twenty years old, his heart had failed and he’d died before he’d even dropped to the ground on the golf course. He’d always seemed so active and healthy; no tests had ever picked up on the rare heart condition that had taken him too early. Doctors said it wasn’t something they could test for. I didn’t believe them then, and even though I’d read news articles about similar deaths in young people, I wasn’t sure if I believed them now. All I knew was that he was gone.

Heavy footsteps echoed through the hall of my apartment seconds before Jagger was standing in the doorway of my bedroom, a somber look on his face.

“How did I know you wouldn’t have made it out of here?” One corner of his mouth twitched up before falling again.

“I can’t do it,” I choked out, and tightened my hold on the ring. “How am I supposed to celebrate anything on a day that brought so much pain?”

Jagger took in a deep breath through his nose then pushed away from the door frame. Taking the few steps over to the bed, he sat down by my feet and stared straight ahead as silence filled the room.

“I honestly don’t know, Grey,” he finally said with a small shrug. “The only way I made it to my car and your apartment was because I knew Ben wanted this, and would still want it for us.”

“He was supposed to be here,” I mumbled.

“I know.”

“Our two-year anniversary would have been in a few days.”

There was a long pause before Jagger breathed, “I know.”

I stopped myself before I could go on. Nothing I said right now would help either of us, not when all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball on the bed that was supposed to be
our
bed, and give in to the grief. I had to remember that today wasn’t hard for only me. I hadn’t been the only one to lose him. Ben and Jagger had been best friends since they were six. And two years ago they’d been in the middle of a conversation when Jagger had looked over at Ben because he hadn’t answered, and watched as he fell.

“Jag?” I whispered.

“Yeah, Grey?”

“How do we do it?”

The bed shifted as he leaned forward to rest his forearms on his legs, turning his head so he could look at me. “Do what?”

“Keep moving on. I thought this year was easier, I thought I was doing better until this last week. And then today . . .” I drifted off, letting the words hang in the air for a few seconds before saying, “It’s like no time has passed. It’s like I’m right back where I was when you picked me up and took me to the hospital. I feel like my world has ended all over again. There are still some days when I don’t want to get out of bed, but not like this.”

“There isn’t an answer to that question. Even if there were, it would be different for you, for me, for anyone else who’d ever been in this situation. I get up and keep going because I know I have something to live for, and I know it’s what he would want. I can’t think about how I’ll deal with the next day, I just take each day as it comes. There will always be hard days, Grey, always. We just need to take them with the good days, and keep living.”

“I feel like it’s cruel to his memory to move on,” I admitted softly a few minutes later.

“No one ever said we had to move on, we just need to keep moving.”

I met his gaze and held it as he stood up and turned, holding a hand out to me.

“You ready to move?” he asked, and the meaning in his question was clear.

“No,” I replied, but still held out my hand. Slipping it into his, I let him pull me off the bed, and wrapped my arms around his waist, dropping my head onto his chest.

Jagger folded his arms around me, and brought his head down near mine to speak softly in my ear. “Don’t think about next week, or tomorrow, or even tonight. Just focus on your
right now
. Right now we have to go to our graduation. Right now Ben would be flipping out because you would be making both of you late.”

I choked out a laugh, and a deep laugh rumbled in his chest.

“And you would tell him . . . ?” His question drifted off, waiting for my response.

“To get over it and bet him twenty bucks that we would still beat you there.”

This time his laugh was fuller, and he rubbed his hands over my back before stepping away from me. “Exactly. Then he would put an extra twenty on it, saying I would show up with fresh charcoal on my hands.”

“And face,” I added.

Jagger rolled his eyes. “That was one time.”

“It was to your mom’s wedding.”

“I didn’t like the guy anyway.” I smiled and his eyes darted over my face before he held his hands up. “No fresh charcoal, and we’ll show up at the same time. So no one wins today.”

I took a deep breath in and out, and nodded my head. “I think I’m ready to move now.”

“All right.” He bent forward and grabbed my cap and gown off the bed before turning to leave the room.

I followed him down the hall and into the living room, pausing in the entryway only long enough to look in the mirror and wipe away the streaked makeup. Once we were in his car, I touched his forearm and waited for him to look over at me.

“Thanks, Jagger. For coming for me, for talking to me—just . . . thank you.” He had no idea how thankful I was for him, and I wouldn’t have known how to explain it if I tried. He was just always there to make things better, always there to help me . . . always there to be everything I needed.

He shook his head slowly once, and his green eyes stayed locked on mine. “Sometimes I need motivation to keep moving too. You don’t need to thank me, just let me know when you have to talk about him, okay?”

“Yeah.” Letting go of his arm, I sat back in the seat and grabbed the long chain that held Ben’s wedding band. Taking comfort in the feel of it in my palm, and the knowledge that he would be proud of Jagger and me right now.

I
M
A
D
E
I
T
through the graduation without crying again, but I never felt like I was happy that it was happening. Even though Jagger had gotten me to a point where I’d been smiling and laughing, the second he left my side when we arrived, I’d fallen back into a state where I was constantly on the verge of crumbling from the grief of what today was. Only to be made worse when Janie had hugged me longer than normal, and then I’d seen my parents and older brother, and none of them had been able to force anything more than a strained smile and “congratulations.”

Lunch afterward didn’t prove to be much easier for anyone. One of my uncles mentioned the date and asked how I was dealing with it, and it had turned into some awkward hush-fest where everyone started kicking the other under the table, and giving them meaningful looks as if to say:
Shut the fuck up!
For the next forty-five minutes, no one said a word. Not even a thank-you to the waitress when she’d brought the food.

As much as I hated it, and as much as I loved my family, I was relieved when we’d said our good-byes and my brother had driven me back to my apartment.

“You doing okay, kid?” he asked when he pulled into a parking space.

“Some days.”

“But not today.” It wasn’t a question, he knew.

“Yeah . . . not today,” I said softly.

“Do you want me to come up? I can hang out, crash here for the night, and head back tomorrow.”

“No, it’s fine. I didn’t really sleep last night, so I’ll probably go to bed when I get in there.”

“Grey, it’s four in the afternoon.” He looked at me with either pity or sympathy, neither of which I wanted to see.

“Today was kind of rough, it felt like three smashed into one, and like I said, I didn’t really sleep last night. I’m tired.”

He was silent for a minute before he twisted in his seat to face me. “I’m worried about you.”

I gritted my teeth and took calming breaths before saying, “You shouldn’t be. It’s been two years, I’m getting better.”

“Are you?” he asked on a laugh, but there was no humor in his tone. “I knew today would be hard for you, there’s no way for it not to be. But, shit, how much do you weigh?”

I jerked my head back. “What? I don’t know.”

“Do you look at yourself in the mirror? Do you see how you look in your clothes? You look like you’re wearing someone else’s clothes, and they’re a size or two too big.”

Glancing down at my shirt and skirt, I shook my head. “No, they—well, I’m eating! You saw me at lunch, I ate half that burger.”

“No, Grey.
I
ate half your burger. You picked it up and put it down at least a dozen times before cutting it in half, and then picking up one of the halves only to put it back down. I watched you. You ate two fries. Nothing else.”

I tried to think back to the restaurant, but I couldn’t even remember ordering the burger, let alone cutting it. I just remembered half of it was gone when the waitress asked if I wanted a box. I’d said no. As for the clothes, today was the first time I’d actually paid attention to what I was wearing in years. I usually just put on clothes and left, not caring to see how I looked.

“Well, what do you want me to say, Graham? I’m
trying
. You have no idea how hard it is to lose someone who has been a huge part of your world for over half your life. Who has owned your heart for most of that. Who you were supposed to marry
days
before they passed! You don’t understand what I’ve been through,” I seethed, and wiped at my wet cheeks. “I finished school, I’m living, what more do you want?”

“I want you to live, Grey.”

“I just said—”

“You’re existing,” he barked, cutting me off. “You’re existing,
not
living. You’re going through the motions you’re supposed to without realizing that you’re doing them, or why.”

“That’s not true!” I screamed. “You can’t judge me based on what you’ve seen of half a day. A day that is a horrible reminder of what happened.”

He grabbed my hand and squeezed, and when he spoke again, his voice was calm. “Kid, I’m not saying any of this
only
based on what I’ve seen today. Janie’s worried about you—”

“Janie? Janie?! You’re having my friends keep tabs on me, Graham?”

“Grey—”

“How often do they check in with you? Huh? Do they only see me now so they can tell you how I’m doing? Because I don’t see them very much, but then again, who the hell would want to be around someone who is just
existing
?”

“Grey!” he snapped when I opened the passenger door and jumped out of his truck.

“Screw you and your
existing
bullshit, Graham! I’m fine! I’m dealing the only way I know how, and I. Am. Fine.”

I didn’t care that there were tears streaming down my cheeks. I didn’t care that I was overreacting. I was overreacting because I was terrified that he was right, and I didn’t want him to be. I was tired of everyone looking at me with sympathy or pity. I was tired of rooms growing quiet when I walked into them . . .
still
. I was tired of the way everyone seemed to walk on eggshells around me. And I was tired of feeling like I was giving them a reason to.

I took off for my building, ignoring Graham’s voice as he followed me from his truck. Grabbing my keys from my purse as I ran toward my apartment, I fumbled to find the right key so I could get in there before he could catch up with me. The keys slipped from my hand, and I reached out for them at the same time as I tripped out of my sandals and hit the concrete on my hands and knees.

Ignoring the spilled contents of my purse, I rocked back so I was sitting on my heels and let my head hang as hard sobs worked their way through my body.