Free The Best Week of My Life by Suzanne D. Williams

reasons maybe he was exactly like his father, why he might hurt her and damage her forever. And he could never live with himself if he did that.
    He couldn’t hurt Daphne and her stop being like she was because how she was is what made him want to be with her so badly, to kiss her until his mind blanked and there was nothing else around but the two of them.
    Carter folded his arms behind his head and gazed out the rain-smeared window. Red hibiscus flowers, crushed by the heavy drops, pasted themselves to the glass creating an abstract painting. A gust of wind sent them flapping out and smacking back again.
    The rain had given him an excuse to stay away, to spend time alone thinking and make up his mind. Yet in all the hours he’d been here, avoiding conversation with his mom and Henry all day, locking himself in this bedroom, he’d only concluded one thing. He was afraid. Terrified.
    No, make that two. He wanted Daphne. But maybe wanting her and being right for her were two entirely different things.
    A knock on the doorframe flipped his gaze that way and his mom looked in. “What’s got you so glum?” she said. “I figured you’d escape to see Daphne.”
    He exhaled slowly. “Needed to think.”
    She crossed the room and seated herself at his side. “About?”
    He didn’t reply right away, and so she did what moms do, she picked at his shirt and brushed his hair with her fingertips.
    “About dad,” he said at last.
    Her bearing changed. She hated talking about his dad, so they never did. But avoiding it was killing him and creating more problems for him to deal with.
    “What about him?” she asked.
    He settled his gaze on her face. He looked like his dad; she’d told him that often enough, so maybe that was part of her discomfort in talking, the memories she probably had of better times and their hopes for him and how he brought the pain back.
    “Am I like him?”
    She inclined her head to the right and dusted her hair from her neck. “In what way?”
    “In the can’t-hold-a-marriage-together way.”
    She flinched. “That’s unfair, son.”
    “Well, he couldn’t.”
    She glanced toward the open door and standing, moved back and closed it. She held in place for a minute, her palm on the surface, before turning back around.
    “It takes two to argue,” she said evenly.
    “So it was you that couldn’t hold onto things as well?” He was well aware he sounded bitter, but he couldn’t stop the force of his words.
    She sighed. “It was both of us. He messed up; I messed up, and we were both too proud to say, ‘I’m sorry.’”
    “Are you? Sorry?”
    She nodded. “All the time. Your father was the most dashing man. He swept me off my feet within days of meeting him, and I could think of nothing but being his wife, having his children. But I was unprepared; he was unprepared. We didn’t give each other enough time to be friends.”
    She squirmed a bit. “We should’ve slowed down, but then you came along …”
    “So you married for me? It’s my fault?” Guilt bashed him in the head, and he wallowed in it. He’d destroyed his parents’ marriage. Him, by coming into existence.
    “No. Carter …” His mom touched his arm. “Why are you doing this? The marriage wasn’t your fault. The divorce wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault; it just happened, and now, I have to move on, to find happiness again.”
    He pulled his arm back. “Yeah. I hear how you’ve moved on.”
    Her cheeks reddened. “Carter Pruitt, that’s uncalled for.”
    “Well, you’re not married, and he’s here, and you and him … I thought you believed what the preacher said. I did. Carrie wanted to; she begged me.”
    Her face grew alarmed.
    “But I said no , and so she said I was too ‘sensitive’ and she ‘couldn’t deal with it.’” The look on Carrie’s face returned as real as it had been that night, accusatory, hateful. He groaned and crammed his hands over his eyes.
    His mother’s voice