Free Beginning of Forever (Heaven Hill #7) by Laramie Briscoe

last time they’d had completely uninterrupted time together, and it had been well before Addie had come to live with them. Since he’d taken the VP position in the club, he was needed constantly, and she was obviously needed in her capacity at CRISIS. “Do you think our relationship has suffered because of that?” she asked him quietly.
    He was silent for a long time. That either meant she’d touched a nerve, or he was giving it a lot of thought. She hoped he was giving it a lot of thought.
    “If I’m being completely honest with you…” he started.
    “Please do.” She swallowed roughly. “Because if you haven’t been, then there are some issues we need to work on.”
    “It’s not a big deal,” he was quick to soothe her. “It’s just kind of like, we’ve gone from one extreme to another in our relationship, and I have to admit, some of that is probably my fault.”
    Her eyebrows screwed together, she wasn’t exactly sure what he meant. “Can you explain what you mean?”
    Scratching the back of his neck, he wondered if he’d just stepped into some shit he wouldn’t be able to get out of. “When you first came to stay with me, and even after we ran off and eloped, our whole lives were each other. Then we decided to try for a family. It was like every month you didn’t get pregnant, we pulled away from one another just a little more. You would volunteer more at CRISIS, I would work out more, or I would take on more responsibilities within the club. Now we have Addie in our lives and we’re still being pulled, but it’s different now…she pulls us, not circumstances we can’t change.”
    She’d had no idea he’d felt that way, and truthfully, she hadn’t realized they’d pulled that far away from each other. If she was brutally honest with herself, she could see where he was coming from, and she could pinpoint the month that she’d started to retreat within herself. It was the month her period had been a week late, and she’d known with such certainty she was pregnant. Early the next morning, she’d woken up to take the test, only to find that her period had come, and it was then that she knew she wouldn’t be having her own child. That was the month, day, exact minute, she’d given up, and a piece of her had closed off from him, and it wasn’t until Addie had come into their lives that the part had opened back up. “I’m sorry you felt that way,” she whispered. “I see where you’re coming from, and I know exactly what you mean.”
    “Marriage isn’t easy.” He cleared his throat. “There have been some circumstances we’ve been put in that would have broken other couples, but here we are.” He lifted up their hands, which were still clasped together. “We’ve never let petty bullshit tear us apart, and all I can tell you now is that from this moment on, we’re aware of the things we tend to do to one another. We keep our eyes open for when that happens again, because it will—we’re human. We call each other on it, and we don’t let our relationship suffer because of choices that we are making or have made.”
    “Sounds good to me.” She smiled over at him, and for some reason, the clarity she saw in his eyes brought tears to hers. “Sorry.” She laughed, pushing against the tears that had started to leak out. “I am super emotional lately, and I have no idea why.”
    “It’s been an emotional couple of years for us.” He chuckled. “You’re fine, baby, you just need some time away, and that’s exactly what you’re going to get.”
    *
    The rest of the trip went off without a hitch. They never hit a lot of traffic, and it turned out that Addie was a good traveling partner. As they entered Gatlinburg, Meredith assumed that they were staying at the same cabin she and Tyler had stayed in the last time they’d been here. To say she was surprised when he pulled into a condo was an understatement. From the car, she could even see a lazy river that went around