Page 117 of Cross + Catherine: The Companion

Cross smiled at his father’s false complaints. Really, his dad loved his mom to the ends of the earth and back. It was a special, crazy kind of love that no one on the outside looking in could truly understand.

He was pretty sure even he didn’t understand it, all things considered. Then again, he was sure people looked at him and Catherine in the same way. Like their love was something strange and strong and unobtainable.

He thanked his mother and father for that. For seeing what good, healthy, true love really was as he grew up. They had taught him how to love someone, and how to do it properly.

A good man earns a good woman.

“Juan is a good man,” Cross said.

Calisto passed Cross a look. “I think so, yes.”

“And I know he loves Cece like nothing else.”

“Seems so.”

“So why can’t I—”

“You’ll smile,” Calisto told him. “You will smile when you need to, and when she looks at you to make sure that everything is okay today. You will smile when you have to because it’s what father’s do when our hearts are breaking, but theirs is so full. You will smile because you want to—when the time is right, and when you’re feeling up to it. You will smile, Cross, and it will be okay.”

It was like his father had taken the air right out of his lungs with that statement. Cross didn’t even know how to respond.

Instead, he settled on a quiet, dumb, “Oh.”

“I know—it doesn’t feel like it right now.”

“I’m not sad,” Cross murmured.

And he wasn’t.

He was a lot of things.

Sad was not one of them.

“It’s not about being sad. It’s about change, and moving into a new chapter. It’s about letting go of a hand that’s been holding onto yours for twenty-three years. And it’s fucking fine to not know how you want to feel about that, son.”

“Is this how you felt, too?”

Calisto cocked a brow. “What, when Cam married?”

“Yes.”

“Of course.”

“I wondered,” Cross admitted.

“And for you, too.”

Cross glanced up again at that statement. “What?”

“I felt like this when you married, too. Of course, I had a much longer time to prepare for you leaving than I did with Cam. You started walking ahead of me as soon as you learned how to run your mouth, and talk back. I figured by the time you were a grown man, it would be … well, not fine, but a happy moment for me to see you marry and start a life for yourself.”

“And it wasn’t?”

“It was,” Calisto returned, shrugging, “but it was also heavy. I didn’t realize that there was still a piece of me holding onto the part of you that was still a little boy. The little boy who followed me around nonstop, and thought I was his hero. And the little boy who fell asleep in the back of my car, and played with his trains and trucks under my desk. So yes, I was happy, and it was also heavy.”

Cross blinked. “But you didn’t seem … you smiled all day.”

“And you will smile today, too. All day.”