Xavier stared at me, his eyes a hurricane of emotions I couldn’t decipher. “I wish she could’ve met you,” he said, so quiet that I felt more than I heard his words. “She would’ve loved you.” The tightness behind my ribs morphed into a raw, pervasive ache. It spread everywhere—my throat, my nose, behind my eyes and in the deepest grooves of my heart. I didn’t cry, but this was the closest I’d come to doing so in a long, long time.
