Tears slipped down Abby’s cheeks.
“My father used to drill into my head never to let any one event define my life, and that night I knew what I had to do. I took Remi home and then I called 911 and reported the accident. I told them only our parents had been in the car. We lived in a small town, and I didn’t want Remi to be known as the little girl who survived the accident that had killed her parents. I called in a favor with a guy I had grown up with who had become an EMT. His father was a doctor, and they checked out Remi and kept it quiet.”
“Your instinct to protect her . . .” She wiped her tears. “Aiden, that’s remarkable.”
He shrugged. “I was only following my father’s advice. There was nothing remarkable about it. I had nightmares for months, reliving all of it. But from that moment on, my life became about making sure Remi was okay. She’d lost the two most important people in her life at an age when her biggest worries should have been about cute boys and diaries. I wanted to keep our parents’ spirit alive for her and make sure she grew up knowing she was loved and that, while we had lost our parents, she still had me and I’d always be there for her. I got her into therapy, and once she’d had time to mourn, I tried to carry on all the traditions my parents had, reading to her like my dad used to, making big deals of her birthdays, making sure she had friends and continued with dance lessons. Eventually the memories in the West Virginia house became too much, and we moved to my place in California. I didn’t want her dreams of being an actress to die with our parents, so I got her an acting coach and made sure she had all the right opportunities.”
“That must have been tumultuous for both of you, moving away from the comfort of the community and friends where you were raised.”
“It was harder for Remi because she was so young. I did everything I could to help her make new friends and to nurture those relationships so she could regain a sense of community. And she did.”
“What about you? That couldn’t have been an easy transition, losing your parents? Suddenly becoming mother and father to your younger sister?”
“I got through it. I’m not going to pretend it was easy. I had no idea what I was doing.”
“Did you have friends to turn to for help?”
“Not really. Before our parents died, I was so focused on running the LA division of my father’s business, friends weren’t a priority. And after I moved Remi to LA, I was too young to be peers with the parents of her new friends, and with a twelve-year-old girl to care for, I didn’t fit in with other twentysomethings, either. My father’s business associates and our parents’ friends tried to help, that sort of thing, but I felt a need to shelter Remi from too much of that. As I said before, I didn’t want her to be defined by their deaths, so I figured things out as best I could.”
“She’s really lucky she had you watching out for her.”
“In some ways, yes. But I was overprotective, always afraid something would happen to her. If she went bowling or skating with friends, I went with them, even when she was a teenager. As you can imagine, she hated that.”
“It’s hard to be a teenage girl. But who could blame you for wanting to protect her?”
“That was my feeling. I may not have always made the popular decision, but I always made the decisions that I thought were best for her.” As he turned onto the road that led to the lighthouse, he said, “And I now realize that as she got older, I protected her too much. When she finally got her big break into acting, I was right there every step of the way, managing her career, living wherever she was filming. Not only was I overprotective, but I also did too much for her. That’s probably my biggest flaw, wanting to give her everything she deserved, everything she ever wanted. We were brought up with one general rule of thumb—if you have, you give to others, whether it’s money or just helping things happen for them. That carried into every aspect of my life. It still does. It’s a hard habit to break. But it was too much for Remi. When the stalker situation occurred, I had to travel for work, and I hired bodyguards for her. Unfortunately, Remi picked that exact time to rebel. She snuck out and outsmarted every bodyguard I hired, until I found Mason. She really met her match with him.”
“Did that bother you? That you hired him to protect your sister and he fell in love with her?”
“Hell yes, it bothered me. Not to mention that she kept their relationship a secret from me at first. But he loves her to the ends of the earth, and they’re good for each other. He’s very protective of her, but he allows her the space she needs in a way that keeps her safe, while I had wanted to shield her from everything. Anyway, after the stalker incident was resolved, Remi, Mason, and I had a goodbye ceremony for our parents, which dredged up feelings I had been keeping locked down for a long time. Remi and I cleared the air, and when I told her that I blamed myself for our parents’ accident, it broke her heart. The little sister I had raised put on my big-sibling hat and made me promise to see someone and deal with that guilt. For her, I got help.”
Abby’s heart broke for him. “And for you? That’s a lot of guilt to carry around for so long.”
“Like you when you were younger, I wasn’t used to putting myself first.” He turned into the parking lot and said, “But about a year and a half ago, when I started therapy, I realized I needed to let that guilt go. I’ll never know if my parents could have lived had I not come home. But the bottom line is that I did go home, and they died. But I didn’t cause the accident, and I’ve dealt with the guilt and grieving. I also realized how hard it was for me to step back and let Mason take over my role of protecting Remi. She didn’t need me the way she once had. Remi and our close friends thought I’d race out and sow my wild oats or celebrate my freedom. But I’d done my fair share of playing around and being irresponsible in college. I had no more oats to sow, and I’d never seen raising Remi as a burden, so I wasn’t looking to celebrate my freedom.”
He’d given up his whole life for his sister, even more years than she’d given to her mother. And he was not only genuinely happy he’d done it, but he’d also helped Remi flourish and didn’t carry an ounce of resentment toward her for all he’d given up so he could be there for her. Could he and Abby be any more alike? She felt like she’d met her soul mate. She should know better than to let herself think like that, but it was hard not to.
He parked the car and turned in his seat with a lighter expression. “My life had been completely defined by Remi’s happiness, and I don’t regret a second of it. But I needed to figure out who I was if I wasn’t taking care of her. I had my own career, but I had no clue what the rest of my life should look like without her as the center of it.”
“It takes a lot of guts to admit that,” she said.
“Babes, you’re involved with me, which means Remi will blab it all to you the first chance she gets.”
“She sounds like a great sister. But I can only imagine how hard that transition must have been for both of you.”
“For me, yes, but not for Remi. She’s a pistol. She had no trouble spreading her wings, and I’ve since accepted my new role in her life as more or less just her big brother. But with extra time on my hands now that she’s no longer acting and doesn’t need me to travel with her or manage her career other than a few endorsements, I pretty much buried myself in work twenty-four-seven, which was great for business.”