Jess’s thin shoulders rose and fell. “Nothing’s perfect, Lib. If it was, I wouldn’t be dying. And I wouldn’t have to ask you this.” Supplication filled her dark brown eyes. “Can you find a way not to blame Leo for me hurting you?”

Flames of anger curled around what she’d long believed their friendship to be. The heat rose, cracking the two perfectly connected halves open and searing her. Vengeance oozed out thick and black before catching alight and filling her with acrid smoke and the bitterness of broken trust and faith. When the black cloud eventually dissipated, she glimpsed in the ash something closer to the reality of their friendship—flawed but with love, however misguided, at its heart.

Libby hugged herself hard, trying to hold herself together. “My family’s right. I’ve let bitterness and revenge get in the way of everything I believe in. Along the way, Leo got tangled up in my hate for you and my grief for Dom. He should have been immune from it all.” She heaved in a breath and felt something inside her cleave. “I’m truly sorry for that.”

“Thank you.” Jess sucked in her lips. “And you and Nick?”

“We’ve learned a lot.”

“Will you be okay?”

Libby wished she knew. “We want to be.”

“You have to be.”

“We’re getting help with the speed bumps. We owe it to the girls—” She corrected herself. “We owe it to the children to honor our mistakes, learn from them and live the best version of ourselves. I promise Leo will grow up in the heart of our family surrounded by Hunter and Pirelli love, exactly as he deserves.”

Jess pinned her with the lioness stare of a mother protecting her child. “And you won’t change your mind?”

“No.”

“Not even when he’s fifteen and running wild?”

“By then Lucy and Indi will have taught me a few tricks and I’ll be prepared.”

“You’ll give him the ‘I love you but not what you’re doing’ talk like Karen gave me?”

Libby tried to smile but her mouth wouldn’t work. “I promise, I’ll tell him I love him every day, just like I tell the girls.”

“Thank you.” A tear slid down Jess’s cheek. “Can you do something else for me?”

“If I can.”

“Can you tell Leo I was his mother? Tell him some of the good things I did, not just the bad.”

“Oh, Jess.”