Trust In Forever (Book 12 in the Forever Series)

Chapter 6

Demi

After what happened on the camping trip, with Mr. Bryant, I was worried about Avery, even though he said he was fine, so I insisted he see a counselor to talk about what happened to him. I wanted him to talk to someone about how close he came to being molested by Mr. Bryant. My sweet boy agreed to the counseling & even seemed eager to go. Since the night after the ordeal, he wanted to sleep in bed with me & Nick & I knew that wasn't a good thing. That was the biggest thing I was hoping the counseling would help with. Having your child in bed with you, puts a cramp in your sex life, something Nick & I didn't need.

As for Mr. Bryant, he was replaced by another man as the scout leader & since his father was a leader, too, he also stepped down because he couldn't take the murmurs all around him. I felt bad for him, but I couldn't blame him for wanting to step out of the bad light that had been cast upon the community. His family name had been tarnished, which wasn't an easy thing to deal with.

Avery didn't want to do cub scouts anymore since Reid was no longer doing it. Many of the boys dropped out after hearing why Mr. Bryant was let go. Avery's name wasn't brought up, thankfully, which was such a relief to me. I never wanted him to deal with people staring or passing judgement, so if his identity was kept out of the Mr. Bryant drama, I was relieved.

Our lives seemed to get back to normal, once again & I was relieved for that, too. I knew normalcy wasn't going to be permanent with our family, so I enjoyed it while I could. Nick was busy most days, planning his tour or working with other artists either recording or producing, while I managed our house & my career.

Throughout March I had some promo events for the animated movie that was coming out, so Nick & I worked out our schedules so the kids wouldn't be neglected. One weekend in mid March, I had some appearances in California & didn't want to go alone. My parents were out of town & Nick's parents weren't able to stay with the kids, so I ended up inviting Marissa to go with me.

Marissa's husband had cheated on her a little over a year ago, so she was in need of time away with her best friend, since her last 16 months had been so difficult. I missed hanging out with just her, since our kids always seemed to be around, so I was excited.

While we flew to California, Marissa & I talked a lot, but she didn't seem to bring up Derek, her husband. I knew we had plenty of time to talk about him so I wasn't going to ask. I was enjoying the catching up anyway.

The first evening after arriving in L.A. I didn't have anything going on. It was a Thursday so Marissa & I ordered food to be delivered to the house & we ate it in our pajamas & robes. I turned on some funny movie & we laughed our asses off. It felt like we were teenagers again, even taking silly selfies & videos. 

It was almost ten when I heard my phone ringing, so I picked it up, & saw Nick's face on my screen. He was facetiming me, so I showed Marissa who smiled, then directed her attention back to the television.

"Hey babe." I said as I accepted his request.

"Hi, Gorgeous." Nick smiled at me through the screen. "I miss you already."

"You're a liar." I chuckled, shaking my head.

"No, I'm not. I seriously miss you." He glanced away, letting me know he was watching something on the TV.