Page 49 of Ever After All

Rhys let out a put-upon sigh as if he couldn’t believe I didn’t understand. “You leave her a message, or you send her a text, but don’t do anything else for now. She can’t ignore you forever. I mean, you are married, so unless she flees town and never comes back, she’s gonna have to see you, even if it’s to file paperwork for divorce.”

The stricken way I felt inside must’ve shown on my face. Griffin angled his head to the side, biting his cheek to keep from laughing. “Okay, it’s not funny, but oh, my God, you are so in love with her. Rosie is not going to divorce you. That’s totally not a Rosie move. Her father is here, her brothers here, and her husband is here.”

“That would be you,” Adam interjected dryly. “It’s going to be fine.”

“It is,” Blake offered. “But you have to get through the hard part.”

“Life was much less complicated when I wasn’t in love,” I said.

“Yeah, but love is worth the pain.” Adam clapped me on the shoulder. “You got this.”

Chapter Thirty

Wyatt

I did not, in fact, have this. I felt like I was walking a tightrope across a chasm growing wider by the day. I didn’t know how to get to the other side to where Rosie was.

I didn’t want her to think I wasn’t willing to fight for her, to fight for us. But I was afraid of pushing her too hard and too fast. We had actually talked about how that week before she went to nursing school and before I flew out into the wilderness to fight fires had been this capsule of time when all the pressure was off because of our circumstances.

I think my heart knew then what my mind wasn’t ready for. Maybe I didn’t understand love then, but my heart knew there was a possibility with her that I had never experienced before.

I’d kept my distance ever since we’d both landed back in town full-time. Because, damn, Rosie had her guard up, big time.

While I was busy trying to formulate how I was going to talk to her, I stopped to get coffee at Spill the Beans Café. Both Phyllis and Hazel were there. There was a lull in the crowd since it was late morning.

Phyllis was prepping my coffee while Hazel was refilling the pastry case with a fresh batch of offerings. “You really should try one of these,” she said, holding one up.

“Sure, I’ll have one.” I didn’t even know what it was.

I was being polite, and I was a little hungry, but my lack of enthusiasm caused Hazel to straighten and eye me skeptically. “What’s wrong?”

I started to hedge before Phyllis tapped a button on the espresso machine and glanced over. “Wyatt and his wife are going through some things.”

“Well, I know that,” Hazel replied. She rested a hand on her hip and wagged the pastry at me. “You’re married. A part of marriage means you’ll have your ups and downs, and you have to deal with the hard stuff. That “for better or for worse” thing really means something even if you got married when you were drunk in Las Vegas.”

I felt my cheeks get warm and smiled sheepishly between them. “Rosie said she needed space.”

“That’s your line, and you’re sticking to it, huh?” Phyllis said as she rested her hips on the counter and faced me.

“What do you mean ‘that’s my line’?”

“That’s what Griffin mentioned,” Hazel piped up.

“And Rhys,” Phyllis added.

“And Adam,” Hazel said.

“Oh, my God,” I muttered. “My brothers are gossiping about me.”

Phyllis’s brows hitched up. “No, they’re not. They were talking to each other. We just heard the whole conversation because they were sitting right over there.” She gestured to the table closest to the register.

“They would never gossip and betray you like that,” Hazel said.

“Well, I could use another perspective,” I finally said.

Hazel and Phyllis both perked up. “What can we tell you?” Hazel asked.

“We were both married to our husbands until death did us part,” Phyllis said.

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