Page 83 of So Close

Brynn shrugged. “If you were anyone else trying to win your woman back, I’d say you needed to make a grand gesture. Fly her to Paris, buy her a rock and get down on one knee. But in your case, you’ve got to quit showing love with money. You need to do something else. Something that speaksherlanguage.”

“So you’re saying … you’re saying I need the opposite of a grand gesture. I need …”

I deserve someone who treats me like a human being with free will—

He thought about it a moment, and then he knew. Not exactly what he was going to do, but the spirit he had to do it in. She’d showed him, after all, over and over again. She’d thought she was convincing him to love an inn, but in truth, she’d taught him much more than that. How a simple faith in community and friendship and family could buoy people up. How a little bit of space to breathe could make it so much easier to be human.

How small—sometimes tiny—acts of kindness and love made people’s days or changed their lives.

“I need a humble gesture.”

42

Auburn held a party at Beachcrest to celebrate its new ownership. Nothing big, but her siblings came, and several of her friends and acquaintances from town, and Brynn and Carl, of course, and the two romance writers who could make the trip—Deja and Aria. Auburn served champagne and lots and lots of homemade cookies, and the atmosphere was festive.

She stood on the sidelines. She was thrilled. Of course she was. But—

Chiara appeared at her side. “Great party,” she said. She threw her arms around her sister.

“Thanks.”

As she started to pull away, Chiara grabbed both her arms.

“Auburn.”

She tried to look away, before tears could fill her eyes.

“You don’t look like a woman who just got everything she ever wanted,” Chiara whispered.

Auburn didn’t bother trying to lie to her sister. It wasn’t worth it. “I’m happy. Of course I’m happy. I love this place. And I know I will always love this place. But—”

Chiara waited. Patiently.

“It’s stupid, I know it’s stupid—”

“I doubt it,” Chiara said.

“—but I wish he were here.”

“He could be here,” Chiara said quietly. “You could ask him to come.”

Startled, Auburn looked at her sister. “And then what? And then every time he needs to feel like a man, every time he wants to call the shots, I just knuckle under and let him?”

“Is that what you did? You knuckled under?”

“No. No, I fought him—but—”

“That’s right. You didn’t knuckle under.”

“But I did all those years with Patrick.”

“Yes. You did. For a while. But in the end, you walked then, too, and that’s what counts. Look what you’ve done. You’ve done exactly what you said you wanted to do, and you did it your way, in the best possible way, working with your community, bringing in all the people who cared to help you. You did it with so much strength and courage and—I’m so proud of you. They’re proud of you, too. And grateful, Auburn. They’re so grateful.”

She made a sweeping gesture of the room. It encompassed everyone there, and all the ones that weren’t, too. The friends who’d reunited and the lovers who’d found courage, the married couples who’d finally found the space and time to talk about what mattered.

Rick and Dewann.

Trey … and Auburn.

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