Page 35 of Second Chance with Seth

“I know it’s hard for you to trust me,” he says out of the blue. “But I want to make this work. I need to, and even if you’re not ready to forgive me yet, I’m not giving up.”

Chapter Eight

Seth

I can’t sleep. It might be four-thirty in the morning, but my eyes refuse to close. I guess that’s because I’m still bemused about yesterday afternoon.

Everly refused to answer my question… although thinking about it, I didn’t phrase it as a question. I just told her I wasn’t giving up. But I said I wanted to make it work and dropped a hint about her being ready to forgive me. She could have said she was… or she wasn’t. But instead she said nothing, which might have been because she was struggling not to cry.

That confused me even more than her lack of response. I couldn’t be sure why my words would have upset her, or even if it was my words that had brought tears to her eyes. Was it my presence? Or that we were walking by the creek, taking the same route that we had all those years ago, on our first night together?

I didn’t know. And I didn’t want to ask, just in case I got an answer I didn’t want to hear.

I couldn’t hold her, either, even though I wanted to.

It didn’t feel as though I had the right… not when she hadn’t agreed to forgive me.

It all felt so up in the air… so inconclusive.

We walked back in silence for a while, but that became unbearable, so I asked her if Owen would be okay closing thecoffee shop. I knew that time was moving on, and that we were unlikely to make it back there before noon.

“He’ll be fine,” she said. “He’s done it before.”

“Are Sundays still as busy as they used to be?” I asked.

“Not at this time of year, but it’ll get a lot busier in the summer.”

I nodded my head, recalling how she and Aunt Clare would split their shifts on Saturdays, but always worked together on Sundays, because they had to. When Aunt Clare died, I offered to help, but Everly declined, telling me she could cope, even though I think we both knew she was struggling. She just preferred to struggle alone.

And that hurt… although, walking by the creek, looking for ways to make things right between us, didn’t feel like the best time to tell her that.

I also didn’t particularly want to talk about Owen. He might not have been a threat, in the way I’d first perceived him, but I still felt like she’d allowed him to step up and help, when she’d refused to give me a chance. She’d refused to even listen to my pleas for her to employ someone… and yet there he was. It was probably a childish perspective, but I couldn’t help it, and rather than upset her any further, I buried it and turned the conversation around, recalling my meeting with Nate the previous afternoon.

“What surprised you most?” she asked once I’d revealed the content of our conversation. “Was it Dawson and Macy, or Laurel and Brady?”

“Dawson and Macy, I suppose. Not that I know Macy.”

“I don’t know her very well,” she said. “I’ve only met her a couple of times. But she seems lovely.”

“She’d have to be to break Dawson out of hibernation.”

Everly chuckled at that, and I had to smile, even though I was struggling to breathe.

“So, you weren’t surprised about Laurel and Brady?”

“I was, but I already knew about Mitch’s death, and I suppose they were thrown together after that?” I said, and she tilted her head slightly.

“They were, but Laurel told me just the other day that Mitch was cheating on her.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He was leaving town with his girlfriend when they were killed.”

“You mean the woman who was in his car was his girlfriend?”

“Evidently.”

“Wasn’t she pregnant?” I asked. I remembered hearing something about that at the time.

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