Page 55 of For Butter or for Worse
I choke out a strangled laugh. “You can’t mean that. Georgie, you are…” I don’t even know how to put it into words. “You’re a shooting star in a sky of people who are content to stay as they are. You’re the reason I believed I could have more than the small life I’d been living. Georgie, I would have—” I stop myself, not sure if I should speak the words on the tip of my tongue.
I take a slow breath. It’s not going to do me any good to keep secrets. “I booked a flight to New York, when Uncle Bill first told me where you’d gone.”
Georgie’s eyes well up with tears. “What?
I nod. “Even after the way you left, I couldn’t imagine a world where you weren’t in it, and when you didn’t show up in Willow Cove the next summer, I begged Bill to tell me where you were. And I bought a one-way ticket.”
“You came to New York?”
I shake my head, hating the answer to that question. “Before I could head to Charleston, Bill told me you were happy. I had been miserable for months, and you werehappyaway from me, so I took the coward’s way out and bought the surf shack instead, telling myself that I was perfectly content to keep living the life I’d known. Even if it wasn’t true.”
A tear slips down her cheek, followed by another. I’ve never seen Georgie cry, and the sight is painful. I didn’t mean to make her hurt.
“Royal,” she whispers, shaking her head. “I wasn’t happy. I told Bill that I was, but I missed you like crazy, and I kept thinking I’d made the wrong choice by leaving. Being with you…it didn’t feel real. Things weren’t supposed to be as easy as they were with you, so I convinced myself that it wasn’t meant to be.”
Brushing the tears from her cheek, I take a few even breaths and try to settle the old fears that have never fully retreated since the day she ran away from me. It’s time to be brave and hope that I’m stronger than I was ten years ago. “Georgie, I never stopped loving you. And I don’t think I ever will stop. But if you’re going to leave, I would rather you tell me now. Don’t let me hope.”
Her response starts as a smile, small and tentative but so very beautiful. “I’ve been chasing a dream for so long. But being in Willow Cove again—no, being withyouagain—is the first time I haven’t felt like I’m running after something. I think…I think my dream is here. Something to call mine, that I know will never let me down.”
“Kingston’s can be anything you want it to be. The bakery is—”
She touches her fingers to my mouth, stifling my almost desperate words. “The only Kingston I care about is this one.” Then she rises up on her toes and kisses me. It’s not a kiss filled with heat or restrained desire like what we’ve shared before, but it’s every bit the embrace I’ve longed for over the years. More so. It’s a kiss that speaks of promise and a future and my own hopes and dreams coming true.
It actually hurts when she pulls away only a few seconds after she claims my lips. “I feel like I need to clarify.”
I groan. “I got the gist.”
But she shakes her head and gets a determined look in her eyes. “I made the mistake of not communicating last time, and I’m not going to do that again. You deserve more.”
“More kissing? Yes.”
She laughs butdoesn’tkiss me. Instead, she puts her hands on either side of my face so I can’t look away. “I still want the bakery in my name.”
Some of the lightness in my chest dissipates. “Okay.”
“And it’s not because I don’t want to be married to you. I do. If you’re okay with that.”
I take hold of her left hand and kiss the sea glass ring on her finger. “I am.”
“Good. Because divorce sounds messy and I’m pretty fond of you, Kingston.”
Fond of me. Divorce sounds messy.I’m really trying to see the positives in what she’s saying, but it’s getting harder every minute. “Okay,” I say again.
“I’m going to make changes to the bakery,” she continues. I can only nod now. “It has good bones, but I need to make it my own if I’m going to thrivewithin it. And we’re going to have to do something about Prince Harry’s pen because he terrifies me every time I go out into the yard.”
None of this sounds anything like the vulnerable soul-baring I did a moment ago, and while I don’t think honesty is transactional, I can’t deny I was hoping for more “I love you” and less “that llama is trouble.”
Georgie’s smile grows, but it’s not something I can match right now. “I’m going to miss the city, King. I know I am.”
Which means she’s going to leave. I take a step back, but she grips both my hands and stops the movement.
“So I think we should take a vacation now and then, when we’re not in the middle of our busy summers.”
I swallow as I process her words. “Summers. Plural. Do you mean…”
“I love you, Royal Kingston. And there’s a whole world out there for us to see. Probably some great places for you to surf that aren’t in South Carolina.” Her smile is a wide grin now. “But even if you want to spend the rest of your days in Willow Cove, I want to share those days with you. You’ll just have to be prepared for Cecily to whisk me away now and then because she may be this marriage’s biggest supporter, but she’s still my best friend and won’t like that I’m choosing to make Willow Cove my permanent home.”
I think I’m crying now, which is ridiculous, but I can’t help it. “You love me,” I repeat. “You want to stay.”
