Page 87 of How to Kiss a Hawthorne Brother
Flint smiles when he sees me approach, my hand still holding Rebecca’s. He lets go of the woman in his arms long enough to clap me on the back and pull me into a quick bro-hug.
Soon, Lennox is beside us too. Only Perry stays off to the side, leaning against the bar where we left him, his arms crossed, a scowl on his face. At least he tried, if only briefly. That’s more than we’ve gotten from him before.
It takes me a few songs to really relax, but Rebecca was right. It is a great way to stop thinking.
Kate is never far from my thoughts. Every time I see a woman with dark hair pass through my periphery, I do a doubletake. When someone laughs, it’s Kate’s laugh I hear.
But I’m living anyway. I’m breathing. I’m smiling, laughing, enjoying being with my brothers.
I can do this.
Ihaveto do this. It’s the only choice I have.
One day at a time, I’m going to get through this. I only hope it gets easier.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kate
I sit in mygrandmother’s front porch rocking chair and stare at my phone. My mom and I have been texting back and forth since the conversation we had while I was in London.
As soon as I made it back home, I sent her copies of a few of the pictures I found, and she’s been texting me stories about them. Little things she remembers. She even told me how she met Dad and what their early relationship was like.
Things still aren’t perfect. Far from it. But they at least feel a tiny bit easier.
Things with Brody on the other hand?
I have no idea how I’m supposed to feel.
I pull up the news article I’ve visited approximately five hundred and fifteen times since it popped up in my newsfeed Friday morning.Hollywood A-lister Flint Hawthorne returns home to North Carolina to celebrate brother’s success.I normally click on articles about Flint because it’s crazy and weird to read about someone who is famous to everyone else but a childhood friend to me. But this one impacted me in ways I didn’t expect. The article includes two different photos. One isof all four Hawthorne brothers, their arms around each other, their smiles wide. Lennox is in the middle, holding some sort of award. But the second photograph? It’s of Brody.
Okay, fine. It’s actually of Flint. He’s on a dance floor, surrounded by people, but Brody is clearly the guy standing right next to him. He’s in a suit, which is all kinds of hot, but he’s also holding hands with a woman.
That? Not so hot.
His lips were on mine just over a week ago, and now...and now I don’t know what. I don’t know anything because he hasn’t responded to any of my text messages.
He’s home, at least. I know that much. It’s possible I went for a long walk last night that may or may not have looped by his house multiple times, stopping only when his truck was back in his driveway at 7:04 p.m. You know. Give or take.
Honestly, I have no idea how he didn’t see me. Or hear that I’m back in town.
I don’t know the protocol for this situation.
I came home from London ready to tell him I’m pretty sure I’m in love with him. No, not just pretty sure. I came home ready to tell him Iam.In love. The end.
But I can’t do that if he doesn’t want to talk to me. Which, obviously he doesn’t, or he would have responded to my texts.
I hurt him, I know. Leaving like I did was cowardly. But I was scared. Scared and overwhelmed and...what if it’s too late? What if it doesn’t matter at all because he’s already thinking about someone else? What if he spent the entire weekend with the nameless woman in the photo, and I’m not going to see him again until we randomly run into each other at the grocery store when we’re both buying avocados?
I might be overreacting.
I wasdefinitelyoverreacting when I did a deep dive into Flint Hawthorne celebrity gossip looking for any sliver of information about the Hawthorne brothers’ weekend in Charlotte.
I’m not proud of how far down the rabbit hole I fell. I think I took celebrity stalking to a whole new level. I visited message boards I will never be able to unvisit. Saw posts from women who literally know everything there is to know about Flint. And I meaneverything.Shoe size. Favorite food. Favorite color. The name of his dog when he was a kid. They know about Stonebrook. Several of them have even been there. There were half a dozen different photographs of women standing in front of the big farmhouse or crouching in the strawberry fields, their smiles wide as they hold up the picking buckets labeled with the Hawthorne family name.
Brody has mentioned it to me before, that they sometimes have fans show up, but seeing the devotion up close and personal was disconcerting, to say the least. And completely fruitless.
In all that searching, the woman in the original photo, the one with Brody, didn’t show up anywhere else.
