Page 81 of Say the Words
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you lying hurt out there somewhere.”
She still looked amused, but tempered with soft understanding. “I never pictured you for the worrying type.”
“I’m not. Or, I wasn’t. I don’t know what I am now. You keep taking me by surprise until I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”
“I didn’t think I was doing all that.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” I took a step back, as though that could rid me of the temptation to kiss her again and never stop. “We can’t keep doing this.”
She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, as if gathering all her strength to her.
“Give me one good reason why not,” she said when she opened her eyes again. “And it can’t be your brother.”
I ground my teeth together. “He’s part of it.”
I wouldn’t be like him, indifferent to everyone’s wants but my own.
“Haven’t you ever been with someone you knew you shouldn’t have?”
“Yes.” The image of Delia driving away with a casual wave flashed through my mind. “I don’t want to be that for you.”
“Youwouldn’t be. Dating Bret was just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”
Her words seemed to cut through the air between us as I turned over what she’d said.
“When my mom died, my whole world fell apart.” She spoke softly, but her voice carried an urgency, too, like she needed to get the words out, make me understand. “I stayed out here a few weeks, but Dad thought I should return to Austin, back to the life I had there. So I went back to my apartment, lost and alone and shattered.”
I twined my fingers with hers, offering some small measure of comfort.
“I was adrift and numb, barely noticing the weeks that passed. I lost my job. I don’t know if you knew that.” She looked like she feared I might judge her for it. I squeezed her hand to let her know I never could. “I was too much of a mess to meet with clients, I couldn’t keep myself together. That’s when I started the online work. Nobody had to know how broken I was inside.”
It killed me to think of this sweet, loving woman trying to work through her grief and sorrow all on her own.
“Then one day, I ran into Bret at this random coffee house I’d been to a hundred times before. We hadn’t talked in years, and we stopped to catch up. Handsome and charming, everything about him was polished to a shine. He didn’t look at me with pity in his eyes, or talk about my mom, and he never, never asked how I was feeling.” She gave a small shrug. “I didn’t recognize it as indifference at the time.”
I had accepted that’s just how Bret was with women—in it for a good time, not for a long time. He’d had a parade of women go by, some he brought to town, others I heard about only in passing. Some part of me had hoped he’d grown past all that and was ready to do right by June. I should have known better from Day One.
“Our time together was a distraction. Being with Bret let me forget my grief for a little while, but that wasn’t really what I needed. I like to think that if I hadn’t been so shattered by my mom’s death, I wouldn’t have dated him as long as I did. I would have realized we just didn’t connect, that there wasn’t anything real between us, we didn’t really know each other. Not like you and me.”
This last came out a whisper, but I felt every word. Her gaze dropped to somewhere in the vicinity of my broken ribs, right close to that part of me that ached like a demon when she spoke this way.
“This,” she said, tugging on my hand, “doesn’t have anything to do with Bret. This is about you and me.”
She leaned closer, inching toward my face. A replay of that night in my truck, but now that I’d kissed her, the anticipation thrummed so much worse for knowing just how glorious a kiss from June could be. Her lips finally brushed against mine, soft and sweet, before she lowered back down to her heels.
“Bret’s a fool,” I said. She smiled up at me until my chest seemed to explode all over again.
If my brother was a fool for letting June go, what would that make me in a few days when I would have to do the same thing?
TWENTY-SEVEN
june
From the firstminute I’d walked through Fine & Dandy’s doors, I’d wanted to move in. The shop was filled top to bottom with the sorts of homey accents I loved to snap up for my clients: rustic wall art, plush decorative pillows, cozy throws just perfect to cuddle up in by a fire. All the little finishing touches that made a house feel like a home.
A few customers browsed the store, but Marilyn buzzed straight over to greet me.
“I hoped I’d see you here.” She moved right in for a hug as though we did this every day.
