Page 73 of Revelry
The man I’d just realized made me the happiest I’d been in years called me out on my biggest fear—that I was selfish. And wasn’t that just proof that it was true?
The longer I’d been there with him, watching as anger and fear danced across his features, the more I’d realized he wasn’t mad about the river. That might have been his excuse to let it free, but the truth was he was scared just like I was.
Because I was leaving, and he was staying, and just like the summer had begun, it would end.
In two weeks, I’d head back to Seattle—back to the boutique, where my team expected me to have a brilliant line designed and ready to be worked on, back to my friends, who would expect me to be the happy go-getter I was before my divorce, and back to the city, where the mountains were only faint ghosts in the distance.
My hand jetted out to where I’d left my phone on my bedside table earlier and I unlocked it quickly, ignoring all the missed texts from earlier and clicking through my favorites to dial Adrian.
“Hey, mountain girl,” he answered, to which I only replied with a pause and a sniff, and then I heard him sigh. “Oh babe, what happened?”
“It’s all ending, Adrian. The summer is almost over, I have to find a place to live, I have to figure everything out and I haven’t done anything. I don’t have a line,” I admitted. “I don’t have anything.”
My hands tightened around the phone and I curled in on myself even more, aching in every way. I’d spent almost three months trying to find myself and I’d come up empty handed.
“Hey, everything’s going to be okay. You can stay with me until you find a place and don’t worry about work. The boutique is just fine, Wren. Everyone still loves you and your work and no one is worried. Plus, the team and I have been working on some designs, too, and if we need them to float us through next year’s summer line we can do that. I think you’re going to love what they’ve come up with.”
I sniffed again, feeling even more like a failure. Adrian and the team had already had to do next year’s spring line all on their own because I’d been too fucked up. Now they would possibly have to float me through another one. Did they even need me anymore, for anything else other than my name? I felt useless, hopeless, completely broken.
“When do you check out of the cabin?”
“Two weeks from today.”
“Okay,” he answered, voice soft and encouraging. “Just come straight here before you go anywhere else. I’ll have wine ready and I’ll help you unload boxes if you want or we can just talk or we can go out. Whatever you need.”
I nodded into my pillow, but another ache rolled through my chest. I wasn’t ready to leave.
“We’re going to get through this.You’regoing to get through this. You’re too strong not to.”
I stopped nodding then, silence my only response. I felt a lot of things in that moment—heartbroken, sad, guilty, inadequate, lost, unsure.
There was a long list, but strong wasn’t on it.
Later that night, I wrapped myself in a blanket and made a giant mug of hot chocolate before settling in on the front porch. The clouds had cleared out completely, leaving me bathed in the soft light of the moon and stars as I sat with my sketchbook in my lap. I didn’t even get to open it and attempt to work through my feelings before Momma Von appeared at the edge of my drive.
“Hope there’s something strong in that mug,” she said as she climbed my stairs. Her bangs were pinned back in a braid tonight, skin freshly tanned from a day of working outside I assumed.
“Hot cocoa. But I can spike yours, if you want?”
“Like that’s a question,” she answered with a wry smile.
I popped up and dipped inside as she made herself comfortable, and five minutes later I returned with hot chocolate for her, too—complete with two shots of Baileys.
She took it gratefully, a hum of appreciation on her lips as she took the first sip and I covered the two of us with my blanket. I loved the little bench on my front porch, the view of the mountains, the stars. I’d miss it all, more than I had words to explain.
“I think it’s time I tell you the rest of the story,” Momma Von said after a moment, her hands wrapped around her mug. “About Dani.”
I tucked my legs up onto the bench, balancing my mug on my knees. “I thought that wasn’t your story to tell.”
“Yeah, well,” she started, eyes focused off in the distance. “I’m afraid the person whose story itisto tell may never have the strength to tell it.”
“You talked to Anderson?”
She nodded. “He told me about what happened earlier. I’m so sorry,” she said, pausing for a long drink. “And I’m so happy you’re okay.”
“Is he? Okay, I mean?”
“No,” she answered quickly, shaking her head. The movement was so soft, so slight that I couldn’t even be sure it’d happened. “But it’s not you he was mad at today, Wren. It’s not you he was yelling at. It was himself.”
