I made it that way.
Everything since we parted ways at seventeen comes back to this one truth I couldn’t give him then, and still can’t now.
Not even the bookstore can hold my attention once I make it into town. Though, the hot cuppa from Freya’s Tea Shoppe helps to settle how shaken I feel after the near accident. My body’s reaction to being so close to Jamie was just as unsettling.
I can’t stop thinking about how good it felt to be held by him. My body melted into his like it remembered, and then it just let go.
How long has it been since I cried like that in front of another person who wasn’t my parents? If I’m honest, I haven’t been that unguarded with anyone since Jamie.
And how sad is that?
I follow my feet home, watching the uneven cobblestones under my wellies as I spiral deeper into my thoughts.
I never expected an apology from Jamie, and it was so damn sincere too. But he isn’t the only one at fault. I played my own part in our friendship—relationship… whatever—falling apart.
I’m the one who cut him out of my life and lied when we always promised each other the truth.
Nope, not going to do that.
Beating myself up for decisions I made as a heartbroken and scared seventeen-year-old won’t help anything. I had my reasons. And when the sands of time wore those down and I wanted to make a different choice, new reasons presented themselves.
But things have changed, and I need to forge a new path forward.
When I pass a cottage just down from the inn with aFor Rentplacard in the garden, it feels like a sign. My gut tells me itwould be perfect for me and Lennox, and the first step on this new path needs to be locking down a place for us to live. Only then can I consider telling Jamie everything.
I wonder—not for the first time—why he’s never settled down with anyone. In my years of silently keeping tabs on him through social media, I’ve never seen a woman make an appearance other than his friend Rory—and she’s been around since he first moved to Tahoe. I was irrationally jealous of her as a teen, and as embarrassing as it is to admit it, I still am. It stung to watch him move on with a new friend. Especially another girl.
As a perpetual bachelor, how will he react to finding out he’s a dad? Or that he’s missed out on ten years of his son’s life? I don’t even know how I want him to react. Do I want him to want to be part of Lennox’s life? The obvious answer is yes, but we have a good thing going. I don’t want to completely obliterate our comfortable balance if Jamie isn’t even going to be around.
And he won’t be.
He has a whole life in America to go back to once everything settles here.
He won’t stay. He wouldn’t stay for me then, and he won’t stay for Lennox now. So, at best, he’d be a part-time “dad” from a world away which will only hurt Lennox… And me.
Or what if he doesn’t want anything to do with Lennox? That thought makes my heart ache in my chest. How could he not want him?
Stop, Avi. You’re getting aheadof yourself.
I inhale deeply when I reach the loch and look out over the shining waters. There’s no use overthinking all the possibilities. I just have to tell him and figure out the rest from there.
I head up the garden path to the kitchen, looking at the bench swing that sits in place of the tire we once played on.
So much has changed.
The kitchen is oddly quiet. The calm before the storm that comes between breakfast and lunch. I set to work chopping onions for tonight’s sauce, the scrape of my knife across the cutting board the only sound in the space. I’m thankful for the potent sting the onions elicit—at least if anyone walks in, they’ll think my red-rimmed eyes are due to them.
I toss them into a pan with some garlic and herbs and the kitchen is instantly filled with their aromatic scent. Everything inside me relaxes a little. This is where I feel most comfortable, most at peace. In my kitchen.
As I wash my hands, a pair of booted feet pass the window on the way up the ladder to the roof. Jamie’s boots.
I guess things haven’t changed that much. I wonder if he’s headed up there to escape whatever it was that happened between us earlier, or if he just needs to think. Ormaybe he wants to write.
I never see him on his computer, like I’d expect if he’s working on a new project. Instead, he’s always with Aileen or Angus, helping with whatever he can around the inn. Whether it’s checking in guests or oiling rusty hinges, cutting back the hedges when they get unruly or tidying up the parlor. I even spotted him turning down beds one evening when they were short-staffed. It’s clear he’s attempting to lighten their load.
But surely he’s still writing?
“Mornin’, lass,” Hamish says, walking in the kitchen door.
