He found me first, standing on the bench like a drama queen and spreading his arms wide. “Mark Mercer, as I live and breathe.”
I rolled my eyes and headed toward him.
He’d climbed down by the time I reached his table, but he was still grinning as I took a seat across from him.
“How the hell are you?” he asked. Then I watched the immature-frat-boy persona fall away and read real concern in his eyes. He’d witnessed everything that had gone down at Grandpappy’s yesterday too.
“I’m okay,” I replied honestly. But hopefully soon there’d be the potential for more than that.
I clinked my glass to his and took a sip before greeting the two other men at the table. Cole Abernathy was on my left and Jase Wilcox sat across from him. They’d both been friends with Brady since elementary school, and I’d been around them plenty in the years I’d been working for the Judds.
“Good to see you,” the man nearly everyone called Abby said. “And thanks for coming out to Flyers’s opening a couple of months back. You took off before we got a chance to talk.”
“No problem. It was great. I hope business is good.”
While Abby gave me an update on his newest venture, I thought back to that October evening with Candace, legs folded beneath a too-small table, our knees pressed together. The way I’d wanted her—her time and attention and love—but I’d forced all those complicated feelings aside, held myself back, and tried my best to be her friend instead. I’d been scared to wish for more, too afraid of losing her before I even had her.
Maybe love and loss would always be tethered together in my mind. Two sides of the same coin. I hadn’t experienced one without the other. But I didn’t want my relationship with Candace to come down to a coin toss.
“You ready, Mercer?” Brady asked, pulling me out of my thoughts and holding out his pint.
As the intro music for Trivia Night began, I let myself sink into the experience—one I’d avoided for so long. The simplicity of it. The novelty. The community.
“Yeah,” I replied. Then I clinked my glass to his again and gave myself permission to have fun.
There was room for more in my life. I’d made it small on purpose. And I’d kept it that way to ensure my safety. But I could take up space. I could grow, and I didn’t have to do it alone.
I had a life I loved—or the potential for one. It was time I started living it.
twenty-one
CANDACE
My office was freezing Tuesday morning when I got in. The fact that it was December and five thirteen in the morning probably had something to do with it.
I turned my electric heater to the highest setting and wrapped myself in a blanket I kept on the back of my desk chair. Then I pulled out my trusty notebook and flipped to the page I’d been scribbling on all day yesterday.Things to say to Markwas in bold at the top of the lined sheet. Making a list had helped to order my thoughts after I’d calmed down.
When we’d had our fight on Sunday, I’d been too emotional and reactive to really express myself. It was hard to make a good point when you were shrill and unsteady on the inside and just as shrill and unsteady on the outside. I’d walked away because I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere while the shame I felt just made me more and more defensive. My adrenaline had needed to dissipate and my good sense to return. And I’d needed to stop shouting I loved him mid-rant.
I face-palmed and groaned as I remembered the utter shock on his face at my angry love confession.
A soft knock on the doorframe had my head snapping up.
“I saw the light beneath the door. Thought I’d check on you,” Joan said by way of greeting. She was decked out in her winter running gear. Dark leggingshugged her slim, muscular legs while a quarter-zip pullover covered her top half. She wore a headband over her ears, and her cheeks were already a little pink from the cold.
“Oh, you know,” I hedged.
Joan looked amused. “Just torturing yourself and being miserable?”
“Yep. That’s the one.”
She came in, closed the door behind her, and took the narrow uncomfortable seat in front of the desk. “He’ll come around. He knows you didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
My eyes drifted toward my notebook, but I didn’t see the myriad of apologies written there in my hasty scrawl. I only remembered the panic on his face, the total devastation while he’d dragged me away from the Prices. The way his anxiety had increased tenfold when he realized that all eyes were on us and the scene I’d caused.
“I don’t know, Joanie. He has every right not to forgive me.”
“Bullshit,” she said without heat. “That Price girl deserved everything you said and more. I’ve had to watch people give him a hard time for years. Bitten my tongue while people like Eloise Carter made him feel less than, treated him like some deadbeat who doesn’t pay child support instead of the damn saint he is.”
