Page 65 of You Know You Wanna

The trees were lit up by lights placed every few yards along the path and a light breeze stirred the night air. It was so damn serene that it almost felt like stress couldn’t exist here. As it was, I felt more relaxed than I had in years, my muscles no longer tense at all and my brain finally not working overtime all the time.

I filled my lungs with fresh air and held it for a beat. “Do you think you’re going to stay here forever?” I asked quietly.

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug and looked around before glancing up at me. “That wasn’t the plan, but it ended up that way. Things got comfortable and easy. I fell into a routine, and suddenly, years had gone by and I hadn’t left.”

“Do you still want to, though?” I asked. “You mentioned wanting your own studio in a big city and you’ve already said you want to start traveling more, but will you always come back here? Will this always be the home you come back to?”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” she replied after thinking about it for a long moment. “It feels like it will be and I love it here so much, but there’s this small part of me that wonders what else could be out there for me.”

“It’s a great big world,” I said, smiling to let her know that I wasn’t judging either way. “Your little corner of it is pretty amazing, though. I understand your hesitation to leave.”

“Well, maybe if I do start traveling more, even just those short trips I told you I’d start taking, I’ll find someplace else that feels like home. Maybe if I do, I’ll stay there for a few years and see what it’s like.”

“Is that something you’d be interested in?” I asked. “No offense, but you don’t seem like the nomadic type.”

She laughed. “I’m not, but who knows? Something about the idea of experiencing a little bit of life elsewhere has always been alluring to me. Not in the ‘can’t wait to get out of town way,’ but I guess I just never saw myself spending my entire life living only in Bluebell Hollow.”

“There’s nothing wrong with getting out and seeing more of the world,” I said. “Personally, I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to do it.”

“Have you traveled a lot?”

I shrugged. “Some. Mostly for work, but I want to change that. I want to start traveling more for pleasure. With Laurene going off to the United Kingdom, I might combine visits to her with trips around Europe. See some stuff.”

“Do you think you’ll ever move there?” she asked. “Your ex has, right?”

“My ex is currently living on my yacht. God only knows how long that will last, but it’s something she’s always wanted to do. Living abroad has been a thing for her since before we even met and I guess she’s finally getting it out of her system, but I have no desire to relocate permanently. Least of all to the part of the world Jacqueline happens to be in.”

“You’re better when you’re separated by entire oceans?” she teased lightly.

I laughed. “That’s exactly it. Besides, I wouldn’t uproot my life and my business to go over there only to have her to decide to move Laurene to Asia or someplace else the next month.”

“Do you think she’d do that? Move Laurene from London to yet another different country?”

I let out a slow breath through my nostrils as I thought about it. Then I nodded. “As unfair as it would be, I think she would. When she’s ready to move on, I doubt she’d think twice about enrolling Laurene in a school closer to wherever she’ll be going.”

Birdie winced. “That does seem unfair. Are you sure it won’t be better for her if you just keep her in Manhattan with you?”

“I wasn’t, but now, I really don’t know,” I replied honestly. “When we were negotiating the settlement and Jacqueline insisted on Laurene going to England for the school year, I figured I was never home anyway and that she’d be better off near her mom, but I’ve been questioning that a lot these last couple weeks.”

She glanced up at me. “Will you be able to keep her with you if you change your mind? Or how would that work?”

I shook my head, lifting my free hand to drag my fingers through my hair. “I have no idea, but it’s definitely not as simple as just changing my mind. I’d have to change Jacqueline’s too, and it won’t be easy. Plus, I’m still not convinced it would be better for Laurene to stay. While it sounds like a great idea right now, I’m just not one hundred percent confident that I’ll be able to cut back my hours enough to be the parent she deserves to have in her life.”

“You work for yourself, though,” she said, her tone puzzled, like she was trying to figure it out. “Doesn’t that mean you get to make your own hours?”

I chuckled. “Sure, but it also means that when I’m not working, my work isn’t getting done. I mean, I guess I could hire extra help. Declan wouldn’t mind a few more hands in the office, but I like to have control. I don’t know how to just leave stuff in other people’s hands and trust them with it.”

“You could learn,” she suggested. “Create a system where you still have the final say but that gives you more time to spend with your daughter.”

I drew in a deep breath. “It’s an option, but realistically, the settlement has already been signed. That’s the first hurdle I’d have to get over and Jacqueline doesn’t even want to talk to me about Laurene right now. I doubt she’s going to agree to changing the settlement, which means we’d have to go back to court. It’d scratch open wounds that have barely started healing and we’d probably spend the next two years tied up in litigation because of it.”

She shuddered. “That sounds awful.”

“Yeah, well, it is what it is,” I said. “I’d do it for Laurene in a heartbeat, but only if I really am convinced it would be better for her to stay, and I’m not.”

“She sure wants to,” Birdie said. “I know she’s still young and that you guys, as her parents, have to decide what’s best for her. I also know that what’s best for her won’t always be what she wants, but surely what she wants should at least factor into the decision.”

“She’s never even visited the school she’ll be attending,” I said. “The place is supposed to be incredible. Going there may well be what’s best for her, and in time, she might come to see that. We won’t know until she’s there and she’s had some time to adapt, but by then, she’s there. At that point, it’s too late to second-guess whether we were right to have sent her there in the first place.”