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“Wait a minute.” Eric cocked his head, not believing he was even about to ask this. “Did you tell Tessa to call me?”
“Yeah.”
“Because you wanted to talk?”
“Yeah.”
Now they were back to staring in silence again. Eric’s head swam with grief and confusion. And huge, utter relief that he finally understood what had been wrong between them for so long. “I can’t tell you what to feel for yourself, Jamie, but I’ll never blame you. And neither will Tessa. And Mom and Dad thought you were doing the right thing, or they wouldn’t have come for you. It wasn’t your fault. And I sure as hell never thought I was perfect. So can we just start from here? Try again?”
“I’d like that,” Jamie said. “I’m sick of fighting all the damn time.” He glanced up. “Plus, my jaw felt like hell for a while there.”
“Consider it payback for all the stress you caused me over the years. I thought you’d never make it out of college with a degree.”
“Dude, I serve beer. I would’ve been okay.”
Eric growled, but he left it alone. Considering the burden Jamie had been carrying around, it was a miracle he hadn’t lost himself entirely. Eric’s heart shook at the thought of how bad it could’ve gotten if Jamie hadn’t been a good person deep down inside.
Jamie rubbed a hand hard over his face. “Okay. Does this mean you’ll keep doing all the stuff at the brewery that no one else knows how to do? Much as I hate to admit it, we can’t do the things you do.”
“Actually…no.”
Jamie’s hand dropped. “No?” he asked warily.
“I haven’t figured it out yet,” Eric admitted, “but something’s got to change.”
“Something like what?”
Eric looked down at his mom’s grave, wishing like hell he had someone to help him puzzle it out. It wasn’t just the arguments with his brother that had been slowly tearing him up inside. It was more than that. “I’m not happy doing what I’m doing. I need something else.”
“You’re not thinking of heading east again, are you?”
“No.”
“Well, you can’t have my job,” Jamie growled.
“I don’t want your job. But…maybe somebody else’s.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
BETH STRETCHED OUT ON the blanket, pointing her toes and raising her hands as far above her head as she could. The sun beat down on her. The breeze danced over her skin. It felt like the last nice day of the year. She knew it wasn’t. There’d be other bright, sunny days, but she felt an urgency to soak up the warmth to see her through the winter.
“They’ll be back soon,” Cairo said, stretching like a cat on her own blanket. The sandstone beneath them was hard under the thin fabric, but it was nearly as warm as the sun.
“Do you need me to do anything else?” Beth asked, hoping the answer was no. She didn’t want to move.
“It’s all ready,” Cairo answered, her own voice drowsy.
“Good.”
The climbers had set off well over an hour before, and Beth was glad she hadn’t joined them. She needed this peace right now more than she needed to challenge herself. And she did feel peaceful, despite everything. She felt freer than she had in years. She couldn’t change what had happened to her, but she could be free of it. She was free of it. No matter what Kendall did.
But nothing was clearer. Because now that she’d been honest with her father, she could see how dishonest she’d been with everyone else. She’d wanted so badly to be everything she’d read about and studied. Everything she’d believed. But she couldn’t be everything. Nobody could. Cairo had her life with two men, and she was happy with that. She didn’t try to fit what other people loved into her life, too. How could there be room for that?
Beth had been trying to be too many people, all at one time. But how was she going to figure out who the real Beth was?
The wind lifted a strand of hair and dragged it over her face. She slipped it back behind her ear. Over the past few months, she’d discovered a few true things. She loved helping people at the White Orchid. She loved putting them at ease and guiding them in the right direction. And she loved the family she’d made for herself at the store. But that was the extent of it. The rest…the rest of it she could do without. And frankly, some of it she was starting to hate.
One more true thing was that she didn’t want to be sexually omnivorous. She just wanted to be comfortable. Which led her to the truest thing of all…Eric Donovan. He’d hurt her, badly. But part of that was her fault. If he hadn’t known anything about her but sex, it was because she hadn’t let him see.
