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Chapter Thirty-Seven
Penny
It’s late when I wake up the next morning, at least later than normal and I can hear Lauren moving around in her kitchen. I slept better than expected when I finally did fall asleep. My thoughts were consumed with worrying about Tommy alone at our house and wondering if I’d walked out on him, on us.
That’s the last thing I want him to think and I hope he knows I would never leave him for good. Even if I do take the job in Washington, even if we have to do the whole long-distance thing, I’m still all in.
I climb from the bed and pull on the leggings I was wearing yesterday along with the t-shirt I slept in. I never went home last night, but I’m going to need to today. The thought of going home to our house, knowing I left him alone there makes my heart shatter into a million pieces. I’d be devastated if he had done that to me.
I’m so fucking selfish.
I stumble out of Lauren’s extra bedroom, still a little tired, but still completely wrecked because I can’t make a damn decision.
She’s standing in the kitchen looking a little worse for the wear too. Her eyes are bloodshot like she spent last night on a bender, but given we didn’t drink at all, I know that’s not the case. She yawns, her mouth opening wide, her eyes falling closed as she stretches her arms above her head.
“You okay?” I ask, my words sympathetic.
“Yeah, I think so. I’m just so damn tired and you’re never going to believe this,” she says, stopping for a second to take a drink of her coffee, “I puked.”
“You puked?”
“Yeah. I got up, walked into the bathroom and instead of going pee, I threw up,” she explains, sounding totally confused. “I think I ate something bad or maybe it’s just exhaustion from trying to get this business up and running.”
“You and Jack have been working day and night. You’re probably just run ragged,” I say, knowing the feeling. Between all this work and now the stress over deciding what I’m going to do, I feel like I might puke too.
“Have you made a decision?” she asks quietly, her forehead creased with concern.
“No,” I wail, covering my face with my hands. “Let’s talk about something else,” I mumble through my fingers.
“Okay, I have an architect coming to meet with me in an hour. Why I scheduled it for today is beyond me. I swear I think Jack is going to murder me in my sleep if I schedule one more thing during the grand opening week.”
“An architect, huh? Fill me in. What’s going on?” I ask, prodding a little and enjoying the fact that our conversation isn’t dominated by what the hell I’m going to do.
With the cider house already finished and the restaurants and the tasting rooms remodeled recently, I can’t imagine what else could need to be done. This place is this gorgeous amount of rustic and modern that fits perfectly with Jack and Lauren; it’s like a goddamned postcard.
“We’re tearing down the old cottage next door and Jack and I are adding onto this place. Eventually we want to have kids and moving off the vineyard isn’t something either of us want, so…” she shrugs, looking around.
Lauren’s little cottage is beautiful just like everything else on the vineyard and I know it’s the house she grew up in and the place where she fell in love with Jack, so leaving isn’t an option.
“When I lived here as a kid it had three bedrooms and then Will and Ellen renovated it, so it had an ensuite, but that doesn’t really make it conducive for a family.”
“But you don’t want to leave, so why not add on. It’s going to be amazing,” I tell her, thinking about Tommy’s beautiful, perfect house on the vineyard and how much I love it, how much I love it here.
How much I love him.
Lauren keeps talking and I feel like an asshole, but I don’t hear a word she says, my focus is now on exactly what I need to do.
“I’m sorry, Lu, but I gotta go,” I announce, interrupting her, but the smile on her face says she understands.
“What did you decide?” she calls after me as I run out her front door with my shoes in my hands.
“I think I better tell Tommy first,” I yell over my shoulder, dodging the rutted terrain as I run shoeless toward the path that leads to mine and Tommy’s house.
I fling open the front door, tracking my dirty feet all through the house as I yell for Tommy but get no response.
I should’ve known he wouldn’t be here. He’s doing what takes his mind off of shit. He’s working. He’s somewhere on this massive plot of land and now I have to find his broken-hearted ass.
There’s no way I’m texting him, because he’ll panic and ruin the moment. I whip my hair into a bun and climb in the shower, needing to at least wash my dirty feet before I hit him with my decision.
