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Long after we’ve hung up, I sit there with my phone in my hand, trying to figure out my next move. I need a plan. I know where I am, and I know where I want to be. I just have to figure out how to get them both, without losing myself or the man I’m falling for.
Shouldn’t be too hard, right?
Chapter Twenty
Rueben
One week later
“You okay?” Royce asks between sips from his beer bottle from across the deck.
“I’m fine,” I repeat for what feels like the millionth time. Between my mom and brother, and the easy lie I keep telling myself on a regular basis, I’ve said those exact two words more times than I can count.
“You’re not fine. You’re a grumpy bastard.”
I finish off my third beer of the night and toss the bottle into the recycle bin. “I have a lot on my mind.” That’s putting it mildly. In the week since Cricket left, I’ve been a miserable fuck. I know it. Apparently, my brother knows it. That’s probably why he refused to listen to my declined invitation for tonight and just showed up with food and beer.
“Would any of it be about a beautiful brunette with pretty green eyes?”
My cheek ticks and my jaw tightens as my brother talks about Cricket. She’s been back in California for seven days. Seven days of hell on earth, missing her like crazy and wishing she would have stayed. But I also know it wasn’t the right time. She has commitments and obligations back west, which is why I didn’t just ask her to drop everything and stay.
Even though I wanted her to.
“Mind your own business,” I mumble, grabbing a fourth beer from the cooler.
“Your grumpy mood is my business.” He doesn’t continue, just looks out over the Smoky Mountains landscape. “Why didn’t you ask her to stay?”
I take a long drink of my bottle to give myself time. Time to formulate an answer to the burning question of the week. “It’s not the right time. She has a life out there, shit to do. She couldn’t just drop everything and stay here with me,” I tell him.
“Why the hell not?” he asks, his facial features showing he’s genuinely confused.
“Because,” I start, frustration sweeping through me like a furnace, hot and fierce. “You just don’t understand,” I end up saying, even though it’s a weak retort at best.
Royce leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His eyes lock with mine and I can tell he’s not going to let this go. “Explain it to me.”
Sighing, I take another drink of my beer and end up setting it aside. “There’s all this crap stacked up against us right now. I start a new job in another week, and my free time and leisure travel isn’t going to be what it was, at least not for a while. She’s a morning show host on television, Royce. She can’t just take off whenever she wants to come to Tennessee.”
“How do you know? You made it sound like she doesn’t even like her job.”
And here’s where it gets tricky. “She doesn’t. Not really. But… I guess I just wanted her to want to make the decision on her own, ya know? I don’t want to be a major influence on this life-changing choice, and then she come to regret it down the road.” And that right there is the main reason I didn’t ask her to stay. I’m terrified she’ll hate it here, hate the life she gave up everything for, and regret her decision. Regret me.
“How is she going to make that decision if she doesn’t have all the facts? You want her to come here, right? So ask her. Lay your cards out and see where they fall. She’s hot, Rueben, but something tells me she’s not a mind reader.”
I look over at my brother, my heartbeat thumping a heavy melody in my chest. “She is hot,” I finally say with a cocky grin.
“Dude, I’m still trying to figure out what she sees in you. I mean, you’re not even the hot Rigsby brother,” he teases.
I snort my disbelief and shake my head. My smile falls from my face as I get back to more serious matters. “There’s so much to decide. Where will she work? Will she want to live with me? If not, where is she going to stay during peak tourist season?” I start firing off, and while I know how I’d answer all of those questions—she’d be with me—I don’t know that we’re exactly ready for that. That’s why I add, “It’s been like…a week.”
Royce shrugs. “What does a calendar have to do with it? You think just because you were with her a week that it means you can’t love her yet?” I feel his eyes burning into me, reading my mind and my soul. “You do love her, right?”
The answer is immediate. “Yes.”
He just smiles back across the deck. “Hearts don’t lie, little brother.”
“That’s pretty deep for a man who’s never been in love before,” I tell him and watch in fascination as something passes through his eyes. Regret, maybe? Longing? Yeah, there’s something there, but it’s pushed aside quickly and replaced with a grin. “No time for love, little brother.”
I just grin at my older brother. “You’re going to fall hard.”
