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It wasn’t the first time I had wondered how my life might have been different if I’d stayed in Castle Falls with my dad and my friends.
Seeing Will and Jamie not even trying to hide their love or their feelings really was a stark contrast to everything I had known—or had thought I’d known—about Castle Falls.
Maybe the small town wasn’t just a place people got stuck and had awful lives.
Maybe I was wrong.
It was all too much to take in at once. But for the first time in my life, the thought occurred to me that things didn’thaveto be the way I’d always assumed. Love didn’t mean I was going to disappoint someone.
Maybe the person who had been standing in my way and making me miserable and lonely for the past ten years hadn’t really been my dad, or the NFL.
Maybe the person who’d been keeping me from love for the past ten years was… myself.
Chapter Twenty-Two - Joanne
I looked up from the reports I’d gathered just in time to see Naomi fish a piece of candy out of the little dish by the register and pop it into her mouth.
“Did you even unwrap it first?”
“Jesus,” Naomi jumped and shot me a sheepish grin. “Do you have eyes in the back of your head or something? I thought I was being pretty sneaky that time.”
I laughed and rolled my eyes.
Even on her best days, Naomi was about as subtle as a freight train.
“What are you doing over there with all those papers, anyway?”
I gave a half-shrug as I glanced at the ever-growing stack of reports in front of me.
It had been just over twenty-four hours since Brady had asked me to start gathering the shop’s financial information. I had already made my way through most of the items on his list, butdamn, it was tedious.
I’d finally moved from the office to the front desk to sort through everything, just for a change of scenery. I had been sort of hoping that Naomi wouldn’t ask too many questions, though. It wasn’t a job I particularly enjoyed doing, but I didn’t want to bitch about it too much. No sense in bringing her mood down with talk of the impending sale.
Still, I didn’t want to lie to my friend, either.
“It’s, um, some reports and stuff that Brady asked me to get together.” I nibbled at my lip, wondering how much I should say. “Sales numbers, expenses… stuff like that.”
There. It wasn’t a lie, but it sort of glossed over the unpleasant parts, too.
Good enough.
“Do you know if he’s heard anything back from those corporate guys?” Naomi’s voice had dropped to a whisper, even though we were the only two people in the building.
Brady had left to make a second trip to the bank—presumably to pick up the rest of the paperwork from his list—and had said he probably wouldn’t be back in the shop for the rest of the afternoon.
I understood why Naomi didn’t want to shout her questions from the rooftops, though. It felt like we shouldn’t be discussing the topic at all, much less while we were at work. It just felt… weird.
But Naomi was still looking at me, eyebrows raised, waiting for a response, and I knew from experience that the look she was giving meant she wouldn’t be put off for long, even if I had been inclined to try.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m pretty sure Brady’s going to wait until after the Anderson-Beachman wedding to do anything major, but… does it even matter? It’s just delaying the inevitable, right? Should I even care as much as I do?”
They were all questions I had asked before, both to myself and to Naomi, and I knew verbatim what her optimistic non-answer would be, even before she opened her mouth to speak.
“I don’t think youcouldstop caring, even if you wanted to. And, you know, a lot can still happen in a month.”
I knew Naomi had a point. It would just be more helpful if I could borrow a little bit of her optimism—or even better, if I could get some of myownoptimism back.
I used to actually share Naomi’s sunny disposition, but the stress I’d been under about my uncertain future had made me more nervous, more cautious, more pessimistic than I’d ever been before.
