AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’d spent the entire evening pacing a path down the center of my mother’s expensive living room carpet. I was too frantic to think clearly. Too frantic to come up with any sort of plan. Too frantic to think about the best way to spin this or even present Flynn with a logical explanation, let alone some kind of flowery preplanned speech.
Turned out being a skilled negotiator—being a fuckingRainmaker—was impossible when you had your whole life and future on the line. All I knew was that my heart had removed itself from my chest against my will and was beating somewhere across town. I wasn’t going to feel whole again until Flynn and I were together.
Besides, space was what had gotten us into trouble in the first place. He could take his space and shove it.
After verifying that Flynn wasn’t in his house, I made my way to the locked front door of the Tavern and banged it with my fist until someone finally unlocked it.
It was Dan. The fucker.
“Where is he?” I asked without preamble. “Flynn’s not home. I already checked. And don’t even think about telling me to leave again because—”
“He’s not here.” Dan sounded tired. He stepped back and gestured for me to come in, which was… decent of him. “He took off after the last customer left and said he’d be back later to clean up. I figured I’d stay to do it for him since he’s been so slammed.”
Dan was doing a piss-poor job of being the villain I wanted to cast him as.
“Did he say where he was going?” I asked, grabbing a nearby chair to place on top of a table. I could tell Dan had been partway through the work when I’d shown up, and the least I could do to help Flynn—and Dan—was to help clean up while I interrogated him.
“You know… I didn’t like you at first, JT,” Dan began, eyeing me from over a set of chair legs before reaching for another. “I thought you were trying to sabotage Flynn’s chances at Brew Fest.”
“Yes. I know exactly what you thought.” Since Flynn had screamed it at top volume earlier, the whole town might know at this point. “But it’s not true.”
“I got that.” He ran a hand over his short hair. “I figured that out when I saw the look on your face earlier. You were helping us. It was nice of you.”
I bristled at his generous use of the term “us” but appreciated his gratitude nonetheless. “I care about Flynn.” Which was an understatement, but Dan wasn’t the guy who needed to hear my truths or deserved my explanations.
“It seems like you do. Which is why I can’t understand why you would keep this from him. This business is his heart. If you’ve known him as long as everyone says you have, how could you not know that?”
“I did!” I snapped, pushing away from the table. “I’ve been afraid of this all along, but I couldn’t figure out what else to do. So don’t fucking talk to me about knowing Flynn Honeycutt, do you hear me? No one knows that man better than I do.”
“Really?” Dan stepped forward and jutted his clenched jaw at me. “Did you know he has dreams to travel the world? To go to school and learn from the experts?”
“No he doesn’t.” I rolled my eyes. “No more than I want to be a baseball player.”
“What?”
I shook my head, knowing that whatever else I’d fucked up, this one thing I’d gotten right. “That’s not what he wants anymore, Dan. It might have been his dream once. And maybe I believed it still was, even a few weeks ago. But dreams change. People change. Flynn’s real dream is to stayherein the place he loves most and help grow the town along with his business. He wants to support his family. He wants to build something that endures. He wants to make Honeybridge a place people want to come to and never want to leave.”
Dan’s face had morphed into an expression of surprise.
I let out a soft laugh, even though I felt like crying. “That’s what I was trying to give him, man. His dream. That’s all I was trying to do.”
Flynn’s voice came from behind me. “Then why weren’t you honest?”
“Flynn,” I whispered. I closed my eyes and breathed in and out. Just hearing his voice, filled with hurt and anger as it was, knowing he was in the same room with me, sent a wave of peace washing over me like Willow Honeycutt had just sprinkled me with relaxation mist while resetting my chakras.
I turned toward the man I loved, and in that moment, I realized my own truth just as surely as I knew Flynn’s.
I had one chance to tell him. To make this right. But it was going to take a miracle to make it happen.
ChapterSixteen
Flynn
I couldn’t bring myself to look at JT’s face. Dan met my eyes over JT’s shoulder and tilted his head, silently checking whether I felt safe being alone with JT… while also telling me he thought I would be. Clearly, something JT had said changed Dan’s mind about the guy. Maybe he’d turned on the Wellbridge charm.
I waved Dan off. “Go home, Dan. Gonna be a long day again tomorrow. Thanks for everything.”
Thankfully, instead of arguing, Dan turned around and disappeared into the kitchen. A few moments later, I heard the back door close with a solid thunk.
