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I find my most charming smile as I do just that and pin the grandmotherly woman in an apron whose name tag reads Joan with it. “Last minute flowers for my wife?”
“Well—”
“Something that says sorry and forgive me for being a pain in the ass while she’s carrying our baby,” I add sheepishly.
The lady smiles back and shakes her head. “One groveling husband special coming up.”
Jesus Christ, I think, looking at the bouquet laden with pretty flowers and the cute little teddy bear in the gold bag I nab at the last second. Joan may look sweet and grandmotherly, but she is definitely up there with the mob in her ruthlessness.
She efficiently hands me the bouquet and directs me toward the door.
I pick up dinner and head back to my patrol car, trying to figure out if everyone in Birch Harbor knows that I fucked up before I even make it home.
If Brandi doesn’t forgive me, then I give up. I’ll become a monk or something. I don’t want anyone but her, and the idea of her refusing to talk to me makes me sick to my stomach.
I press the button on my car keys to unlock the vehicle when a feminine voice speaks up from behind me.
“Please, Travis.”
Everything freezes and I don’t move for a full second. Then, without turning around, I pull open the car door and put my purchases on the passenger seat.
“Whatever it is, Jessica,” I say, straightening up and taking a deep, calming breath, “you got the wrong brother to talk to.”
“I want to talk to you.”
I turn then, letting my gaze sweep over her for the first time since I walked out of the courthouse a divorced man.
Funny, she doesn’t look like Brandi to me that much anymore.
Her face is too sharp. Her lips are too thin. She’s a pale comparison to the woman I married. I’ll take the soft sweetness of my wife any day.
But still, that little frisson of awareness goes through me, anyway. Like some kind of muscle memory, when she leans forward. Only, it’s not a sexual awareness. It’s like I’ve been shocked with a cattle prod one too many times and need to step away.
“I don’t want to talk to you. I think everything has been said, and was said, when you left me for my brother.”
Her gaze drops down to my hand, the ring there. “Your mom said you’d remarried.”
“Not really your business.”
I just shake my head when she crosses her arms over her chest and steps back.
“No,” Jessica says, shifting on the pavement as she pulls her coat around herself. “I screwed up. But we were young then and—”
“You fucked my twin brother. You fucked him while we were married and then left me and married him. I’m going to say that’s a little beyond a screwup because we were young.” I put my hand on my car door, the keys dangling. “But that really doesn’t matter, actually. We’ve all moved on. And we both now have what we want.”
Like a gust of fresh air, a weight that I didn’t realize I’ve been carrying is let go. What I want is sitting at home. What I want isn’t this woman standing opposite of me with a pinched expression on her face. No matter what memories stir within me, I smile at the fact that all Jessica offers is a memory. And memories have a way of skewing in directions that aren’t ever what they really were.
“I need to get home to my wife. Go home to your husband.”
She nods and I turn from her and get in the car. And as I pull the door shut, she says, “It’s not that easy, Travis. He hits me.”
With shaking hands, I put the key in the ignition and pull away from the curb.
I can’t let myself get lost in her bullshit. Not right now. Not tonight.
I know my brother. He wouldn’t… he wouldn’t do that.
But no way am I stepping into that mess. No way at all.
