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I don’t realize we’re still pressed up against each other and his arm is still around me until the heavy weight of it stops feeling good and suddenly feels like a steel band I need to escape from. Yanking my hand out of his grip, I push against his chest and move out of his hold, taking enough steps back from him that my brain won’t be distracted by how good he smells and the heat of his body. Reaching over to the counter, I quickly lower the volume of the music on my phone.
“Believe me, my being an artist is just afractionof my problems with them,” I mutter, crossing my arms in front of me. “What do you mean you promised my brother?”
Really hoping I’m confused and that he’s not saying what I think he’s saying, I wait for him to explain. Ryan rubs his hand against the back of his neck, and it quickly stops being adorable and just pisses me off.
“You know, when he asked if you could stay with me. Because he knows I’m good at talking people down from a ledge, and he thought you’d probably listen to me more than you’d listen to your family. Don’t be mad at him! He was just trying to help you.” Ryan smiles at me when he finishes rambling.
Smiles, like every word out of his mouth doesn’t feel like someone is stabbing me right in the heart. Or in the back.
“Tristan isn’t worth my anger,” I tell him, swallowing past the lump in my throat and blinking away the stupid tears in my eyes.
“Well, that’s good news!” Ryan exclaims, completely oblivious to who I’m actually mad at right now. “You must understand how worried they’ve been that you just walked away from your life and came here, right?”
All I can do is shake my head at him, calling myself all kinds of names for having my head in the clouds, just like my father accused me of. Every bit of hurt after that conversation with him comes back, but it’s amplified by a thousand, because I actually trusted Ryan. I trusted that he was a sweet guy and that he was just being a good friend by letting me stay here. I thought after all the days we’ve spent together that he understood me and knew I wasn’t the selfish brat my brother made me out to be, but obviously I was wrong. And that hurts more than any words my father could ever say to me.
“So that’s why you’ve been so supportive and nice to me. Not because you actually wanted to, but because my fucking brother put you up to it. Well done, coach.” I clap my hands together a few times as the lump in my throat gets bigger. “I gotta say, I didn’t see that play coming.”
“What? No!” Ryan quickly speaks with a shake of his head. “I’m probably screwing this up and saying it all wrong.”
“Oh no.” I laugh sarcastically. “You’re saying itjustright. Do you want to know howconcernedmy family is and how much theycareabout me? I didn’t walk away from my life right before I got to this island, Ryan. I left Chicago six months ago.Six fucking months, and I haven’t heard from them evenonce.”
It’s quite obvious Tristan didn’t sharethatlittle tidbit of information with him while they were chatting about me, going by Ryan’s wide eyes and his dropped-open mouth. A mouth I wanted to kiss just minutes ago and now I have the sudden urge to punch.
“Instead of trying to convince me how much my family supposedly cares about me, maybe you should be asking yourself why now, after six months of not speaking to me or giving a shit about me, they’re suddenly up my ass and in panic mode, wanting me to come home.”
“I’m sorry,” Ryan quickly whispers. “I didn’t know. I—”
“Right,” I cut him off, nodding and swiping angrily at a damn tear on my cheek that wouldn’t stay put in my eye. “But you could haveasked, instead of just assuming I’m a selfish bitch who doesn’t care about anyone but herself, and instead of believing the bullshit my brother fed you. I quit that job at my father’s company nine months ago, because I was tired of being disgusted by how he conducts business. Do you even know what the Brewster Development Company does?”
“Buys failing businesses and makes them better?” Ryan asks softly.
Another humorless laugh comes out of me. “Not quite.” I shake my head. “They make a bunch of shitty promises they never intend to keep to family-run businesses in small vacation towns, just like this one. They throw dollar signs in front of these businesses that might be struggling or just want to increase their earnings. They tell them it’s easy; just hand over a percentage of your profits, and we won’t change a thing. We’ll just make it better and make you so rich you won’t even know what to do with all that money.”
Ryan stays quiet while I speak, but he starts to look as sick to his stomach as I feel when I continue.
“My father tells them the Brewster Development Company is just going to oversee things while they still retain full control of their own business,” I explain, feeling like I might really throw up now with every word out of my mouth, knowing I turned a blind eye to how my father has done this for too many years. “And these people, who just want what’s best for their community and for their families… they believe my father and his lies. And as soon as they sign on the dotted line, my father says he’s going to make a few upgrades. Do a little redecorating. And when their backs are turned, he bulldozes all of those small businesses without even batting an eye and then builds billion-dollar resorts and casinos in their place.
“The news praises him for boosting the economy of a small town, but he pays enough people that they leave out the part about how it doesn’t benefitanyonefrom that small town, because he pushes them all out. He takes away everything sweet, and quaint, and wonderful about a small town, and he ruins it with his greed. And on top of that, he makes sure his top-notch lawyersreallyfuck them over by adding a tiny little clause in the contracts they never even notice. It cuts off any say they might have, or any money they were going to make, as soon as their businesses come down. And sure, it’s all technically legal, but that doesn’t make it right.”
“Definitely not,” Ryan mutters, swiping a hand through his hair and shaking his head.
“Even though I couldn’t stand what he did any longer, I still tried to make it work after I quit. For three months, I tried to be a part of that family, but they wanted nothing to do with me and made it quite clear I wasn’t welcome there any longer.”
Ryan takes a step toward me, like he wants to pull me in and give me a hug. For a second, I remember all the sweet things he’s done for me, and I almost let him. And then I remember he doesn’tactuallycare about me. He was just doing all this to butter me up so I would listen to him. I quickly take a step back, watching his face fall and his shoulders droop when I move even farther away from him, immediately annoyed that it makes me feel like a jerk.He’sthe one who was so keen to talk about this right now, so I let him have all the ugly parts I never wanted him to know.
“Today was the first time my father picked up the phone—not to see if I was even alive, but to remind me what a huge disappointment I am,” I continue, swiping at another tear that falls. “Do you know what he did the first time I showed him a painting I was proud of? He barely gave it a glance, and then he threw it in the fireplace and told me he had more talent in his pinky finger. I was nine.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ryan whispers when I pause, his quiet voice rasping out of him with so much emotion as he looks at me that it makes my stomach flop, but I ignore it and continue.
“I was twelve when he found my hidden art supplies under a floorboard in my room and tossed them in the trash. Fourteen when he found out I bought more and sold a painting to a friend’s mom, and he sent me away to boarding school. Seventeen when he ripped up my acceptance letter to art school and laughed in my face when I got upset. Twenty-five when he did the latter again, when I tried to explain how unhappy I was. You want to go through all my texts and voicemails to see all theyears-worth of messages from him telling me how worthless I am and how I’ll never amount to anything without him?”
Ryan just shakes his head at me, and I ignore all the pain written all over his face with every word I speak. It’s a little too late for him to start feeling bad now.
My heart hurts looking at this man who had quickly become a friend and one of my favorite people, stupidly thinking there could be something more between us.
“You have no idea what kind of selfish pricks my family consists of, but go right ahead and tell me why I should go running back to them.”
Ryan’s mouth just opens and closes without any words coming out, and suddenly, I’d rather be anywhere but here, in this cottage with him.
