AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Can I date again?
Am I being disloyal to West?
She wasn’t sure who she could talk to about this.Bea would have too many questions.Lauren wouldn’t know what to say.Joy would tell her to trust her heart.Bessie would give similar advice, but she’d probably tell Cass to eat a bunch of awesome Southern food while she did.
Cass had been doing that for a long time.When Harrison spoke of him and his ex-wife focusing on their careers instead of having a family, she understood that.She and West had waited five years before having their twins, because he needed to finish school and have some way of supporting them.
She’d put her interior design on the back-burner, only pulling it out as motherhood allowed her more time as the children grew and left the house.She’d been nearly full-time in the year before West had died, and frankly, the only reason she hadn’t gone insane in the fifteen months since was because of her job.
Her nerves rattled at her, and she rounded the bend in the path too.
A glorious sight opened up before her, and Cass paused and sucked in a breath.“Look at that,” she whispered.Harrison stopped beside her, and they both looked at the edge of the world.
Blue met blue—the bluest of blues Cass had ever seen—on the horizon.Green fell away on both sides, and Grant and Bea were nowhere to be seen.It honestly felt like Cass and Harrison were the last two people on earth, and that the water was coming for them.Slowly, but surely, it would cover all the dry ground and they’d be left to figure out how to survive with all the warblers, spoonbills, and gators in the Everglades.
“This is stunning,” Harrison said.He lifted his phone and took several pictures.“Do you want to be in one?”
“Yes.”She moved down the trail a few feet, turned, and cocked her hip.She grinned at him, and his smile in return came instantly.
“Beautiful,” he said, and Cass startled.Surely he meant the view, because he bent his head to study the picture he’d just taken.She went back to him to see it, and she did find such beauty in the world around her.
She looked up into his dark eyes, noticing that they weren’t brown as she’d originally thought.She put her hand on the side of his face, and time froze.He didn’t blink; he didn’t breathe.
“Your eyes are green,” she whispered.In that moment, she got an answer to one of her questions.
Her feelings for Harrison were real, and they were okay.
Sudden embarrassment flooded her, and she dropped her hand and stepped back an appropriate distance.“I’m sorry.”She shook her head.“I don’t know…”
“It’s fine,” he filled in for her.“Things aren’t always what they seem until we get up close, you know?”He gave her a smile cloaked in something she couldn’t name and stepped by her.“Come on.We don’t need Bea and Grant gossiping about us.”
Cass spun around.“They’re gossiping about us?”
“No,” he said.“And we don’t need them to start.”
She caught up to him quickly, what with her legs being long and all.Her pulse now pounded out the question,Is there an us?
Grant had said Harrison wasn’t dating right now.But would he consider going out with her?
Cass knew then that she did want to start dating again—if it was with the right man.
As they continued down the path and caught up to Bea and Grant, Cass searched and searched for the answer to her last question—was she being disloyal to West?
She never found it.
But she did see an American coot, and giddiness filled her.“West loved those,” she said, turning to Harrison as if he cared.“They’re in Texas year-round, and he loved how chicken-like they are, but also how black.”
Harrison chuckled and said, “They’re funny little birds.”
Yes, they were, and Cass let her happiness expand and flow through her.
Later that night—theirlast night in the Everglades—Cass stood at the railing on the boat and watched the sun dip into the western sky.“This is gorgeous,” she said to Bea, who stood at her side.
“Isn’t it?I thought it would be the perfect way to end our trip.”
Cass laid her head on Bea’s shoulder.“Thank you for doing this.It’s been perfect.Exactly what I needed.”
Bea nodded, and a Bea who didn’t respond right away meant she had something difficult to say.Difficult for her, at least.“You’ve been talking a lot about West,” she said.
