Chapter 49
Delanie Goodman slathered her toast with homemade butter from the Amish market two towns over. She picked up the jam that Grandma Bormann had handed to her and then set it back down before looking up at Avery who sat across the breakfast table from her.
The sisters were the last two Goodmans in the Hollow after their mother had passed a handful of years ago. Believing in family, and not having families of their own yet, they shared an apartment over the store they also shared. As sisters, they shared even more than that.
Avery motioned with her head at the honey that sat between them.
“Fine.” Delanie took the bottle and lifted the lid, letting it drizzle across the toast.
“The man’s source has a hive making some mean honey, and I don’t know what he added to it, but it’s positively orgasmic,” Avery stated as if it needed to be said.
“Get off my case!” Delanie told her as she took a bite of the butter-and-honey-drizzled toast and tried not to moan in delight. Then she shifted subjects quickly, knowing her sister would follow. “Tell me you broke up with him.”
“I told you I would. I did.”
“Tell me it’s for real this time.” As Avery’s eyes glanced aside avoiding the demand, Delanie rolled hers at her sister. “He’s married, Ave!”
“I know.” The sound from her sister’s throat was bleak and resigned. But that was all Avery would give her—no promises that she wouldn’t go back. To her sister’s credit, Rob fooled them all. For a while. The wife in Charlottesville had been quite the surprise.
But what Delanie couldn’t quite grasp was that her sister had broken up with him three times now.
Twice she’d gone back, saying she loved him.
The first time, he promised he was leaving his wife, said he decided he wanted to be with Avery.
But a year later, when he was still making excuses, she left him again.
Delanie thought it was for real that time.
Then she found out her sister had been seeing him again.
No fake promises this time. Just slipping away and not getting what she wanted or needed.
Delanie hated picking up the pieces. Rob broke her sister’s heart over and over.
For some reason, Avery kept letting him.
If she went back this time, Delanie knew it would be with full knowledge of what she was—to him, to his family, to his two daughters, God forbid if they ever found out about her.
“Ave, you have to stop this,” Delanie added, though it wasn’t the first time. Avery’s refusal to look her in the eyes soured the sensuous breakfast.
“Enough about me,” her older sister declared. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“We mopped out the floor when the store flooded. We turned in the insurance papers. We had the work done. The shelves are all put back, and we made promises.”
“You’re breaking one of them now,” Delanie protested.
Avery’s promise had been to leave Rob for good.
Her own promise seemed stupid and trite, but Story had told them change was coming to the Hollow with the waters.
The sisters had decided to make their own change. But Avery was backing out, it seemed.
She saw her sister’s lip twitch, acknowledging the problem.
“I don’t have to hold my promise if you don’t have to hold yours,” Delanie protested now.
“You’ve been in love with him since you were in middle school.”
And that was exactly the problem, Delanie thought. She’d been in middle school, and he’d graduated and moved away.
Jasper Velasco wasn’t much more than a fantasy she’d concocted—or at least that’s what she told herself.
It was certainly easier to believe she was in love with a man that didn’t really exist. Surely, she couldn’t really be in love with a man who didn’t love her back, didn’t even notice she was there. It was all just a fantasy.
“You dumped all four of your last boyfriends for not being him,” Avery added smartly, as if she hadn’t just confessed to not quite being broken up with her married lover.
“So you’re suggesting—” Delanie waved the knife as she prepped another piece of toast, because Avery was right, whatever Jasper was doing in that kitchen was pure magic. “—that I should make a move?”
“It’s what you promised.”
“He’s ignored me for years. To be fair, I was in pigtails when he was becoming an adult.”
“I don’t know if it’s that simple,” Avery added with a sigh. Then, with a sad look, she added, “Nothing ever is.”
“He’s never paid me a moment’s attention,” Delanie protested.
“But you need to try,” Avery insisted. “That was the deal. You either snag this man or learn that he’s not what you think and find someone who is.”
Delanie shot back a dark, hard glare. “Only if you do.”
“Shit,” her sister muttered. “Can I cast on myself at least?”
“Yes,” Delanie answered confidently, mostly because she was confident it wouldn’t work any other way. “You have to leave Rob. He’s not leaving his wife.”
Avery nodded, tears forming at the edge of her eyes, as she once again acknowledged the truth of that. Delanie wanted to feel sorry for her, but she’d felt sorry for her before, and Avery had gone right back to the lying liar.
Her sister was smart. Her sister was capable. Delanie had no idea why the hell Avery would keep going back to a man who insisted on lying to everyone else in his life.
“You can cast on yourself,” she added. “But of course I cannot cast on Jasper.”
“That would be unethical,” Avery replied, like she was the lord of ethics in this family.
As if. Delanie practically snorted but didn’t voice it.
She did not want to do this. What had it been—well over a decade?
—that she’d had a crush on the same man?
Avery’s accusation that she kept dumping her boyfriends for not living up to her fantasy—for which she already had a face and a name—was sadly correct.
Facing Jasper Velasco, the real man, was not on her to-do wishlist, but she had to get her sister out of this horrible relationship with Rob.
With a deep sigh, she held one hand out across the tabletop for a handshake. If she needed to, she’d grab a sharp knife and make it a blood oath. “You leave him,” she declared.
“You make a move,” Avery countered, and they shook on it.