Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
IRIS
At last, the Sand Dollar Suite was starting to look like a suite.
One that a guest might enjoy staying in.
The new drywall was up and textured, waiting for its first coat of primer.
The elegant lines of the future en-suite bathroom were framed in, a promise of claw-foot tubs and gleaming tile.
Sunlight, no longer choked by dust, streamed through the newly installed hurricane-resistant windows and illuminated the space with a clean, hopeful light.
A week ago, this progress would have filled me with a giddy, triumphant joy.
Today, I was just numb.
I stood in the center of the room, but my mind was a million miles away. In the tiny cabin of Line Dancer, listening to the story that had reshaped my entire understanding of the man next door.
Three days had passed since Austin laid his soul bare.
Three days where he had been… carefully tender.
We’d talked about it more, of course, in quiet, halting conversations that were both heavy and hopeful.
This wasn’t something to be solved in a single night.
It was a wound that would need time, patience, and air to heal.
So he'd show up at my porch in the evenings, his presence a quiet promise. We’d share a meal, the conversation carefully skirting the rawest edges of what he had exposed, giving us both room to breathe.
He’d hold me secure in his arms while we watched the sun set into the distant horizon.
And every time he looked at me, every time he touched me, my heart would break a little.
For the twenty-one-year-old boy who had survived when his world had been ripped apart.
For the thirty-four-year-old man who was still paying the price.
My love for him, a feeling I could no longer deny, was a fierce, protective ache in my chest.
But beneath the love, beneath the profound empathy, a new and insidious fear had taken root. A cold, slick tendril of doubt had wrapped itself around my heart.
“They think you look like her. Like Caitlin.”
I believed him. That was the honest, terrible truth.
I believed with every fiber of my being that when Austin looked at me, he saw me.
I believed he thought his feelings were genuine.
That his desire was for Iris Holloway, the chaotic, pastry-peddling woman who had blown into his life.
I didn’t think for a second that he was consciously deceiving me.
But what if he was deceiving himself?
That question was the poison that seeped into still moments, the one that cast a long shadow over the warmth of his body next to mine in the dark.
What if, after thirteen years of lonely, tortured grief, his wounded heart had simply seen a ghost and latched on?
What if this intense connection we shared wasn’t a new beginning for us, but just his subconscious attempt to write a happier ending to the saddest story I had ever heard?
The thought made me feel hollow. It cheapened everything we had built, and the knot in my stomach tightened.
I couldn’t untangle it on my own. I needed another sounding board besides Austin.
And I couldn’t talk to Liv, as much as I’d come to value her friendship.
This was a Coleridge issue. A deep, complicated, family-sized wound.
There was only one person who knew him, loved him, and had welcomed me with an open heart.
I pulled out my phone, my thumb hovering over Brenna’s contact.
She had said the story was Austin’s to tell me, and he had.
But now I was left with the reaction. The fear and doubt were a living thing inside me, and if I didn’t find some perspective, they might eat me alive.
I typed out a message, my words clumsy and inadequate.
Iris: Are you free for a bit this afternoon? Could really use a friend.
The reply came almost instantly.
Brenna: Always. Bookshop. Tea. 30 minutes?
Iris: Thank you. See you then.
I put the phone back in my pocket. I didn’t know what I was hoping to hear from Brenna, but I desperately needed her perspective.
Bookshop in Paradise was an oasis of calm as I stepped inside. A quick glance revealed the store was empty except for us, and Brenna casually flipped the sign on the door to Be Back Soon.
“Let’s head back to my office.”
The room was as cozy and eclectic as the rest of the shop.
The walls were lined with overflowing bookshelves, along with a cluttered desk and two comfortable armchairs that looked like they had seen a thousand stories.
She closed the door behind us and put a kettle on the hot plate she had tucked in a corner.
“Earl Grey or Chamomile?” she asked, her back to me as she pulled two mugs from a shelf.
“Chamomile, please.” I sank into an armchair, my hands twisting together in my lap.
Brenna didn’t press. She just moved with quiet efficiency as she prepared the tea, her silence a patient space that invited confidence rather than demanding it. She handed me a steaming mug before settling into the other armchair with her tea cradled in her hands. “What’s on your mind, Iris?”
I took a sip of the tea, the fragrant steam doing little to calm the butterflies in my stomach.
My words, when they came, were halting at first, a clumsy, tangled mess.
“It’s… it’s about Austin. Something happened a few days ago.
” I looked up and met her gaze. “He told me. About the accident. About all of it.”
Surprise flashed through Brenna’s eyes, followed quickly by a deep, profound sadness that seemed to dim the light in the room. She put her mug down and gave me her undivided attention. “What did he say?”
A fresh wave of tears pricked at my eyes as I remembered the raw, broken look on his face. “He told me about his friend, Leo. And Leo’s girlfriend, Beth. The storm and the sinking… And Caitlin.”
Brenna closed her eyes for a moment, pinching her delicate brows together. “Oh, Iris. I’m so sorry you had to hear that. I’m even sorrier Austin had to tell it.”
“He needed to. And I’m glad he trusted me enough to do it.
” I took a shaky breath, forcing myself to get to the real heart of the matter, the real reason I was here.
I explained his argument in the back room of Tidal Hops with Eli and Braden.
“The thing is, Brenna… I believe him. I believe every word he said when he told me his feelings for me are real, that they’re separate from what happened. I don’t think he’s lying to me.”
“But?” Brenna prompted gently.
“But what if he’s wrong?” The question burst out of me, a torrent of fear and doubt I couldn’t hold back any longer.
“What if he’s not being honest with himself?
” I shook my head, the knot in my stomach tightening.
“What if he saw a woman trying to fix up an old house, a woman who reminded him of a life he lost? A… I don’t know.
A do-over? How can I ever really know if he wants me, or if he just wants a happier ending at last? And who could blame him?”
The raw, vulnerable words hung in the office between us. I was stripped bare, my deepest, most terrifying insecurity laid out on her cluttered desk.
Brenna listened to my entire rambling confession without interrupting, her expression full of deep, unwavering compassion.
“Those are very fair and intelligent questions to be asking, Iris. And they show how much you truly care about him. That you’re worried about him, not just about your own feelings.
” She tilted her head and darted her eyes over my head.
“There is sort of a superficial resemblance. From what I can remember, anyway. It was so long ago.”
She took a sip of her tea, her gaze thoughtful.
“You have to understand something about my brother. We, his family, have been living with the effects of that day for thirteen years. After the first few months, when Austin was still pretty shell-shocked, he never talked about it. Not to me, not to Braden, not to Eli. He said that was his coping mechanism.” When her eyes met mine, they were filled with conviction.
“For him to willingly walk back into that storm and show you the most painful part of his soul… He wouldn’t risk that kind of agony for a do-over.
He only would have done that because it’s you. ”
The certainty in her voice was a lifeline, and I clung to it. “That’s what I try to tell myself.”
“Then keep saying it. Is it possible you reminded him of Caitlin at first?” she asked with a shrug.
“Maybe. On some deep, subconscious level that none of us can understand. Who knows how grief and trauma work? They don’t follow rules.
” She leaned forward, her gaze sharpening.
“But Iris, you have to look at the evidence. He has made more progress and let more light into his life in the past couple of months than he has in the entire thirteen years before. That’s not about the past. That is entirely about the present.
Austin discussing the accident at last is solely about the effect you are having on him. ”
A single, hot tear escaped and traced a path down my cheek. I wiped it away.
“But you’re right,” Brenna conceded, her voice gentle again.
“The only person who can truly answer that question, for himself and for you, is Austin. And knowing my brother, he’s just now starting to process everything he unleashed by telling you.
The door is open now, and he’s terrified of what’s lurking behind it.
He’s going to need some time. And some patience. ”
“I know,” I whispered. “I just… I’m scared.”
“Of course you are,” she said, her voice full of kindness that made me want to cry all over again. “But Iris? He is too. Probably more than you can imagine. Because he’s scared of losing you.”
The weight of Brenna’s words settled over me, a strange mixture of profound relief and sobering reality. Everything she said resonated with a deep, intuitive truth. Austin had chosen to let me in, to show me the deepest parts of himself. That had to mean something.
“Thank you, Brenna.” What I felt wasn’t just gratitude. It was a feeling of being seen, of being understood. “I really needed to hear that. From you.”
“Of course.” She reached across the desk and gave my hand another reassuring squeeze. “Austin is a good man, Iris. He’s been lost for a long time. It looks like he might be finding his way home.”
She leaned back in her chair, her professional bookstore-owner demeanor returning, though her eyes were still full of a sisterly warmth. “Now are you going to tell me what you really thought of our book for this month, or are we just going to sit here and psychoanalyze my brother all afternoon?”
I let out a laugh, a watery, relieved sound. The offer of normalcy, of a simple book discussion after such a heavy conversation, was a gift. “Oh, it was terrible. The hero was a complete idiot until at least page two hundred. I almost threw it across the room.”
“Right?” Brenna grinned. “That’s exactly what I said! But the ending was worth it, wasn’t it?”
“The ending was perfect,” I agreed, and the double meaning of the words hung in the air between us.
I left Bookshop in Paradise a few minutes later, clutching a new book Brenna had insisted I take. My heart was lighter and my path forward clearer, if not easier. I walked the few blocks back to Heron House under the late-afternoon sun, the usual cheerful sounds of Dove Key now brighter.
When I got home, Gus’s crew working on the second floor was a steady, reassuring rhythm. I stood on my new, sturdy porch and looked across the yard at Austin’s quiet, orderly house. The sun glinted off his windows, making them look like fiery, unblinking eyes.
My fear was still there, a low hum beneath the surface.
But it was no longer a paralyzing fear. It was a clarifying one.
Brenna was right. I couldn’t push him, and I couldn’t demand answers to questions he likely didn’t have for himself yet.
But I also couldn’t just wait, letting this doubt poison everything we were building.
I had to talk to him. Not to interrogate him about Caitlin, but to talk to him about us.
I had to tell him that I was here for him, but that I was also scared.
I needed to tell him that for this to work, I needed him to be sure.
Sure that he saw me and not a memory. I would give him time and patience to find that answer for himself.
But he had to know the question was on the table.
He was worth the risk.
And I was worth fighting for too.