Chapter 20
TWENTY
Tonight, talking to Patrick, Emily had only just begun to loosen her grip on the life she’d thought she and Will were building.
Her evening on the beach had given her a moment to catch her breath, a place to begin truly forgetting—but now, there was Will, cutting through the darkness with the others, like some ghost she wasn’t ready to face.
Had he come to explain, to reclaim whatever was left of them, or to break her all over again? The ache stirred in her chest, sharp and familiar, but beneath it, a newer thread of resistance tugged gently.
“Hey.” Will reached out for her arm, running his finger down it.
Anger boiled up that she’d allowed the gesture.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
She looked over at Patrick. His gaze moved from her to Will.
“I’ll finish loading all this,” he said. “You can go on inside with the others. I’ve got it.”
“I’ll help,” she offered, taking a step away from Will.
“No.” Patrick shooed her away. “You have visitors. I’m just the chef, and my work is done.” His jaw clenched.
Emily felt vulnerable, as if the tide had gone out too far and left the disarray of her heart exposed.
She wanted to make a good impression on Patrick, to let him know she wasn’t a disaster.
More than that, she wanted him to know how good he was.
And Will’s presence had just made him secondary.
He couldn’t compete with her and Will’s past. She wanted to run after Patrick and tell him that none of that mattered.
Will stood just feet away—once the center of her world, now more like a stranger with shared history. She didn’t know what he might say or do. Nothing about his responses was recognizable.
But Patrick was someone who had, in mere days, looked at her as if she mattered, with genuine interest, as if he actually saw her.
It was confusing, almost absurd, to feel steadier beside a near stranger than the man she had promised to be with forever.
Guilt flashed through her, followed quickly by defiance.
She wasn’t Will’s to hurt anymore—he’d made that clear.
“Let’s go inside,” Sienna suggested.
Blair linked arms with her and offered an empathetic smile.
Emily shot a look of apology at Patrick. She’d have to explain it all to him, if he’d let her. But tonight, maybe she wouldn’t crumble when facing Will. She would hear whatever it was he had to say—and stay standing.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said to Patrick, but he’d turned toward the fire pit, throwing sand on the glowing embers. She caught his brief glance as she walked away.
“Sorry to get here so late,” Tyson said, grabbing Sienna’s hand. “We were hoping to get into town more easily, but with that storm, it was tough going.”
Emily took another step away from Will, moving to the other side of Blair and Rocko.
Is anyone going to tell me why my ex came along?
“Can I get anyone a drink?” Sienna asked as they entered the house. Discreetly, she widened her eyes at Emily as if to say, I know you’ll need one.
“Why don’t we get their things upstairs and then we can all settle in?” Blair suggested.
Rocko came up behind Blair and kissed her cheek. “Sounds like a plan.” Then he shot Emily an apologetic look over his shoulder.
The two couples began to load their suitcases into the elevator, leaving Will and Emily in the living room.
“Why did you come?” she asked him.
“I feel like we haven’t really had a chance to talk—just the two of us.”
She gawked at him. “And whose fault is that?”
He tapped his chest. “Mine.” His dark eyes were full of remorse, something she hadn’t seen before now.
“Yes.” She didn’t know what else to say to him, her anger building like an inferno.
“Can we go somewhere we can talk?”
With a deep, steadying breath, she led him up the stairs to her room. She could hear Blair filling Rocko in on all the amenities of the place. Sienna and Tyson’s muffled voices bounced down the hallway. But Emily hadn’t uttered a word. Her hands trembled and her heart pounded.
“Wow, this is incredible,” Will said, dropping down on her fluffy duvet-covered bed.
She shut the door.
Inside the quiet bedroom, the noise of the ocean and voices outside fell away, leaving the enormity of everything unsaid between them. She stood near the door, arms crossed, and Will got up again, uncertainty flashing across his face.
“You look different,” he said finally, his voice softer than she expected.
Emily didn’t answer right away. What was there to say to him? That being left had originally hollowed her out emotionally, then oddly freed her? That she was angry—not just at him for blindsiding her, but at herself for not noticing that things weren’t good between them until it was too late?
“Why did you come?” she asked again.
He hesitated, then shrugged. “The storm freaked me out. I was worried for you. It got me thinking. I figured maybe we could have a conversation about us?”
“Us? Where’s Lanie?”
The color drained from his face. “You know her name?”
“Well, if you hang out with my friends, I will, eventually, know her name. But even so, I met her the day I went with you to the gym. She tried to sell me a month of hot yoga.”
He flinched.
So it is the same Lanie. Emily walked toward him. “Will, what do you want?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Emily scoffed.
“I’m not even sure how to start, but I’m going to try to get my feelings into words. Will you at least hear me out?”
She nodded slowly, not because she agreed, or was necessarily interested in his about-face, but because she knew this moment needed to happen. It was time. She didn’t care about answers, but she yearned for an ending that didn’t feel like absolute rejection.
Will took a step forward, invading her personal space. “I really messed things up.”
She stared at him, her lips pressed together, waiting for at least a meager apology rather than a confession. It was clear he’d messed things up. Now, would he be a man and tell her how sorry he was?
“You and I met so young…” He paced. “I got to Nashville, found a few new friends, and began to make a name for myself. I didn’t know who I was yet.”
He looked over at her, but she didn’t budge from her cautious stance.
“I couldn’t be a good husband when I didn’t know who I was.”
“I’m the same age as you are, and I didn’t stray,” she said. Her limbs wobbled, but she stood firm, trying not to let the humiliation that had saturated her very being show.
He sat on the bed and put his face in his hands. “I know,” he said, his words muffled. “I screwed up.”
“I’m sorry. Have I missed something? The last real conversation we had was to get me to sign over the house I’d put all our hopes and dreams into, to give it away to the woman who stole my entire life. And now, suddenly you’re here, without her. You’ve skipped a few steps. Want to catch me up?”
“I broke up with her.”
“Why?” Emily asked, suspicious of his motives. She had every right to be guarded. She didn’t know who he was anymore.
He patted the bed next to him, but she stood her ground.
“Come on, Em. At least sit down.”
With a deep breath, she climbed onto the bed, but scooted up near the head, putting a pillow in her lap.
“You being here in the middle of a tropical storm freaked me out. I realized I didn’t want to lose you.”
She squinted at him in confusion. “You left me. I wasn’t yours anymore, so you had nothing to lose.”
He looked at his lap. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said in an exasperated whisper.
“The thing with Lanie started as a minor flirtation. It exploded into more, and before I knew it, I was sneaking around behind your back. I felt awful about it, Em. I’d done the deed, so the only way to do the right thing was to break it off with you so you could find someone who would treat you better, and then I tried to make good on what I’d started with Lanie. ”
“I never realized you were such a weak individual,” she said.
“I didn’t either. But it happened. I thought if I acted awful to you that you’d leave, find someone else, and I could feel a smidge less horrible for having let you go.”
Tears swelled in her eyes, and she cleared her throat.
“I figured Lanie and I deserved each other. But you didn’t deserve any of it.”
Look at him, acting as if he’d done some heroic feat in setting me free. Did he really think she was going to believe it? “You still haven’t answered why you suddenly wanted me back when you thought I was in harm’s way.”
“Because I was with her for the wrong reasons. I liked the newness of the way she looked at me, how she didn’t know all my little dark places yet.
Things started to snowball. She got this big idea about living together, and I didn’t know if I was ready for all that, but she kept on.
I let things go too far, asking you to give up the house, trying to hold on to the thing that had been so important at the time that I’d ruined my upcoming marriage for it.
But when it came down to it, I didn’t love her.
I had to put a stop to all of it, whether I get you back or not. ”
“I signed the documents, so the house belongs to you and whomever you choose,” she said.
“You did?”
The drop in his voice almost made her falter.
“So now—what?—you’re here all weekend with Rocko and Tyson?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking as if he was about to be sick. “I imagined this going differently.”
She tilted her head, shaking it in bafflement. “Why would you imagine anything other than this reaction from me?”
He blew air through his lips. “I don’t know.” His voice was shaky, unsure. His eyes glistened with emotion. “I always thought we could get through anything. I just didn’t ever fathom that I’d be the cause of this kind of pain.”
Her heart squeezed. He looked like the old Will, albeit battered and broken down.
Her tense shoulders fell, but she forced herself not to comfort him.
He’d hurt her in an incredible way, and even though he’d shown some remorse, she wasn’t sure how to respond to it.
She felt herself slipping back into the old version of Emily, but the new version was hanging on for dear life, pleading with her to stay the course.
She liked who she was becoming without him, and while, originally, she’d wished for this very moment, she didn’t know if she welcomed it anymore.
“Should we get ourselves together and go downstairs with the others?” she asked.
He stared at her. “They’re going to want to know where we stand.”
“We’ll tell them. We are exactly as we were before you decided to come crash my vacation.” With that, she pushed away any lingering affection she had for the man she’d thought he was. She stood up, straightened her T-shirt, walked out of the room, and headed downstairs.