Chapter 14
Fourteen
Reese felt like she had walked into the lion’s den. If the lion was an almost six-foot-tall blonde who looked perfectly sun-kissed as she stepped into the inn lobby, wearing a bright purple romper that draped expertly across her body.
Awareness thrummed through Reese’s veins at the sight of her, and she tamped down her visceral reaction as best she could. Reese wasn’t usually someone who let her emotions, especially ones like these, get the best of her.
But Sydney looked beautiful. And when she leveled a smile in Reese’s direction, Reese truly, finally , understood what it meant when someone’s knees went weak.
“I’m sorry I’m running a few minutes late.” Sydney smiled apologetically, running a hand through her hair.
“Ah yes, the couple’s brunch,” Hallie said knowingly, though what she knew wasn’t clear to Reese.
Sydney shot her a look, though what it conveyed, Reese couldn’t be sure. “Yes, bestie. The brunch you said you’d make sure I was up for when I texted you last night.”
“Actually, you texted me this morning . And I tried to wake you up. Three times,” Hallie emphasized before turning her attention to Reese, who’d been standing next to the check-in desk watching their back-and-forth. “Apparently, our girl had a hellish time getting back from Florida last night.”
Reese leaned closer, looking for any sign of weariness on Sydney’s face, but she looked flawless as ever. Still, Reese allowed herself a few indulgent seconds of just looking at Sydney before she asked,“What happened?”
“Well, first I tried?—”
Sydney held her hand up. “Hallie, I’m pretty sure she was talking to me.”
“Regardless, I thought my rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ was pretty good.” Hallie paused, sighing dramatically. “I guess it wasn’t enough to get you to rise, though,” she said as a broad smirk covered her face.
Sydney’s own smile broadened. “There was something wrong with our plane. We boarded and then deplaned and then had to wait hours to find another one to fly out. My seven o’clock flight finally left around two a.m.”
Her voice was casual and light as she described her travel woes. If the shoe was on the other foot, Reese would have still been a puddle of anxiety, recovering in bed.
Hallie nodded solemnly. “I think I heard her pour herself into bed around six a.m.”
“At least there wasn’t traffic getting out of the city,” Sydney said earnestly.
Reese glanced at her watch, which showed it was about thirty minutes before eleven.
She’d survived on as much sleep as Sydney had gotten last night, but she didn’t wish it on anyone.
She turned her attention to Sydney, who, when she’d thought that Reese wasn’t looking, was shooting daggers at her best friend.
“Sydney, I could have gone without you. Seriously, it’s not that big of a deal,” Reese said, knowing that she could have survived without her for the day, though she’d absolutely have missed having Sydney at her side.
“I want to go.” It was the softness of Sydney’s words, along with the faint blush on her cheeks, that made Reese light up from the inside out.
It meant something—that Sydney had shown up, even when it wasn’t easy. Reese didn’t feel like a lot of people in her life did that for her, especially not if it was an inconvenience to them.
Reese looked down at her watch again. “All right. The sooner we arrive, the sooner we can leave.” She shot Sydney a joking smile, hoping to convey that she didn’t expect the day to be that awful. Who could be sure, though, when her family was around?
Hallie walked them to the door and waved them off, as she liked to do, before they slipped into Reese’s car and started the short journey to Reese’s parents’ house.
Since their kiss and Reese’s confession of how her last relationship had ended, they hadn’t done a whole lot of talking about where they stood, even though things between them were getting more complicated.
She’d missed Sydney while she’d been away in Florida, but their texting had been restrained to little updates and check-ins and, on Reese’s side, a few anecdotes about Grant’s idiocy.
Which meant that, unfortunately, their seeming goal of keeping things simpler had left Reese with a lot of blank space that she’d taken to filling in herself, whether accurate or not.
Even now, with the two of them alone for the first time in a week, neither seemed determined to push the conversation forward. The radio provided the only sound as they wound toward their destination.
Still, Reese couldn’t stop thinking about what everything may mean, even if she couldn’t quite voice her thoughts yet.
She’d tried not to read too much into it when Sydney had sent back an entire row of emojis when she’d told—what she thought—was a great story relayed by her mom involving Grant forgetting their cake-tasting appointment last week and, after finally arriving fifty minutes late, scarfed down six types of cake within ten minutes.
Which, because he hadn’t looked at the options that Brynn had sent him beforehand, sent him into a mild allergic reaction to pistachios.
He’d broken out in a vibrant, red rash across his neck and hands that Reese wondered if she’d get to see today.
She’d then gone on to replay how Brynn, in a panic, had called Sharon, who’d promptly informed her that, yes, Grant was aware of his allergy and had likely not looked at the list she’d sent him for consideration.
An unexpected boon for her was that now that she and her mom were on better terms, she was being given an inside look at Grant’s day-to-day, which was… not great.
Reese flip-flopped between being embarrassed for Grant and distressed for Brynn, who, against all reason, seemed committed to moving forward with their impending nuptials.
Over the last few weeks, her anger at Grant had slowly started to dissipate, and it almost felt like punching down to try and interfere with his life, considering the job he did all on his own.
He wasn’t a great person by any stretch of the imagination, but her true ire, she could now acknowledge, was directed at her father.
On some level, she’d always known that. Only, she’d tucked it deep into a corner of her mind that she’d compartmentalized and pretended hadn’t affected her, hadn’t shaped her into the person she’d become.
The difference, now, was that she was accepting how that bud of rejection had grown and festered and ensnared its tendrils into every facet of her life.
That she wasn’t the person she’d become in spite of it, but because of it.
Not that she was giving her father any credit for her success, if that’s how financial freedom at the cost of personal relationships, family, and trust in herself and others could be defined. All it really meant was that she probably needed a lot of therapy.
Or, at the very least, to stop letting someone else’s measure of her worthiness define her.
So she’d been thinking about that, too. How it had been easier to assume that her mom wasn’t in her corner because it felt like a rejection every time she didn’t stand up for Reese.
The reality was that her father had never included her mom in business-related endeavors, and any insistence at Reese’s inclusion would have fallen on deaf ears.
In her own way, her mom had tried, but Reese hadn’t been willing to see it.
Her mom had encouraged her to follow her passions.
Every year, there was at least a box of items to be donated from whatever hobby or pursuit Reese had taken an interest in, and as she thought about it, her mom had always known about whatever she was learning in school, asking Reese thoughtful questions and making sure she had what she needed.
A microscope from her stint as an amateur scientist. A telescope when Reese had developed an interest in astronomy.
An abundance of specialized kitchen accessories from a short-lived dream to become a baker, the desire to name her future bakery Reese’s Pieces a bigger draw than her actual interest in the complexities of recipes.
The reality of the situation was that it was Reese who hadn’t wanted to have a relationship with her mom, not the other way around. Her single-mindedness and awe of her father had created a tunnel vision that made everything else seem like… less.
And it had meant, with a realization that had settled deep in her bones as she and her mom had shared a coffee earlier this week, that she’d become a lot more like her father than she wanted to admit, given how he treated others.
She’d held so tightly on to this idea that she could prove him wrong that all the best parts of her had crumbled in her hands.
She didn’t want to be that person anymore.
But wanting something and doing it were orders of magnitude apart.
Because, she thought, as she snuck a glance at the woman next to her, who stared out at the passing homes, set back from the street in the way that only money could buy in a small town with so much coastal space, honesty and vulnerability seemed more difficult to achieve than any professional success she’d ever managed.
She and Sydney had been thrown together by their mutual disdain for her brother, but now, they were in a place she’d never expected .
And that scared her.
After everything she’d learned about herself in the last few weeks, what else was lurking under the surface?
Sydney had been honest in her attraction, which was tingle-inducing to Reese, in the best possible way. It also meant that Sydney knew what she wanted.
But what did Reese want?
She cleared her throat as they rounded the corner, coming onto her parents’ street.
“I really appreciate this. You could have told me what a hellish time you had getting back from Florida. I hope you know that I’d have understood if you didn’t come,” she added, pushing down the disappointment she knew she’d have felt if she didn’t get to see Sydney.
Because she wanted… she wanted .