Chapter 16 #2
Reese picked up her coffee cup and took a sip, studying Brynn. “Enamored looks good on you,” she said with a genuine smile.
Historically, Brynn would have cared about other people’s opinions.
A lot. She’d have wanted their approval, or she’d have put their own happiness and desires above her own.
But one thing that she’d really been working on since coming to Stoneport was listening to the voice inside her own head instead of what she thought other people wanted to hear from her.
“Enamored is a good word for it.” It didn’t seem to wholly encapsulate the depth of Brynn’s feelings these days, but she was keeping that thought private for her own benefit.
She’d promised Hallie that she was willing to take things slowly, and to actually honor it, she also needed to make that promise to herself.
It really depended on the day whether she made good on said promise.
Reese gave her another appraising stare. “Any reason why I’m just hearing about this now? It seems like the situation has been developing for a while.”
“It only escalated recently,” was how Brynn decided to phrase things. “But you’re right. In retrospect, it’s been building for longer.” It was a certainty that Brynn had only just recently accepted, once she’d realized that her feelings were way beyond friendly.
“The last time we talked, you were planning to casually date and sow your wild oats,” Reese stated. It was a fair point. They hadn’t checked in nearly as much as Brynn had expected when she’d come to Stoneport, but that was on her.
Still, she shrugged off the idea for some reason.
Probably because it seemed so ridiculous that she would have ever gone on dates with other people, considering Hallie was right there, waiting for her.
God, Brynn had been so laughably oblivious to her own feelings.
“I don’t think anyone would define anything about me as wild. ”
Reese looked at the hickey again. “I beg to differ.” Brynn laughed but then quieted when Reese added, “I just wanted to make sure that not telling me didn’t have anything to do with me being Grant’s sister.
The last thing I would want is for you to think that you couldn’t talk to me.
Especially because you are, by orders of magnitude, the person that I picked to stick with post-breakup. ”
And as Brynn accepted Reese’s words, she felt the truth in them.
Reese had always been honest with her, even when it had caused significant drama in the Devereux family.
Brynn didn’t take that lightly, and it made her feel like she owed Reese an explanation.
Not because it would make Reese happy, but because it felt important to Brynn herself.
“I didn’t mention it because I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on.
With myself. With Hallie. Honestly, I didn’t even know that I was into women until recently. ”
Truly, there had been so much newness in Brynn’s life over the last two months—since coming to Stoneport—that it felt like she’d boarded a rocket ship into the future. She was here now, and everything, including her, was so very different.
“I really do value your friendship so much,” she said. “And I think there was a part of me that worried about the complexity of everything. Hallie and I are both of your maids of honor. We both work for you. And Hallie and Sydney are best friends. It’s complicated.”
Reese laughed lightly. “Don’t worry. I know all about complicated. Earlier this summer, I felt like I was living in a soap opera.”
But, if they were putting it all on the table— “I really like her, Reese. Like, a lot.”
“I’m sensing some hesitation, though,” Reese observed astutely. “Is it about Grant?”
Brynn let out a harsh laugh. “God, no. I don’t think about him except when I wonder how I ever almost married him.”
“What was that about, anyway?” Reese shifted in her chair. “If you don’t mind me asking. I’ve always really liked you, and I’ve never really liked Grant. The two of you just seemed like such a strange couple. No offense.”
She’d been getting that a lot. “The thing with Grant was…” Then, she realized that Reese would probably understand better than a lot of people. “You’ve met my parents.”
“I have. Lovely people who want the world for their only child.”
Starting to talk about Bridget more with Hallie was making it easier to push through the opening that Reese had unknowingly given her. “Actually, I had an older sister. She passed away when I was six.”
Reese held her hand up to her chest, clearly upset by this information. “I’m so sorry, Brynn. I didn’t know.”
“My parents don’t talk about her. She died, and it was like the idea of dealing with that grief was too painful for them.
So…” Brynn had been thinking about this a lot lately.
Why she couldn’t stand the idea of disappointing her parents, even though she knew they would always support her no matter what.
Reese waited patiently, giving Brynn the much-needed time and space to collect her thoughts.
All the pieces were scattered across her brain like a scavenger hunt, but she’d never really wanted to connect them.
That would mean that she actually needed to do something with that information.
And she didn’t relish the conversation she would need to have to make that happen.
But starting with Reese was a good place to practice. “I love my parents.”
Reese nodded. “I know you do, Brynn. It’s clear to everyone how much you all love one another.”
She rolled her lips inward, chewing on them.
Finally, she exhaled. She could do this.
Talk about the hard stuff. “I was only six. And once Bridget died, it was like the light had gone out of my parents’ eyes.
I can remember that much. Everything took on this muted, sad quality that sort of felt like I was looking at life underwater.
And when she was gone, it was like all the energy they’d been putting into her treatments and care had nowhere to go.
I don’t really think they could deal with that.
But they’re great people, and they were very aware that they still had a daughter left. ”
She got an affirming, encouraging nod from Reese to continue.
“What they really want, more than anything in this world, is for me to be happy. Maybe so happy, even, that it could somehow balance out the scales of losing a daughter who would never get that chance. To grow up and fall in love and live her own life.” Brynn felt tears prickle behind her eyes, realizing everything Bridget had never gotten the chance to experience.
“And for a long time, I looked at being happy as never being sad. Or never struggling. Or never making mistakes and then charting a new path as a result. It’s sort of defined my entire existence, if I’m being honest. These last handful of months have been the first time that I’ve let myself be confused or wayward or searching. ”
The sympathetic smile on Reese’s face cut straight into Brynn’s chest. She knew that Reese understood a whole hell of a lot about wanting to please her parents. Even if it was for different reasons.
But Brynn wanted to get this out. She wanted to give it a voice for the first time in her life. Otherwise, she was likely to fall back into old, destructive patterns, and with a relationship with Hallie on the line, she needed to make sure that didn’t happen.
“And it’s so crazy because I know my parents didn’t even like Grant.
But by the time he asked me to marry him, I was graduating from my PhD program and staring down the barrel of what came next.
And the idea that my parents would be worried about me and how I was living my life created this…
opening for me to think that settling down and getting married was the most practical decision.
Even if it was with a complete bonehead. ”
Reese laughed wryly. “Understatement of the year where Grant is concerned.”
Brynn ran her hands along her lukewarm coffee cup, frowning. “I’m worried that Hallie doesn’t think that this version of myself is the real me, but I feel more like myself than I ever have before.”
Reese held Brynn’s stare for a beat, Brynn’s words hanging in the air between them. “I can see how someone like Hallie, who thrives on consistency, would think that. Have you two talked about it?”
“That’s why we’re taking things slowly,” Brynn explained.
“I feel like she just expects to wake up one morning and see me with my bags packed, telling her that I’m moving across the country like her parents.
And that, for good measure, I’ve somehow convinced you to sell the inn right out from under her again. ”
Reese winced. “I didn’t realize what I’d stepped in there until it was already too late.”
Brynn knew, the same as she’d come to understand her own emotional baggage, where Hallie’s resistance—or fear, more accurately—was coming from. But Brynn knew that unless Hallie wanted to work through her own demons, there was no world in which Brynn could love her enough to compensate for it.
But all of Brynn’s attempts at rational thinking didn’t change the fact that— “She’s the best person that I’ve ever met. And I wish she could see that about herself.”
Hallie needed to want it for herself. That was the scariest part of all of this for Brynn.
Because even though she was willing to go slowly and meet Hallie where she was, she couldn’t force Hallie to see herself as the amazing woman she saw whenever she looked at her.
A woman who was so arresting and charming and funny and beautiful that it took Brynn’s breath away.
The woman who had opened up Brynn’s world and exploded it into Technicolor.
But Hallie being told something versus Hallie believing it in her own heart were two very different things.
The silence had hung heavy before Reese asked a question that had been circling around in Brynn’s mind for over a week. “So, where does that leave you two?”
“In the most terrifying place I’ve ever been,” she admitted. “Where I can’t control the outcome but I also want this—want her—more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my entire life.”
Reese clocked her with a knowing stare. “Welcome to love, my friend. It’s not for the faint of heart, but the payoff can be pretty incredible.”
Brynn had thought that she’d loved Gregory and Grant because they’d decided to be exclusive. Because she’d made commitments to them. Because they’d started to plan their lives with the other one in mind.
But whatever she’d felt with them and for them had never scratched the surface of her feelings for Hallie.
When they’d first slept together, Hallie had told her that she was falling for Brynn. Falling where? In love, just like Brynn?
She couldn’t stand the thought of being alone in this crazy, out-of-control feeling that had overtaken her entire existence.
“What if she’s too scared to really let me in?” Brynn asked on a shaky exhale, voicing her biggest fear. “How did you know with Sydney? You’ve only been together for six months, but you both seem so sure.”
Reese got this faraway look as she blushed, and Brynn could tell that she was thinking about her fiancée.
After a beat, she laughed and shook her head, clearing her daydream away.
“Every step of the way, I’ve felt like Sydney and I were on the same team.
I thought that I’d had that with other people in my life, but once Sydney and I clicked, it was so different.
Sure, there were fears and doubts and baggage, on both sides, but no matter what we went through, I always felt like I had a true partner. ”
“I’m sure running into your brother’s ex in California was a wild start to a meet-cute,” Brynn said, nodding.
Reese laughed then, her blush deepening. It made Brynn lean forward, confused.
“What?”
“Boy, do I have a story for you.”