Chapter 30 #2
“I watched you save this place with your own hands. I watched you turn the numbers around, fill every room, and fight off a corporation without anyone’s help.
You managed and took responsibility for this place like you were the owner.
And you should be.” She reaches forward and takes my face in both hands.
“I could have written a check and fixed it all, but there are lessons to be learned in the struggle. You earned this.”
The tears come again. My emotions are waging a war inside of me.
“I love you enough to let you be strong.” She wipes my cheeks with her thumbs. “Sign the papers. This place is yours. It always has been, and now it’s official.”
She sets a pen on the desk beside the documents.
“But Josie—”
“I’ve already spoken to Josie about it. She agrees, Wendy. Her heart isn’t in Seaside. Yours is.”
I pick up the pen, and my hand trembles as I sign every page where the tabs are placed. When I’m done, Gran takes the stack and slides it back into the envelope.
“There,” she says. “I’ll have this filed this afternoon to make it official.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I tell her.
“Sit here. Breathe.”
She goes to the kitchen, and I stay on the couch with my hands in my lap.
The B&B is mine. The man who helped save it is gone.
Every place I look, I think of him. The front desk, the dining table, the spot by the stairs where he kissed me after Darren Calder left.
I can’t be down here.
I go to my room, close the door, and climb into bed.
The sheets still smell like him from last night.
I pull the comforter to my chest and let the exhaustion take me.
My body and brain are done for today, and it’s not even eight.
Every emotion I’ve experienced since I woke up has left me hollow, and now I’m shutting down. I sleep hard, and it’s dreamless.
When I wake up, the light in the room has changed. It’s softer, coming through the window at an angle that tells me it’s afternoon. I reach for my phone on the nightstand. It’s just past six. I’ve been out all day.
I stare out the window at the cloudless blue sky. I’m done crying, but the shock hasn’t faded. I check my phone for a text from him, but I only see one from my sister, telling me she has the worst hangover of her life. I think about texting him, but I won’t.
I climb the stairs to the third floor and walk into the Captain’s Room. The ocean fills the balcony view the way it always has. I open the door and step outside. The railing is warm from the late sun, and the view is the same I’ve admired all my life.
I sit in the lounge chair and close my eyes. The breeze carries the faint sound of waves, and I try to understand what went wrong.
That’s when I hear it.
Music drifts up from somewhere below me. It’s faint at first, just a few notes carried on the breeze, and then it gets obnoxiously loud. It’s “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison. I roll my eyes.
Some asshole is disturbing everyone’s peace, and I’m ready to go downstairs and curse out whoever it is. Then it gets louder, to the point where the windows behind me rattle.
I stand up, and that’s when I see Dyson Carter Banks standing in the sand below the balcony, wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
A big-ass speaker is beside him. His hair is messy, and he’s grinning up at me with a sparkle in his eyes.
The sight of him standing there rewrites every horrible thing I believed about today.
“You cheesy asshole!” I scream, and the laugh and the sob come out at the same time.
“Come down here and say it to my face!” he yells over Van Morrison.
“I’m gonna kick your ass, Dyson Carter Banks!”
“Quit talking about it and do it!”
I take the stairs so fast that my feet barely touch the wood. I nearly wipe out on the second-floor landing, catching the railing with one hand before my momentum carries me forward. The lobby is a blur.
I take the porch steps two at a time and cross the yard barefoot in the sand. He sees me coming and lowers the speaker just before I crash into him hard enough to knock him back three steps. He lifts me into his arms and spins me around.
My arms lock around his neck, my legs wrap around his waist, and I bury my face in his shoulder. I’m crying so hard that I can barely breathe, and the words I’ve been holding in all summer come pouring out of me. I almost lost him, and I’ll never make that mistake again.
“I love you,” I say into his neck. “I love you so much.”
His arms tighten around me, and he holds me off the ground like I weigh nothing. His face presses into my hair, and when he speaks, his voice cracks wide open. “I love you too. So damn much.”
“Brown Eyed Girl” continues to play at our feet. The sun is low, and the ocean sparkles behind him. I’m holding on to a man who didn’t leave. He stayed. He chose this island. He chose me.
I pull back just enough to see his face.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
“I’m sorry. Don’t ever fucking plan on it,” he says and kisses me deeper.