Chapter 4 #2
"Give or take." Rhett cracks his beer open and takes a long drink, watching me with something between amusement and sympathy. "Take your time. It's only been fifteen years."
"That's not funny."
"It's a little funny."
I put my head in my hands, and Rhett gives me a minute, which is more patience than I usually get from him. When he finally speaks again, his voice has lost most of the teasing.
"You know," he says, "Gemma and I almost didn't happen either.
I was so busy being the guy who didn't do relationships that I nearly let her walk away twice before I got my act together.
The only difference between us and you is fifteen years instead of a few months. Doesn't mean the fear's any different."
"What was it like? Finally saying it?"
"Terrifying," he admits. "Best terrifying decision I ever made. You're going to walk into that clinic and it's going to feel like standing at the edge of a cliff, and then you're going to say it anyway, because the alternative — spending the rest of your life wondering — is worse."
I think about that for a long moment, the garage quiet except for the distant sound of someone running a compressor across the yard. "What if I ruin everything? What if she doesn't—"
"Barrett." He says my name the way you'd stop a man from walking into traffic. "She's been in love with you since she was fifteen. Everybody's known that too."
The garage goes very quiet. Somewhere outside, a motorcycle engine turns over, and the ordinary sounds of the compound keep going on around me while my entire understanding of the last fifteen years rearranges itself into something new.
"Everybody knew," I say slowly. "Both of us. The whole time."
"The whole time," Rhett confirms. "You two are the only people in Anchor Bay who didn't get the memo."
I sit with that for a long moment — the years of proximity, of almost, of two people circling the same truth from opposite directions and never once colliding.
I don't say anything else. I don't need to. Something has finally clicked into place, loud and undeniable, and for the first time since Halcyon's letter landed in my inbox, the fight in front of me isn't the only thing occupying my mind.
I spend the rest of the afternoon in a fog, half-present in a call with our attorney, half-present in a meeting about the upcoming hearing, my mind circling back over and over to the same impossible math — fifteen years, and everyone but the two of us apparently doing the arithmetic correctly the whole time.
I think about all the times I introduced her as "my best friend" at compound events, watching new members do a double-take at the easy familiarity between us before someone quietly explained the situation.
I think about the number of times Dominic tried to bring her up in conversation, gently, the way older brothers do when they're trying to nudge you toward something without pushing too hard, and how I always deflected, changed the subject, insisted there was nothing there to discuss.
I think about every anniversary of my father's death, every one of them spent with Wren beside me at the grave before anyone else arrived, both of us standing there in comfortable silence until the rest of the club showed up.
I think about every late-night phone call, every crisis, every ordinary Tuesday that somehow felt less ordinary because she was in it.
Fifteen years of evidence, sitting right in front of me the entire time, and I needed my best friend's husband to spell it out in a garage before I could finally read it clearly.
By the time I leave the compound that evening, the sun's already dipping toward the water, and I drive home with the radio off, replaying Rhett's words the whole way. She's been in love with you since she was fifteen. Everybody's known that too.
I don't sleep well that night. Not from stress this time, but from something closer to anticipation — a restless, electric awareness that something in my life is about to change, and that for once, I'm not afraid of the change. I'm afraid of waiting any longer to let it happen.
I have no idea, lying awake in the dark running through a dozen different versions of how I might finally say what I've spent fifteen years not saying, that Wren has already started noticing the shift in me before I've said a single word about it — that somewhere across town, she's lying awake too, cataloguing every small change in my behavior, wondering if she's finally allowed to hope.
The next morning, I go into the office early, determined to actually make progress on the presentation for Councilwoman Ortiz instead of spending another day distracted by Rhett's revelation.
It doesn't work particularly well. I catch myself, more than once, staring at the same paragraph of a financial projection while replaying some memory of Wren instead — the exact sound of her voice at two in the morning, the particular way she'd said you're allowed to let people help you, like she was talking about more than just the buyout.
Dominic finds me around noon, staring at my laptop screen without actually typing anything.
"You're somewhere else today," he observes, dropping into the chair across from my desk.
"Long night."
"Rhett mentioned he had a talk with you yesterday."
I look up sharply. "Does the whole club discuss my love life in real time?"
"Pretty much, yeah." Dominic doesn't even try to look apologetic about it. "For what it's worth, I'm glad you finally caught up. The rest of us were starting to worry you'd go your whole life without noticing."
"That obvious?"
"Barrett." He says it with the particular exasperated affection only an older brother can manage. "You've been in love with that woman since before you had a driver's license. It was obvious to everyone except you."
I sit with that for a moment, the accumulated weight of fifteen years of blindness settling differently now that I can finally see it clearly. "I don't know how to tell her. Not in a way that does it justice."
"You don't need it to be perfect. You just need it to be true." Dominic stands, claps a hand on my shoulder on his way out. "Trust me. Piper didn't marry me because I said the right words. She married me because I finally stopped being too scared to say any words at all."
He leaves me alone with that, and I spend the rest of the afternoon only half-focused on Halcyon, the rest of my attention circling back, again and again, to the woman I've loved for fifteen years without ever once telling her so — and to the growing, undeniable certainty that I'm not willing to wait much longer to fix that.
I finish the day's work later than I mean to, the presentation for Councilwoman Ortiz still incomplete, my mind too full of Wren to give the numbers the focus they need.
I drive home slowly, past the marina, past The Crow's Nest, past the clinic where her window is still lit on the second floor, and I sit in my truck outside for a full minute, considering whether tonight is the night I finally walk up those stairs and say what I've been circling for fifteen years.
I don't. Not yet. The timing feels wrong somehow, too impulsive, too unplanned for something this important. But I drive home telling myself it's only a matter of days now, not years, and for the first time since Halcyon's letter arrived, that feels like the more urgent deadline of the two.