Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
brADEN
The bonfire had been burning for an hour before I arrived.
I could see the glow from where I stood screened by brush—orange flames dancing above the dunes at the resort’s edge, silhouetting my siblings.
They’d gathered on the packed sand where the family had hosted these bonfires for as long as I could remember.
Eli and Jules were sprawled on one of the oversized driftwood logs, his arm slung casually around her shoulders.
Harper and Chase were nearby, trying to contain Claire and Cameron from crawling all over the place.
Brenna sat with Hunter close beside her, their bodies angled toward each other in that comfortable way of people settled into permanence.
Austin stood at the fire’s edge with Ben, their faces illuminated by the flames.
Iris was hosting a guest reception tonight at Heron House, and Austin’s solitary presence was more pronounced now that it was unusual.
Of course they’d been talking about me. About Tessa.
About what I’d done. I’d spent the last three days in a state of controlled dissociation.
Work had been a refuge—the sharp focus required to inventory hops, monitor fermentation, and refine the recipe for the new seasonal blend.
At the brewpub, I could hide inside the mathematics and precise chemistry that didn’t care about my personal catastrophe.
But I couldn’t hide forever. Family obligation was a pull I’d never learned to resist, and this afternoon Harper had texted with a casual invitation that wasn’t really an invitation at all.
We’re having a bonfire tonight. You should come.
I approached the fire slowly, taking in the scene. The moment I came into view, conversation shifted. Recalibrated. People who’d been looking at each other suddenly looked toward the beach or the flames or anywhere that wasn’t directly at me.
“There he is,” Eli’s voice was artificially bright, the forced warmth of someone trying to hold something together with enthusiasm.
I grabbed a beer from the cooler someone had set up on the sand—one of mine from Tidal Hops—and claimed a spot adjacent to the group but not fully inside it.
My shoulders were locked. I focused on the beer, opening the can and taking a pull.
The taste was familiar enough to ground me, even if nothing else did.
“Good turnout tonight,” I said to no one in particular. The kind of neutral observation that could fill space without committing to anything real.
Austin was watching me. I caught the look—the assessment in his eyes, the way his jaw tightened slightly. He’d been where I was, or somewhere close. Emotionally walled off, choosing solitude over the messy risk of connection. He’d learned better, eventually.
It took him about five minutes. He waited for a natural lull in conversation, until Harper had picked up Cameron to soothe him, until Brenna and Hunter had stepped away to talk to each other in their private-even-in-public way.
“So,” Austin said. He still stood at the fire’s edge, the flames casting long shadows across his face. “I can see you’re wound tighter than a drum. Want to talk about it?”
I turned the beer bottle slowly in my hands. “Not particularly.”
“I figured.” Austin shifted his weight, and I realized he was going to push. “But you’re going to anyway, because sometimes we don’t get a choice. You’re the one who taught me that in the back room of your brewery not so long ago.”
Something hot flashed through my chest. A defensive anger, the kind that felt safer than the alternative. “Can it, Austin. I don’t need a lecture.”
“I’m not here to lecture you.” Austin moved closer. “I’m here to point out something you already know but are doing a really good job of not looking at directly.”
The bonfire was the only light on the beach now. Stars had started appearing overhead, but they were faint, barely visible. Everything was narrowing down to just the two of us and the flames before us.
“What’s that?” I asked, though I didn’t really want to know the answer.
“You’re following the same playbook I did. Build something good, start to believe it might actually work, then tear it down from the inside before someone else gets a chance to.”
The beer suddenly tasted bitter. I’d crafted the story of a careful man making a careful decision, and I’d believed it just enough to present it without shame. But Austin was right. The shame was there. I could feel it now that he’d named my actions.
“She’s leaving.” My words came out flat, controlled. “The Great Barrier Reef position, the next dream opportunity—it’s all there. It was always going to end this way.”
“So you did it first.”
“I did it logically. The only thing that made sense.”
“You did it out of fear.” Austin’s voice wasn’t unkind, but it was firm, impossible to dismiss.
“You decided ahead of time that you couldn’t handle the uncertainty.
That it was safer to end it yourself than to risk her choosing something else.
And you know what that is, Braden? That’s not logical.
That’s you making a decision for her because you were too scared to let her make it herself. ”
I wanted to argue. I’d spent three days constructing arguments, polishing them, rehearsing them until they felt solid.
We wanted different things. Our timelines didn’t align. She would always wonder what she’d missed. I was doing her a favor.
But none of that was true. None of it was the real reason.
“I was protecting her,” I said, and even as the words left my mouth, I could hear how hollow they sounded.
“From what? From you? From her own choices?” Austin stepped closer, his dark stubble almost glowing in the firelight. “You weren’t protecting her, Braden. You were protecting yourself. And you wrapped that protection in logic and noble intentions like a gift for her.”
The fire crackled louder, sending another spray of sparks into the darkness. My siblings had gone quiet, or at least quieter. They were pretending not to listen but were absolutely listening to every word.
“You don’t understand the situation,” I said, but it sounded like a plea, not an argument.
“Bullshit. I understand it perfectly because I’ve lived it. I understand what it feels like to be so afraid of losing something that you decide to lose it yourself first.” Austin’s eyes met mine, gray and unflinching. “And I understand that it destroys you from the inside out.”
Brenna appeared beside Austin, almost as if she’d been waiting for him to soften the ground first. She sat down on one of the logs, her posture deliberately casual.
“Braden,” she said, and just hearing my name in that tone—the one she used when she’d decided to cut through every wall I’d constructed—made my stomach clench. “Do you want to know what I think?”
I snorted. “I don’t think I have a choice.”
“You don’t.” She smiled sadly. “I’m sure you told Tessa she should go after her dream instead of staying here. But you know what? Austin’s right—you took that choice away from her. You decided what she wanted. And you did it all without asking her what she actually thought.”
The crackle of the fire seemed to grow louder, or maybe my ears were just ringing. I couldn’t breathe quite right. The anger drained out of me, replaced by something much worse—something that felt a lot like the truth.
“Brenna,” Harper called a warning from somewhere near the edge of the group, but Brenna held up a hand.
“No. He needs to hear this. He’s been sitting in his cottage for three days practicing the narrative that this was a hard but necessary choice.
I love you, Braden. We all do. But what you did wasn’t hard.
It was easy. The hard thing would have been trusting her.
The hard thing would have been saying, ‘I’m scared, and I don’t know how this ends, but I want to find out with you.
’” She paused to take a breath. “But that required vulnerability, and you don’t do vulnerability. So you hid behind logic instead.”
Something cracked inside my chest. I could feel the careful architecture of my self-deception beginning to fracture under the weight of her words. She wasn’t wrong. Every excuse I’d rehearsed, every logical justification I’d prepared, exposed itself as the thin cover it had always been.
Across the fire, Eli had gone very still. He’d been watching the exchange, and now he glanced at Brenna and Austin like he was about to say something.
Then Ben moved.
Ben, who’d been quiet at the far side of the gathering, holding Colton in his arms. Ben, who never pushed anyone or offered unsolicited advice. Ben, who’d spent most of his adult life working through his demons and had learned, somewhere in that process, the difference between judgment and truth.
He handed the baby back to Hunter and stepped into the firelight.
He waited until I looked at him. “I fought like hell to become a paramedic. Not because I had all the answers. Not because I knew for certain it would work out. But because I was finally willing to show up for myself even though I didn’t know how the story would end. ”
He paused, and something in that pause held more weight than a thousand words. Ben had been the wild card of the family, the angry kid who seemed destined to fail. He’d done the work, faced his demons, and earned the right to speak about courage.
“The real tragedy,” he continued, his eyes steady on mine, “isn’t losing a fight you should have won. It’s being too afraid to step into the ring.”
And there it was. The part of me that wasn’t hidden behind logic or self-protection or carefully constructed justifications went perfectly still.
Because Ben was right. I’d folded. Not because I’d thought it through and made a brave choice, but because I was scared shitless.
Of Tessa leaving. Of being abandoned again, the way I’d felt when she left town at eighteen.
So I’d abandoned her first, as if that somehow gave me power over the outcome.
It didn’t. It just meant I didn’t get to fight for what I wanted.
And neither did she.
I’d built everything here. The business, the life, the persona of the guy who had his act together. The golden boy who’d recovered from his high school heartbreak and transformed it into success. Except I hadn’t recovered from anything. I’d just gotten better at hiding the wound.
Then Tessa had come back, and for a few months I’d let myself believe that the story could have a different ending.
That I was enough now. That she would choose me because she wanted to, not because I needed her to.
But the moment I experienced that uncertainty, the moment I couldn’t control the outcome, I’d panicked. And I’d ended it.
Which meant I’d abandoned her. Like I’d been abandoned before. And like I was terrified of being abandoned again.
The fire crackled, and my family chatted among themselves, giving me time to process what they’d said.
They weren’t angry at me. That would have been easier, somehow.
They were seeing me clearly—seeing the fear beneath the logic, the cowardice beneath the careful decision-making—and they were saying so anyway.
That was what family did. They stared you down at your worst and didn’t look away.
I stared into the embers and let the full weight of my mistake press down on me. The hollow ache in my chest was immobilizing. This was worse than the breakup, worse than the relief I'd felt when I’d finally made the decision. This was the moment I couldn’t hide from the truth anymore.
That I’d been a coward. Chickenshit.
That I’d chosen the pain of loss over the risk of love, and I’d lost anyway.
I was hollow. The structure of my justifications had collapsed, and underneath it was just regret. Suffocating, immobilizing regret. I’d found enough courage to start building a future, but not enough to see it through. And I had no idea where to go from here.