Chapter Twenty-One
Did anybody else get a scone from Scuttlebutt, Spirits & Scones this morning? Mine tasted weird.
First comment: Mine, too, and they’re usually so delicious!
Willow Brown: I’m so sorry! My shelves got moved around and I accidentally used the wrong ingredient. Please stop by anytime and have a delicious one on the house!
Third comment: Did you make Lavinia mad again?
—Wayward Harbor Online Community Group
“I just want to say that woman in the pictures did nothing wrong. I knew she didn’t recognize me, and I gave her my middle name.
I deliberately misled her, and even though drinking that coffee in public was our only interaction, I know she was harassed online.
I can only apologize for the harm my actions caused her. ”
Lucy snorted and handed Taylor’s phone back to her. Reese Noonan’s public statement was too little and too late.
“It won’t change anything that happened, but maybe it’ll help going forward,” Willow said. “Trolls are bored by personal responsibility, so they’ll move on to somebody else, and you’ll be free to start over in Miami.”
Miami.
At some point during the night, while watching her tree twinkle away the darkness instead of sleeping, Lucy had finally admitted to herself why barely half of her stuff was packed and she still hadn’t messaged Sydney to ask her to get the spare room ready and give her an ETA.
Once she left Wayward Harbor, her relationship with Nick would be over. And maybe he’d never held her hand in public or put a label on what was between them, but that didn’t change the fact it was real.
She loved him. And she didn’t want to leave him.
But she couldn’t stay if he didn’t feel the same. It would hurt too much.
The one thing Lucy knew for sure was that if Nick asked her to stay in Wayward Harbor, she would.
“Lucy?” Taylor touched her arm, dragging her away from her thoughts of what if. “What’s going on?”
“That was not the face I expected you to make when I mentioned Miami,” Willow added.
Thankfully, the Scuttlebutt was empty but for the three of them, because Lucy burst into tears. Napkins were shoved into her hands, and she buried her face in them as Willow and Taylor took turns rubbing her back.
When the crying jag passed and she’d dried her face with a fresh wad of napkins, Lucy took a shuddering breath. Then she sipped the water Willow brought her.
“What’s going on?” Taylor asked again.
She wanted so badly to tell them everything.
They were her friends—Taylor was her sister—but that was exactly the problem.
If she told them the truth of how she felt about Nick and how it would hurt to leave him, but he hadn’t even hinted at not wanting her to go, they’d be upset on her behalf. And he lived in this town. With them.
And even though he hadn’t done anything wrong, Willow and Taylor might hold it against him.
“I’m going to miss you both so much,” she finally settled. And it was the truth, even if it wasn’t the whole of it.
As expected, they buried her in promises to call and text and FaceTime constantly. And they talked about how Lucy would have to come back when the baby was born. Plus, when the baby was a little older, they could all come visit her in Florida.
A lot of promises were made, though Lucy knew traveling from Maine to Florida wasn’t cheap.
She smiled and nodded along with everything they said because they wanted her to feel better. But they didn’t know there was only one person who could do that.
After parting ways with them, Lucy went home and found the driveway and cottage empty. It took her a moment to remember it was one of Helen’s club meetings at the library—book club, knitting club, or maybe a talking about books while knitting club—and they usually went to Jenna’s for supper after.
Since she was going to be alone for at least a few hours, Lucy dug out her Bluetooth speaker and plugged it in so she could blast a fun, upbeat playlist and get to work.
The first thing on her list was emptying the dryer.
It had buzzed before she left for the Scuttlebutt, but she’d just popped the door and left it for later.
It was a load she’d thrown in of heavier items—jeans, sweatshirts and cardigans that probably should be hand-washed, but she couldn’t say because she deliberately didn’t read care labels—and the last thing she pulled out was Nick’s favorite hoodie.
Sitting back on her heels, Lucy pressed it to her face and inhaled. It didn’t smell like Nick, of course, but there was still some comfort in picturing him wearing it. And that was the problem.
If she was going to embrace a fresh start, she couldn’t take it with her.
There was no denying she was going to miss Nick painfully, and she could see herself sitting in her car with the air conditioning on blast so she could wallow in his hoodie.
It would be the same as hiding under Gran’s blankets, and she wasn’t going to do that anymore.
After turning off the music, Lucy grabbed her bag and the hoodie, and she was in her car before she could talk herself out of driving to Nick’s house.
If there was ever a moment he might ask her to stay—to give her even a glimmer of hope Nick didn’t want her to leave—it would be when she gave him back the hoodie.
He would know she was in the final stages of getting ready to head south.
But once she was parked in front of his house, she couldn’t bring herself to get out of the car. Agreeing that what was between them was only a temporary fling had been a lie, and confessing that to him was daunting. She sat with her hands squeezing the steering wheel until her knuckles ached.
Then Nick stepped out onto the front porch and watched her, his head tilted as if waiting to find out what she was doing.
After taking a deep breath that did nothing to calm her nerves, Lucy grabbed the hoodie from the passenger seat and got out of her car. His gaze dropped to the sweatshirt in her hand as she walked toward him, and his body stiffened.
He didn’t come down the steps to meet her, either. Instead, he moved to one side to make room for her to join him, but that grumpy face was back. Nick’s spine was rigid and his jaw was tight. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but he certainly wasn’t happy to see her right now.
“Sorry to just drop in without texting first,” she said, in case he’d been in the middle of something.
“It’s not a big deal. My brothers and I were out back, but we have cameras and it alerts me when somebody pulls in, so I saw your car.”
“Right. Well, I’m sorting through my stuff and I thought I’d give this back,” she said, dropping the folded hoodie onto the nearest chair. “Because it’s not actually my stuff.”
“You can keep it if you want,” he replied, his voice tense. “We’ll be getting more.”
“I probably won’t need it in Miami.”
His jaw tightened even more as he gave a sharp nod. “Probably not.”
Lucy resorted to teasing to break through that mask because it had worked for her in the past. “Are you going to miss me?”
Nick didn’t respond for so long, she actually thought he was going to ignore the question. But after pressing his lips together and swallowing hard, he looked into her eyes, and Lucy knew that, even though it was clearly hard for him, he was about to admit he didn’t want her to go.
And the rest, they could figure out together.
“Will I miss having one more person in my life I have to take care of?”
The words struck her like a slap across the face, and she took a step back, as though putting more space between them could lessen the impact.
“Take care of?” Shock, hurt, embarrassment, anger—they were all swirling around her head and they all came out in her tone. “Sure, the night I arrived, I had to ask you to let me stay, and maybe I needed a kick in the ass to get off the couch at first, but I’ve never asked you to take care of me.”
“Maybe you haven’t technically asked, but you know I will. You knew from day one that I don’t let the people in my life down, and you just kept gravitating back to me.”
“I gravitated to you—as you so unflatteringly put it—because we lived in the same house. It was hard not to. But also because I liked you. I enjoyed your company, and I thought the feeling was mutual, but apparently not.”
Nick tried to catch her arm as she spun away from him, but she jerked away. “Lucy, wait. I didn’t—I’m sorry.”
No force on the planet could have made her turn back and face him as she processed that Nick Slater not only didn’t return the feelings she’d developed for him, but he thought she was just looking for somebody to take care of her—the way her mother looked for a man to take care of her.
She was nothing to him but a barnacle he was looking to scrape off.
It was a painful way to get an answer, but at least she had one.
* * *
Nick wanted to cry. He wanted to throw up, or kick a truck tire until he couldn’t move his leg anymore. He wanted to drop to the ground, screaming and kicking like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Instead, he just sat on his front steps, staring down his empty driveway.
He’d done the right thing.
Lucy would never ask him to go to Miami with her. She knew he would hate it there, so she wouldn’t put him in the position of having to choose. But he couldn’t ask her to stay because he couldn’t ask her to give up Miami.
He knew what it felt like to give up what he wanted in his life for love. The love of his mother and his brothers. They were his whole heart, and he’d never lied to them. He would still make the same choices, every time.
But he knew how it hurt. Resentment and loss were like the tiniest of splinters. Not enough to keep him from enjoying life, but there. And ready to catch on something with a zing of pain at times.
How long could Lucy pour beers or scoop ice cream before she remembered she could’ve been a hot mixologist in a hot city? He did not want to see that regret in her eyes. He loved her too much to ask her to give it up. But he was afraid she might love him enough to do it anyway.
So he’d taken the choice off the table.
She would cry a little. She’d get angry. And she’d probably hate him for a long time. But she’d go to Miami and start her business, and eventually she’d be happier than she would have been with him.
That was what he had to believe.
Nick sat for a long time, trying to will his broken heart back together enough so he could go in the house and pretend he was just fine. But eventually he forced himself to get up, because if there was one thing he’d learned about grief, it was that the world didn’t stop for it.
When he reached for the door, he saw it. His favorite hoodie, folded and set on the other chair where Lucy had left it.
He picked it up and buried his face in the fabric, hoping to breathe in the scent of her vanilla bodywash and the cream she used in her hair to fight the frizz. He wanted to inhale the scent of Lucy.
It smelled like laundry detergent.
When he went inside, his brothers were still in the backyard.
He could hear their voices and their laughter, and he knew they were expecting him to come back.
But he couldn’t do it. Right now, with Lucy gone and his sweatshirt in his hand, there was no way he could pretend he wasn’t falling apart inside.
Instead, he went upstairs and closed the door. Then, still fully clothed, he curled up on his bed, the hoodie in his arms, and hated himself.