Chapter 37
Autumn
Summer and Jane run back to where my dad, Nessa, and Haru are still standing to tell them the news. I watch as the good news ripples through the group. Then I turn my attention back to Hanna.
“Can we help with anything else tonight?” I ask her.
Hanna watches me for a moment, then wipes a hand across her face. “This—” she gestures at the blackened barn. “This is our problem. It has nothing to do with you, and I’m so sorry your family got pulled into it. Hott Springs will make good on this.”
“I want to help. It’s so much worse to…you know, sit and wait.” I want to do anything I can to make things better, to get this wedding back on the right footing.
She gives me another thoughtful look, then says, “I’m going to get up super early and start calling everyone I know in the business, so if you want to help with that, I’ll send you a text about where I’ll be and when.
But there’s absolutely no pressure. You don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to help me fix our family’s mess. ”
There’s an expression on her face I can’t make out…and then I know it for what it is. She’s blaming herself for all of this.
“You know it’s not your fault, either,” I say. “Your grandfather set up a situation that made you a target.”
She bites her lip, but for the first time, she smiles. “He did, didn’t he? You bastard.” She addresses the last two words to the ground, then looks back up at me. “Anyway, I’ll text you in the morning. And obviously you’ll be there”—this addressed to Tucker—“since you have to stay with her.”
Tucker shakes his head. He isn’t looking at me or Hanna. “Uh,” he says, “about that. That horse left the barn.” He grimaces. “Poor word choice.”
He holds out his palm with an AirTag in it.
My stomach sinks like a lead balloon. “I took both…I took yours from the nightstand, and mine is in my—”
But when I open my little clutch purse, it’s not in there, and realization dawns. “Oh, no. Wait—how did you know I was here…?”
“Weggers called the room.”
I slip my hand into my pocket and touch his AirTag, my stomach sinking lower as I brush the cool plastic.
“Oh, God, Tucker…” I can’t believe I did that. I look from Hanna to Tucker and back again, my eyes filling with tears. “I’m so, so sorry. I’ll tell him it was all my fault, that I walked away from you when you were sleeping, that I forgot—”
His face and Hanna’s both tell me that it’s not going to help.
I did this. After they made it through four separate trials, I ruined things for the Hott family. I broke the will.
I must have said some of that out loud—or my face spoke it for me—because Hanna shakes her head. “It’s not on you. It’s like you said. We’re all Granddad’s victims.”
I can tell she means it, but my heart is still breaking, for what my mistake will cost them, for how impossible it will be to fix this.
The fact that she’s not bawling me out feels like a huge gift.
Her generosity in the face of what she stands to lose is almost too big to imagine. “Hanna.” My voice cracks.
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t take this on yourself. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.”
Her eyes are fierce on me, and I can tell she means it.
“If you think it’ll help, I’ll talk to Weggers.”
She sighs. “It’s worth a try.”
“I’ll call him first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you,” Hanna says simply.
She switches her gaze to her brother. “In the meantime, you two should probably stay together. In case it still matters. In case Weggers is magically inclined toward leniency. And because there’s obviously someone unhinged out there and Autumn could probably still use your protection.
Besides, her sister still thinks you two are actually dating, right? So for her sake—”
“Why would you do that for me?”
My stomach drops at the voice behind us.
Summer.