Chapter 48
Tucker
One by one, my brothers and sister and their significant others get up to leave.
In the end, only Eden, Rhys, and I are left. Eden looks from me to Rhys and says, “You know what? I’d better get back to the quilt shop.”
She closes the door behind her on her way out.
The room feels even smaller than when it was filled with my family. Because Rhys is looking at me like I’m a slide under a microscope, something slightly unexpected and complicated.
“You want to talk about it?” he asks.
“Autumn?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “You know what I mean.”
A month ago—hell, two weeks ago—I would have said fuck no. But I’ve had a little practice since then.
Telling Rhys isn’t as easy as telling Autumn, but that doesn’t shock me.
But he’s a surprisingly good listener—maybe because it’s his job.
Since meeting Eden and going on a wild road trip to chase down her runaway fiancé, Rhys stopped being a high-powered and very aggressive New York City divorce lawyer and started being a Rush Creek family lawyer.
Listening to complicated stories is…well, it’s what he does.
I tell him the whole tale from the beginning, about taking the gig with Elizabeth, about discovering that she had feelings for me, about realizing that maybe I had feelings for her, too.
About recusing myself and turning her security over and John not waking up to save her.
And what happened after that, how I walked away from the firm and my friends and shut out my brothers and sister.
When I’m done, he says, “And Autumn?”
“What do you mean?”
“And you shut out Autumn.”
“No, I didn’t shut her out. I told her this whole story. We—we talked a lot.”
His eyes comb over my face. Rhys is a smart guy, a perceptive guy. And I’m pretty sure he can read the whole fucking story. But all he says is “But now you’re shutting her out.”
“No,” I say again, getting grumpy. “She went back to Baltimore, and I live here. And long-distance dating is hard enough when you’re in a good place, but I’m not in a good place. And she has things to work on, too. It was a mutual decision.”
“Tucker,” he says patiently. “Don’t bullshit me. I’m a divorce lawyer. It’s a ‘mutual decision’”—his finger quotes are so exaggerated he’s going to give himself a cramp—“approximately point-zero-five percent of the time. The rest of the time, someone decides and the other person deals with it.”
“You’re not really a divorce lawyer anymore,” I point out.
“You know what I mean,” he says. “You decided, what? That you don’t deserve her?”
There’s that word again.
“No. Maybe. Yes.”
We stare at each other.
“That’s not how it works, you know,” Rhys says.
“You don’t go away and do a whole lot of work and become some perfect guy who’s never going to make mistakes.
You just—” He closes his eyes. “You decide that she matters more than anything else. And then you…you just, one day at a time, make sure she knows it. That’s how you deserve someone.
That’s the whole goddamned story. The rest of it is a lot of therapy and being a fuckhead sometimes and apologizing afterward. ”
“She could have been killed,” I say. I mean it to come out in a normal voice, but it’s barely a rasp. “In the fire. Or by Rena.”
Rhys freezes. “Oh,” he says. “That’s what this is about, huh? If you hadn’t wanted to be with Elizabeth, she wouldn’t have died?” Both his eyebrows are sky high. “And if you hadn’t wanted to be with Autumn, she wouldn’t have been in danger?”
I don’t have to nod for him to know the answer.
“I could have protected Elizabeth instead of trying to be with her.”
“Yes,” my brother says, “you could have. And she might have died anyway. Whoever killed her was very determined. And Autumn didn’t die.
She didn’t even get hurt. She is apparently very strong and resourceful, and as it turns out, sometimes you can’t control everything.
You can’t make a murderer less determined, and even if you’re not there, someone can save herself. All the decisions aren’t yours.”
He sighs and raises his eyebrows at me. “But some of them are. And I can’t see the future, but I did see the way you two looked at each other.
You have a choice. You can walk away from that, and then you know for sure you won’t get to spend time with Autumn.
Or you can walk toward it, and you know you’ll get to spend some time with her.
The rest isn’t in your hands. People get sick and die way before you want them to.
Or get in car accidents. Or, you know, fall in love with someone else and divorce you.
” He winces. “But you can’t control any of that.
So…” He pauses. “Control what you can fucking control.”
At that moment, Autumn’s words from that awful day come back to me.
Tucker’s going to burn the world down to figure out what happened to me.
Was she bluffing when she said that?
I don’t know. I don’t know whether she was bluffing or whether she believed it, but the thing is I want her to have believed it. I want her to believe it now. I want her to know it to the depths of her soul, and I want her to know that no matter where she goes, I’ll come for her.
I just have to figure out exactly how to show her I mean that.
I don’t know how…but I know who might know.