Chapter 22
I feel like I deserve an award for dousing that fire.
As hard as Parker found it to get back to work, I’ve found him equally distracting after he gave me quite possibly the best kiss of my life.
Escaping up to the loft is only partly to clean up the mess I didn’t bother to deal with last night, but mostly it’s to keep my hands to myself.
It’s not an easy task when he’s in the barn making manual labor look easy.
Truthfully, I thought it would be fun teasing him a little—but the looks he keeps shooting my way are enough to make me feel like I’m about to combust.
The sight of the loft brings me crashing down from the cloud I’ve been drifting on all morning.
Lo and behold, the leftover desserts are—well, leftovers no more.
Mid-morning light, shining through the slats in the walls, illuminates the dust floating in the air, landing on half-eaten cake and on remnants of champagne and cocktails in plastic cups.
Flies buzz around the food scraps, and I try to ignore what looks like pawprints in the sticky smears of icing spread across my formerly perfectly decorated dessert table.
At least the raccoons enjoyed the party.
I stand for a moment with a trash bag in hand, wondering where to begin, before it all feels like too much.
I ignore the mess, though, because seeing it makes me realize that there’s one person I need to talk to about this, someone I should have remembered much earlier than I have. I pull out my phone.
“I have to tell you something,” I blurt when Lyla picks up. “Last night went horribly. And not like someone got food poisoning, this was well and truly a disaster.”
Lyla’s quiet for a beat, and I can picture her face rearranging into big sister mode. “Start from the beginning.”
I tell her everything, from how well it started, even though almost everything was slightly different from how I pictured it would be, Parker’s surprise campfire and cowgirl experience, and how it ended with me and the bride-to-be at the hospital.
“No,” she gasps. “Pumped stomach?”
“Fractured wrist.”
“NO.”
“She’ll be in a cast for her wedding next weekend.”
“Okay. There’s … a lot to unpack there. Let’s start with the fact that I’m guessing you’re probably beating yourself up over it, am I right?” She takes my silence as her answer. “Accidents happen. I’m sure she doesn’t blame you.”
Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean she won’t tell the whole world about what happened under my watch.
I keep that bit of intel to myself, though.
Rightly or otherwise, I decided not to tell Lyla when I discovered Lucy’s online persona.
I was stressed out enough without Lyla knowing the stakes of taking our business on a test run without her.
Now that I’ve royally screwed things up for both of us, I know I need to tell her the truth.
What I don’t know is how to bring it up.
“It never would have happened if you were here. I don’t know why I thought I could ever do this without you.
” Lyla's presence alone is enough to keep people in check, which she attributes to being a Leo. I think it has more to do with growing up as the oldest of five siblings and practically helping her working parents raise her brothers and sisters. But Lyla likes to believe in the power of the universe, and who am I to take that away from her? It takes me a beat to realize she’s gone quiet. “You still there?”
“Would you ever?”
“Would I … what?”
“Open the business on your own. You could do it, you know. You don’t need me.”
I press the phone closer to my ear. “Whoa, where is this coming from? I thought we were pausing the business. Why does it sound like you’re pulling out completely?”
“No!” she says quickly. “It’s just … we should probably talk about what happens if Adam gets this job in New York.”
The unexpected rush of emotions catches me off guard.
I’m happy for Adam, but I hate the thought of even more change coming my way.
A month and a half ago, I was about to start spending every day with Lyla.
I hate even to think it, because I’ve been the one hiding from my life here at Salem Stables, but the idea of so much distance between us, permanently?
It scares me. At the same time, I’m conflicted by the thought of going back myself.
I hadn’t planned on leaving anytime soon, but now I realize I may let myself ignore the fact that eventually, I’ll have to.
I can’t stay here forever … can I? It is starting to feel like home in every sense of the word.
And if Lyla is telling me she can’t be part of the business, I’m not sure what I have to go back to.
Parker’s face floats through my muddled mind, and it’s enough to prove that whatever is going on between us is so much more than a simple distraction.
“We don’t have to decide anything right now.” I’d prefer if we didn’t. “How do your parents feel about all this?” I know how much they rely on her for the family business.
“They’d be more than fine with it if they could see how well Billie’s stepped up,” she says, and her younger sister’s mischievous face pops into my mind, deceptively sweet with that dusting of freckles on her nose.
She’s in her mid-twenties now, but I will forever see her as the wild child drawn to every thrill-seeking risk she could find; the girl was single-handedly responsible for Lyla’s first frown lines.
“Billie wasn’t thrilled with being part of the family business at first, but she seems to have come around, for whatever reason.
It’s Billie, though, so I’m not convinced it’s a genuine change of heart. ”
Her words are spoken with a weight I’ve grown used to hearing but have never questioned before.
I’ve always viewed Lyla as the older sister who likes getting involved in other people’s problems. After this brief conversation, I’m wondering if she sounds so tired because she’s been dealing with other issues, and the weight of responsibility is finally catching up to her.
It sounds like she might want the distance from it all. I only wish I knew where that left me.
I think of Sam, and how he’s still fighting to convince his father that he wants to work at his garage after taking some time to explore other options.
His dad might not understand, but Sam needed to step away to gain that perspective and make sure he was there because he was choosing to be, not because it was the path chosen for him.
“Maybe it is genuine,” I say, letting myself be optimistic for a change.
“This is my sister we’re talking about. Do you remember what she told me when I started working for my parents? That I was settling in the worst way because I was dedicating my life to perpetuating someone else’s dream instead of my own.”
I wince. “Yikes. That sounds … harsher than I remember.”
She laughs, sounding more tired than bitter. “You’re telling me. Of all my siblings, she’s the least likely to sugarcoat things. Which is why it doesn’t make any sense that she’s back and leaning into this.”
This time, when I picture Sam, I also think of myself and how na?ve I used to be. I took the world and my life at face value; I didn’t ask questions because things were exactly the way I wanted them.
“She’s older now. Maybe she sees things differently.”
Lyla scoffs. “Billie can’t commit to a hair color, let alone a career path.”
“People change their minds, Ly,” I say gently.
She’s quiet for a long beat. Eventually, she says, “Yeah … yeah, they do.”
We chat for a few more minutes before we end the call, and I stand there for a long while afterwards, staring at the phone in my hand, unsure what to do about the unsteady feeling brewing inside me.
At the sound of his voice, my head snaps up to find Parker standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame.
“Sorry to interrupt the moment you’re clearly having with your phone, but I’m starving and couldn’t tell how much longer you were going to be. I had to take matters into my own hands.”
How does a person make a T-shirt and jeans look so damn good?
Honestly, the thought dances a conga line through my head at the same time I realize Lyla’s sudden departure came in time to stop me from gushing about making out with Parker while he was standing right behind me.
Though the thought of him standing behind me is not exactly an unwelcome one.
“How long have you been lurking there?” I demand, my cheeks growing hot.
“Observing is not the same as lurking.”
“It’s the same as spying,” I shoot back, doing my best to ignore the intoxicating smell of him.
Ignoring me, he steps through the door and walks around the room, looking past the mess and focusing instead on my sample art around the loft.
There are a few pieces on each table and a whole bunch that I put up on the walls as inspiration for the group.
But a bunch of drunk, giggling women at a bachelorette party is a much different audience from a thirty-something, stone-cold-sober man, and I suddenly feel incredibly self-conscious.
It’s an odd sensation, because I’ve never been shy about my work before.
“Did you do all these? By hand?”
I nod, trying not to squirm as he continues around the room, sauntering like he’s at a gallery.
He stops to look at each one like they’re masterpieces, while I, in turn, study the slope of his nose, the upturned end that gives him a slightly boyish look and which cranks up when a grin pulls at the edge of his mouth.
My stomach drops when I realize what he’s looking at. “Oh my god!” I lunge for him, covering the sign with my body.
“What was that about a G-spot?” he says through barely contained laughter.
“Nothing!” I say, dodging his grab for it. “You misread it. Clearly, you can’t read. Or you need glasses. Or all of the above! Hey, why don’t we take you right now to get that checked out? I’ll drive.”