Chapter 30
“I don’t regret any of this,” Cort said simply. “I want you to know that.”
For a moment, Rebecca was speechless. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what to say; it was that she didn’t know how to say it.
“I don’t, either,” she finally managed, but the words almost stuck in her throat.
Because they weren’t entirely true. All those moments when the fear had crept in and she had ignored her intuition—she regretted that now.
She had known this could happen. So she could feel that Cort was standing in front of her, one foot metaphorically out the door, because she knew him.
He sighed. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “You don’t have to be.” Please don’t pity me. Don’t feel sorry for me.
“Running into Mel, it was awkward. Worse than awkward. She was upset, and although we’ve agreed not to interfere in each other’s romantic lives, ever, the thing is, I’ve never introduced Pip to any of the women I’ve dated since Melanie and I broke up.
” Any of the women I’ve dated. It made sense, but it was still as if a pail of cold water had been dumped on her head.
Of course Cort had dated. He had the Cort Adams Effect, after all.
He wasn’t just the person she had recently begun to think of as belonging to her.
He had never been hers. He was handsome, kind, irresistibly charming, single. Still, she felt a flash of jealousy and had to look away from him so he wouldn’t see it.
“Pip didn’t meet Mel’s guy until they had been dating for months and things were really serious.” He rubbed his jaw with his hand, then began again. “We’ve been having so much fun…”
“So much fun…” Rebecca echoed. “I get it, Cort,” she lied.
He had been staring into the coffee she had made him when they arrived back at the diner, but now he looked up. “You do? Because I don’t think I’m fully caught up with my head and my heart here.”
She looked away from him. She hated that he had just put into words exactly how she was feeling—which was so typical.
Hated that her heart was racing, her palms were sweating.
Now that she knew what it was like to be in his arms, it was all she wanted in the world.
But she couldn’t have it, not anymore. She had let herself believe something else when it came to Cort, but there was no avoiding it.
Better to just rip the Band-Aid off now and be done with it.
“I can see why Melanie was bothered. I know it has nothing to do with jealousy and everything to do with parenting. You’re both very good parents to that boy. He’s lucky. But so am I. I’m lucky to have met him.”
He smiled tentatively. “Pip is special,” he said.
“And he likes you a lot. Mel worries that you won’t be here for too much longer, and she doesn’t want Pip to get attached.
Which, I’ll admit, was something I’ve been allowing myself to forget.
To pretend isn’t real. I’ve started making myself believe you aren’t going anywhere…
but you can’t make promises, and I know that. We’ve probably moved too fast.”
She nodded, swallowed over the painful lump in her throat. “We definitely need to slow down,” she said, and did not mean it. But the words were out, and they had sounded so certain.
He put his coffee down. His gray eyes were like rain clouds.
“The problem is, I don’t think I could ever just be casual with you. If you don’t see a future at all for yourself here, we need to do more than slow down. I think it’s probably best that we stop altogether. Do you see a future for yourself in Bramley Hollow?”
“Cort, I—” But she didn’t know what to say to this.
In this case, there was no truth to be told.
Except for: My life is in Toronto. My apartment, my job.
But she couldn’t say that, because there was no solution to it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and it was almost a whisper.
Her eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them away so quickly he might not have noticed.
She was doing the right thing, she told herself.
She wasn’t in a position to simply decide to stay in Bramley Hollow because of her feelings for Cort.
She didn’t know the first thing about running a diner, could barely manage the cleaning out and renovation of one. She had a job. A life. It wasn’t here.
He was watching her closely. “I want you to be happy,” he said. “Even if it’s not here. I’ve always known you wanted to be somewhere else.”
She nodded, throat still tight. “And I’ve always known you wanted to be here.”
“I’m happy here,” he said.
Why can’t I be? she wondered, watching him. It would be easy, wouldn’t it, to open her mouth and say, I’m staying. I’ll find a way.
But they had moved so fast. It didn’t make sense to throw away everything she had, make sudden promises for someone she had only been dating for a week.
You didn’t just make decisions like this in the heat of the moment because of what your heart was telling you to do.
It didn’t make sense. Even if it meant she had to stop something that felt better than anything else in her memory.
Even if the idea of never touching him, never kissing him again, caused the ache in her heart to bloom into something Rebecca felt moving through her body like a creeping vine, constricting all joy. It would hurt less eventually, though.
“Becca,” he said in a low voice, looking away. “I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Cort. You’re doing what you know is right for you, for your son.”
“And you’re doing what you know is right for you. We’re being very adult here,” he said with a sad smile.
“Isn’t that the truth?”
“And since we’re adults, we can obviously handle…still being friends, right? It won’t be easy at first, but it’s tough to avoid a person in a small town.”
Now her heart felt like it was truly breaking. “You won’t work on the diner anymore?”
“Of course I’ll work on the diner. I would never let you down like that, or Lenore.”
“We’ll just have to be grown-ups about it,” Rebecca said.
Another sad smile. “Exactly.”
“I can do that, Cort. Of course.” She bit her lip.
“And…this may be totally out of line, but I hope you’ll still bring Pip by sometimes.
Maybe after you explain that we’re just…
” But it was too hard for her to say it.
She couldn’t. And as she watched him, his expression shuttered even more than it already had.
“Of course I will. I know he’d really like that.”
“I would, too.”
“Great.”
She looked up at him for a moment, wishing for just one last kiss, but she didn’t think she could handle that. “I’ll walk you out,” was all she said.
At the door, he turned to her. He looked like he wanted to tell her something, to say something that might change things, and she felt so much hope it was painful.
But then he just shook his head, looked away from her out into the golden light of the autumn afternoon.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” he said. And he walked away.