Chapter 6
Chapter Six
DEAN
I woke mid-dream. It had been so real—my financial planning place right there on Main Street, with its lampposts and flower baskets. Even in my imagination, it looked like Norman Rockwell had thrown up and created it all.
Yet… I had been so happy. Like a dream had come true.
Awareness crept back in. The silence was different, a deep, unfamiliar quiet, punctuated only by the low whirr of an air conditioner.
My throat was dry, my limbs heavy. Sated.
I cracked an eye open. The morning light was a pale, hazy blue, filtered through thin curtains.
A woman’s arm was slung over my waist, her breathing a soft, steady rhythm against my back.
Panic bloomed within me, sour and icy cold. I wasn’t in my bed.
I was in Brynn Vance’s.
It was supposed to be fake. A vacation charade easily erased and forgotten. Instead, I was drowning in the proof—her warm, sleeping body pressed against mine. Her bare thighs against mine. The fact that we were both naked under the covers, and it wasn’t even 8:00 a.m.
I sat bolt upright, peeling away from her cling. The sheet dropped from my chest and hips, exposing every inch of me to the prying gaze of the morning. I barely noticed. My heart pounded, my hands already clammy with sweat.
Last night, it was a den of possibility and euphoria.
Now, it was a map leading somewhere I never intended to go.
Our clothes were everywhere. Her bra hung off the chair.
A framed photo of her and Holly sat on the nightstand—something she’d obviously brought with her.
A beach towel in a blinding shade of turquoise hung on a wall hook.
Every object was a landmark leading to a place I had spent years avoiding.
It was all so goddamn domestic. So feminine and welcoming. I wanted to crawl out of my own body. I swung my legs off the bed and planted my feet on the cool tile, but my chest cinched tighter with every breath.
That’s when she stirred. Behind me, the sheets rustled, and the weight of her gaze on my back was a physical thing. I tensed, pretending not to notice. Maybe if I stayed still, she’d go back to sleep.
“Dean?” Her voice was hoarse, half-asleep, but soft. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
I gripped the mattress so hard my knuckles went white. “Nothing. Just need some air.”
The lie hung between us, paper-thin. She sat up, dragging the covers with her, wrapping herself in cotton and concern.
“You okay?” she repeated, quieter this time.
The concern in her voice triggered something primal and embarrassing.
I felt it in the roots of my teeth, the base of my spine.
I’d spent years training myself to be self-contained, invulnerable, the kind of man who could walk away from anything.
From anyone. But now, with Brynn in my head, on my body, everywhere—my training failed.
She reached out and touched my shoulder. I jerked away like she’d pressed a lit cigarette to my skin. My breath whistled in and out as fast as a dog panting. But I couldn’t get enough air.
“Dean, please talk to me.”
I couldn’t. My pulse spiked, my vision got hazy at the edges. If I opened my mouth, something ugly would come out. She slid closer, careful and slow, until her bare knee touched my thigh. Her hand hovered near my arm, not quite touching this time.
“You’re having a panic attack.” There was no judgment in her voice. Just a gentle fact, as if she were explaining something to her first graders.
And that only made me feel more inadequate. I braced my elbows on my knees and tried to breathe. “Not… not a panic attack.”
She exhaled, not quite a snort or a laugh. “Okay. Just regular hyperventilating, then.”
Her words should have pissed me off, but they were gentler than I deserved.
I focused on a spot on the floor, where the tile was cracked in the shape of a Y. “I need to get out of here.”
She didn’t move, didn’t pull back. “You can leave, but it won’t help. I know how this works.”
I almost laughed, but the sound snagged in my chest. “Doubt it.”
She waited, giving me time to climb back into myself. When I didn’t speak, she nudged, just enough to tip me over. “Just breathe, Dean. It’s okay. Tell me what’s happening.”
“I had a fiancée,” I said. The words came out cracked, foreign. I couldn’t believe I was telling her. “Three years ago. Thought she was the one. We were engaged a year and a half. I moved for her, changed my job, the whole nine yards.”
Brynn sat motionless, listening.
“I turned down two promotions because she didn’t want me traveling. We were supposed to get married in Asheville in October. Peak leaf season.”
I realized my hands were shaking and knotted them together.
“She left me a month before the wedding. For a guy she met at some spin class. Said she was sick of being the only person in the relationship willing to take a risk. Said I was a doormat.”
I tried to laugh, but it sounded strangled.
“I spent a week drinking vodka in a Holiday Inn. Then I packed up and moved to Atlanta, took the best job I could get. I was determined to become so successful, so untouchable, that no one would ever dare call me a doormat again. Didn’t talk to my parents for six months. Ghosted all my social media.”
Brynn made a small, sympathetic noise, but she let me keep going.
“It’s not like I haven’t been with anyone since then,” I said, the words rushing out now, a desperate attempt to explain something I didn’t understand myself. “But it was always on my terms. My rules. It was safe.
“This… panic thing has never happened before. I don’t…
I can’t.” My voice broke. I gestured vaguely at the room, at the rumpled sheets between us, at her.
Then I dropped my head into my hands, humiliated by my loss of control.
“I’m not a relationship guy, Brynn. Do you understand?
I don’t do this. I don’t let people in. Not anymore. ”
Brynn didn’t say anything, just scooted closer and rested her hand—warm, steady—over mine.
My first instinct was to pull away, but the heat of her skin anchored me. I stared at our joined hands, my own trembling, hers calm. I couldn’t figure out whether to flip my hand over and lace our fingers together or bolt straight out of the room.
She squeezed once, then let go, preventing me from having to decide. “Thank you for telling me.”
I had no idea what to do with that. All I could think was how pathetic I sounded, how Brynn deserved someone better, someone who wouldn’t freak out just because her life was more real than a bank statement.
She didn’t try to fix it. She just sat with me, our bodies still, the only sound the distant hush of waves on the beach.
For the first time in years, I let myself feel it.
The grief, the shame, the hollowed-out space that loss leaves behind.
It was awful, and it was a relief. The human heart wasn’t meant for this kind of exposure.
I could handle being naked, but being known?
That was a different animal—one that clawed its way up my ribcage as soon as the silence stretched a little too long.
My hand trembled. It still felt warm where Brynn had touched it. The vulnerability in the room calcified, transforming into something sharp and hostile. Every second she didn’t run for the hills, my internal alarm shrieked louder.
I needed a reset, a hard break, anything to cut through this gluey aftermath. I vaulted to my feet. The room spun for a second, then snapped into perfect, judgmental clarity.
“Shit, sorry,” I said, already regretting the way my voice sounded—raw, frayed, as if I’d chewed glass in my sleep.
Brynn’s gaze flickered. “Dean, it’s okay. Really.”
She meant it. That was the problem. The more compassion she showed me, the more I wanted to set myself on fire.
I paced a tight, nervous loop from the bed to the tiny closet, picking up clothes as I went.
The room felt smaller with every step I took, like it was designed to compress me into a manageable size.
I snatched my boxer briefs from the foot of the bed and stepped into them with such force I almost lost my balance. My shirt came next, wrinkled and damp, still carrying the scent of her skin and cheap detergent. I yanked it over my head, struggling with the collar like I was wrestling a python.
Brynn sat up, arms wrapped around her knees, the sheet draped carelessly across her chest. Her hair was a mess, and her cheeks were blotched with pillow marks. The urge to look at her was overpowering. I didn’t.
“Dean, has it occurred to you that maybe you’re reacting this way because what’s happened between us is different than your usual flings? That it means something?”
I finally met her eyes, just for a second. It was a mistake. She looked exposed, still worried for me, even now. I darted my gaze away as the tendrils coiled in my stomach again and knotted up.
No! I just got it all under control again. End this now. Get out while you still can.
“No. What happened last night was fun.” My words tumbled out in a snarl. “But let’s not pretend this is more than a vacation fling.”
She flinched like I’d thrown something, but I couldn’t stop. I needed to get ahead of the next blow, the one I could feel winding up inside her.
“I mean, come on.” I gestured vaguely at the window, where the morning sun lit up the marina and the cheerful pastel houses. “People don’t come to places like this to find themselves. They come to forget. That’s the whole point.”
Brynn’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you’re doing? Forgetting?”
I barked a laugh, hollow. “Trying to. It’s not working, though. Goddammit, this whole thing was fake!”
She watched me with wide, stricken eyes. The crushed look on her face should have made me feel powerful. It didn’t. It made me want to crawl under the bed and wait for the world to end.
I kept talking, because it was the only way to drown out the sound of my own heart. “I’m not built for this, Brynn. The mornings after. I have a life in Atlanta—a good one. I’m going to get back on a plane, and this place will just be a story I’ll tell at a bar sometime. If I even bother.”
She sat up straighter. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged, finding my pants on the floor and pulling them on as fast as I could. “But it’s easier than pretending this is something it’s not.”
She shook her head, incredulous. “You just poured your heart out to me, Dean. Probably for the first time ever. You think I didn’t hear that?”
I tried to smile, but my lips wouldn’t cooperate. “I’m just trying to do you a favor, Vance. You don’t want a guy like me.”
She stared, her expression inscrutable. “I think I get to decide what I want.”
“Yeah, well, that’s your mistake.” My words landed flat, each one a pebble in a dry well. “But I’m not going to let you make it.”
I couldn’t stand the weight of her eyes anymore. I turned my back, zipped my pants, and grabbed my shoes. The urge to bolt was so strong I could feel the adrenaline in my toes.
She didn’t chase me.
I stood, staring at the closed door, my breath shallow and fast. My skin crawled. In the reflection of the window, I looked like a man who’d just lost a fight he didn’t know he was in.
For a second, I thought about turning around and trying again. But the words wouldn’t come. Instead, I slipped my shoes on, not bothering with socks, and yanked open the door.
The last thing I heard was Brynn’s voice behind me, “Coward.”
She wasn’t wrong. Wasn’t that the story of my life?
I left the room, every muscle vibrating, counting down the hours until my flight. There were too many. I needed to get on an earlier one. Every step away from Brynn felt like the last, desperate gasp of a drowning man.
I made it ten paces down the hall before her voice rang out, clear and sharp as broken glass. “Dean Mercer, if you take one more step, you’ll regret it.”
I stopped, the pulse throbbing behind my eyes. I could have kept going. Should have. But the promise in her voice wasn’t a threat—it was a dare. So I turned.
Brynn stood in the doorway, wrapped in nothing but a bedsheet and righteous fury. Her hair was a wild tangle, her cheeks blotched with anger. She looked stronger than I’d ever seen her. A hell of a lot stronger than me.
She clutched the sheet in one fist. “God, you really are scared. Go ahead and run, then. But at least admit it to yourself. You’re leaving because this was real, not because it was fake.”
My mouth became a parched desert. “Brynn—”
“No. You don’t get to say my name. You don’t get to have the last word.” She pointed down the hall, her arm shaking. “Go back to your real life. Forget this ever happened.” She stepped back into her room and slammed the door.
I walked, shoes untied, shirt still wrinkled, the skin on my back tingling with loss. Tingling with the memory of last night. I made it to the end of the corridor before I stopped and pressed my forehead to the cool plaster wall. I didn’t cry.
But I wanted to.
I kept moving, hoping the ache would ease with distance and knowing it wouldn’t. Knowing I’d just blown the best thing to happen to me in a long time. The image of that business on Main Street flashed one last time in my mind before I ruthlessly shoved it down and locked it away.