Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Well, she’d done it.
She’d treated Dante the way he treated her. Like a line item on a yellow legal pad. Cool efficiency disguised as maturity. She felt like absolute shit about it.
She simply wasn’t built that way.
She’d been forced to choose: preserve her heart or her charity. It was a no-brainer which of those was the nobler cause. She’d chosen the veterans. She’d chosen honor.
Now she sounded like Dante—essentially committing the same “crime” of prioritizing business over pleasure. If it was so honorable, then why did it feel horrible?
She was grateful that Gabby was out of the office today. Honesty did not have the energy to have a well-meaning discussion about what had happened last night. Not that she was getting anything done here by herself. Her email inbox kept dinging, and she ignored each new message.
She sat, pen in hand, scribbling doodles on a notepad with a header that read Honest Nutrition.
Honest. Oh, the irony that the only person she’d been lying to was herself.
But. She still had a job to do.
She dropped the pen and picked up her phone. She had yet to meet with her first client for Long Live Food. She would make one last attempt with Michael Tillsbury, and after that, she was moving on.
Onward. Upward.
I wanted to reach out one last time to see if we can work together. If you’re no longer interested, say the word. I will let you go.
She hit send and turned the phone facedown.
I will let you go.
She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. Her mind swirled, her chest ached. She wished she possessed the ability to turn off her heart like a light switch. To turn down the volume in her head that had been so loud. Too loud.
Maybe that was why she didn’t hear the door.
“Hellooo?” came a familiar voice. It belonged to the woman who had plied Honesty with too many margaritas and had made her laugh so hard her belly hurt.
Jaylyn Crane was in the main part of the office, barreling down the long shotgun-style walkway like a woman on a mission.
“I thought I locked the door,” Honesty called out as she crumpled up the paper she’d been doodling on.
“Nope. Wide open.” Jaylyn tilted her head to one side, her hair falling over one shoulder. She was wearing a short black dress and Doc Martens, and a ring on nearly every finger. “I have something for you.”
From behind her back she produced a thick, glossy magazine. She plunked it unceremoniously onto Honesty’s desk. “Hot off the presses.” J sat in a guest chair and crossed her legs. Honesty had half expected her to plop those heavy boots onto her desktop instead.
On the cover of North Shore Style, Honesty and Dante stood beneath a shade tree outside of the estate, the lake sparkling behind them.
Dante stood at her back, one hand proprietarily at her waist, his chin touching her hair.
She wore an ivory dress selected by the designer, and he wore linen pants and a white shirt.
They were laughing at something the photographer said, a throwaway joke she couldn’t recall at the moment.
“Where did you get this?”
“I know people. A courier is delivering a copy to Dante right now at his house in California. I wonder if he’ll see what I see,” Jaylyn said. “Do you see what I see?”
“He’s in California?” Honesty hadn’t known that he’d left Chicago.
“Yeah. He flew out with Simone early this morning. He didn’t tell you?”
“No. He didn’t.”
Jaylyn sighed and then repeated, “So, do you? See what I see?”
Honesty figured there was no sense in arguing. Jaylyn was a dog with a bone when she didn’t have an agenda. If she was here and she’d brought this—well, she was more like a Kraken with a pirate ship.
“I see a woman who deluded herself into believing in second chances,” Honesty said. “And a man who never signed up for the all-inclusive experience.”
She held out the magazine for Jaylyn to take. Jaylyn folded her arms over her chest. “There’s no arguing with that photo. You’re looking at Dante like he’s the only focal point in a spinning room. You look completely, catastrophically in love with him.”
Honesty’s stomach flipped. But she tried lying anyway. “Well, I’m not.”
“That’s a shame.” Jaylyn took the magazine and studied the cover for a long moment. “Because that’s how he is looking at you.”
The words detonated like a grenade that left Honesty’s ears ringing from the blast. “You can’t know that. And you weren’t there last night when he walked out on me. No goodbye. He left and apparently climbed on a plane to fly home. How in love with me could he be?”
“Okay, I didn’t know that part.” Jaylyn sighed. “He didn’t say goodbye to me either. I called him as he was boarding the plane with his mom. That’s how I found out he was leaving.”
“His mind’s made up.”
Jaylyn’s chin wobbled.
Honesty felt for her. “I’m sorry he didn’t say goodbye to you. That was rude of him.”
“I didn’t come here for your sympathy,” Jaylyn snapped. Did all Cranes hide their real feelings behind anger? But then Jaylyn surprised her by saying, “Sorry. Now I’m being rude. I came here to tell you that he is in love with you and he’s not here because he’s scared.”
“Jaylyn, he’s not scared. He left because I told him I didn’t need him.”
“You what?”
“Not me. The nonprofit. I can handle it without him.”
“But he loves to be needed.”
“I know. But I love to be loved, and that’s where we don’t see eye to eye.
Us together, as good as it was…” She trailed off, unsure what to say about them.
“He cares about his foundation and my charity and that is admirable. We’re not dismantling any of that.
Once he’s done being angry, I know he’ll return to being professional. ”
“Professional?” Jaylyn choked on a laugh. “That’s boring.”
No kidding.
“Can I tell you something about my brother?” Jaylyn rolled the magazine between her hands. “He never talks about what he wants. He has built the habit of putting everyone else first.”
“Everyone except the woman he’s sleeping with,” Honesty muttered.
Jaylyn unrolled the magazine. “Maybe it’s time for both of us to give up on him, you know? He’s not going to stay here for me, either.”
“J, Dante loves his family first and foremost. He would do—and has done—anything for you guys. But his mom is his family too. I’m sure he’s had a hard time splitting those loyalties.
When my brother died, I wasn’t thinking of anyone except my parents.
I wanted to make sure they were okay. I wanted to be there if they needed me.
There was no way I would have picked up and left them to grieve alone during that time… ”
“You mean the way Dante stayed with his mom in her time of grief?” Jaylyn pinned her into place with that dark, good-witch gaze. “There was no way he would have left her alone then. Just like you.”
Honesty had inadvertently sided with Dante. “That’s not—”
“You can’t give up on him. You love him. And he loves you. He’s been giving to everyone but himself.”
“A realization he needed to have last night.”
“That’s all I came to say.” Jaylyn stood from the chair.
“I appreciate it. I do. It’s complicated.” Honesty stood, rounding her desk to see the youngest Crane sibling out the door. Which she would lock once Jaylyn was on the other side of it.
Before she left, Jaylyn surprised her with a hug. Honesty embraced her, touched by the sweetness of the gesture.
Jaylyn held Honesty at arm’s length. “We’re friends. No matter what happens. Promise?”
Honesty nodded. It was an easy promise to make.
Dante tossed his keys on the foyer table. Compared to the penthouse at the Crane, his home was less lush. More sparse. The decorator he’d hired had stuck with neutrals. He was surrounded by clean lines, dark woods, and iron sculptures he didn’t know if he liked or not.
He frowned at a particular piece in the corner. It was a lone arced shape on a pedestal. Stark and meaningless. Or maybe that was just him.
He’d lived in this house for the better part of two years and had never, until now, felt like a stranger here.
Odd.
What his mother and his brother had said flitted through his head again.
Maybe he wasn’t the same man who left LA for Chicago.
He sure as fuck didn’t feel the same. He hadn’t been an uncle when he left.
Now he was. He had also given a best-man speech, stood up to his father instead of keeping his thoughts to himself, and he had fallen in love with his ex-girlfriend.
None of which had been on the agenda when he’d—
Wait. Back up.
Back. The fuck. Up.
He was frozen, one foot on the stairs, one hand on the banister.
“I didn’t fall in love,” he murmured to himself, but his heart thudded out a steady chant in his head. One that sounded a lot like Bull-shit! Bull-shit!
He slowly lowered to sit on the third step. He searched the shadowed room in front of him for any signs of himself. Spacious and stark, the room echoed when he cleared his throat. Everything from the soulless décor and meaningless art pieces screamed that he was in the wrong house.
In the wrong state.
The truth caught up with him all at once. He used to be a man with questionable direction in his professional life, but he’d known what he’d wanted in his personal life. He’d loved Honesty years ago. He’d planned on her being his future. Not a part of it—she had been it.
He’d loved her then. And he loved her now.
He hadn’t stopped loving her for eight years. He’d tucked that love away like a memory he’d hoped to forget. He’d hidden it from himself so well, that when faced with her again, he couldn’t call it up.
He had prioritized his mother, his grandfather, the foundation. He had put everything ahead of the one woman who mattered most to him.
Honesty Benitez.
That she’d given him a second chance was a miracle. He’d been so wrapped up in pleasing her, in being of service, that he’d missed the whole goddamn point. He hadn’t given her the one thing she’d wanted—the one thing that would have made the biggest difference.
His heart.