Chapter 5
five
PATRICK
I’m yours.
Words whispered in the dark of night. Two words that were breathlessly repeated over and over again when limbs were tangled in bedsheets. Two words that felt like a promise.
Words that quickly turned into a lie but have been branded on my heart and embedded in my brain since they were spoken. The burn still feels as fresh as the day I was marked.
I shake myself out of the somber memories and walk toward Lottie’s bathroom. I can’t see her putting up a fight at bedtime tonight, considering she spent the evening at my mom’s and chasing Graham’s dog, Curly , around in the snow for over an hour.
There are three bedrooms on the second floor; mine has the en suite bathroom, and Lottie has taken over the small one down the hallway. The other room is technically a guest room, but since all my family lives in town, it doesn’t get used much. There’s also one smaller room on the ground floor that I use as my study and home gym. The open plan kitchen and dining area is my favorite spot in the house, letting me catch up with Lottie about her day while I’m cooking dinner and she’s coloring at the dining table.
I might be a single guy, but I like to think my house is decorated with good taste; though, I have my mom and sister to thank for that. I began looking for a house to buy when Carrie was halfway through her pregnancy, knowing I’d need somewhere bigger to raise a child. Two months later I moved out of my one-bedroom apartment in the middle of town and closed on this four-bedroom, Victorian -style coastal home, on the outskirts of town. I wanted to make sure my kid would have a childhood similar to mine; with the ocean at their doorstep, endless space to get up to no good, and unconditional love at every corner of their life.
Carrie only lives a short drive away in Jacob’s Bluff , one of the neighboring towns, making it easy for Lottie to share her week with us both. She usually spends Wednesday to Saturday with Carrie and Sunday to Tuesday with me, though we’re pretty flexible. Carrie is an EMT , and her schedule is just as unpredictable as mine sometimes, but we try to keep it consistent for Lottie’s sake.
Although Lottie wasn’t planned, there would never be any doubt in anyone’s mind that she is loved, cared for, and supported. Carrie and I pride ourselves on showing her that even though we aren’t together like other parents, we show a united front and act like a team. I have never seen Carrie as anything more than a friend—and I know she shares the sentiment—but I love her for bringing my daughter into the world. Something I will forever be grateful for. Years ago, I saw myself raising a child with a different woman, but life had other plans for me. Young and na?ve.
No one stuck around after the tense meeting today, and I’m not ashamed to say I went and hid in the back office while George went over some final details with Johanna .
My new coworker .
Jesus , what has my life come to? If someone had told me my week would start with her not only walking back into my life but that we’d be forced to work alongside each other at such high stakes, I would have laughed hysterically in their face. It appears that fate is now laughing in mine.
Peeking around the door frame to Lottie’s bathroom, I check to see how she’s doing. I find her making funny faces in the mirror, looking a lot like a rabid raccoon, thanks to the toothpaste foam lining her mouth. She catches my reflection in the mirror and her goofy face breaks out into the biggest grin, instantly erasing the sullen mood I’ve been in since leaving the restaurant. I like to call it Lottie therapy.
“ Excuse me, miss, have you seen my daughter?” I ask in faux confusion while looking around the bathroom dramatically, even whipping back the shower curtain.
She looks a little concerned for a nanosecond but then quickly catches on to my joke. “ She doesn’t live here. I do, the bon-don-ible snowman.” She curls her fingers, raises them in the air, and growls.
“ Oh my! Well , a-bom-i-na-ble snowmen don’t need bedtime stories. Guess I’ll get going.” Thumbing behind me, I back slowly out of the bathroom.
She scrambles down from her stool and wipes her mouth on the hand towel hanging next to the sink. “ Dadd -eeeeee! It’s me, it’s me. I love story time. Come on.” She grabs my hand and pulls me down the hallway toward her bedroom, with a lot of strength for someone so tiny. “ We have to get a move on.”
I laugh because this is exactly what I said to her this morning when we were running late.
Once she’s tucked underneath her mint-green comforter, surrounded by her favorite stuffed animals and her twinkling night-light is on, I settle my large frame beside her. We read her favorite dinosaur princess bedtime story—voices and all—but she drifts off to sleep before I get to the last page.
Pushing her hair back, I drop a kiss to her forehead and shut off her overhead light. “ Sweet dreams, spud,” I whisper, before tiptoeing out of her room.
As soon as I’m outside her door, my phone buzzes in my back pocket and my smartwatch shows me it’s Graham . Don’t I have a bone to pick with him.
Making sure I’m far enough away from Lottie’s room so I don’t wake her, I accept the call and don’t bother with niceties.
“ Thanks for the heads up, you prick!” I whisper-shout.
“ Whoa , now hold up. If this outburst is about this afternoon, I would like to remind you that I called to warn you about the town’s newest arrival. It’s not my fault you hung up on me before I could tell you. Do you want to apologize?”
“ Well …you could have tried harder. I walked right into that meeting looking like the biggest fucking idiot. I could barely look at her without wanting to…” Strangle her? Hold her? Kiss her?
My eyes widen at that last one, as if my internal thoughts were broadcasted through the phone to my brother, and I’m glad he can’t see the heat warming my cheeks.
“ Without what?”
“ Nothing , nothing. This is a total mess. I’m guessing Mom told you about what she and George proposed?”
“ Mm -hm. She sure did. I’m sorry I didn’t let you know how bad the finances have gotten. Mom swore me to secrecy until they had spoken to you.” I hear the hurt in his own voice, and I know how hard it would have been for him to keep that information under lock and key. “ How do you feel about it all?”
I know he’s not only referring to the restaurant. I’ve spent all day playing today’s meeting on repeat in my head and the only conclusion I’ve come to so far is that I have no idea how I’m going to handle being in such close proximity with Johanna and stop myself from asking that burning question.
Why did you leave?
I wish I didn’t care, yet there are so many reasons why I do. Not knowing what happened all those years ago has slowly eaten me up inside, to the point that I feel numb anytime I hear her name or see something that reminds me of her.
She’s exactly as I remembered her, if not more heartbreakingly beautiful. Something about the way she carried herself and reacted to certain things had me pausing. The sudden stiffness to her muscles, the way she avoided eye contact, the glint of panic in her eyes when I first spoke. I hated the way I reacted and how I spoke to her, but I was completely blindsided by her arrival.
“ Honestly ? I have no idea. The restaurant is a punch to the throat, but I knew we couldn’t carry on pretending that the number of customers wasn’t dwindling each day. Jo , on the other hand? Yeah , didn’t see that coming.” It’s been over five years since we last spoke and I’m still none the wiser as to why she left. Last my mom said she was doing well in Tennessee , so why would she abandon that life at the drop of a hat and move back to town?
Graham hums in agreement down the line. “ What are your plans for the restaurant then?”
“ Apart from avoiding her as much as I can, I don’t know where to start. I never knew things were this bad.”
Graham is silent, and I know he’s thinking of the best way to respond. This news is hard on all of us, and I know Graham will be quietly stewing in his thoughts.
“ Well , be careful. I know how close you two were and I don’t want you to get hurt again.” Something about Graham’s tone makes me think he has more to say on the matter, but he doesn’t press me on the subject. He’s never vocalized it, but I know Jo’s leaving cut Graham much deeper than he let on. He doesn’t know the full story about what happened between us before she left, and it’s not something I’ll be sharing with him anytime soon .
“ You’ve got nothing to worry about. I can’t see her sticking around for long.”
“ I don’t know, Pat . Mom said something this evening about going easy on Jo and not judging her too quickly. Maybe you guys can finally talk about what happened.”
“ There’s nothing for us to talk about. She made that clear enough.”
I decide to change the topic, not wanting to dwell on Jo’s return and my failing as manager. We make plans to go for a drink later in the week, and Graham offers to pick Lottie up from school tomorrow. We hang up, I let out a long sigh, tilt my head back to rest against the cushion, and stare up at the ceiling. My eyes follow the path of a crack in the crown molding, and for once I allow myself to think back to the weeks following my dad’s death, his funeral, and Jo’s departure.
The memories leave my jaw aching from how hard I’m grinding my teeth together. I try not to think about one day in particular, but as always, fail miserably. I acted on impulse, allowed my emotions and bruised heart to lead me, and I saw something I didn’t want to see. And it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Weeks later, I was in an even worse state. I lost myself in the restaurant and was working over sixty-hour weeks. My family dealt with the loss of Dad in their own way, but I knew they saw the additional loss I was carrying. For whatever reason, they knew better than to ask.
Only my best friend, Dex , called time-out on my pity party when he saw I was practically dead on my feet and losing weight. Deciding I needed a change of scenery, he took me out for a few drinks in Jacob’s Bluff , rather than our usual drinking hole, Shirley’s . Only a few turned into too many. I wasn’t blackout drunk, but it was enough for me to reveal all to Dex as I held back the tears in the middle of the bar. I don’t remember much after that. I do remember meeting Carrie and going home with her.
The guilt of that night was acidic, eating me from the inside out. Betrayal and hurt still riddled my mind and heart from the loss of Jo , but never in my life did I see myself trying to get over it like that. We weren’t official, but it still felt like cheating. I’d somehow convinced myself that everything I saw was a mistake and perhaps if I tried to reach out to Jo again, she could explain it all as a complete misunderstanding. I just needed to get my head straight first before contacting her.
Only I never got that chance, because a few weeks later, Carrie called me out of the blue asking to meet up. I wasn’t proud of the night we spent together and wasn’t interested in a relationship with anyone. Probably because I still held out hope Jo would realize she belonged in Sutton Bay with me.
When Carrie told me she was pregnant, my world was flipped upside down. I didn’t forget about Jo —that’s a skill I will never be able to master—but I knew I had to show up for Carrie and the baby we were now expecting. It didn’t feel right to reach out to Jo , and guilt still ate away at me. It might not have been planned, but the idea of becoming a father felt so right. After weeks of heartache, the unexpected news brought light and happiness to my family and me. And the loss of my dad and Jo hurt a little less as each day passed.
Two months before Lottie came into the world, I received a text that answered all the self-doubting questions that had been running rampant in my mind for months.
I guess you’re done waiting. Don’t worry about me, I’m not your problem anymore. Now I know why your calls stopped.
It took all my willpower not to pick up the phone and demand answers from her. To tell her she was my problem and I’d never been done waiting. She was the one who had clearly moved on.
I knew nothing good would come from making that call or responding to that text. What I wanted wasn’t a priority anymore, because I had to step up and put my past behind me. That was the last time we spoke, and before I knew it, I was the father of a little girl. She was the one thing that now held all my attention and love. The moment my eyes fell on my daughter, nothing else mattered. Everything I did was for her.
Only after seeing Johanna Thomas for the first time in years, two things are clear.
The burns from her leaving never fully healed.
And she still lights me up like no woman ever has.
I might not like what my mom and George are proposing, but I won’t let my damaged pride get in the way of working together to save the restaurant. If I don’t do it for myself, I’ll do it for my dad.
As I struggle to fall asleep, I forget about Graham’s warnings to be careful. Because when sleep finally finds me, I dream of a woman with golden-blonde hair and dark blue eyes.
The only difference between the woman in my dreams and the one I saw today is their smile.
Because the smile I remember rivaled the sun. The one I saw today was fake and dulled.
And I wish I didn’t care so much to find out why.