Today?
She walked out humming, leaving them alone and speechless.
“Well,” Dusty finally said on a huffed-out breath he’d clearly been holding for a while. “You wanna see the upstairs?”
Did she?
Nervously rolling the listing sheet, she nodded. “I guess. I’m a little…”
“Yeah. I am, too,” he said on a laugh. “Come on.”
She followed him up the narrow stairway—yes, the disgusting carpet would have to go—which opened up to a living area much like the one below. Except the view up here was even more astounding.
Turning, she tried to take it in—both units were essentially apartments and they’d been rented hard. But the bones were spectacular and the price…
She glanced at the sheet. They were asking twice her high end. But with Dusty…
“Much the same in the back,” he said. “But come and look at this. You can’t get here from the lower unit.”
He opened a door that was in the same place as the one in the downstairs kitchen, but this opened to concrete stairs and…sky.
As she climbed, longing clutched her throat. “This is…” She stepped onto a rooftop deck, automatically reaching for sunglasses she’d left in the car. “Bright.”
“Beautiful,” he said, turning to a nearly three-sixty-degree view from the water to town.
“Sunsets would be stupendous,” she whispered.
“And night skies out of this world,” he added.
“This is…unbelievable.”
He nodded, still taking it in. “Nothing like it in Destin. At least, not for us.”
Us.The word hung on the air and nearly choked her.
“C’mon,” he said, ushering her to a round table with an open umbrella and two metal chairs the owner had placed up there. “Let’s…discuss.”
Sitting in the shade, they both laughed awkwardly, neither one knowing where to start.
“She’s tricky, that Lorna,” he finally said. “I gotta give her props for…orchestration.”
“And an amazing house unlike anything we’ve seen before.”
They were quiet for a long moment. She glanced at the paper, the view, then him, realizing that he hadn’t taken his eyes off her.
“I’ve missed you,” he admitted softly. “Probably more than I should.”
“You’re allowed to miss people. Even when you’re scared.”
He shrugged. “And I’m not in Vermont.”
“I noticed.”
“I decided not to run,” he said. “But I didn’t want to stay if it meant hurting you.”
“And I didn’t want to fall if it meant waiting around for someone who wasn’t sure.”
They looked at each other, the sound of a child laughing on the beach and a few cars passing the only noise besides Tessa’s pounding heart.
