“I love you too.” I shoved my hands under my thighs to stop their shaking. Peyton’s tone was too careful, like she knew whatever she was about to say was going to hurt me. I rolled my shoulders back, trying to be brave.
She squared her shoulders like she was ready for battle. “I need you to not hurt my boy.” I stared at her, wondering if there was more. But her lips were closed tight, waiting intensely for a response.
“Okay,” I said, feeling like she’d asked me a trick question I didn’t know the answer to. “I’m not sure what you mean specifically.”
“I mean that I can’t watch his heart break again and I doubt the rest of the family wants to watch it either.” Her fingernail made a soft curlicue on my knee. “When you chose Lorne in Hawaii, Cash put up a good front. He went surfing, snorkeling, took selfies with his cousins while they ate shaved ice. But it was all a lie. It was killing him inside.”
I nodded, but my lungs seized, hating the hurt I now knew I’d caused him.
She continued. “When it became clear by the last day that you weren’t coming back, he broke down, head in my lap, sobbing. He had his first and last panic attack. Ford and I had to drag him into the shower and hold him, the three of us fully clothed, the water pouring down on us, to get him to stop.”
I wiped a tear from my cheek. “I know I chose wrong. I regretted it every day. I just…I didn’t think Cash was serious then. I thought he was being hot-headed. It didn’t make sense. I never even suspected?—”
“You don’t owe me an explanation. You’re a grown woman and if you want to marry someone that isn’t Cash, that’s your right. That’s not what I’m saying.”
“What are you saying?” I sounded so timid. Not at all bold and confident like my aunt.
“He laid it all out there today. He told you he loved you. All his songs are about you. There can’t possibly be any room left for doubt.”
“No,” I whispered. “There’s not.”
Her head tilted and her mouth pinched. “But you know what I didn’t hear?”
I stared at her, waiting.
“I didn’t hear you say you love him back.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting a sob that was desperate to break free. “I’m sorry,” was all I could say.
“Hey,” she soothed. “I didn’t come up here to make you feel bad. That’s not what this is about. I love you, honey. You’re as much a niece to me as Sophie, Maddie, or Jane. And whether you choose Cash or not, I will always love you.”
“What’s it about then, because I’m feeling pretty terrible?” I laughed through my tears.
She laughed too and pressed a hand to my cheek. “Cash would be upset if he knew I was saying this to you, but I can’t watch him be yanked around. And you have to keep in mind that things are even more complicated because we’re all family. Much lesser things have torn families apart.” She wiped a tear from my cheek. “So if you’re not certain you want a relationship with him, you need to tell him that. No back-and-forth, internal tug-of-war nonsense where you reel him in, push him away, reel him in again. Because he isallin. And if I have to watch something like that…” She shook her head. “Ifwehave to watch something like that…” I didn’t need her to finish. She would think less of me. Might even resent me. Along with everyone else.
“I don’t know that I can give him that.” I wanted to add ‘right now’ but that hinted that things might change and I had no guarantees. “I still have a lot to work through.”
“I understand.” Her eyes turned down but she nodded. “Your ex did a number on you, didn’t he?”
My hands fisted around the bottom of my T-shirt. I watched as my fingers twisted it this way and that. Anything not to meet her eye. “Do you want me to move out? I can probably move into that studio in Lemon and Silas’s barn?”
“No, honey. That would hurt Cash and we’re trying to avoid that right now.”
I looked up. “Worse than staying?”
“I think so.” We sat there in awkward silence. I didn’t know what else to say. I guess she didn’t either because she gave my knee one last pat. “Let him down gently, will you?”
eighteen
Cash
Isat on the back deck after everyone was asleep, guitar in my lap, my gut still in a twist from earlier. Not even the bullfrogs croaking by the lake or the fireflies dancing in the grass could calm me. I wanted to ask Charlie about what happened in the pool. About cutting herself and why she thought I wouldn’t want her. And about the kiss. But I was terrified of her response. Didn’t want to hear her reject me verbally, the way she had nonverbally both times I kissed her.
She’d been super quiet at dinner, offering nothing in the way of conversation, only pushing food around her plate. Ever since she got here, she’d inhaled her food like she thought it might be her last meal. Her lack of appetite tonight couldn’t be a good sign. So yeah, the scared half of me kept winning out.
I tapped on my iPad, staring at my composition software, trying to figure out why I ever thought I should put a G chord in this spot. Actually, I hated this entire song right now.
The sliding door opened, bringing my head up. Charlie walked out carrying her guitar. The one I gave her when she turned sixteen.
