“She left Bourbon Canyon. She left me.”
He stepped back and peered down the hallway. He held a hand up. I didn’t know who was still here. Then he crossed to me and sat on the cot. “Will she be back?”
I shook my head and tapped my fingertips together. “She was going to use all the money on her mom and nephew. This bar and a house. Now the world is wide open to her.”
“Shit.”
Relieved I didn’t have to explain how epically hurtful today had been for her, I nodded. “She’s never had the chance to do what she wants. I asked her once, you know. If she could go back and do anything, what would she do? Her answer didn’t include Bourbon Canyon.”
“She doesn’t have the same relationship with the town that we do.” He stated the obvious, but he wasn’t lecturing. I kept my smart-ass retort to myself. “Why did she leave you though?”
I gave him a disbelieving look. “She doesn’t want to be in Bourbon Canyon.”
He studied me until I wanted to squirm, just like our dad used to do. “Is staying here worth giving her up?”
I could tell him she hadn’t given me a choice, but she’d asked a rhetorical question that meant the same. My answer had been instinctive. Instant. I was an important part of two different enterprises.
Was I a critical part? Why hadn’t I asked myself those questions? I was forty. My life was here. “What would I do?”
“Live off her?” he joked, but I scowled at him. “I don’t know. You have a lot of skills. What’d she talk about doing?”
“Pastry school. In Boston. Or London.”
Tate grimaced. Neither of us was a city guy.
“She’s selling Flatlanders,” I said. When she’d said that, a part of me had died inside. I’d put a lot into these walls. Flatlanders had character now. It was a trendy dive bar, and Madison would’ve run it well. A new owner might change everything. Cover up the history we’d made.
“Shit,” Tate said again. “Kind of hate to see this place go. You never know what kind of owner the next one will be.”
“Yep.” I gripped the edge of the cot. Memories flashed through my head. How she’d shut the door in my face when I’d first stopped by. Her coming out of the bathroom in a bra and underwear. The way she’d opened for me on this very cot.
We hadn’t even been dating for two months, but I couldn’t imagine my life without her. Even now, when I thought of waking up to an empty house tomorrow, there was nothing. Did I just get up and go to work? An ordinary Thursday?
Was there time off for heartbreak? I was the boss, there could be.
Then I’d be wandering the house like a ghost, lost and confused as to why I was haunting the place by myself.
I sank my head in my hands. I sensed someone at the door, but I didn’t look. The cot lifted as Tate got up. It dipped again and the smell of wildflowers surrounded me. Mama.
“You know,” she said, “when you and Wendi broke up, I was so relieved you didn’t try to win her back.”
My laugh was bitter. There’d been nothing to win back. Our relationship had been floundering, worse than I had thought apparently, and it’d been severed as soon as Wendi had touched another man. “The bullet I dodged hit Madison.”
“Mm.”
A minute ticked by. Then two. A cord of tension coiled tighter inside me. It wasn’t like Mama to be quiet during times like this.
“What are you still doing here, Teller?”
I lifted my head. “My life is here.” My answer was weak. How important did I think I was?
“You don’t think I saw how you felt at Tate and Scarlett’s wedding? Wynter and Myles’s? Summer and Jonah’s?”
“Mama.”
“Autumn and Gideon’s—their renewal, since I know you’re going to point out how none of us were there for the Vegas wedding.” She rested a hand on my shoulder. “You were especially melancholy at Junie and Rhys’s wedding. I think you started to write off any of that happiness for yourself. You’ve isolated yourself for so long. I worried about you when Tenor and Ruby got together.”
“There was nothing to worry about.”
