Beck nodded as if he already knew this and I realized he probably did. I wouldn’t put it past him to insist on regular reports from the chief of police. Highly on-brand for Beck.
“Ranger inserted himself into the matter,” he said. “I believe he was behind the doorbell camera inquiry or at least he’s claiming some credit for it. What his involvement actually means, I don’t know, though I can imagine we’ll see a lot more of him.”
“I don’t mind. I’ll take him and his eagle-eye watch on everything in town. He tips like he has a swimming pool filled with gold.”
Beck was silent for several minutes before asking, “Have you heard from Lance?”
I let my eyes close as he kissed the inside of my palm. “Nope. You?”
He shook his head. “Not since the accident.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for, storm cloud. Nothing at all.”
At the appointment, Beck was on his best behavior, never once pretending to be my husband or requiring second, third, or ninth opinions when the doctor announced I wouldn’t need surgery if everything continued to heal normally.
There was plenty of the good old scowl game but beyond that, I couldn’t get a read on his mood—which was an increasingly dense problem because I didn’t know what was going on with us.
Most of the time, I didn’t need to know what was happening in Beck’s head. If I had to guess, it was probably a running list of issues to handle, reasons to roll his eyes, and a hyperfixation on the mechanics of wrap skirts. But right now, after everything that went down last night, I needed some information. I couldn’t fill in the blanks by myself. I mean, Icouldbut that wasn’t a great idea. Not without Muffy’s supervision.
“I’m taking you home,” he said once we were back on the road to Friendship. “Right?”
I’d planned to go to Naked this afternoon. Even if I only covered the counter for a few hours, getting out of the house and doing something felt essential to my survival. “Yeah,” I said. “That works.”
Later on, I’d get a ride from Meara or Beth. Or I’d walk. It wasn’t that far and the exercise would do me good. I just didn’t want to go to this place Beck and I shared—the rough, weathered edge of Friendship Cove—and go to our separate shops as if everything was normal. This wasn’t normal.
“Can we—” He stopped, reached for my hand. I let him have it. “Can we talk about everything that happened last night?”
“Of course. What would you like to talk about?”
“I can’t stay here,” he started, the words rushing out like a popped balloon, “but I thought what we had was a little more serious than some summer fling. Maybe it started out that way but it feels like more than that now.” He shrugged, tapping his thumb on the steering wheel. “Maybe it has something to do with your accident or—I’m not sure. It’s probably a misplaced sense of—of something. But we can’t—I can’t—this isn’t”—he flattened my palm against his chest— “I can’t stay, Sunny.”
I stifled a sigh. “Beck, who are you trying to convince? Because I know you aren’t staying forever and I don’t need you to explain the dynamics of that to me. It would help if you could tell me what you do want because I’m definitely stumbling around in the dark on that one.”
He stared ahead, silent, his jaw tight.
I watched a minute pass on the clock without a response from Beck. He slipped his fingers between mine and squeezed my hand as he drove. After another minute, he said, “I don’t have an answer to that.”
“Then you should take some time to find one and come back to me when you’ve sorted it out.”
“What? No. No, Sunny, I’m not going anywhere. That’s ridiculous.”
“It really isn’t,” I said. “As you’ve stated a few times, you can’t stay here and I’m not about to ask you to change your entire life for me—”
“You could.” He rubbed my knuckles over his lips once, twice. Did he understand what he was saying? Did he realize this had started with him insisting his time here was short and he had other places to be? Or was it just as Muffy had suggested, a foil for an issue that had nothing to do with this town? “You could do just that.”
“And yet I am not going to,” I replied with a broad, salty smile that he didn’t notice. “We all know how you feel about Friendship and there’s no doubt in my mind that if I—or anyone else in your life—asked you to stay here, you’d grow a moss of hostility on your north side before the end of a year. If youchooseto change your whole life, it has to be for reasons that have nothing to do with me.” I peered at him for a moment. “And I don’t think that’s possible, Beck. You’re not going to wake up tomorrow morning and fall in love with Friendship.”
He pulled up in front of my house and stopped, his steely gaze focused on a spot down the street and his hand still warm around mine.
“Take some time,” I repeated. “Think it all over, even if that means getting cool with the idea that the future is out of our control and the best we can do is choose the paths that feel good while they’re open to us.”
A laugh creaked out of him as if he hadn’t laughed in months, maybe years. Then, “Are you breaking up with me?”
It was my turn to laugh, even if Beck seemed to take grave offense to it.
“No, I’m not breaking up with you,” I said, “though I do find it precious that you’re this ultra-buttoned-up guy who juggles millions and billions of dollars, and you’re fixated on the precise condition of our relationship when you’re hardly the type I could ever imagine wanting to be called anyone’sboyfriend.”
