The sun was barely setting over the trees as Brett led her down the stone path deeper into the blooming bushes. He stopped behind the pond and turned to face her. Penny didn’t know where to start. Thankfully, Brett spoke first.
“You asked me a question.”
“I did?” Penny breathed.
Brett nodded. “Before you left. I didn’t answer, so I thought I’d do that now.”
Penny tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “Did you fly or drive?”
“Drove. With Tyler and Sean.” Penny looked around as if expecting them to pop out of the bushes. Brett chuckled. “They’re back at the hotel.”
Hotel. So they were staying the night. Penny wracked her brain, trying to remember what she’d said to him. That moment was a blur, but the words finally filtered back into her head.
Brett took a step closer. “You asked if I could forgive you.” Penny nodded and bit the inside of her cheek. He drew a deep breath, then clasped his hands in front of him. “No. I don’t forgive you.”
Penny’s heart sank like a stone, and she braced herself to listen to him tell her how much she’d hurt him. The pressure behind her eyes started to throb. “Brett—”
“I don’t forgive you because there’s nothing to forgive you for. You told me you couldn’t do that again, and I promised you I didn’t have a mould I expected you to fit, but that’s exactly what I was asking you to do.”
Penny shook her head and started to speak, but Brett held up a hand.
“Just let me finish. Please.” He paced in front of the fountain. “I thought I was enough. In my self-centred head, I thought you could stay because you had me and you needed me as much as I needed you, so that made your sacrifice reasonable. But I'm not enough, and I’ll never be enough because I shouldn’t be. No human should have to limit their world to a singular point orbiting around someone else’s life. I don’t want that for you, Penny. I don’t want you to stay in Calgary because I need you.”
Tears filled Penny’s eyes. “It’s not that I don’t need you, I do! Leaving and driving across the Rockies felt like I was ripping out a piece of myself and chucking it out the window. But I go all in, Brett. I go deep and hard, and I don’t see when I’m drowning until it’s too late. I can’t—
“I know how to tread water.”
“What?” Penny gasped for breath.
“You taught me. You showed me how to keep my head up and not look like a dying cat.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know—“
“Nobody can see when they’re drowning, Penny! That’s why we don’t swim alone.” Brett stepped closer, and Penny fought the sobs threatening to reach up and strangle her. “You taught me how to tread, and I’m doing the work. I’ll keep doing the work. I’m not going to leave you in the water, and I sure as hell won’t let you drown. I know I’m not perfect. I know I don’t have the best track record, but if I have to strengthen my muscles, I want to do it with you. I want to struggle with you. I want to hurt with you.”
Penny tried to find something to do with her hands, and Brett reached out and grabbed them. “Look at me. Please,” he whispered. “I will sell my half of the business, I will leave the Snowballs, I will sell my apartment and start over here if that’s what you want.”
“Brett, you fought for that life, I can’t—“
“Ican. I built a new life from scratch once, and I can do it again. I know how to battle, Penny, and I will crawl through that shit a thousand times over if it means I get to have you through it. All of you. Not just the part that’s there whenIneed it.”
Penny swiped the tears from her cheeks.Was he serious?She thought about her family here, the pieces of her soul that had snapped back into place since she’d come home. But then she thought about coming home from Greece and walking back into her childhood bedroom.
She didn’t have a life here, not yet. She didn’t have a life anywhere. “What if I don’t know who that is?”
Brett swiped his thumb over her cheeks. “Please let me be there when you find her. Because you’re already the most beautiful damn thing I’ve ever seen.” He pulled her flush against him, running his hands over her bare shoulders and back.
Brett kissed her wet cheeks, his breath whispering against her skin. “I love you, Penny.”
She slipped her hands inside his suit jacket and ran her fingers over the soft fabric of his shirt. “I love you, too.”
The setting sun turned the garden to gold as Brett drew her lips to his. The clinking glasses and chatter inside the restaurant blended with humming insects and the first croaks of frogs in the pond, but Penny was worlds away.
Brett touched her like she was a bird that had landed on his arm and he didn’t want to scare her off. Penny wasn’t having any of it. She tugged against his back, letting him know how much she wanted him.
He didn’t take much convincing. His hands grew insistent, tracing the shape of her under the slinky fabric. “When do you leave?” he asked roughly before pulling her lower lip between his teeth.
“Sunday,” she breathed, her heart slamming inside her chest. “How long are you here?”
