“I don’t think he’s coming back this time, Will.”Her voice felt shredded from the crying jags she experienced off and on during the night, and it sounded even worse.
Willa leaned back and wiped the tears off her face.“Then it’s his loss.Figuratively and literally because I am going to have Beckett take at least one of his limbs, maybe two.”Lottie’s watery chuckle dissolved into more tears as she clung to her best friend.Willa made soft shushing noises next to her ear and smoothed her hand down Lottie’s back in soothing circles.“I take it that he found out about the money?”
Lottie nodded and wiped the back of her hand under her nose, too upset to think about rooting around for one of her embroidered handkerchiefs.After telling Willa about the windfall Mrs.G had left for her, Lottie also divulged the largest expenditure she’d made.Willa thought it was sweet, but clearly Nate did not agree with her.
“Yeah, he found out.”She peered at the front door that remained closed, unlike her feelings for the last man to walk out of it.“I thought that helping him reach his goal was something good, but he sees it as me not having enough faith that he would have found a way to make it work on his own.The worst part about it is, we’re both right.”
Willa shook her head.“I don’t think you lacked faith in him.If anything, you just wanted to save him some trouble.”
Smiling sadly at her friend, Lottie shrugged.“Seems like it’s the same thing.”She peered around the room, seeing the home that had been left to her because she’d never really had one.Nate had always had a home, one filled with love and people around him that helped him see that he held the tenacity and fortitude to do anything.Maybe she’d wanted to be a part of that too, only he’d never invited her to do so.“He made it clear a long time ago that we were never going to happen.It’s the one thing I never wanted to believe coming from him, but maybe I should have.”Willa opened her mouth to talk, but Lottie shook her head to cut her off.“Come on.Let me change and then we’ll go shopping like we were supposed to.”
Willa followed her back to her room, smiling sadly.“We don’t have to go baby shopping today.”She picked up the piece of paper Nate had dropped hours ago and placed it on Lottie’s dresser.“We can stay here and watch movies.Maybe one of your old favorites?”
Lottie emerged from her closet in a pair of yoga pants and a baggy sweatshirt, her limp hair pulled up into a sloppy bun.Was she a cliché?Yes.Did she care?Not one iota.“No way.”She patted Willa’s baby bump and smiled.“This little peanut deserves to be celebrated, their room adorned with all the latest in baby gear, and their wardrobe filled with the most adorable clothes that I can get my hands on.Besides, I could use the distraction.”It may also be the only opportunity she had to shop for a baby, but Lottie kept that depressing thought to herself.
Willa nodded and the two walked hand in hand out the front door.“Should we go over to Brookdale to shop?”
Lottie smiled at the one other person who knew her best.She wasn’t sure Nate would be out around the town, but the thought of seeing him at all felt like a hot knife dragging through her chest, emptying the already hollow cavity of anything good she had left.“Absolutely.”
As Willa drove the two of them a couple of towns over, Lottie gazed out the window and thought back on the question she’d posed to herself a few weeks prior.Was there such a thing as too much love?Apparently the answer to that question was yes.
Chapter Twenty-One
Nate
Nate stared out at the apple orchard that was as familiar to him as anything else in his life.After his talk with Lottie, he needed to be somewhere he might find some semblance of peace, but there was none to be found here or any of the other half dozen places he’d visited over the last few hours.After a fitful night’s sleep in the bed that seemed far too empty, Nate rose and jogged around the town, stopping in the center square that would soon be transformed into everything he wanted it to be.When he looked around the craggy sidewalks and dead crabgrass, Nate had expected to feel a sense of accomplishment that those sights would soon be a thing of the past, but the victory felt voided by virtue of the fact that it hadn’t really even been his win to begin with, not fully.
Lottie had been there every step of the way, even before he’d asked for her help.Nate had needed her help, wanted it in fact, but that was when it had beenhischoice.If he would have known she was behind the scenes, pulling at threads and puppeteering the whole thing, would he have even asked her?Nate buried his head in his hands, his body tired and achy and his head a jumbled mess of confounding emotions.Anger at her for lying to him, at himself for having broken a promise and once again pushing away the most wonderful person he’d ever had the privilege of being with, and distress at the knowledge that he’d likely screwed it up for good this time.
It wasn’t the fact that Lottie had kept everything a secret from him that hurt the most, but that she didn’t have enough faith in him to believe he could do it.Nate had always wanted to make something of himself just as his brothers had, but apparently she didn’t think it would happen on his own.The one person he thought saw him for who he truly was didn’t really even know him at all.Didn’t she see how desperate he was to leave his mark on this town, something that people would remember long after he was gone?Nate sat and looked out over the trees, wishing it would bring him the same sense of peace it always brought to his brother Travis, but the one place he knew he could find comfort was also the last place he could go.How did he reconcile Lottie’s lack of belief in him with the intense feeling of love he still carried for her?
The sound of boots on the back porch had him swiping away the moisture that had gathered in his eyes angrily.Sniffling, Nate turned to see his parents smiling sadly at him.His dad came and sat on one side of him while his mom sat on the other.A look passed between the two of them before Nate’s dad finally spoke.“Want to talk about it?”
Nate shrugged.“Not really.”His parents had wisdom beyond their years and he would be a fool not to listen to it, but he just didn’t have it in him to seek their counsel right then.
His mom nudged his shoulder with hers.“Do it anyway, Sweetheart.”She searched his face for a moment and sighed, her expression understanding.“You went and chewed your own leg off again, didn’t you?”
