He shook his head. “I need to do this on my own.”
Her head tipped a fraction and again, sympathy flashed in her eyes, only this time concern vied for space, too. Her jaw tightened and her lips thinned, but she nodded. “Will you come by after?”
Her family’s property bordered the Bacco vineyards. They’d run back and forth between the two estates dozens of times a week as teenagers.
“It might be a while.”
She reached out and squeezed his hand. “Just come. Or call if you can’t.” She pulled out her phone and without thought, he did the same. A few seconds later, she’d AirDropped her contact information to his device.
She hesitated, as if unsure whether to leave. Despite what he’d told her, he felt the same uncertainty. He didn’t want her to witness whatever might happen to him once he set foot inside, but he didn’t want to watch her leave either.
She squeezed his hand again, then went on her toes and brushed a kiss across his cheek. “I’m glad you’re here, Collin. If you don’t show up in two hours, I’m coming back for you,” she said. “I’m not going to let another almost-two-decades pass before I see you again.”
And with that she turned, skipped down the steps, and walked away.
She slipped down a row of vines, the bright red of her flannel shirt a shot of color in the muted browns of winter. She’d always been a beacon of color, of brightness, in his life. Even when she hadn’t been a part of it.
When he could no longer see any hint of her, he noted the time on his phone, then slid the device into his pocket.
Two hours. She hadn’t intended to—or maybe she had—but Helia had given him something he needed. A time frame. He didn’t need to face all his demons today. He didn’t need to immerse himself fully in the hell of his past. He could give it a cursory inspection, dip his toe in. Two hours only. Really, only ninety minutes, as it would take a little more than twenty minutes to walk to her family’s place. He could survive most things for ninety minutes.
CHAPTER TWO
He had a beard. A trim one. One that looked soft and yet still…beardy.
“I’m focusing on the irrelevant because…” Helia muttered to herself as she traipsed across the Bacco property—Collin’s property now—back to her family’s land. “Because he’s back,” she finished on a near silent huff. “He’s back,” she repeated.
Her first best friend, her first lover, her first a lot of things. Hereverything. Until he’d left. She hadn’t known—still didn’t—everything that had gone on between him and Roger in the castle. She’d known it hadn’t been good, though. A fourteen-year-old boy, already built like a man, didn’t hide in her family’s storage barn for no reason when he had a thirty-thousand-square-foot literalcastleto sleep in.
Seventeen years later, the vivid memory of finding him, curled up with a pillow and a thin blanket in the bucket attachment of their tractor, still haunted her dreams. As did the wary way he let his guard down as she stayed in the barn talking with him for four hours. In the years since he’d left, she’d been tempted to be angry with him for never reaching out, never letting her know he was okay. But how could she stay mad at someone running from something she couldn’t even imagine?
She’d missed him, though. His quiet smile, the way his eyes creased when his lips curled up. The dubious yet tender look he gave her every time she proposed one of her crazy ideas. He would have done anything for her—both a gift and a responsibility. The feeling had been mutual, though, and one of the reasons she’d let him go seventeen years ago without a fight.
“Did you check the wine?” her mother asked, walking toward her with a bouquet of white roses sprinkled throughout with red winter berries, startling Helia out of her trip down memory lane.
So lost in her thoughts, she’d arrived at Sundaram—her family’s property and business—without even noticing. Or doing what she’d set out to do in the first place.
She winced. “Sorry. I, uh…Collin is back.”
Her mother paused. The afternoon sun caught her face as she tipped her head. With her sharp bone structure, deep indigo eyes, and smooth, even skin, she’d always been a beautiful woman. That hadn’t changed at sixty-five.
“For his father’s memorial?”
Her parents had taken Collin in when she’d befriended him that long-ago winter. She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time—her family had always been a loving, welcoming one. As an adult, though, she recognized that they’d known things weren’t right in the Wilde household and they’d wanted to give Collin a safe space to be, to come.
“I doubt it,” she replied. “But I don’t know.” It would be scandalous if he didn’t attend, and gossip flew up and down the Napa Valley faster than the tourists’ cars. Collin wouldn’t care, though.
A sympathetic look crossed her mother’s face. “Will he stop by? I’d like to see him.”
She nodded. “He said he would. I gave him two hours before I went looking for him again.”
Her mom smiled. “An ultimatum, Helia? Really?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe not the best idea given that I—we—haven’t seen him in years.” She paused. “But it worked. I think.” Then, not wanting to delve into the reality of Collin being back any longer, she nodded to the bouquet. “How’s everything coming together?” They had a sunrise wedding the next day followed by brunch for a hundred people, then, five hours later, a dinner reception for four hundred. The whole event a mix of Indian and American traditions.
“The florist just left. Everything is sitting in the cooler, but I wanted to see a centerpiece vase on one of the tables,” she replied, holding up the one in her hands. With its wide rounded base and narrow neck, it looked like a filigree-covered wine decanter. Beautiful, but unusual.
“Are you going back to check on the wine?” her mom asked.
