And worse than that: They didn’t care. At all.
Thank god all she’d eaten was a few bites of salad. Her stomach was churning uncomfortably as four pairs of eyes—she appreciated that the twins had their own thing going on right now—were trained on her.
Suddenly, she felt like she was going to cry. She inhaled quickly, trying to stave off the tears prickling behind her eyes. Twice in one day. That was a new low.
“I’m really fine with salad. I had a big lunch anyway,” she lied so that everyone could comfortably go back to ignoring her.
Why had she even come here? They would never change. If anything, things would only get worse, now that there were thousands of miles between them and Mason and Claire were ushering in the next generation of Thatchers.
Ugh, and Hallie didn’t even know if she wanted kids. She definitely wasn’t going to have them just to try and earn her parents’ love.
She felt like, in this moment, she didn’t know much of anything. The only thing she could cling to was that, deep down, in spite of always being made to feel like an afterthought, she knew that she didn’t deserve this.
She stabbed at her salad and took a big bite, the conversation having moved on without her.
She also knew that, without a doubt, she had to get out of here as soon as possible.
CHAPTER SIX
Brynn was extremely confused about what was happening. And, inconveniently, Hallie wasn’t being much help.
Instead, Hallie was focusing on wrestling off her boots, which looked like they were giving her a surprising amount of trouble.
Brynn looked down at her phone just to make sure she wasn’t going crazy. It was New Year’s Eve, and she knew Hallie wasn’t supposed to be back until two days from now. She’d set up a reminder in her calendar and everything.
But Hallie was here. Standing in, to be fair, her own apartment, which Brynn had moved into while her boss was away.
They’d gotten a last-minute request for a room, and Brynn’s had been the only one available. Wanting to be as accommodating as possible, she’d asked Hallie what she should do.
Four days ago, it had been Hallie’s suggestion that, if Brynn was comfortable with it, she could move into the guest room in the owner’s quarters, since no one was staying there.
It had all made perfect sense from a logistical perspective, which Brynn had appreciated.
Now, with Hallie home days early, it didn’t makeanysense. Especially because she hadn’t told Brynn that she was coming.
Did Hallie not trust her? Was this some elaborate check-in to make sure that Brynn was keeping everything running smoothly? Oh, god. Had there been a serious guest complaint that required Hallie to fly home so quickly?
Brynn had never been yelled at by an authority figure before. And even if Hallie didn’t look menacing right now, having moved on to wrestling with the zipper on her bulky jacket, it still made Brynn grow too warm too quickly. She threw her blanket off as an act of self-preservation, hoping it would cool her down.
But Hallie was seemingly unconcerned by Brynn’s own internal woes. “I totally forgot that you were using the other bedroom,” she said, slapping her hand on her thigh like it was the funniest thing in the world before going back to wrestling with her jacket.
Brynn nodded slowly. Because… yeah. She was still confused. “You told me it was okay when I asked about the guests who needed the extra room. I thought you weren’t coming home for another couple of days?”
Finally unzipping her jacket, Hallie let out a sound of relief as it fell to the ground. “You are so very right, Brynn. I came home early. This is where I wanted to spend New Year’s Eve. Not in Colorado,” she said as she lugged her duffel bag into her bedroom, which Brynn hadn’t seen the inside of yet. She took people’s privacy very seriously, and she wouldn’t betray Hallie’s trust like that. There was a brief moment in which she wondered if Hallie was going to close the door behind her, but then she appeared back in the living room, putting her hair in a ponytail. “I should have let you know, but I was on standby for a flight and wasn’t sure that I was going to make it back.”
“Is everything okay?” Brynn asked, adjusting her position on the sofa. She’d been settled in for an evening of watching moviesin her pajamas, and she was just realizing that, after having thrown her blanket off, she looked wildly unprofessional in a pair of pajama pants and a hoodie.
But it was difficult to push her uneasiness away, even as Hallie seemed to be preoccupied with something else. That was quickly confirmed for Brynn, when Hallie looked at her intensely. Brynn would have never thought that she could feel a look in her bones, but she absolutely did. “I’m going to be honest with you, Brynn; it’s not. I don’t have the emotional energy to lie right now.”
Brynn’s fight-or-flight mode kicked into high gear, the alarm in her eyes apparent. Any words she wanted to say lodged in the back of her throat.
Hallie quelled them quickly—something she seemed to have a knack for doing—when she said, “Which has absolutely nothing to do with you. For the record.”
Brynn’s shoulders—her whole body, in fact—relaxed. What a wild thirty-second rollercoaster that had been. She knew very well that she didn’t do a great job existing in gray areas or feeling like she’d done something wrong. But now that she knew Hallie hadn’t come back because of some misstep on her part, she could focus on figuring out why Hallie looked like she was cycling through bursting into tears or laughing, depending on the moment.
If it wasn’t about Brynn, it probably meant that it wasn’t about the inn. Which left something on Hallie’s trip as the culprit for her early return. “Did something happen in Colorado?”
Hallie let out an exasperated puff of air that blew the tendrils of hair framing her face around. “Just family stuff. I decided that I didn’t need that negativity in my life. And my back definitely didn’t need to sleep on a sofa again.” Brynn was going to respond, not that she even knew the right thing to say, but Halliekept talking. “It was a nice sofa, I’ll give them that. Some brand with a kind of wood or a wooden object in the name, I think. Crate and Barrel? West Elm? Pottery Barn?” Hallie laughed loudly. “Who has a barn filled with pots anyway?”
