Sydney King was the woman Grant had been in a serious relationship with when Brynn had unknowingly become a partner in his affair. She hoped that maybe one day they’d get to talk, to clear the air now that Brynn had also broken free from Grant.
And now that she’d be spending more time in Stoneport, she realized that opportunity may just present itself.
“I cannot keep up with your comings and goings these days.” Gregory Atwell, her best friend and—for an ill-advised period in his closeted life—former boyfriend, sat across the table at the diner where they were having lunch. It was a restaurant that Brynn and her dad had frequented when she was younger, though they still stopped in for an occasional meal. It still smelled the same, even after all these years.
Honestly, it had been a tough sell to get her dad to stay home when she’d mentioned where she and Gregory were meeting, but he’d relented. Thankfully. She just needed some time to talk to someone who didn’t think she could do no wrong. And over the past thirty-six hours, her parents' loving and, well, slightly overbearing adoration of her now that she was home made her all the more certain that offering to help in Stoneport was the right choice.
She’d have lunch with Gregory, go home and pack, and then she’d be on her way to the charming coastal town where she could put herself to work so that her mind was too tired to even think.
Still, though, she smiled. No one would ever expect her to be the “bouncing between places” type of person. She didn’t hate it. At least for right now. “I texted you every week from Louisiana.”
Gregory peered at her through his glasses, his bright eyes shining. He was a gorgeous man who would one day look dashing in the arms of another, also gorgeous man. “Brynn. You created a freaking PowerPoint presentation about your cheating fiancé, which you then showed to everyone at your rehearsal dinner. And then, mere days later, you absconded to the South, where the only photos that I got from you were you doing manual labor. For three months.” He held his fingers up, like that somehow drove his point home.
Brynn frowned. “I was really upset by the hurricane.”
His groomed eyebrows rose dubiously high on his forehead. “Really? That’s the line we’re going with?”
“Two things can be true.” And really, it wasn’t a lie. The hurricane had whipped through Louisiana and a few of the surrounding states a few days before her wedding weekend was set to kick off, and for as much as she’d tried to focus on what was in front of her—namely, said PowerPoint that she waspreparing to give to a room of two hundred people—she hadn’t been able to shake the destruction.
Somehow, having it as an anchor in her mind, reminding her what true devastation looked like, had made what she was about to do to her own personal life a lot easier to manage.
“Have you, like, ever even tried to apply any of the philosophical principles that you study to yourself?” he asked before picking up a piece of the turkey club that their waiter had dropped off moments ago.
In response, Brynn pushed her scrambled eggs around on her plate. There was never a wrong time for breakfast as far as she was concerned, but right now, she felt a little queasy. If Gregory wanted her other truth, though, then she’d give it to him.
“Grant was a serial cheater. That’s on him. I’m not sure what else you want me to suss out of the situation. Do you want me to beat myself up about it? Spend sleepless nights wondering how I couldn’t have known? Doubt every single decision that I’ve ever made and break myself down into so many tiny little pieces that I’ll barely be able to function?” Even though that’s exactly what she’d been doing—and trying to avoid doing—over the last few months.
So much sympathy was written across Gregory’s face that it made her want to cry. All anyone in her life ever wanted was for her to be happy. It should have been every person’s dream. Instead, she was paralyzed by the constant fear of disappointing those closest to her. Like if she was unhappy, it would have been caused by some failure on their parts. Especially when it came to her parents. She didn’t want to keep thinking about this. She rolled her shoulders and took a bite of her still slightly warm eggs.
Gregory cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, B. I’m sure that this whole thing is a mindfuck and that you’re just trying to pushthrough it in whatever way makes sense. I’m not here to judge you for how you choose to grieve. Honestly, I should just be happy that your coping skills are encouraging you to help others and not get shit-faced drunk most nights and make reckless life decisions.”
Brynn pursed her lips. “I’m notgrieving. It’s not like anyone died.” She didn’t appreciate Gregory using that word in relation to something as insignificant as Grant and his philandering. She knew what real grief felt like, and this wasn’t it.
“I’m just saying…” God. He wasn’t going to let this go. “Grieving is about emotional and life adjustments after a loss.”
“I wouldn’t call Grant a loss,” she argued, feeling the truth of her words in her bones. “He was net neutral on a good day. Net negative, if we’re being honest.”
Gregory blanched. “And you were going to marry this man?”
“It made a lot of sense at the time. He pursued me. Wooed me. We dated for a year, and then he proposed. Our fathers were in business together, and we come from the same world. I was graduating from my PhD program and ready to begin the next chapter of my life.”
Now it was Gregory’s turn to frown. “Ahh… the ‘analytical’ part of analytical philosophy. How romantic.”
Gregory was one of the few people who got to see behind the curtain. He knew that Brynn could be stubborn as all hell when she didn’t want to emotionally delve into something. Mostly, she just went along with everything to keep the peace. “I understand how our relationship happened, and now, I’m moving past it.”
“By taking a job as an innkeeper in the town where your ex grew up? Which is owned by his sister, if I’m remembering correctly, which I know that I am.” God, she really shouldn’t have mentioned where she was heading later. Clearly, they were not on the same page about how Brynn should be handling herself in this situation. The wordfeelingsalmost sprang tomind, but again, she wouldn’t give Grant the satisfaction of acknowledging that there was a small part of her that he’d made to feel stupid.
And feeling that wayhurt.
Still, he earned himself a snort for calling her an innkeeper, even as Brynn tried to hold it in. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to be some type of assistant manager. I’m not one hundred percent clear on the details.”
“Just flying blind on this one? Seeing where the wind takes you?” He smirked. “Think they’ll give you a name tag and everything?”
“It’s the right decision,” she affirmed, the words important for both of them to hear. “At least for now.”
She couldn’t stay in Boston. She’d given up her apartment in Cambridge somewhere after her almost sister-in-law, Reese, telling Brynn that she’d unknowingly been a party to an affair and before she’d plucked up the gumption to put Grant’s philandering on blast in a very public way. Once they were married, the plan had been for Brynn to move into Grant’s apartment, but that had obviously never materialized. She’d been living with her parents ahead of the wedding, and now, the idea of spending winter with her two biggest fans made her feel itchy. Which she hated to even think about. So, the sooner she could distract her mind with something else, the better.
Gregory pushed his empty plate toward the edge of the table. “So, what’s the plan in Stoneport? For real.”
