“That’s why we’re taking things slowly,” Brynn explained. “I feel like she just expects to wake up one morning and see me with my bags packed, telling her that I’m moving across the country like her parents. And that, for good measure, I’ve somehow convinced you to sell the inn right out from under her again.”
Reese winced. “I didn’t realize what I’d stepped in there until it was already too late.”
Brynn knew, the same as she’d come to understand her own emotional baggage, where Hallie’s resistance—or fear, more accurately—was coming from. But Brynn knew that unless Hallie wanted to work through her own demons, there was noworld in which Brynn could love her enough to compensate for it.
But all of Brynn’s attempts at rational thinking didn’t change the fact that— “She’s the best person that I’ve ever met. And I wish she could see that about herself.”
Hallie needed to want it for herself. That was the scariest part of all of this for Brynn. Because even though she was willing to go slowly and meet Hallie where she was, she couldn’t force Hallie to see herself as the amazing woman she saw whenever she looked at her. A woman who was so arresting and charming and funny and beautiful that it took Brynn’s breath away.Thewoman who had opened up Brynn’s world and exploded it into Technicolor.
But Hallie being told something versus Hallie believing it in her own heart were two very different things.
The silence had hung heavy before Reese asked a question that had been circling around in Brynn’s mind for over a week. “So, where does that leave you two?”
“In the most terrifying place I’ve ever been,” she admitted. “Where I can’t control the outcome but I also want this—wanther—more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my entire life.”
Reese clocked her with a knowing stare. “Welcome to love, my friend. It’s not for the faint of heart, but the payoff can be pretty incredible.”
Brynn had thought that she’d loved Gregory and Grant because they’d decided to be exclusive. Because she’d made commitments to them. Because they’d started to plan their lives with the other one in mind.
But whatever she’d felt with them and for them had never scratched the surface of her feelings for Hallie.
When they’d first slept together, Hallie had told her that she wasfallingfor Brynn. Falling where? In love, just like Brynn?
She couldn’t stand the thought of being alone in this crazy, out-of-control feeling that had overtaken her entire existence.
“What if she’s too scared to really let me in?” Brynn asked on a shaky exhale, voicing her biggest fear. “How did you know with Sydney? You’ve only been together for six months, but you both seem so sure.”
Reese got this faraway look as she blushed, and Brynn could tell that she was thinking about her fiancée. After a beat, she laughed and shook her head, clearing her daydream away. “Every step of the way, I’ve felt like Sydney and I were on the same team. I thought that I’d had that with other people in my life, but once Sydney and I clicked, it was so different. Sure, there were fears and doubts and baggage, on both sides, but no matter what we went through, I always felt like I had a true partner.”
“I’m sure running into your brother’s ex in California was a wild start to a meet-cute,” Brynn said, nodding.
Reese laughed then, her blush deepening. It made Brynn lean forward, confused.
“What?”
“Boy, do I have a story for you.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Hallie had a date tomorrow night. Adate.
Coincidentally, it was with the most incredible woman she’d ever met.
Sitting at the front desk, watching the clock hands move so slowly that she wondered if something in space and time had actually broken, she found herself shaking her head at the sheer improbability of it all.
True connection was rare enough in this world, but for it to happen to Hallie? Absolutely bonkers.
For a long time, content was the word that she’d used to describe her life. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was comfortable. And Hallie did love to be comfortable.
Now, though, comfort was mingling with excitement and attraction and a whole hell of a lot of yearning.
All of these new feelings had burst Hallie’s world into vivid bloom, and there was no going back.
Even if it was scary, what was the alternative?
Somehow, literal perfection in the form of Brynn Fitzpatrick had simply waltzed into her life and then, against the odds, had made a home in it.
A woman who looked at Hallie like she’d hung the moon, when all she’d actually done was hang a piece of art on Brynn’s bedroom wall.
