“It’s pathetic. But at least I have an excuse—I can’t find her, and trust me, I’ve looked.” He turned from the window. “You know exactly where Ally is. You have her phone number, her address. And you’re sitting in this place scrolling through pictures instead of doing something about it.”
Colton picked up his phone. The photo of the inn was still on the screen.
“What is that place?” Marco crossed back to the couch and sat down, leaning over to look. “That porch with the lake and mountains behind it?”
“The Blueberry Inn. It’s opening in less than two weeks—September eighteenth. Tara’s been working on it for months.”
“The mother? The one who makes the clothes?”
“That’s her.” Colton swiped to another photo—the lake at sunset, the mountains reflected in still water. “This is the view from her cottage.”
Marco took the phone, studying the image. “Tell me more about this place. This little mountain town.”
“Blueberry Hill. Population maybe two thousand. There’s a general store, a bakery, and a bookshop. People actually know each other’s names. They have potluck dinners and community events where everybody shows up.”
“No paparazzi?”
“No paparazzi. No photographers camping outside restaurants. No one trying to get a piece of you.” Colton watched Marco scroll through more photos. “When I was there, nobody cared that I used to pitch for the Tornadoes. I was just some guy.”
“No one knowing your name.” Marco’s voice had gone quiet. “No one wanting anything from you.”
“Pretty much.”
Marco swiped to another photo—Colton and Will standing in Colton’s barn, both covered in sawdust, grinning like idiots.
“You look different in these pictures.”
“I felt different.”
The rain had intensified, drumming against the windows. Colton thought about Blueberry Hill in September—the leaves just starting to turn, the mornings crisp and chilly enough for a jacket, the light changing earlier each evening. Ally had mentioned an orchard that let you pick your own apples, said she wanted to try making honey-apple butter this year, and was planting her own orchard after the fire.
“She hasn’t called,” he said finally. “Not once since I left, and I texted her.”
“But have you called her?”
Colton was quiet.
“That’s what I thought.” Marco handed the phone back. “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we? Two grown men who can’t figure out how to talk to women.”
“You talk to women constantly. That’s literally your brand.”
“I talk at women. I charm them, I flatter them, I take them to expensive restaurants and say all the right things. But talk to them? Actually say something real?” Marco shook his head. “I’m tired, Colton. Genuinely tired. Same clubs, same faces, same empty conversations. I keep thinking there has to be more than this.”
Colton looked around the room and out the windows. “I’d make Blueberry Hill home. See my dog, horses, look out over the lake.” He shifted. “Spend every day telling Ally what an idiot I am. I could fly in to the city a few times a year, do the shoots and go back.”
“A place where no one would bother us.” Marco was staring at the photo of the inn on Colton’s phone. “Where I could just be some guy drinking coffee on a porch, watching the mountains.”
“You’d hate the coffee. It’s not Italian.”
“I’d survive.” Marco looked up. “You’re going? To this opening?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Stop thinking.” Marco’s voice sharpened. “You spent your whole life being told what to do. Coaches, managers, agents, trainers—everyone had a plan for Colton Matthews. Now no one’s telling you what to do, and you’ve forgotten you get to decide for yourself.”
Colton reached for his bourbon. “Come with me.”
Marco’s eyebrows rose. “To Blueberry Hill?”
