“You know I don’t just mean tonight. I’m talkin’ about you callin’ that placehome.”
There was a pause where I held my breath, waiting for Nat’s response, knowing I shouldn’t be listening but unable to help myself. Maybe Nash was right and I should just ask her. Tell her how I was feeling and see if she might be feeling the same.
But then Nat laughed, and the sound shot daggers into my heart. “C’mon now, Rory. You know as well as I do that Havenbrook isn’t home. Hasn’t been for a long time, and I don’t imagine it’ll ever be.”
I closed my eyes, the crushing weight of her response settling on my chest. It didn’t matter what Nash thought he saw. What Rory—or anyone else, for that matter—thought they saw either. Not when, in the end, Nat didn’t want this life. She didn’t want to be stuck here. Not with her family and not with the family I’d strapped her with.
So, I was going to do what had always been the plan…what we’d agreed to at the start.
I was going to let her go.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
NAT
Rory’s wordshad been spinning in my head from the moment Asher, the kids, and I had left my parents’ house. I’d gone inside in search of Owen, not advice, but I’d managed to snag both. After I had laughed off Rory’s assumption that there was something between me and Asher, Rory had told me I was being an idiot. Par for the course with my eldest sister, really, but there’d been something in the way she’d said the words that had me paying attention.
Throughout Rory’s blustering and barbs, it had all boiled down to the fact that Asher and I had been able to fool everyone in town, as well as my parents, with this marriage because it hadn’t been all that fake.
It certainly hadn’t felt fake. Not when he kissed me each night, slid into my body, and moaned my name. Not when I woke up with him at my back, his breaths on my neck, and his sleep-gruff voice in my ear. Marriage hadn’t been at all like I’d thought it would be. Feared it would be, honestly. Marriage with him had been kind of perfect.
But things were now upside down and backward, and I didn’t know right from left or up from down. Didn’t know what everyone else saw when they looked at the two of us. I just knewthat, somehow, after twenty years, I’d fallen in love with my best friend. And that was probably something I should tell him.
He sat on the couch, head bowed as he strummed his guitar, humming along to whatever tune was currently floating in his mind.
“That’s pretty. You have lyrics yet?” I sank into the spot on the couch I’d commandeered as my own, wrapping my arms around my legs and resting my chin on my knees.
He glanced at me and offered a small smile. “Some, but it’s not finished.”
I hummed and tucked my cold toes beneath his thigh, wiggling them as if that would warm them up faster. “You seemed a little distracted tonight. You all right?”
“Yeah, never better.” He set the guitar down and ran a hand through his hair. “Everything worked out exactly how we planned.”
“Can’t believe I’m sayin’ this, but Seville made the right choice. The Haywards weren’t too happy, though—did they even try to set something up to see June or Owen while they’re here?”
“Nope. Don’t expect they will either.”
And those assholes had just about taken June and Owen from us—him.
“Well, if my daddy can come around, maybe they can, too. Never thought I’d see the day he spoke up for me.”
Asher relaxed back into the couch, resting his head on the cushion. “That was definitely not the curve ball I was expectin’ today.”
“’Course, he did make a comment when we were leavin’ about settin’ up an appointment at town hall for me to find a—and I quote—‘real job.’” I rolled my eyes. “Guess he’d hit the quota for bein’ a decent human being in a single day.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that, actually, now that this is all done.”
I couldn’t have asked for a better opening, so I straightened and reached for his hand, running my fingers over the callused tips of his. “Good, me too. You first.”
“I—” He cleared his throat and shot me a look out of the corner of his eyes. Was that hesitancy there? “I can’t thank you enough for everything you did for me…for us.”
I poked his thigh with my toe. “You’ve gotta stop thankin’ me for something I said yes to, Ash. I mean it.”
“I just want you to know how much I appreciate it, and I love you for doin’ it.”
Yeah, I loved him, too, but not for some arbitrary reason. I loved him without fail or exception. Loved him unconditionally, through all the good and bad. Through all the ups and downs and every path life had taken him on. Loved him like I’d never loved anyone else.
“I love you for askin’ me and not Nash.”
