“It’s a rule.”
“A rule?”
“Mom’s rule,” Gabriella emphasized, her voice catching on her pain.
With a heaving sigh, I asked. “What’s the rule?”
“When Mom got sick, she used to go and sit down by the creek on the bench. We’d always go to check on her, and she got so sick of us fussing she implemented the ten-minute rule.”
“Go on,” I encouraged, already knowing that however ridiculous their rule was, it was one I wouldn’t be breaking.
“Mom decided that if someone went and sat on the bench, they got ten minutes of uninterrupted peace before anyone was allowed to come near them.”
“Ten minutes?”
“Yep,” Georgia confirmed, glancing at her watch. “Ten minutes where no one was able to ask you if you were okay or what was wrong. Ten minutes alone with your thoughts.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket.
“What are you doing?” Gabriella asked.
When I showed them my phone. The timer was already counting down.
“Grace can have her ten minutes, but then I’m going down there,” I declared.
“Thank you,” Gabriella offered, squeezing my arm before turning and heading back to their guests.
“You’re a good guy, Cole. Mom would’ve loved you,” she offered, hitting me right in the feels.
“Thanks, Georgia. That means a lot,” I confessed.
“I’m glad you’re going to be our brother-in-law,” she added with a wink before turning and leaving me standing there, mouth gaping and watching the timer count down every second.
“Five. Four. Three. Two. One,” I counted aloud as the seconds ticked down. By the time the buzzer sounded my feet were already moving.
Chapter twenty-five
Grace
The moment I sat on Mom’s bench, I felt the tears trickle down my face. I should’ve come here sooner, but in truth, I knew why I hadn’t. I’d been avoiding it. Not wanting to face it. This was Mom’s favorite spot and just being here brought back every emotion I thought I’d buried long ago.
I wiped away my tears and looked out across the creek. The water was running fast for this time of year, bouncing off the rocks and leaving frothy water in its wake. Along the edges of the creek, birds swam in the shallows as the grasses swayed. It was so quiet and peaceful here that I remembered Mom’s words.
“I need time to think. Out here, there’s no noise to distract me from working through things,” she’d told me and she was right.
There were people crawling all over the B&B right now and I couldn’t hear any of them. Nothing but the squawk of the birds and the rush of the water.
“Mom, I wish you were here to tell me what to do,” I said out loud, wishing for an answer I knew wouldn’t come.
I closed my eyes and tipped my head back toward the sun, letting its rays warm me. I’d just burned bridges I never thought I would, and strangely enough, I had no regret. Not just burned them either. I’d set fire to them, added gasoline then danced in their ashes. Had Ben not shown up here this afternoon, I’d still be holding on to all that anger, but now I’d let it loose I felt lighter. I might still not be any closer to figuring out what comes next, but I knew I wasn’t going back. When I’d told him that I realized it was what I wanted. Or more importantly, what I didn’t want. I had no interest in playing corporate games with people whose mission in life was to step on others. It wasn’t who I was and definitely not someone I wanted to be.
“Your ten minutes is up,” a deep voice I recognized announced as a stick crunched under his boot.
“Guessing the girls told you about that,” I asked, turning to face Cole.
He looked worried. His brow was furrowed, his hands buried deep in his pockets, and unease written all over his handsome face.
“It was the only thing stopping me from rushing down here,” he admitted.
