“You head right, and I’ll go left.”
His instinct was to stick close to her.“I’ll go with you.The edge of the bank could be unstable.”
For a moment, he thought she might argue, but then she turned away to resume her search.He paid far more attention to her and the terrain than looking for signs of graves.Rufus stopped at a few spots to sniff around, but kept going.
“He’s sure got a good sniffer on him,” Willow remarked, sounding like a proud mother.
“What made you decide to adopt a dog?”he asked, coming up beside her as she squatted down to examine a slight mound in the earth near the edge.
“We always had a dog growing up.I wanted to adopt one in New York, but Br—my ex kept saying no.”
Tripp was more than a little curious about him.“How long were you guys together?”
“Almost four years.We met right after I moved to New York.”
That was a long time together.Whoever the guy was, he had to be a complete fucking idiot not to fight with everything in him to hold onto her.Because if there was even the slightest chance to make Willow his, Tripp couldn’t imagine letting her walk away.
“What about you?Are you seeing anyone?”
“No.”He’d pretty much cut himself off from the rest of the world since entering treatment.And as far as dating went...any other woman paled in comparison to her anyway.
Willow nodded and rose.She was quiet a moment as she looked out at the sea, then faced him and sighed.She was stunning like that, framed by the ocean, the soft wind blowing little tendrils of hair around her face.It made him want to step close, pull off her sunglasses so he could look into her eyes as he tucked a lock of it behind her ear.
“Look, I need to get something off my chest,” she said.
He braced himself, going still inside.This was it.The moment he’d been living in dread of for the past two years.
FOURTEEN
“O
kay.”Tripp waited, concealing his raging anxiety.
“I’m sorry I didn’t make more of an effort to reach out and keep in touch after you were wounded.That was really shitty and selfish of me.”
Of all the things she could have said, he hadn’t expected that.“Don’t be.You were going through a lot.”
