Eleanor felt a twist of sympathy and discomfort in her belly. Gosh, shehadoverstepped, however accidentally. And from the way Garrett was grimacing, this wound might be old, but it was not healed.
“Man,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know our situations aren’t exactly the same, but I do know how badly it stings when someone who has promised to love you suddenly reveals that they just… don’t anymore.”
Garrett cleared his throat aggressively. “Yeah. Well. It’s not all bad.” He turned back to the waiting window, the tarp covering fluttering a little in the breeze. “I mean, that kind of betrayal really teaches you that the world isn’t all butterflies and sunshine, doesn’t it? It teaches you to be on your guard, always.”
She swallowed hard against a lump in her throat. His cynicism sounded as though it was laced with bitterness and pain, and hearing it made her heart break for him.
It wasn’t that she didn’t understand Garrett’s impulse to hide himself away from the world. It had been her first instinct when Brian had blindsided her with the news that he wanted a divorce. But there was a big difference between holing up in her bedroom for a long weekend and from pushing everyone away for a decade… and she was beginning to realize that all of Garrett’s gruffness was designed to do just that, to keep everyone else at bay so that he didn’t risk getting hurt again.
Still. It wasn’t her place to push too hard. So she kept her voice noncommittal and airy as she replied, busying her own hands with unwrapping her new doors and window.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, woof, divorce can definitely make you feel that way. But if I’d blamed the whole world for the way Brian treated me, I’d never have come to Magnolia Shore. I wouldn’t have made my new friends. And I wouldn’t be opening this bookshop.” She shrugged. “Maybe there really are silver linings to every rain cloud.”
When he didn’t answer right away, she hazarded a peek in his direction. He was still staring at the place where the window would go, but his expression was absent, as if he was considering what she had said.
She didn’t rush him. It took several long moments for him to speak.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said after a while. “Maybe I’ve been holding on for too long.”
She met his piercing blue-green eyes. Her heart felt like it stuttered in her chest as they held one another’s gaze.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Maybe.”
Their gazes remained locked for a beat longer, and in that beat, Eleanor asked herself a thousand questions about what this man might be like, about what a friendship between them might look like, if only he let himself become open to the possibility.
Then he cleared his throat, and her questions disappeared like a puff of smoke.
“I’ll get out of your hair,” he said, sounding nearly reluctant. “Good luck with the repairs.”
He departed, leaving Eleanor with a busy mind as her hands occupied themselves in making her dreams a reality.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I’m going to die,Cadence thought as she stared down at her yoga mat.I am going to collapse into a puddle of my own sweat and drown. Goodbye, world. This is it for me.
Cadence knew her thoughts were a bit melodramatic, but goodness, it wasso very hotin this room. The warmth had felt just north of pleasant when she’d first entered the room, and as class had begun, she could sense the appeal. The heat had loosened her muscles, making her feel strong and flexible. But then she’d kept exercising, and the heat had been relentless inside and outside her body, and now she felt like a popsicle on a summer’s day.
She snuck a glance at the clock at the back of the room even though she had to come out of the downward-facing dog position that everyone else seemed to hold so easily in order to do so.
Only seven more minutes.Thankgoodness.
Cadence survived the last few minutes by thinking of ice water, ice cream, the polar ice caps. Anything that was cold. And when the teacher called the class to an end, she was the first out the door, her yoga mat gathered hastily under one arm. She leaned against the wall outside, the spring breeze the mostrefreshing thing she’d ever felt… after the water she was gulping down, of course.
A wiry older man who had been, at one point in the class, executing a perfect headstand, shot her a grin as he exited the yoga studio.
“First time?” he asked.
“And last time, I think,” she said, laughing.
He chuckled too. “It’s not for everyone. Me? I’ve got the bug. I do this nearly every day.” Cadence shuddered at the thought. “That’s how my wife feels,” he added, noting her gesture. “I couldn’t get her to come with me to a class for love or money. But don’t worry. You’ll find something that’s right for you.”
He gave her a friendly nod as he walked away, looking far too spry, and not nearly sweaty enough, for someone who had spent the last hour in that baking hot room.
Cadence felt cheered by his parting words. Shewouldfind something that was right for her.
But what she wanted to find right now was a pastry, one that was full of sugar and butter and deliciousness.
She deserved it, she felt, after that last grueling hour.
