Charlotte all but stomped over, glared at the knot in the thickening dark. “Remember what?”
“This knot. I faced it like this”—she moved her body so she was angled straight toward it—“when we were walking into the woods. So if we—”
“Charlotte!”
Brighton turned a perfect one-eighty toward the voice, toward the way she now knew they needed to go. Shapes coalesced in the gloom, moving closer.
“Brighton!”
“Here!” Charlotte yelled, moving toward them. “We’re here!”
There were three of them—Adele, Sloane, and…Wes.
Because of course he was here too.
“There you two are,” he said, looking overly relieved. He had justmetCharlotte, for god’s sake. “It’s dangerous to be in the woods this close to dark.”
“This is how horror movies start,” Adele said.
Charlotte didn’t even look at Brighton. “I just needed some air. We both did.” A graceful inclusion, no glance to the side, no faltering. Charlotte Donovan at her full strength.
“Next time, get some air on our back porch,” Sloane said. “There’s a mountain view and everything. And take your phone. You scared me to death.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said. “Thank you for coming to find us. We were totally lost.”
Brighton pursed her mouth, said nothing. She just watched as Wes put an arm around her ex and started walking, Sloane on Charlotte’s other side.
“You okay, baby girl?” Adele asked. She regarded Brighton carefully, a black knit hat pulled over her braids.
Brighton swallowed. Made sure her voice was steady. Adele knew everything, yes. Brighton was safe with her, no doubt, but if she said anything but yes right now, in the middle of these woods after everything, she’d fall completely apart.
And she wasn’t sure she’d get herself back together this time.
So she just nodded, touched the star knot once more before looping her arm with Adele’s and walking straight out of the woods.
Chapter 15
“Okay, so what do wedo now?” Wes asked.
He and Charlotte stood together in a corner of Winter Berry Bakery, pressed closer together than she’d normally stand next to a near stranger, but desperate times and all that.
It had been two days since the Forest Incident, as she’d come to refer to it in her head, refusing to attach the wordkisseven in her own ruminations. For the most part, she’d managed to avoid Brighton at the Berry house, dragging her quartet into the basement for rehearsals anytime they all agreed. When they weren’t practicing, most everyone else lay around watchingLove ActuallyandThe Muppet Christmas Carolwhile drinking spiked hot chocolate.
But Charlotte worked.
She checked arrangements, reordered set lists, sent emails to their manager checking on venues and equipment, even though she’d already verified all of those details weeks ago. She knew she was driving Mirian crazy, but she had to do something. Sittingaround watching Kevin McCallister’s improbable defeat of two buffoons wasn’t in the cards, especially since she knewHome Alonewas Brighton’s favorite Christmas movie. When she ran out of emails to deal with and her quartet rebelled against her work ethic, she practiced on her own, sitting on a chair in the Berrys’ finished basement between the comically large flat-screen and the leather sectional, unfurling song after song after song.
No one bothered her.
No one asked her to take a break. Her quartet knew better, and Brighton…well.
Brighton hadn’t spoken to her since the Forest Incident.
And that was exactly how Charlotte wanted it.
Except now she found herself at Winter Berry Bakery in a waking nightmare called Speed Date and Decorate. It was the second Two Turtledoves event, with Nina and her friend Marisol at the helm, during which half of the group stayed at tables and started decorating a giant sugar cookie, and the other half moved around the room whenever Nina struck a singing bowl, shifting to a new table and a new partner.
“Then we’ll change up who stays put after about forty-five minutes,” Nina had said at the start. “That way, everyone will get to talk to everyone, no matter your sexual orientation!”
