“Yeah, and apparently we’re going to head out within the hour. We should be back by morning,” I told him. I let out a heavy sigh, trying to shake off the weight on my chest. “Tell me what in the hell happened. Have you heard from James again? Is there anyone hanging out on the property who shouldn’t be there? If there is, you need to call the cops. I don’t give a damn who it pisses off. They’re not going to intimidate you. I can’t be worried about you when I’m driving through the night.”
“Dane, I don’t want you doing anything dangerous. You had a long day. Why don’t you wait until morning to drive down here?” Now that Jen and Grady had convinced me I needed to get back to the inn as quickly as possible, waiting was no longer an option.
“Babe, it’s okay. Jen and the baby are coming with me so we can take turns driving,” I explained to him.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Brook said, and I wondered if there was something else he wasn’t telling me about what was going on back home. “Honestly, I’ve got things handled here for now, and your uncle swore up and down that he’s managing things on his end and no one’s going to bother us.”
I nearly laughed at the idea of trusting anything James said at this point, when he had already proven how untrustworthy he was. Just because James said the situation was under control didn’t mean a damn thing to me. No, now that I’d resolved to get home as quickly as possible, that was what was going to happen.
“It’s time we get the problem taken care of once and for all, Brook. And I know you’re worried about me bringing Jen down there. I was too,” I admitted. “But one thing you’re going to learn about Jen and Grady is they’re even more stubborn than me. Jen has a plan, and it’s a good one. But I need your help. I don’t care what you have to do, but I need you to block off a room for Grady’s family. I’ll text you all the details as soon as I can.”
“And how exactly am I supposed to do that?” Brook let out a huff, and I could almost picture him with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, glaring at me because we both knew damn well that the inn was booked solid through the summer. Neither of us said anything as Brook typed away at the keyboard on the other end of the line. “Dane, I’m telling you there’s nothing available. The only thing we could do is put them up in your room, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to need a place to stay too. And what about when your dad comes?”
“We’ll figure all that out. There has to be something we can shuffle around.”
“I’m looking and I’m telling you there’s nothing,” Brooke shot back, words clipped. I knew he was upset with me, but there was no other way. I’d done everything I could do. Now I needed him to come through for me on this one detail.
“Hadn’t you blocked off the room for my dad?” At the time he did it, I’d argued that my dad and I could share a room, but now I was grateful that he’d insisted we needed a private place and I needed space to get away when trying to reconnect after a decade apart got to be too much. “If you have to, put them in that room and my dad can stay with James, at least for a little while.”
“Are you sure that’s the best idea?”
It was possibly the worst option, but we didn’t exactly have many to choose from at this point. One way or another, Jen and Pax would be arriving at the hotel tomorrow, and in order to make everything look believable, they were going to need a room.
“Once I get down there, we’ll work on a better long-term solution,” I reassured him. “But for now, just like with everything else, we just need to buy ourselves a little bit of time. If you hear from James again, tell him you talked to me, and he needs to be at the hotel tomorrow morning if he wants this problem to go away.”
I lay back on the bed, closing my eyes as I imagined how Brook would react when I told him the part of the plan I hadn’t already. There was a good chance he’d be so upset with me for lying to him that everything I’d gone through this past week would be for nothing. A pit formed in my stomach and I pushed off the mattress, ready to sprint to the bathroom if I was about to lose the little bit I’d eaten at dinner.
“I might’ve already hinted that to him,” Brook admitted. “I know you didn’t want him knowing what was happening before you got back, in case things fell apart, but Dane, you didn’t hear him on the phone this afternoon. He sounded so defeated. And I know it might be wrong of me to feel bad for the guy, but I wasn’t even thinking about him.”
Hearing confirmation of James’s mental state had me pacing the room. I didn’t want this, didn’t ask for any of this. It was hard to believe that as little as a month ago, I’d only cared about myself, but now I was terrified for what James was going through even as I was pissed off at him for dragging the rest of us into his mess.
“Babe, I’m not mad. You did what you needed to do, and you’ve already done so much more than any employee should be expected to do.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized how cold and distant they sounded. “I didn’t mean it like that, babe. You have to know I don’t see you as an employee anymore. You’re everything to me. The only reason I’m dealing with all this is because I can’t imagine what it’d be like to walk away from you.”
“I know.” The words were right, but there was a palpable difference in the cold delivery of his response. This was why I didn’t do relationships. I absolutely sucked at knowing what to say and when to say it. I wished I was already back home, taking Brook in my arms and begging him to forgive me.
“There’s something else I need to tell you,” I said, resigned to the fact that I’d already put myself on Brook’s bad side. “Jen tried to make the numbers work so I could buy the inn from my uncle free and clear, but it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t ready to give up without a fight, so when Grady suggested that they help me come up with the rest of the money, I agreed. At the time, I told myself it was the right thing to do, but I think even then, I knew it was wrong to make a decision like that without talking to you first.”
“Thank you for telling me.” Again, his words were clipped, and I wondered if I’d be walking back into the inn as a single man, trying to escape the ghost of a relationship that could have been amazing. “I won’t tell you I’m not upset, but you had no responsibility to discuss your financial situation with me.”
“You’re wrong,” I insisted. “Don’t you understand that I’m doing this for us? The only reason I’m trying to save that place is because of you. Yes, a small part of it is wanting to continue the legacy that my grandfather tried desperately to build for himself, but the inn has become more than a building or business to me. Everywhere I look when I’m there, there’s a memory of you. Please, Brook, let me fix this.”
“It is not your job to fix everything for everyone else,” Brook argued. “And I’m not saying there’s anything to fix here either. But I need some time to figure out how I feel about you being business partners with your ex and what that means for us.”
I might not be experienced with relationships, but I knew that typically when one person asked for time, it meant they wanted to be left alone. It meant taking a break. I slid down the wall, fighting back tears, hating myself for how badly I’d screwed this up.
“Okay.” It killed me to think of Brook walking away, but I respected him enough to honor this wish. That didn’t mean I was going down without a fight. “Before you get yourself all worked up thinking Grady’s trying to get back together with me, I’d like for you to get to know him and his family. Believe me. If there was any chance of a future between me and him, it would have happened long ago. Even before he met Jen, I think both of us knew we were little more than good friends who liked getting off together.
“Not once did he make me feel the way you do. There was a brief moment when I thought I was in love with him, but all it took was meeting you to realize it was a platonic love.” I dragged my fingers through my hair, hating that we were so far apart right now. This was even worse than the night I’d walked out on him at the restaurant, and this time there was no way for me to walk up to him and demand that he hear what I was saying. “You’re the one I love, Brook. You’re the one I want to spend my life with. And if you give me the chance, I promise I’ll spend every day trying to prove that I’m worthy of your love, even when I don’t believe that myself. You can do so much better than me, and no matter what happens, I will always be grateful to you for showing me that sometimes falling in love is worth the risk.”
There was a long enough silence over the line that I pulled the phone away from my ear to see if Brook had hung up on me partway through my rambling profession of how much I loved him, but the call was still connected.
“Say something. Please. Tell me we’ll eventually be okay.”
“We will.” For the first time during our call, Brook sounded like he missed me as much as I missed him. “Once we get through this and I have time to stew in my pettiness, we’ll be fine. I love you too, Dane. God knows, you’re challenging on a good day, but I don’t want you thinking I’m giving up on us. And on the bright side, I’d say this is a damn good challenge to figure out if we’re strong enough to get through the hard times together.”
There was a knock at the door, and Jen poked her head inside. “Hey, sorry to interrupt, but if we’re going to head out, we need to get ready. Grady’s outside shuffling stuff around so there’s room for Pax.”
I held up a finger to let her know I’d be out in a minute. “Babe, it sounds like Jen’s anxious to hit the road. We should be there early tomorrow morning if we don’t hit traffic.”
“Drive safe, Dane,” Brook pleaded with me. “I’ll keep everything under control until you get here. Not sure how, but I’ll manage.”
“I have no doubt you will. I love you.”
“Love you too.” Brook sounded less irritated than he had earlier, giving me hope we really would be okay.
