“I need your help,” I say, clearing my throat and scrubbing a hand over my hair. I can feel my cheeks getting hot. “What happened with you… it happened with Lacey, too. Worse.”
He sucks in a breath through his teeth, “I thought so, based on how you were acting.”
“So, how do I fix it?”
“You’re asking me for advice?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. When I nod, he laughs again. “Never thought the day would come.”
“Ha,” I deadpan, then, “I saw the flyer. That she’s listing the cabin. I… I don’t want her to leave.”
Warren leans forward on the counter, pointing at me, “I forgive you for free. But for advice, you have to let me sell some of those glass sculptures here.Andyou have to let me enter them in the contest.”
I grit my teeth against the anxiety that instantly hits me at the idea of competing with real artists. Of putting myself out there again.
But I was wrong about all this — pushing people away just to stay safe. Maybe I’m wrong about pulling away from the art world to stay safe, too.
“Fine.”
Warren grins like a cat, clearly happy at getting the sculptures. “She’s in love with you, too, Max. And I’m willing to bet all she wants is for you to stop pushing her away.”
“So… what do I do?”
Warren points at the door. “Goto her. Stop running away. Make it clear that you’re never going to duck out on her again, then spend every day showing her that it’s true.”
“Right,” I say, already turning toward the door. And when he laughs again, I get the sense that the advice I’ve just paid for was painfully obvious.
It doesn’t matter. I needed it.
And I’m going to follow it to the letter. I will do anything to get Laceyback.
CHAPTER 27
LACEY
I’m sitting on the front porch, chin in my hands, staring out onto the road. I should get up, move to the back porch, look out at the water instead, but after my mom left this morning, I haven’t been able to get up from this spot.
She stayed for the entire weekend and took another day off to be with me. To rub my back and push my hair back from my face and make me feel better.
“I think you should try and talk to him,” she’d said, after I got through the whole story. “A man like that doesn’t remodel an entire cabin for a woman because heprefers to be alone.”
Now, alone with my thoughts for the first time since she got here, I can’t stop turning what she said over in my head. Obviously, I need to talk to him, but I don’t know how to do it.
He was right about me capitulating to everyone. I’ve always done that, trying to make everyone happy except myself. Tomorrow, when businesses in town open, I’ll call and ask them to take down the flyer.
I’m staying here even if Max is telling the truth, and he wants to be alone. This cabin was Jasper’s before mine, and besides, being here is the best I’ve felt in a long time. I actually started working on my dream game. This is about more than Max and me.
Even though I’m not ready to give up on that, either.
And then, as though my thoughts have conjured it, a plume of dust rises up at the end of the road. Then, a dark blue Jeep appears in that dust cloud, rolling straight for my cabin.
My heart leaps into my throat, and I sit up, staring, sure that I must be imagining it. After all this time — more than a week, and nearly two — why would Max come up here?
Unless he’s coming to ask for his stuff back. My mind rushes to fill in plenty of negative reasons for why he might be making the trek up here to my cabin. Things other than wanting to talk to me.
It can’t be possible.
What would have changed his mind?
His Jeep comes to a stop in the driveway, and when he hops out of the driver’s seat, I can’t help it. I stand up. My heart is beating in my throat, my face flushed, that ever-present nausea sloshing around in my stomach.
