He didn’t answer right away. Just kept his head bowed and his eyes closed.
His hand dropped away from the back of her neck and hung loose at his side. “It’s complicated.”
The words dropped like a stone in her stomach. “That’s not an answer.”
“Please, Honey. Can we not?”
But it was already too late.
“Ethan,” she said quietly. “You can tell me.”
There was a pause, long enough for her heart to start pounding again. Then he exhaled, and in that breath, something shifted between them.
His shoulders tensed, and when he looked at her again, the softness from a moment ago was gone. “Clover said, ‘You don’t leave behind something precious unless you're following the core of who you are.’”
“What does it mean?”
He stepped back far enough to feel like something had been lost. “I’ve been looking for someone.”
Her hands fell from where they still rested against his chest.
She already knew. Somewhere deep down, she’d known all along. She’d seen it in the coins at the bottom of the well. She’d felt it in the way his kids looked at her, and in that strange feeling that she was filling a space that wasn’treally empty.
“Who?” she asked, barely breathing.
He didn’t answer.
“Mr. Hale,” she said. “Who are you looking for?”
“My wife.”
Chapter 25
Ethan
The bells ruined everything.
One moment, Honey was in his arms, her lips warm against his, and he could already see where the night would go. Hell, if he was being honest, when they were kissing, his heart was thinking of much longer than one night.
Outside The Kettle, with the autumn air cool against his back and her heat pressed to his front, he let himself imagine what it would be like to keep her. To have mornings with her in his kitchen, evenings with her laughter in his house, and whole years stitched together with the way she made him feel right then.
But then the damn bells rang.
“We should get back to the house,” Ethan said, straightening his shirt and taking a step back. The words crowded into the space where her warmth had been a moment ago.
Honey’s brow furrowed. “Are we not going to discuss it?”
“I don’t know that there’s anything to talk about.” He forced the words out.
With the glow from the streetlight casting over her, shewas everything he had no business wanting as much as he did. He forced himself to step back, take a breath, and fish his keys from his pocket.
“You can’t possibly mean that.” She crossed her arms but followed him around the truck. He opened the passenger door for her, and she slid in without a word. By the time he rounded the hood and got behind the wheel, a chill colder than the night air had crept under his collar.
“I’m sorry,” he said, starting the engine. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“I had a perfectly nice time,” she snipped.
Damn it, so had he. Watching her fit so effortlessly into a place he never thought she’d even want to belong. Seeing her relax under the low, warm glow of the bar lamps, hearing her laugh over the music, catching the way she leaned into him when the crowd pressed close. It had been dangerously easy to imagine her there beside him, not just for the night, but for all the nights that might have followed.
