Chapter Six
“Can you give me a minute to discuss this? You can put me back on hold,” Riley said.
Brent was amazed at how calm he’d managed to stay. Just thethoughtof having to call the customer service line at an airline made his blood pressure rise, but there was Riley, speaking in his usual soft, melodic tones, unfazed by the fact that he seemed to be getting nowhere.
Even though he’d been on the phone for over two hours now.
Riley set his phone down on the kitchen counter, putting it on speaker while Brent watched.
“Okay, so… cancelling flights is a non-option on your particular fare type. Not even if you die. But because of the circumstances, they’re willing to let you change your flights instead for any time in the next six months and whatever destination you want, as long as you pay the difference if it would have cost more. If that’s something you’re interested in?”
Brent sighed. He wasn’t in the mood to think that far ahead.
“Just leave them. I don’t care.”
“I was actually thinking… you’ve already moved your schedule around to take some time off. You don’t wanna sit around here staring at the walls the entire time, and you just had a fairly traumatic experience. You could use a break.”
Brent snorted. “What, head to the Caribbean myself for a week? No. Imagine being the guy who turns up to his honeymoon alone.”
“You don’t have to go to the Caribbean. That doesn’t sound like your choice of destination, anyway.”
“It wasn’t,” Brent admitted for the second time. He knew what Riley was doing. He was just barely coming to the conclusion that he’d spent the entire time he’d been with Rose trying desperately to make her happy so she wouldn’t leave him.
It wasn’t impossible that he’d developed some abandonment issues, even though he’d been an adult when his parents died. It had left him with a little sister to take care of and with the sense that he was alone in the world.
Even though Riley had been there for him. He knew he couldn’t ask Riley to stay forever. That wasn’t fair on either of them. Riley’s life didn’t have to be over because Brent’s felt like it was.
He’d still stayed for months. Sleeping on the couch, insisting that he didn’t want to be anywhere else. Brent had practically had to throw him out to get him to go.
And then watching him go had felt like being abandoned all over again.
Brent was kind of a mess when it came to people he cared about not constantly being close enough for him to reach out and touch. The fact that Rose hadn’t wanted to move in until after the wedding had been killing him.
In hindsight, he was glad she hadn’t. Getting rid of her stuff would have been painful.
But if she’d really wanted to be here, there would have beensomethingto get rid of. Riley had asked him about it, and Brent hadn’t realized it was weird until he’d had to explain that there was really nothing of hers in the house, as far as he knew.
There was more ofRiley’sstuff hanging around.
“Okay, so… where do you want to go? Like, if you didn’t have to think about anyone else, where would you have wanted to spend this week?”
Brent shrugged. He hadn’t really thought about it. “I dunno. Somewhere quiet, I guess. Close enough to the beach to go for early-morning walks along the sand. Lots of trees.”
“So Hope Springs, but with a beach?” Riley raised an eyebrow.
“I like it here,” Brent defended. He knew Riley had seen the whole country end-to-end and gone exploring in Canada and South America too, but he’d never even been inclined to. He liked his home. He felt safe here.
Riley wet his lips. “I have a friend who has a cabin in Oregon. It’s pretty much on the sand. Would that work for you?”
“You don’t need to call in favors for me,” Brent said. He didn’t want Riley to go to any more trouble than he had done.
“I want to. I want you to rest and recover, and it’s a really nice cabin. You deserve time to decompress.”
“I don’t wanna be alone,” Brent argued. He couldn’t handle the thought of being stuck with his own thoughts for days on end.
“I’ll go with you,” Riley volunteered.
Brent hesitated. He missed Riley. He wanted to spend time with him, now more than ever.
