“Rowe?”
“What are we doing, Pane?”
The concern melts into confusion. “What do you mean?”
I rub the back of my thumb across my forehead. “I mean, you’re all expensive hotels, and now you’re president of the Maddox Group—president—while I’m stuck here in Georgia as a piggycorn farmer.”
“That’sMissPiggycorn Farmer to you,” he jokes.
“I’m serious.”
He slides his hands into his pockets. “My mother said something.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it matters. Rowe, I’ve meant everything that I’ve said. I’m not leav—”
“I know, I know.I knowwhat yousay. But yes, Pane, youareleaving. You have to. Now that you’re president, there are people you have to see. Things you have to do. What, are you going to fire up a laptop and work between chores? Maybe between feeding hot dogs to Tallulah?”
His head falls back and he stares into the sky. After a moment, he lifts his head and levels his gaze on me. “Yes, I will have to go away for a little while. But I’ll be ba—”
“To do what?” I interrupt.
“To help you.” He approaches. “I’m not done with this town. I have plans. I want to build a hotel.”
I cock my head. “By yourself? Or with board approval?”
“It’s not like that, Rowe.”
“It is, Pane.”
He reaches for me and I pull away. The look of hurt on his face almost wrecks me, but then I remember the times I’ve been abandoned. Luke promised to stay. My dad tried to stay. But they both left, and I can’t help but think that things like this come in threes. Even if it is irrational for me to believe this way, it’s true. Those men left, and so will Pane.
He will. He just doesn’t know it yet.
So it’s up to me to remind him of how all this has been play. It hasn’t been real.
“For weeks you and I have lived in a tiny little bubble.” I form a cup with my hands to demonstrate. “A bubble that only exists here, in Mystic Meadows. But now we’re facing real life. We’re not in fantasyland anymore. You don’t belong in my world, and I don’t ...”
My voice falls away and he nods. “And you don’t belong in mine?”
“Exactly.”
Agony,excruciatingagony, flickers across his face as I let my hands drop to my sides. Pane closes his eyes briefly, and when he opens them, his features have gone cold, his expression stony. “Rowe, think this through. I’m telling you that—”
“I have thought it through.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“Yes, I have.”
There’s a breath of silence before his spine snaps straight. “Okay,” he says slowly. “If this is what you want—”
“It is,” I say quickly, so quickly that there isn’t time to change my mind. “It’s what’s best.”
There’s a moment where we stare at each other, and then he retreats, spreading his arms wide. “I’ll do whatever you want. If you want me out of your life, little Sunbeam ...”
My heart breaks when he says it.
“Then I’m gone.”
When I don’t say anything, he gives a stiff nod and walks back into the bar, leaving me all alone.
