She leaned back in her chair, her professional bookstore-owner demeanor returning, though her eyes were still full of a sisterly warmth. “Now are you going to tell me what you really thought of our book for this month, or are we just going to sit here and psychoanalyze my brother all afternoon?”
I let out a laugh, a watery, relieved sound. The offer of normalcy, of a simple book discussion after such a heavy conversation, was a gift. “Oh, it was terrible. The hero was a complete idiot until at least page two hundred. I almost threw it across the room.”
“Right?” Brenna grinned. “That’s exactly what I said! But the ending was worth it, wasn’t it?”
“The ending was perfect,” I agreed, and the double meaning of the words hung in the air between us.
I left Bookshop in Paradise a few minutes later, clutching a new book Brenna had insisted I take. My heart was lighter and my path forward clearer, if not easier. I walked the few blocks back to Heron House under the late-afternoon sun, the usual cheerful sounds of Dove Key now brighter.
When I got home, Gus’s crew working on the second floor was a steady, reassuring rhythm. I stood on my new, sturdy porch and looked across the yard at Austin’s quiet, orderly house. The sun glinted off his windows, making them look like fiery, unblinking eyes.
My fear was still there, a low hum beneath the surface.But it was no longer a paralyzing fear. It was a clarifying one. Brenna was right. I couldn’t push him, and I couldn’t demand answers to questions he likely didn’t have for himself yet. But I also couldn’t just wait, letting this doubt poison everything we were building.
I had to talk to him. Not to interrogate him about Caitlin, but to talk to him about us. I had to tell him that I was here for him, but that I was also scared. I needed to tell him that for this to work, I needed him to be sure. Sure that he saw me and not a memory. I would give him time and patience to find that answer for himself. But he had to know the question was on the table.
He was worth the risk.
And I was worth fighting for too.
Chapter Twenty-Six
AUSTIN
A fragile carefulnesshad settled over Iris’s and my little corner of Dove Key, a stillness that was more like the dead calm before a hurricane than any kind of real peace. I’d detonated a thirteen-year-old bomb in the middle of our budding relationship. Now she was walking through the wreckage, trying to figure out what was real and what was just shrapnel from the past.
Tonight, we were sitting on her new porch swing, a gentle breeze rustling the leaves of the massive magnolia tree in her yard. The air was soft and fragrant with night-blooming jasmine, the perfect night for airing truths.
“You’ve been quiet,” I said.
Her gaze was fixed on the fireflies blinking in the twilight of her overgrown garden. “Just thinking.”
“About what I told you, I imagine.”
She turned to me, her eyes dark and serious in the dim light. “Yes. First, I want you to know I’m so incredibly sorry for what you went through. For what you’re stillgoing through. And I am honored that you trusted me enough to tell me.”
I just nodded, unable to speak, my throat suddenly tight.
She paused for a moment, her fingers pleating the fabric of her shorts. “One thing has been running through my mind. Well, more than one. But, after all you went through, how can you still do what you do? Spend your life on the water? I think it would have made me hate the ocean.”
I stared out past the porch railing toward the dark line where water met sky. “The ocean’s just the ocean. It doesn’t take sides. People make the mistakes. Not the water.” I looked at her, needing her to understand this part. “I stay out there because I love it. Because it makes sense to me. Also so it doesn’t happen again. Not on my boat. Not on my watch.”
The understanding in her eyes was more comforting than any words could have been. She reached out and rested her hand on my knee. “So you took the worst thing that has ever happened to you and turned it into your life’s purpose.”
I lifted one shoulder in an uncomfortable shrug. “I guess you could say that. More likely, it’s just my stubbornness and obsessiveness coming through. Maybe it was also a way to honor their memories.”
“And you should honor them.” She turned more toward me, setting the swing in gentle motion. “I also want you to know that I believe you care about me. I don’t think for a second that you are intentionally trying to deceive me, or that you’re consciously comparing me to… to her.”
Relief, so potent it was almost painful, washed through me. “I’m not, Iris. I swear.”
“I know you believe that.” She paused, choosing herwords with a careful precision that caused that relief to vanish. My muscles went rigid. “My fear is… what if you’re not being honest with yourself?”
Her words, so logical and so utterly plausible, chased my relief right off the porch. Iris was expressing the same doubt my brothers had thrown at me. Words filled not with concern, but with genuine, heartbreaking fear.
“I need to know, Austin.” Her voice dropped, raw with vulnerability. “For this to work, I need to know that you want me. Not a second chance at a different ending. The messy, loud, scone-baking Iris who almost took out your prize-winning hibiscus.”
“I know that’s a huge, maybe impossible, thing to ask. And I understand you need time and space to process everything you just unearthed. And I want to give you that.” She took a shaky breath. “But I can’t just float in this uncertainty. My heart’s not built for it. Before I give all of it to you, I need to know you’re not just giving me the pieces of you that are left over from someone else.”
I examined her, the strength, fear, and deep empathy in her beautiful face. She wasn’t giving me an ultimatum. She wasn’t running away. She was laying her heart bare and trusting me with her own vulnerability.
