That phrasing catches me.
“What changed?”
“I stopped pretending I liked who I was around her.”
“Was it a bad relationship?” I ask.
“No. She just wanted someone quieter. Said I was too intense.”
I look at him—the broad shoulders, the steady gaze, the sheer presence of him. “You? Intense?”
His eyes find mine. Something unreadable moves through them. “You’d be surprised.”
I hold his gaze a second too long. “What made you come back? Really.”
“The ocean,” he says. “It started to feel like I was runningfromsomething instead oftowardit. I was old enough to know the difference.”
I think about that. I think about Betty, his grandmother. “I still miss her,” I say. “I think about her every Christmas. The cornbread, specifically.”
He laughs, the good kind. “She’d have been outraged that the cornbread is what stuck.”
We sit in the comfort of the memory. I think about how different our childhoods were. My family was messy and struggling, but we werethere. Griffin only had Betty.
“Your mom looked well yesterday,” Griffin says, following my thoughts.
“She did. We finally got the medication balanced again. It takes so long to get it right, and every time something shifts, it’s like starting over. But she’s been steady lately.”
He nods, but he doesn’t push. He never has.
“She’s stronger than people give her credit for,” I say.
He looks at me over his coffee. “Takes one to know one.”
Joelle reappears with the coffee pot, refilling our cups. The newspaper is still face-down between us.
Outside, Opal Creek is fully awake. I ran away yesterday, and now I’m sitting in a booth in a town I’d never heard of, front page of the paper, eating eggs with Griffin Hayes while my whole life waits for me to come back and clean it up.
Just not quite yet.
“Griffin?”
“Hmm?”
“Thank you for yesterday. For all of it.”
He holds my gaze. “Don’t mention it.”
He means it, and that, more than anything else, is what makes my throat tight.
I pick up my coffee. Outside, the morning keeps going.
For the first time in three years, I think I might be going with it.
Sixteen
The hotel has done something incredibly kind with the wedding dress.
When I came down this morning, it was hanging in a heavy garment bag and treated with a dignity it frankly doesn’t deserve. I accepted it with a faint, burning embarrassment and thanked Barb at the desk. She just waved me off and told me to take good care of myself, which I am currently choosing to believe is a skill I can still learn.
