“Doesn’t have to be childish. We just see which business is more popular during the festival.”
“Sounds childish.”
“It’s market research.”
She has no idea. “You want to pit alcohol against smoothies? The beer and cider garden willcrushyou.”
“Bring it on. And let’s be real. Alcohol isnotincluded in this challenge. While I’d love to offer June’s cider for sale and go head-to-head with yours, my smoothie bar is unlicensed. So, we’re talking my smoothies versus your ‘actual food.’” Her eyes glitter at me in a way that can’t be misconstrued.
This woman is competitive. She’slivingfor this shit. She’d fight me and even lose trying, rather than sit back and share with the likes of me.
“If that’s what you want,” I tell her.
“Great. Whoever sells more, we take that to June. It’s proof of what people want, and therefore which business should get to lease Pier Seven for the rest of the summer. Unless, of course, you’re too scared of losing to a woman and a bunch of ‘liquid fruit.’”
We stare each other down. And Jace’s words come back to haunt me.
Sierra fucking scares you.
“Fine,” I say. “Agreed. When you lose, you can pack up and move out.”
I turn on my heel and head over to my bar just to get the sight of her out of my eyes. My heart is racing. Every fucking word the woman says gets under my skin.
“Cool!” she calls after me. “When you lose, you can throw yourself a pity party at your bar! I’ll send over smoothies!”
Chapter 14
Mason
I lie sprawled on my back in my new bed, staring at the fan that loops lazily on the ceiling, around and around. I smell freshly brewed coffee. Hear birds singing in the trees outside the new windows, the purr of farm equipment in the distance, and the softshooshof the sea beyond.
But I can’t seem to muster a fuck to give about getting up and getting started with my day.
Now that this is my bedroom, it feels entirely new. New paint, new floor, new furniture. Not one hint remains of the years my parents spent in here, or my dad’s parents before that. My grandpa said this was right, that I needed to make it mine. But I needed it, too: the change.
How could I rest, sleep, fuck in a bedroom with my parents’ ghosts?
This was the last room to finish in the extensive renovations that my dad began and I finally just completed. But somehow, the family house still doesn’t feel like mine.
I want it to.
I don’t know if it ever will.
Maybe because it wasn’t supposed to be mine nearly so soon.
I lived in this house for the first eighteen years of my life. But nothing has quite felt like home since the accident.
Or maybe it was long before they died that this problem began.
Maybe it started when I came back to Orchard Cove, all those years ago, a different man than the one who left.
Maybe I thought there would be a change once the primary bedroom was mine and I moved into it. A shift inside me.
I’m still waiting for that shift to happen.
But every morning this week, since I finally moved up here, it’s been the same sense of dread when I open my eyes and smell the coffee my brother’s brewing downstairs. The house is done, but it’s nothomeyet. That’s the feeling.
I’m not at home.
