“It is if you’re only married for insurance.” Bree fluttered her lips. “What do his friends think about this whole marriage thing? Does he have a friend? Not all men do.”
“I don’t think he’s told his friends,” she said, trying to appear unfazed by Elliot’s apparent shame surrounding all things Lainey Davis.
Lainey’d overheard Elliot on FaceTime with Sebastian, Annie, and Grayson countless times. She guessed Annie was the one initiating the calls. Of the two of them, she seemed the most concerned that Elliot’s abrupt move was a sign of a prolonged psychological break, and as such, her voice always carried an air of parental relief when Elliot answered her calls appearing more or less intact. On those calls, they discussed his renovations, the weather, and the general frustrations of remote government work, but Elliot never mentioned Lainey. Not once.
“Do you think you’re grateful for the medication and your brain is confusing that for attraction?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, even though she was certain gratitude wasn’t the source of her attraction. She’d felt that from the very start. What was beginning to grow between them now was something else. Something big.
“The medsareworking, right?” she asked.
“They are,” Lainey assured her. “They’re not magic, but my migraines are more controlled. I finally have the energy to feel…inspired again.”
For her, the worst part of chronic pain wasn’t the physical toll, but the mental one. For so long, she’d wake up with hands itching to create and thoughts consumed by inspiration, but her mind hurt and her body was worn out before the day had even begun. Sometimes it made her want to cry, not the pain—well,a littlethe pain—but the feeling of being trapped inside her body. She never knew when she’d wake up a bird chained to the floor of a cage. Now she was starting to take waking up feeling well for granted, which two months ago she never could have allowed herself to hope for.
Bree stood, belly in hand. “Well, personally, I love this. And you know, with the baby coming, I’ve been thinking…” Lainey’s heart beat impatiently. Bree was ramping up to something. “About kids and the retreat and the future, and it occurred to me…but I wanted to talk to you first because…and I really hope you’ll be honest with me. You’re always honest with me, right? Actually, let me back up—”
“Dear god, woman. Spit it out,” Lainey demanded. Bree’s sentence was turning into the slow climb of a roller coaster Lainey hadn’t agreed to ride.
“I want to bring back ‘Little Groff,’ ” she announced, bracing for Lainey’s reaction. Lainey’s time at the Groff Retreat wasLainey’s third-least-favorite topic (after Hayden and large spiders, respectively).
Lainey’s face screwed up. “What if instead you bring back waterbeds in all of the cabins?”
Bree pursed her lips. “I’m being serious, Laine.”
“So am I! Waterbeds are the only bed you could potentially capsize in, making every night’s sleep a death-defying rush.” Whether liquid-filled mattresses or Little Groff, Lainey suspected she bore equal enthusiasm to either’s revival. “Didn’t the program run at a loss every year?”
Bree shrugged. “So? You were good with the kids.”
Lainey pulled herself up to stand in front of the bathroom vanity and turned on the tap. “Is this your roundabout way of lending me money?”
Lainey watched her friend sigh through the mirror and say, “It wasn’t your fault it all went…sideways.”
For years, the Groff Retreat, a secluded resort dedicated to providing luxurious accommodations famous for hard corners and sharp lines, had operated an efficient system of shuffling children into a barn to be neither seen nor heard. After the parents ditched their kids with Lainey to enjoy their adult vacation, it’d been her job to keep them occupied.
Lainey had been good with the kids. She understood them. They created elaborate art projects with items they found in the woods. They rollicked in and out of the break of Lake Superior. They had paint balloon fights. They darted around the grounds on “secret missions” that usually involved stealing her ice-cream sandwiches from the kitchen because Chef Julian was a stingy asshole. She let the kids be as free as they longed to be, all in the name of “cultural enrichment.”
She’d created her own messy corner in their neat little worlds.So it made a sad sort of sense that Lainey’s job as the art coordinator for Little Groff would end catastrophically and shutter the entire program.
Lainey swung her head under the cabinet again to check her work. “Just a couple of weeks ago you were trying to get me to move overseas. Which is it?”
“I just want to see youwantsomething again. I honestly don’t care what that is.”
“I want things,” she argued, wiping her hands on a towel. “IwantElliot to buy the house from me because Iwantto go someplace else.”
“Wanting change itself isn’t the same as wantingsomething.”
“I think it mightliterallybe the same thing.”
Bree pinched her eyelashes shut, and Lainey imagined her friend was giving herself an internal pep talk to either speak up or stay quiet—which, she wasn’t sure.
“What?” Lainey demanded impatiently.
“You have this tendency to get distracted by the plan before the plan. There’s always a reason you can’t do the thing. Always one last puzzle piece, ‘one last hustle,’ before you’re allowed to want things for yourself. This marriage-cabin scheme is starting to feel like more of the same.”
But this couldn’t bemoredifferent. Lainey was healthy. She was happy. She was closer than ever to finally leaving this town. Bree had no clue what she was talking about.
“Andyouhave a tendency to fixate on my life to avoid your own.”
