Wasn’t sure she wanted to, she thought, catching his eye as she reached the door.
“I haven’t ridden a bike in years,” she said ruefully.
“Some things take a little getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it’s like you never stopped.” His eyes locked hers, and she swallowed hard against the pounding of her chest. She had the feeling that he wasn’t talking about the bicycle right now.
“I can’t believe you still live in this place. It feels like yesterday that we were moving in.” Their friends and family had all pitched in, even though their belongings were meager. A hand-me-down sofa, a coffee table that Kyle had made himself, a mattress until he was finished carving the headboard.
“Remember how I carried you over the threshold?” Kyle said now as she took the final step onto the porch.
She resisted a smile, but not for long. “You tripped on that loose board and nearly killed us both.” She laughed at the memory. She hadn’t thought of it in a long time.
“Well, it’s all fixed now,” Kyle said quietly.
Brooke was preparing herself for the fading carpet, the walls that could have used a fresh coat of paint, the nail holes that she strategically covered in cheap framed art prints.
Instead, she was met with stained hardwood floors, crisp walls in a warm neutral color, and sunlight billowing in through the windows, where her curtains still hung.
“It looks amazing,” she gasped, taking it all in. “We talked about doing all this, remember? If we held onto the place, for when we visited.”
“For when we came back,” he said, nodding. “I remember. I remember everything.”
She pulled her eyes from his, tearing herself from the memories that were washing over her in waves.
“You didn’t take down the curtains,” she whispered. They were prettier than she remembered, and now she knew why she’d had to ask for the fabric for a gift. It hadn’t been cheap, and back then, had certainly been outside of her budget.
With the changes that Kyle had made to the space, they fit better than ever before.
“You worked too hard on those to ever take them down,” he said, giving her a hint of a smile. He jutted his chin to the floor. “Believe it or not, this wood was under the carpet the whole time. And the paint, well, it’s just a fresh coat.”
“It’s…wonderful,” she said, venturing farther inside to realize that other than unleashing everything that was already there, the house was the same as it had been the day she’d left.
“Better than the apartment you found in New York?” He raised an eyebrow, clearly remembering the conversation they’d had about the place. Of course, it had looked much different in the pictures than it had in real life.
“I cried the first night there,” she admitted now with a little smile, and not because of him. “It took a lot of time to fix up and make my own.”
Her own. He nodded at this, and the room fell silent. She used the opportunity to look around, at the mantle, which he’d replaced with one of his carvings, at the framed photo that rested on it.
Their wedding photo.
He followed her gaze. “Didn’t seem right to shove it in a box or a drawer.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, but one thing was very obvious. “I thought you didn’t do woodworking anymore.”
She looked at him, questioningly, and he walked into the adjacent kitchen, pulled some ice from the freezer, and dropped it into a plastic bag. “This stuff, it was just for me.”
She looked at the dining table, the one that been his gift to her, seeing it with fresh eyes. There was so much care, and detail, from the turned legs to the grain of the wood.
“You have a real talent, Kyle,” she said, letting her gaze drift back to him. “I wish you wouldn’t give it all up.”
His mouth was firm, his eyes sad. “Running the pub takes a lot of time. The business is struggling, but I don’t need to tell you that.”
No, he didn’t.
“I never wanted the pub to fail,” she said softly.
“And I never wanted to run it,” he replied, shocking her. It was the first admittance. In the past, he had always been so defensive, so determined to prove to himself that he was making the right choice, even when she knew that he wouldn’t be happy.
Now, realizing that he wasn’t, she didn’t feel any better.
She looked out the window, out onto the trees that led to the glimpse of the lake, to the rocky shoreline where the two chairs that he’d made still sat.
“I used to love sitting out there, watching the waves, dreaming about our life together.”
He came to stand beside her at the counter, following her gaze. “We had a lot of plans. But there was another plan, too. Do you remember it?”
A chill rolled over her as she stared out the window, thinking of him beside her, so content, the breeze on their faces, a mug of coffee in his hand, just like right now, like any other morning.
“We always said that after we’d made it, gone out into the world and done all we’d planned to do, that we’d find a way back to this house, and we’d live out our golden years sitting right there on those chairs.”
Tears prickled the back of her eyes, blurring her vision, and she looked away, quickly
