“Oh, I’m not sure we ever really meant it,” she said casually, even though she knew it wasn’t true. That it had been another grand plan, another pipe dream, more like it. “That would have required buying this place.”
“I did buy it,” he said flatly, forcing her attention.
She stared at him for a moment, not sure of what to say. “Oh. Wow.”
Technically, she supposed that did make it their home.
“I should have told you,” he admitted now, sighing heavily. “It’s all in my name, but I still should have said something. The owner gave a good deal, sort of a rent to own arrangement.”
She shook her head, knowing that it was important, that she should know, but at the same time, she wasn’t sure that it mattered. If she counted their night at the barn dance, then there was only one date left on their agreement until they went their separate ways forever, in every sense of the word.
“I’m glad you kept it,” she said, thinking that it would have stung to know some other couple had snatched it up, made a home of it, lived a life that she had given up or never found.
He heaved a sigh. “Not so sure I’ll be keeping it for long.”
She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“The pub is underwater. I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you.”
Her shoulders dropped when she saw the disappointment in his eyes. “So you’ll need to cash out the house to save the business?”
“Something like that,” he said, turning his back to pull together some ice in a bag.
Brooke walked around the small space, toward the dining table, running her hands softly over the grooves of the wood, the stain was even more rich and beautiful than she’d remembered. She smiled, about to tell him so, when something caught her eye.
A stack of papers, with the bank’s letterhead.
Loan papers, she realized with a start.
She inched closer as her heart began to race, scanning quickly, until she looked up, seeing Kyle staring at her, his expression pained.
“You’re applying for a loan for the pub?” It was all there, in black and white, but somehow still she needed to hear him say it because he knew what this meant every bit as much as she did. A business loan wasn’t easy to get, worse when you had two people in the same family trying for one, and he’d known it all along.
“Ryan thinks the only way to keep the pub going is to change it.”
“And you?”
He shrugged. “Guess my problem has always been the same. I can’t let go of the past, even when I know I should.”
He held her gaze for so long that her heart felt like it had dropped into her stomach. Standing here, in this house—in their home—she felt like she had gone back to the past. Never left it.
And maybe that’s what she should have done.
“Good thing we’re getting divorced then,” she quipped, but damn it, there was an edge to her tone and the tears threatened the back of her eyes.
“Brooke. This wasn’t my idea. This wasn’t part of the plan when you first came back.”
“And since when do you stick to plans, Kyle?” The tears in her eyes were hot now, threatening to fall, and she didn’t even try to stop them as she pushed past him and down the porch steps, ignoring the pain in her ankle. It would mend—but her heart…it never had. It was just like that awful day, the last time she was here, when he’d told her he wasn’t coming to New York, that he’d made his decision, that he was staying right here.
That something else was more important to him than a future with her.
She’d packed her bags, knowing there wasn’t much she wanted to take, that she was looking to her future now, that anything from the past would only hold her back. She’d sat in the bedroom, on the old faded quilt, letting the tears silently fall, willing him to come inside and tell her to stay as much as she willed him to come in and tell her he had changed his mind.
Instead, she’d heard the opening and the closing of the back door, and she’d quietly slipped the thin bands off her finger, and set them down on the bedside table, before walking out the front door, and not looking back.
Kyle stepped toward her now, but she moved back quickly.
It was a mistake kissing him. Just like it was a mistake coming here.
Maybe, it was a mistake coming back to this town.
*
Dinner with her family was the last thing Brooke was up to tonight, but she’d spent too many years alone in an apartment to do the same again. She arrived early and told her mother that she’d be looking through the attic for any old pieces of furniture that might be used in her apartment. The truth was that she needed to be alone, to think, but she also needed to do something she’d avoided for years.
Face the past.
Her mother had kept a trunk for each of the girls, where she kept their baby blankets and school yearbooks, treasures that they might someday want to keep, junk that she as a mother couldn’t readily part with, no matter how inconsequential it now seemed.
Brooke dropped onto the wooden floor and opened the chest, her heart thudding at what she already knew would be inside, but it sank just the same when she pushed the top back, revealed her tulle veil, carefully resting on her satin wedding gown.
She stared at the dress for a minute, realizing that it was more beautiful than she’d remembered it, or perhaps given it credit. Or maybe she hadn’t wanted to remember how
