His gut tightened. “Granny—”
“Just take it.” She sniffed slightly and focused on her bubbling jam concoction. “Give it to that girl. Pretty sure you love her just like Herb loved me. Or buy yourself something fancy and modern to give her. I don’t much care so long as you get your head on straight and do what’s right.”
He slid the ring over the tip of his pinky finger. It was as far as it would go. She knew he’d never want modern and fancy. Then he kissed her lined cheek. “You’re a helluva woman, you know.”
She snorted. “Of course I know.” But she patted his cheek the same way she’d done when he was five. “Now get on with you. I don’t want to see your face until you’ve come clean with Arabella once and for all.”
He hadn’t slept. Hadn’t showered.
He knew he probably ought to at least do one of those things before he went down on bended knee, but he did neither. Just got in his truck and drove back into town.
It was a sign of his own stupidity that he had to spend an extra hour getting gas when he ran out of it halfway there.
But finally he was standing on Brady’s front porch step. The afternoon sun was high in the sky above him and he squinted against the glare because he’d also forgotten his hat back at his grandmother’s place.
“You’re falling apart, man,” he muttered to himself before reaching out to knock on the door.
He heard the squeals of little boys laughing before the door opened up and he looked down to see Toby—or was it Tyler?—looking up at him. “Hey there. I’m here to see your auntie Bella.”
“She’s in the backyard,” the boy said artlessly. “How come you made her cry?”
He frowned. “She’s crying?”
The twin’s twin popped his head into the doorway. “’Cause you’re a liar,” he said seriously. “We gotta get time out when we lie. Are you gonna get time out?”
The only thing Jay had lied about to Arabella was his past. “Can I come in?”
The two boys shook their heads. “We’re not supposed to open the door.”
“But you did.”
They gave each other looks and promptly shut the door right in his face.
Jay started to knock again, but thought better of it.
Instead, he left the geranium on the porch and walked around to the back of the house. It was protected by a tall wooden fence all the way around the yard. Logically, he knew there had to be a gate somewhere, but he was way too impatient just then to try to find it.
Feeling like the biggest louse on the planet, he stretched up and caught the top of the fence, then grunting slightly, managed to heave himself up and over.
He landed in a pile of dog poop, which should have been his biggest warning to date that things were not going to go as he planned. He scraped his boot as well as he could against the grass and walked farther into the backyard, turning around the corner of the house.
And there she sat. Her flaming hair was spread around her shoulders. The temper in Arabella’s blue eyes when she spotted him made them almost as black as the bruises that had faded over the last several days. She didn’t even seem all that surprised to see him. “What’re you doing here?”
He took a few cautious steps closer. She was holding a baseball in her hands and the way she kept turning it between her palms was a little alarming. Particularly when she’d told his mother just two days earlier how she’d played softball in high school.
“I came to tell you something I should have told you a long time ago.”
She tossed the ball lightly from one hand to the other. “I think you should know that—” She broke off, seeming to be waiting for some response.
“That I’m—” His voice came out croaky and hoarse. He cleared his throat. “I’m in love with you,” he finished more clearly.
She made a harsh, buzzing sound. “Wrong.”
“What?”
“Before the balcony collapse. You were going to tell me something. Remember?”
Time had been so full in the last several weeks that in comparison, the balcony collapse felt like it had happened years ago, rather than just six months. “I remember I wanted to tell you everything about me.”
“Like the fact that you’re a liar?”
Regret sank hard inside his gut. “Bella.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You know. Don’t you?”
Her lips twisted. “That you’re Jett Carr?” She bounced the ball twice in her palm. “And I’m the biggest fool on the planet?”
“You’re not a fool.”
She sent the ball whizzing two inches from his head.
It bounced hard on the fence beyond him. “You should have told me,” she said flatly and marched inside the house.
She slammed the door behind her.
Jay went over to it and tried the knob. No shock that she’d locked it.
He pressed his forehead against the warm wood. “I should have told you,” he said loudly enough that if, by some miracle, she was still standing close to the door she’d be able to hear. “People used to only like me because I was Jett. And the longer things went on with you, the more I was afraid you’d like me only if I’d never been him at all. Bella, I’m sorry. I warned you that I wasn’t good enough for you but I fell in love with you, anyway. You’re everything that’s right in this freaking world.”
The door yanked open and he nearly stumbled inside. Tears glittered in her eyes, making them even more sharply blue. “I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out before I saw your damn video. You gave it all up. Became someone new. Never gonna trust again. Certainly not me. Not enough to tell me the truth. Was she the complication in California, Jay? The woman who broke
