Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 109299 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109299 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 546(@200wpm)___ 437(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
She scoffs. “Complicated by you falling in love with your client.”
Mom slaps down the menu. “What happened? Who is she? Can I meet her?”
“I wish,” I mutter. “Let’s order.”
“We’ll order, then you’ll talk,” she says in the most mom-tone ever.
The server swings by, and once we’re alone again, Mom puts on her very concerned about my son face. “So, I ask again, what happened?”
Emily bats her lashes. “Yes, I really want to know too.”
I roll my eyes. “You always want to know.”
“I do, and it sounds like you finally have good tea. So spill it.”
I could act put upon, like I sometimes do with Emily for fun. But I’m frayed too thin, stretched to the bone. I have no fight left in me. “Emily’s right. I fell in love with a client, and it was distracting. I couldn’t focus on the job. I wound up on social media, of all fucking things.”
“Language,” Mom says.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
Emily fills her in on the details. “There was a picture of him and Haven Addison’s sister going out the other night and looking madly in love.” Grabbing her phone, she shows Mom the image.
“Oh, I loved Haven in The Dating Games.” Mom studies the photo and adds, “Her sister’s quite pretty too.”
For the first time, I look at the picture and see something besides my damaged reputation and a lost client. I see the last few wonderful, amazing weeks. Warmth fills my cells. A dangerous smile tugs at my lips as images of Ripley flash before my eyes and words fight their way out.
“She’s beautiful and smart and fiery and caring and thoughtful,” I begin, and once I start, I can’t stop. The valve has loosened. “She’s bold and kind, and she keeps me on my toes. She loves to knock me down a peg or two or three, and she also tries to protect me. When I first started the job, she tried to give me the slip.”
Mom’s enrapt at this info. Emily too. I take them back to the first day on the job and how valiantly my woman tried to ditch me.
Soon, they’re laughing and asking for more. I tell them about the bike, and about Ripley’s friends showing up outside the salon and goading us.
I tell them about how we had to share the cottage.
I don’t tell them how we spent our nights, or how utterly, absolutely in sync we are after dark. That’s for Ripley and me.
Instead, I tell them her favorite lavender is Melissa. That I set bouquets of it in the cottage for her.
“I walked her dog and made her origami, and she showed me around Darling Springs, and I felt like…” I pause, giving some real thought to how I felt with the woman I fell for. The answer’s clear and beautiful. Like freedom and desire all at once. “Like I wasn’t chased by the past.”
Mom sighs happily.
Emily even drops her usual sarcasm. “That sounds really nice.” But then she clears her throat. “So why aren’t we meeting her tonight then?”
I groan, and it’s full of self-loathing. “Because I ruined it all.”
I tell them that part too, finishing the tale right as the food arrives.
“This looks delicious,” Mom says of the risotto, but she doesn’t pick up her fork to take a bite. Instead, she turns her gaze back to me, her eyes thoughtful. “It sounds like you are stuck in the past, though, Banks.”
I flinch. “Why do you say that?”
“So you fell for a client. I get that you want to be professional, but you’re not the first person to fall for a client or an employee, and you won’t be the last. But you’re beating yourself up because you still think it’s somehow your fault that your father lied about his second family. But it’s not.”
Way to be direct.
Ripley said the same thing the other week. Did I believe her? I tried, but maybe I didn’t fully accept it.
Emily’s gaze softens too. “It’s definitely not your fault, Banks. It’s Dad’s.”
“But…” I begin, but the objection dies. What am I even protesting? I’m not entirely sure.
Mom deals me a tough-love stare. “You think you don’t deserve nice things because you’ve held on to this belief that you have to protect me, and Emily, and any woman in your path at all costs since you think you could have protected me from him,” she says with a strength of character that comes from her own resilience, from the way she picked up the pieces and moved on. “But you couldn’t. He did what he did, and he was the only one to blame.”
Like Ripley said.
And dammit, it’s high time I believe it. Maybe belief is a choice. A line in the sand. A before and after.
Right now, I can choose to believe that I wasn’t responsible.
And I will.