Heat flooded his cheeks. Oh for fuck’s sake, he was blushing. He never blushed. Not only that, but he was usually damn smooth when it came to women, and yet when he opened his mouth, he stammered a bit in response. “Uh, yeah, I guess I am. It just, uh, felt right. Probably because this place looks like the set of a romantic comedy.”
Rather than yank her hand away, Mari just laced their fingers together and brought the ice-cream cone back to her lips. “You’re right, I feel like I’m in a romcom. Of course, if I was, I’d totally be working there—” She gestured across the street.
Austin followed her gaze to the bright pink sign of a flower shop called Lucille’s Petals.
“I’d be Lucille,” Mari went on, “and you’d probably be the big-city lawyer whose BMW crashes in Haven and he has to stay in town until his car is fixed.” Then she paused, her blue eyes still fixed on the sign. “Okay, I’m just going to say it. Doesn’t ‘Lucille’s Petals’ sound like the dirtiest thing ever?”
Austin choked out a laugh. “Yup. I was just thinking the same thing.”
They took off walking again, their strides slow and relaxed, the conversation moving easily and without a single beat of awkwardness. Mari told him a few teaching stories about her favorite students in Chicago, he spoke about some of his past photography jobs, and by the time they returned to the SUV, he was even more reluctant to part ways with his pretty companion.
But what was he going to do? Hold her hostage and force her to hang out with him indefinitely? Right, and then that driver’s license of his that she’d photographed would definitely come in handy when she was filing the restraining order.
“That was a lot of fun,” Mari said as she slid into the passenger seat. “It’s been so long since I’ve spent an afternoon just wandering around and doing nothing.”
Austin started the engine, then checked the side mirror to make sure it was safe to pull out of the spot. “I know what you mean.”
She snorted. “Yeah, right. You don’t have a nine-to-five job. You can wander around all the time.”
“True.” He couldn’t deny that he was pretty lucky. Not a lot of folks got to set their own hours, let alone live out their dreams.
As he drove back in the direction of the interstate, he expected the conversation to remain fun and easy, but his passenger threw him for a loop.
“So seriously, Austin, why are you dilly-dallying about going home? Does your family hate you or something?”
“Nope.” His jaw tensed. “In fact, they’re dying for me to come home.”
“Ah, so the reluctance is on your part. Why is that?”
He just shrugged.
“Oh, ’fess up,” she said in a teasing tone. “What do you have to lose? We’ll never see each other again after today, so you might as well unload on me.”
Austin gave her a sideways glance, slightly startled by the earnest concern shining in her eyes. She seemed to genuinely want to hear about his problems, but reluctance lodged in his throat again.
The last time he’d spoken to anyone about it had been with Bree Lockhart, his brother Jake’s girlfriend, and he couldn’t remember ever feeling so uncomfortable. For some reason, Austin’s mother had decided to spill her guts to Bree, who had immediately tried to initiate a heart-to-heart with him. He knew Bree had meant well, but the awkward exchange had ended up triggering that need to skip town again.
He’d been so damn tired of the pressure. His mother begging him to move past it, Bree urging him to forgive, his brothers reprimanding him for acting so distant. Leaving Paradise had felt like the answer at the time, but even when he was miles and miles away, the pressure had remained.
It was time to resolve this whole bullshit mess, he knew that, but talking about it still evoked that agonizing rush of discomfort and hesitation.
“Come on, I’m a good listener…”
Mari’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
He opened his mouth, prepared to thank her for the offer but not take her up on it, but for the life of him, he couldn’t control the words that came rushing out.
“Last year I found out that my uncle is actually my father.”
Chapter Three
Almost immediately, Austin felt like a huge weight was lifted off his chest. His shoulders were no longer heavy, his throat no longer tight with the bitterness that had been jammed inside it for an entire fricking year.
“Wait, what?”
Even as he reveled in that feeling of being…unburdened, he still had to laugh at the startled look in Mari’s eyes.
“My uncle is my father,” he repeated. Then he shook his head. “Fuck, it feels so weird to say it. It’s all I’ve been thinking about this whole year, but this is the first time I’ve actually said it out loud.”
Mari tucked a few errant strands of hair behind her ear, then shifted in the seat so she could see him better. “Okay, you’re going to need to start from the beginning. How exactly did you find this out?”
The moment the memories resurfaced, his entire body tightened again. Great. So much for being unburdened.