He lets out a deep, gusting sigh and his mouth curls at the edge, just a touch. Regret, it looks like. “So I thought—I don’t know. I guess I thought making you one of these things would be a start at saying sorry, for the way I left things. The last time we were together, I told you I couldn’t keep watching you walk away. You told me to ask you to stay, and I didn’t. I was having trouble with the possibility that you’d want to. I thought, how could someone like Evie want to be here? With me?” He pauses and drifts his hand over his heart. My own pounds in response. “I’ve kept so much from you.”
Hope lights up every inch of me, my heart in my throat. I ignore everyone else in the room and take a step closer to the screen, looking at those blue-green eyes, somehow the same color as the sky above him and the trees behind him.
“So this is—I’m asking you to stay this time,” he rasps. “I’m trying to do it right. Come home, honey. Stay with me for a bit. I’ll make you those muffins you like and won’t say a damn thing about you stealing my socks. We’ll sit on the porch and I’ll tell you about the stars. I’ll bring you flowers every day.” He scratches behind his ear and shifts his phone, a rustle of fabric against the bottom speaker.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say this next part.” He gives the camera a grin, knuckles against his jaw. “I want you to stay with me. You can leave when you have to. So long as you come back when you’re done.”
I hold onto the back of the chair in front of me, my hands gripping the top edge until my knuckles turn white. I wish I were standing in front of him. I wish I could trace those lines by his eyes and step between his feet, press my palm to his neck and guide his mouth to mine.
He blinks and his gaze trips somewhere else, another lingering pause. His eyes swing back to the phone with a brush of color across his cheeks, a slow-curling, bashful grin that inches under my ribcage. “Alright, well. That’s it, I guess.” He shrugs, a little unsure. “I know you came back here because you were looking for your happy. But Evie, you gave me mine while you were looking for yours and I think it’s only fair if I try to return the favor. I’ll be, uh—” he swallows around his words—looking, I know, for the right ones. “I’ll be here. You know where to find me.” He stares at the phone like he wishes it were me instead. “Bye.”
The video cuts off with a fumble, his movements unpracticed, his frowning face the last thing I see before the video loops—back to him standing beneath the sun.
I stand there in that tiny conference room and I watch it again. Again and again and again. I feel the eyes of the other people in the room as they watch me for a reaction. I’m pretty sure a couple of them have their cameras out.
But I don’t care.
I only see Beckett and the dark shadows under his eyes that tell me he hasn’t been sleeping much, the way the sunlight catches in his hair and makes it seem lighter—a halo of gold around him. I catalog the lines of his face and the way the ones by his eyes deepen when he says come home, honey.
I feel those words melt against me.
I tighten my grip on my bag as a smile begins to bloom across my lips. Like the wildflowers in that field at the edge of the farm, my face tilted towards the sun.
On my way.
“For the record,” Josie appears at my side with her phone clasped loosely in her palm. It hangs down by her side buzzing away as her chin finds my shoulder. She ignores it and instead sighs happily as ten-foot-Beckett scratches once under his jaw. “I like his plan better.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
BECKETT
I’m having regrets.
Not for what I said, but for—
“Dude, you made me cry.”
I grunt and ignore Gus, throwing a box of pasta into my cart. For whatever reason, I decided today is the day to break my unspoken only-shop-in-the-dead-of-night rule. An attempt, probably, at integrating myself into town like Evie was always encouraging me to do.
Evie, who I haven’t heard a word from since I posted that video almost twelve hours ago.
I’ve heard from the rest of the continental United States, though. A bunch of other countries as well. My phone has been buzzing non-stop since I decided to stand out in the middle of the fields with my phone like a jackass.
I wanted to do something outside of my comfort zone. I wanted Evelyn to see that video and realize that I’m—I’m going to try. I wandered out to the place with the towering oak trees just because it made me feel better—to stand there between them and remember the way Evie looked in the moonlight. With her hair tangled across the blanket and stars in her eyes.
It took me a couple of tries to get it right. I had to stop thinking so much about it, close my eyes and pretend like she was standing right in front of me. Wind in her hair, ruby red lips, the sun making her brown skin glow. It was easy when I went about it like that.
I didn’t bother watching it back before I posted it and haven’t quite mustered up the courage to watch it again. I had to ask Stella if I did anything weird. She had shaken her head wordlessly with her eyes full of tears. Not exactly a confidence boost. I have no explanation for the thousands of new followers on my account featuring exactly one video. Or the hundreds of thousands of comments that are both confounding and terrifying in their abject passion and enthusiasm.
I throw another box of pasta into my cart. Gus trails me down the aisle.
“It was poetic. Just—” he makes some sort of gesture with his hand that I cannot interpret. His finger and thumb pinched together and … I have no idea. I don’t want to know, frankly. “Who knew you were so eloquent under all that grunting?”
I fight the urge to grunt in response and steer my cart around the edge of the aisle. Gus leaves me for candy and beer while I debate the strawberry jam on the end cap. Evelyn liked it and I ran out three days before she left. I grab a jar and place it gently next to a carton of orange juice and three packs of fudge stripe cookies. I stare at it there in my cart like the sad sack I’ve turned into.
A little hope never hurt anyone, I reason.
Though that hope is quickly circling the drain as the silence stretches between us.
Maybe she didn’t see the video? I find that hard to believe considering her profession and the fact that every other living person in the universe has watched it at least three times.
Maybe she did see it and dropped her phone in another stagnant body of water. Or maybe she saw it and commented on the post. I haven’t figured out how to see if she did or not, and I’m too embarrassed to ask Nova for help.
Maybe she watched my video and hopped on the next plane she could.
Or maybe she saw it and laughed, pocketed her phone, and went about her business.
“All good?”
I blink away from the coffee creamers I’ve stalled in front of and glance at Sheriff Jones standing next to me. It’s weird seeing him out of uniform, almost unrecognizable in an old Orioles t-shirt and dark jeans. “What?”
“You’ve been staring at the dairy section like it’s done you personal harm for about seven minutes.” He chews around a toothpick. “Would you like to file a formal complaint?”
“No. I’m—” Tired. Losing hope. Uncomfortable that a woman in Cincinnati called me her cat daddy garden himbo in the comments section of a video meant for exactly one woman. I have no idea what that means, but it doesn’t sound good. “—fine.”