Page 53 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

I have to take a steady breath, because the admission is a lot heavier than I expected to bear after all this time. You’d think time would have healed the wound.

It simply laid a Band-Aid on it…

“I sat in that car telling myself I was protecting my little brother's whole future…and those across this small town who’ve helped raise us. Whose businesses…their livelihoods…their futures all on the line over a greedy rich man who wantshis daughter to simply be miserable. I told myself I drove away that day partly to protect you, the town, the cycle of work that runs through our small knot of a town, but at the expense of the Omega we adored’s heart."

I take a breath, letting it out as if I was holding it for far too long.

Theo doesn't rush me.

He's got our mother's undertow too, when he wants it.

“I’ve told myself for the longest time that it’s the most noble thing we could have done without it blowing up into a big deal…but I guess the reality is, it did implode on itself and simply left wounds that can surely never heal. Just scars and inconveniences for the sake of saving my brother, the town, and I guess our own livelihoods.”

The more I talk it out, the more I truly feel like shit.

Like a villain…

"Yeah," he says finally. "You did tell yourself that. You told me that, actually. At least part of that.” When I clearly look confused, he elaborates with, “Called me from a gas station in Connecticut sobbing about how you'd saved my future." He sets the coffee down. "So let me give it back to you, since you've clearly been carrying it like a lung.”

I know without a doubt this man is going to give me a reality check.

Like mother, like son, clearly.

“You didn't leave her for me, Cade. Or for those of Honeybell Harbor. You left because you were terrified, and I was a reason that sounded nicer than being a frightened coward going against a big bad wolf with an endless amount of money. Or at least enough to wipe away our little town and everyone in it, which honestly, would have been better than what you did to Amber.”That stings.“I never asked to be protected. I'd have handed thatscholarship back myself and worked the docks before I let you use my name as a getaway car."

The café is very quiet.

He’s fucking right…We both know it.

"I know," I finally admit. "I've known for a while. I needed you to hear that, though. Maybe confessing would remind me of what an arse I had been in the past."

"Okay." He picks the coffee back up. Just like that, the weight redistributes, the way it only can with the one person who's known you since before you learned to be charming. "Okay. That's…yeah. Good." A beat. "You're still an idiot."

Asshole.

"Deeply."

"But you drove four thousand miles to stand in a café and let Mom put you through a wood chipper before breakfast, so." He knocks his shoulder into mine. "There's hope. Marginal. Insurance-adjuster hope."

"That's the most anyone's offered me in years."

I know this is the start to the road of not only healing, but maybe growing a pair and fixing what is still broken in the depths of this town.

With a beating heart that I hope I can gather the pieces of and glue them back together, piece by piece before begging for forgiveness…

If we even get a chance.

"Don't waste it," he encourages with a clink of our mugs.

The town arrives in installments, the way it always did, because nothing in Honeybell Harbor stays private past breakfast.

I am, this morning, the breakfast gossip.

Delia Grant clocks in at seven and stops dead with her apron half-tied.

"Well, look what the tide dragged up the steps." She's been serving the morning shift here since I was in high school, and she remembers every romance this town has ever produced, filed and cross-referenced. "How long are we keeping you, then? Weekend? Season? Or is this one of your famous four-day appearances where you kiss everybody's cheek and vanish before the check comes?"

"Ten weeks, Delia. Maybe."