My stomach flip-flops, and I have to grip the edge of the counter to hold myself steady. I was prepared to call King my husband, but this feels like more. This feels like my hold over my life is slipping even more than it already has. “Why don’t we just hire a different attorney?”
King huffs a laugh and runs his hands down his face. “Georgie. Did you forget the part where I said Vanderman was Uncle Bill’s best friend? Bill didn’t trust anyone else, so how can I?”
I get that. But if we’re stuck with a guy who will have to be convinced? “On paper only,” I mutter, forcing myself to take slow, even breaths. “That’s all I’m agreeing to.”
“Then it’s not going to work.”
I groan. “You’re telling me you’re totally fine with pretending you don’t hate me?”
“I don’t ha…” He stops himself before he finishes the sentence, which doesn’t feel great. He would be justified in keeping me low on his list of favorite people; I did turn down his proposal and leave him on an uninhabited island. “It would only be when we’re in public together, which doesn’t have to happen often. We’ll both be too busy with our respective jobs to spend much time together.”
“A bright spot of this plan,” I say as I start cleaning up the mess I made with the biscuits. I’m still not sure why King’s kitchen is so well-equipped, but getting it back to the spotless state it was in before will be a great distraction as this conversation continues. “And how is never spending time together going to convince Vanderman?”
“Ah. Right. Maybe… One date a week?”
“How about no dates? We can just visit each other at our respective places of business.”
His expression hardens when I glance up at him. “You’re not going to break my shelves again, are you?”
“Only if you throw up inside my bakery again.”
“It’s not your bakery.” The words come out sharp enough that I jump, and King cringes. “Sorry. I’m… Sometimes it doesn’t feel real that he’s gone.”
Something inside me aches to pull him into my arms and comfort him, but this conversation does not feel like a good time to be friendly. It feels weird, talking about what our marriage is going to look like, because it’s so different from how our talks used to sound. Granted, eighteen-year-olds don’t have a great grasp on what adulthood will look like, but we used to sit on the beach and talk about how great it would be to work on the boardwalk together, drive home after a long day, settle on the couch and watch our favorite show…
It all sounded so magical back then. But that isn’t how life works, and when I graduated and started thinking about what I wanted in life—about the dreams that could never be achieved here—I realized we were too naive. Too young to get married.
I probably should have told King as much instead of running away, but I’d known, even then, that he would have had an argument ready for me. We can have a long engagement. We don’t have to get married right away. He never would have understood why I couldn’t say yes.
He’s never going to leave Willow Cove. I know that now as much as I knew it then. I loved him too much to risk resenting him when my dreams slipped away from me. Or him resenting me for not being content with a small but good life and wanting more. So I left.
“I don’t know if we can do this,” King says, probably reading my mind. If only he could have done that back then. Maybe he would have seen my fears and known not to push things too fast. Or at all.
I take a steeling breath. “I can do this. It’s only temporary.”
“Your favorite.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I only have to deal with you for a few months, which is probably the only reason I’ll make it through in one piece.”
I sneer a little, feeling my competitive nature rising. “I’m sorry this is going to be so difficult for you. You always did struggle with hard things.”
“Okay.” He stands, the stool scraping along the floor behind him, and folds his arms again. I’m pretty sure he’s flexing, and it’s taking everything in me not to look down and admire his well-toned torso. “I can handle this marriage, Georgie. I’m more worried about you running off before all is said and done and wasting my time.”
His counter-attack stings, but he has a point. “I’m not going to run. Not until the bakery is thriving, anyway.”
“And then what?”
I shrug, though I know he won’t like me not having a solid plan beyond the immediate. “Then I figure out what to do from there. Maybe I’ll find someone who can manage the place well enough so I can move on and use the profits to build my own thing. No matter what, I’ll keep the place, so you don’t have to worry about it disappearing.”
He clenches his jaw but seems to accept that answer, nodding a little as he settles back on the stool. “So I’ll stop by in the mornings,” he says, returning to the original topic.
I sigh and start returning dishes to the cupboards so I don’t have to look at him during this part. “I can bring you baked goods in the afternoons.”
“If anyone asks, and they will, we recently reconnected.”
“Which is true.”
“Unfortunately.”
I roll my eyes. “Are you going to be this grumpy all the time? Since when did you become a crotchety old man?”
“Since my girlfriend ran away without any word of explanation and disappeared.” His gaze is cold when I look at him, but I can see the pain behind the ice. “Since she came back after ten years and pretended we didn’t need to talk about it.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
I shouldn’t be relieved, but I am. I know it’s something we should talk about, but I am too good at avoiding confrontation to have any idea how that conversation might go. I’m not sure I would know what to say in the first place. Sometimes, when I look back at that day, I think I understand why I left the way I did, and other times I wish I could go back to that moment and really take my time understanding why the only emotion inside me when he dropped to one knee was terror.
Back then, it felt so much easier to think he would understand. He knew I wanted to start my own bakery someday, and I knew he wanted to stay close to his uncle, and I figured he would connect the dots and agree that it wasn’t a good idea to get married.
Looking at him now, I don’t think he connected anything. And I don’t think Bill ever told King any of the stuff I told him over the years.
“King.”
“No,” he repeats. “Not now.”
