“I can see that, which is why I asked about Lane.”
Shaking his head, he steps in close and picks up the hand Lane tugged. He presses a long kiss to the soft skin of my inner wrist. “Did he hurt you?”
A little bit, but I’m worried what my husband might do if I say yes. “I’m fine.”
He seems to know I’m lying—he’s reading my mind, like always—but he lets the subject drop and instead kisses my forehead next. We’re still being watched, and I spot several phones recording us, but I’m not about to ruin this tender moment.
“I’m sorry about what he said to you,” he says gently. “None of it is true.”
“I know.” I really mean that, even if King seems to doubt it. “But seriously, what did you—”
“I talked to him.” King smiles a little and then presses a kiss to my jaw. It’s like he can’t stop finding new places to touch with his lips, and he’s going to get us into trouble if he’s not careful. We don’t need to give the internet a different kind of show. “That’s it. And I want nothing more than to talk to you now. Before this thing goes on any longer.”
There is nothing that could stop me from having a conversation with this man right now.
As he threads his fingers through mine, King lets his eyes wander to the brand-new dent in the wall. “Well,” he says slowly, “it’s looking like a new coat of paint is going to be the first order of business when you start the renovations. How do you feel about an off-white?”
I snort a laugh and wrap my arms around him, holding him tight. I think I’m going to like this conversation.
Chapter Eighteen
King
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve walked along the beaches of Willow Cove, particularly with Georgie, but this is one she’s never touched, which makes this feel significant. We made sure the girls were all set at the bakery, asking a surprisingly eager and repentant Meg to resume command over the rest of the baking for the morning, and then I brought Georgie here to the quiet beach across from my house. It’s not large enough for families to set up camp for the day, so it tends to stay quiet.
Quiet is what we need right now.
We’ve barely said anything since the whole thing with Lane went down, and I have so many things I want to say to Georgie. And so many things I should say but don’t want to. Like how Vanderman happened to be outside the bakery and heard me tell Lane that I will never sit by and allow anyone to speak poorly of my wife because I love her too much to subject her to the company of anyone who won’t cherish her.
Vanderman admitted he was wrong to question our marriage. He said he was following Uncle Bill’s instructions in their entirety, and then he handed me a letter. My name was on the front, as well as Georgie’s. In Bill’s handwriting.
I won’t tell Georgie about the letter until I’ve told her everything else weighing my steps down as we walk through the sand. If I am going to open my heart to this woman again, I need to know it will be safe with her.
She’s the first one to break the silence. “I still can’t believe he came all the way down here to try to get me to save the show.”
My hand tightens reflexively around hers. When I realized it was Lane, panic rose in my throat, but the fact that Georgie was so clearly frustrated by his presence quickly calmed my nerves and shifted my energy to anger. “I’m not questioning your judgment,” I mutter, “but what in the world did you see in that guy?”
She laughs. “At this point, I can’t even remember. I think it was our shared dream of starting a bakery, though his dream shifted into something different from mine. I was too stubborn to give up when I was so close to getting what I wanted.”
I don’t love the sound of that, but I refuse to jump to any conclusions. “What did you want? What do you want?”
She drops her head against my arm as we walk. “Something to call my own. I’ve started to realize it doesn’t have to be a big something.”
That’s promising. Hope blossoms in my chest, though I still worry it’s going to leave me brokenhearted. She hasn’t said she loves me, nor has she told me she won’t leave when Willow Cove becomes too small for her. Summer only just started, but what will happen when September hits and all of the excitement dies down?
“Georgie,” I croak and pull her to a stop. “I have to know. Why did you run away?” I’m honestly not sure if she will even answer, but if I don’t get anything else out of this conversation, this is the one thing I need.
Her smile is sad, filling me with trepidation, but she also reaches up and presses her palm to my cheek. “I was terrified, Royal.”
“Why?”
She shrugs, and her words come one after the other in a rush, like she’d been wanting to say them for a long time. “Because I didn’t know who I was. Because I thought my life was supposed to look a certain way. Because I was so sure you could do better than me.”
I choke out a strangled laugh. “You can’t mean that. Georgie, you are…” I don’t even know how to put it into words. “You’re a shooting star in a sky of people who are content to stay as they are. You’re the reason I believed I could have more than the small life I’d been living. Georgie, I would have—” I stop myself, not sure if I should speak the words on the tip of my tongue.
I take a slow breath. It’s not going to do me any good to keep secrets. “I booked a flight to New York, when Uncle Bill first told me where you’d gone.”
Georgie’s eyes well up with tears. “What?
I nod. “Even after the way you left, I couldn’t imagine a world where you weren’t in it, and when you didn’t show up in Willow Cove the next summer, I begged Bill to tell me where you were. And I bought a one-way ticket.”
“You came to New York?”
I shake my head, hating the answer to that question. “Before I could head to Charleston, Bill told me you were happy. I had been miserable for months, and you were happy away from me, so I took the coward’s way out and bought the surf shack instead, telling myself that I was perfectly content to keep living the life I’d known. Even if it wasn’t true.”
A tear slips down her cheek, followed by another. I’ve never seen Georgie cry, and the sight is painful. I didn’t mean to make her hurt.
“Royal,” she whispers, shaking her head. “I wasn’t happy. I told Bill that I was, but I missed you like crazy, and I kept thinking I’d made the wrong choice by leaving. Being with you…it didn’t feel real. Things weren’t supposed to be as easy as they were with you, so I convinced myself that it wasn’t meant to be.”
Brushing the tears from her cheek, I take a few even breaths and try to settle the old fears that have never fully retreated since the day she ran away from me. It’s time to be brave and hope that I’m stronger than I was ten years ago. “Georgie, I never stopped loving you. And I don’t think I ever will stop. But if you’re going to leave, I would rather you tell me now. Don’t let me hope.”
Her response starts as a smile, small and tentative but so very beautiful. “I’ve been chasing a dream for so long. But being in Willow Cove again—no, being with you again—is the first time I haven’t felt like I’m running after something. I think…I think my dream is here. Something to call mine, that I know will never let me down.”
“Kingston’s can be anything you want it to be. The bakery is—”
She touches her fingers to my mouth, stifling my almost desperate words. “The only Kingston I care about is this one.” Then she rises up on her toes and kisses me. It’s not a kiss filled with heat or restrained desire like what we’ve shared before, but it’s every bit the embrace I’ve longed for over the years. More so. It’s a kiss that speaks of promise and a future and my own hopes and dreams coming true.
