“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought her up,” I say with a frown.
“Why did you?”
“I wanted to ask you something. But I won’t. Forget I said anything about it.”
His jaw pulses. With each movement, it gets lighter. Finally, after a few minutes, he sighs.
“What did you want?” he asks.
Guilt swamps me for making him so obviously miserable. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You know I don’t wanna talk about her. So if you brought her up, you must have something you wanna talk about. And being that you just married Holden, I have to know.”
I tap a foot against the floor as I piece together my question. I had it worked out, but his response threw me off and made me forget.
“When you married Shelby,” I say, starting again, “did you feel like it was forever? Like if she hadn’t left, you’d still be married to her?”
He furrows his brows, obviously confused. I know he wants more information—the root of why I’m asking, but I can’t give that to him.
I can’t tell him that I’m wondering if I’m in love with Holden. There’s no way to explain that I’m worried it is love and that if he leaves I’ll be alone forever. Because I’ve never felt this way about anyone, never been able to actually imagine lifetime milestones with someone else at my side. I might’ve hoped for it and tried to mentally Photoshop faces at my side, but I’ve never seen it like a movie, as I can with Holden.
Jobe clears his throat and sits up. His eyes shine with sincerity. “If she hadn’t left, I would’ve still been with her,” he says. “I loved that girl.”
“Then why did you let her go?”
A small, sad smile slips across his lips. “Sometimes when you love someone, you have to let them go do their thing. It hurts like a motherfucker, and everything inside of you screams to hold on to them. But what are you going to do? Keep them around and have them resent you?” His laugh is more at himself, more a sigh, than anything.
My heart hurts for him. He’s never been serious about anything except work and Shelby Laine. Half the time he’s not even totally serious about work. Seeing the sadness in his face, imagining the pain of letting the woman he loved go hurts me. It also flames an ember of fear in the bottom dregs of my soul that I, too, will know that kind of pain soon.
Because he’s right. If Holden wants to go, I’ll have to be happy for him.
I don’t have the history with Holden that Jobe had with Shelby. We didn’t grow up together, going to the same schools, loving the same friends, attending the same bonfires. And even though I’m catching glimpses of what could be so good between Holden and me, that’s all they are. Glimpses.
This is Holden’s future. That was the deal. He’s given me what I needed for my future—for the Honey House to be solvent. If I try to keep him here, I’ll be the irrational one. The one in the wrong. The one who’d be resented. And I like myself too much to be the bad person. I like him too much to pull a stunt like that.
Maybe I love him too much too. Or maybe I love the pretty picture of marriage to a man like Holden presents.
I don’t know. It’s too much to freaking think about this early.
“On that note, I’m heading out,” Jobe says around what sounds like a lump in his throat. “You need anything else?”
I shake my head. A lump in my own throat swells. “Don’t forget your meatloaf.”
“I won’t. Love you, sis.”
“Love you, Jobe,” I tell him as he walks out of the room.
The room feels vacant all of a sudden. The light coming through the windows is less warm. The Honey House feels big, maybe too big, with just me inside.
There is still a smidgen of hope that I can’t extinguish, a flame buried in my soul that wishes things will work out.
Somehow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HOLDEN
Dottie?”
I glance around the clinic. The door shuts softly behind me. Sunlight streams through the windows. I can’t help but see the irony of walking into a place so sunny when I feel so . . . not.
“Dottie?” I call again.
She’s not at her usual perch behind the counter. And while that’s not a necessary requirement of her job—to be here to greet me in the morning—I miss it. I was hoping for her admonishment over my being late, even when I’m not, and her knowing eye. I was even secretly hoping she’d toss me some insightful advice that I didn’t ask for.
Because I could use that right now.
I’m setting my bag on the counter when my grandfather pokes his head around the corner.
“Hey, kiddo. Good morning,” he says.