Page 3 of Brewing Up My Fresh Start (Twin Waves #2)

She’s right. The truth lands with the force of a gut punch, hollowing me out. A sharp pressure blooms in my chest, radiating up into the base of my skull until it feels like the beginnings of a headache. My pulse drums in my temples, steady and merciless.

I care about her. Genuinely care. But not enough to alter my professional trajectory. Not enough to risk my reputation or investor relationships. Not enough to matter when it counted.

“Your financial situation wasn’t my responsibility,” I say, the words metallic and wrong on my tongue.

Michelle flinches as if I’ve struck her. “Right. Of course not.”

“That’s not what I meant?—”

“It’s exactly what you meant.” She turns away, her shoulders stiff with hurt that feels heavier than simple business loss. “You built a friendship with a woman whose livelihood you were actively threatening, and you never saw a problem with that. Because my security was never your responsibility.”

“I thought I was making smart business decisions,” I say, and it sounds hollow even to me.

“You were. That’s the problem.” Michelle faces me again, and there’s something heartbreaking in her expression. “You chose the path that served your interests while destroying mine, and you did it consciously, deliberately, with full knowledge of the cost.”

The assessment cuts deep because it’s accurate. I protected my professional reputation while sacrificing individual trust. I chose convenience over consideration, efficiency over empathy.

“What do you want from me, Michelle?”

“I want you to admit that you made a choice. That you prioritized your business over our friendship. That you protected your interests while sacrificing mine.” Her voice carries exhaustion that goes deeper than this conversation.

“I want you to stop hiding behind professional language and acknowledge that you hurt the woman you claim to care about.”

We stare at each other across the counter that has somehow become a battlefield. The morning bustle has completely stopped around us. Mrs. Hensley and Caroline pretend to read while obviously absorbing every word.

“I’m sorry,” I say finally. “I’m sorry that protecting my business interests meant destroying something that mattered to you.”

“Are you sorry you made those choices, or just sorry I found out about them?”

The distinction matters more than I want to acknowledge, and Michelle waits for an answer I’m not sure I can give honestly.

“I’m sorry they hurt you,” I say quietly. “I’m not sure I could have made different choices given the same circumstances.”

She nods like this confirms something she already suspected. “At least you’re honest about it.”

“Does honesty help?”

“It helps me understand who you actually are instead of who I thought you were.”

The coffee shop feels smaller suddenly, air thick with seven years of memories I never valued the way I should have.

Her laugh when I ranted about Reggie’s latest disaster.

How she remembered I like my coffee black but always offered cream anyway.

The corner table she saved me during tourist season, like it was a given.

“And who am I?”

“A guy who’s very good at protecting himself while convincing himself he’s protecting everyone else.”

The door chimes. Three more customers step in, the bell sounding sharper than usual, and suddenly I feel every set of eyes shifting my way.

The room tilts on its axis, too bright, too close.

Conversations falter as if the entire crowd has tuned into our frequency.

I smooth a hand over my tie, pulse hammering in my throat, the starch of my collar scraping against suddenly damp skin.

They came for caffeine, not a public autopsy of my character.

“I have to work.” Michelle’s professional mask slides back into place, polished and airtight. “This conversation is over.”

“We could continue this later.” My voice sounds strained to my own ears, thinner than I want it to be.

“No.” She turns, plastering on a brightness that makes my chest ache. “Good morning! What can I get started for you today?”

Dismissed. Definitively dismissed.

The onlookers don’t return to their conversations right away. I feel their gazes pressing into my back, hot and unrelenting, as I force my shoulders square and stride toward the door. The smile I usually deploy in boardrooms won’t come—not with my chest hollowed out and my palms itching for escape.

Mrs. Hensley gives me a nod as I pass, equal parts encouragement and glee, and I know she’s already drafting the social media post that will immortalize my humiliation.

Outside, Scott’s Range Rover has disappeared, leaving me alone with the consequences of my diplomatic disaster and the growing realization that I’ve just defended decisions that hurt the person I care about more than I was willing to admit.

My phone buzzes immediately.

Scott: How did damage control go?

Me: I think I may have actually made things worse, which I didn’t think was mathematically possible.

Scott: Define worse.

Me: She understands exactly who I am and what she means to me, and both revelations were apparently deeply disappointing.

Scott: Which is?

Me: The woman whose friendship I valued right up until it became inconvenient for my profit margins.

Scott: That’s not who you are.

Me: It’s exactly who I am. And now she knows it too. Also, Mrs. Hensley witnessed the entire thing, so by noon the whole island will know exactly how badly I handled this.

I drive through Twin Waves’ charming streets, past Victorian houses and small businesses that have survived generations of economic uncertainty, while my conversation with Michelle replays endlessly. Each replay somehow makes me sound worse.

Her quiet devastation when she realized what our friendship actually meant to me.

The way she forced me to articulate positions that sounded reasonable in my head but felt brutal when spoken aloud.

How she saw through seven years of careful compartmentalization to the uncomfortable truth underneath—that I chose the safe path and dressed it up as community service.

Tomorrow, I’ll have to face the town council and defend a project that suddenly feels less like community development and more like systematic destruction of everything that makes Twin Waves worth preserving.

With my luck, Michelle will be there with a PowerPoint presentation titled “Why Grayson Reed Is Literally the Worst Person Who Ever Lived, Complete with Citations and Visual Evidence.”

Tonight, I’ll sit with the uncomfortable realization that I’ve become exactly the kind of person I never intended to be— a man who destroys what matters to people he cares about because protecting it would be inconvenient.

It’s a remarkably depressing realization, even by my historically low standards for personal relationship management. And that’s saying something, considering I once broke up with my ex via architectural blueprints.