Page 63 of Distant Shores (Stapled Magnolias #2)

His hands shook terribly as he tried to pick it up from the table. After several attempts, he gave up and dropped his hands into his lap, clenching them over and over.

Ireland lightly pushed the photo to the other side of the table and angled her body toward him. “Addy says you know something about gardening.”

My eyes burned as Ireland tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled at Pops. “I’m working on a project to raise money to build a new greenhouse here. But my dad was more of a yard art guy, not so much for keeping plants or growing vegetables. So, I don’t know a thing about it.”

Ireland kept it up, talking all about Ari’s plans, and my breaths came easier the longer she went on.

Some of this was new information to me, too, like the fact that Gil, Ari’s late husband, had plans in a notebook that her nephew was reworking into a blueprint for the greenhouse.

“I’m hoping it’ll be up in time to get some tomato plants going,” she said, leaning toward Pops like she was sharing a secret. “That’s been what everyone wants most, besides flowers. Tomatoes.”

Ireland sat back in her seat, and I held my breath as Pops finally raised his gaze from his hands and looked at her.

“My Nell,” he said roughly, pausing to clear his throat, “loves tomato sandwiches.” His eyes shifted from vacant to distant for several long moments before his lips twitched. “I cut her first tomato sandwich of the season horizontal once. She never let me live it down.”

“Well,” Ireland said, threading her fingers together in her lap, “Only psychopaths cut theirs horizontally, so… I’m with her.”

He chuckled, and Ireland pressed on.

“Do you know anything about greenhouse tomatoes?”

Pops looked at Ireland, really seeing her this time, his eyes shimmering with deep affection.

“Well, darlin’. The secret to good tomatoes is you can’t ever take a day off.

You have to care for them every single day,” he said quietly and more slowly than before.

“My Nell…,” he started, then trailed off as he fiddled with his wedding band.

Raising his chin, he looked around the room, stopping when his eyes landed on me. The sudden, deep grief that swam in his eyes was so sharp that I felt nauseous. “She was good at that, wasn’t she, Addy?”

It took everything in me to hold back a flinch, but God , did it hurt.

It hurt.

“Yeah, Pops,” I said, relieved when my voice came out strong. “Grams was good at everything.”

I’d been silently begging for him to come back to the present, to be here so I could show off what I’d found with Ireland, for him to see us really together.

And I hadn’t even thought of what it meant for him. That remembering meant remembering everything all over again.

It was cruel.

There was a knock at the door before it opened, and Nurse Emily walked in with her tablet, midway through a bite of banana.

The moment Pops looked away, I turned toward the window. I wasn’t sure what would show on my face, but the quivering in my jaw told me I was seconds from losing it.

I kept my gaze fixed on the morning sun, the clear, early-summer day.

I was vaguely aware of voices and movement around me, but I didn’t look. I didn’t want to see Ireland see me failing right now.

Knowing I’d choked was enough.

“You got demons, boy?”

I didn’t even startle, just slid my gaze to the older man beside me.

His longish, graying hair was a mess, and it seemed his crayons were out of their carton, forming a weird lump in the breast pocket of his linen shirt.

Beck Sewell’s blue eyes, though a little less vibrant than his daughter’s, were familiar as they stayed narrowed on me. I finally managed a deep breath, his scrutiny better for my nerves right now than compassion would’ve been.

“Hey, Dad,” Ireland said carefully from behind us. “Where are you heading?”

He scowled at her, and I tensed, turning so I could see her, but she didn’t react at all.

“Nosy kid,” Beck gritted out, tapping his fingers against his breast pocket.

“Mr. Beck’s counseling session got moved to this morning after breakfast,” Nurse Emily said with a grim expression.

Ireland gave her a sympathetic look, then turned back to Beck. “Sorry, Dad.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then visibly relaxed.

I knew the feeling.

“It’s okay, Dancing Queen. Sorry for the, uh… grumpies.” He flicked a glance to Pops, then scowled again. “Willie, what are you doing sitting there morose as fuck? Let’s go get breakfast before the chocolate milks are gone.”

Ireland’s eyes widened, and Pops sighed heavily.

Nurse Emily said something to me on her way to Pops, but I couldn’t really understand it, so I just smiled vaguely at her and went back to watching the two people at the table.

Ireland had just put her phone back down after she finished typing something on it, and a few more beats of silence passed before Emily asked Pops if he wanted to eat here or at the cafeteria with Beck.

He answered, but I couldn’t hear it, and she helped him up.

She subtly offered him his cane, and he took it, a deep frown on his face.

His steps were slow and stilted as he made his way to me.

I tried to catch his gaze, but he didn’t look up from the floor as he squeezed my arm for half a heartbeat.

It felt like an apology and a goodbye.

Then he turned and headed out the front door with Beck and Emily.

I wasn’t sure how long I stood there looking at the shut door, but eventually a familiar touch warmed my lower back, and Ireland guided me out of the apartment.

The June sun was relentless as we slowly rolled through the courtyard.

My hair stuck to my forehead, and I pushed it out of the way.

The sounds from the fountain that had been so soothing yesterday turned stifling, and when a strand of hair stuck stubbornly to the front of my glasses again, it was the last straw for my nerves.

Muttering a curse, I tore my glasses off my face and pushed my hair back viciously. Sweat dripped down my temples, and I bent my neck, wiping my forehead on the sleeve of my T-shirt.

“I miss my flannel.”

“I miss your flannel too. It completed the Clark Kent thing you’ve got going on. The Smallville version, of course.”

I shoved my glasses back on and frowned down at her. There was no way she was serious. Not right now.

Her expression was open and warm as she shrugged. “One day you’ll see it.”

I shook my head, dropping my gaze from hers.

Not right now.

Not after that.

I gripped the back of my neck, squeezing hard .

Ireland kept walking, and I followed her, my mind spinning.

“If you hadn’t been there, I’m not sure what I would’ve done,” I said quietly.

It led to a lot of what-ifs. What if Pops had masked his symptoms from us even more instead of reaching out to Jillie? What if I’d failed him then, like I’d done just now?

Ireland’s expressive eyes swam with understanding when I finally came out of my head and looked up.

I’d never understand how anyone thought she was cold.

She didn’t say anything, but the tiniest furrow between her eyebrows turned her expression from thoughtful to calculating.

“What is it?”

Her gaze roamed down my face, to my chest, and over my arms. I felt every inch of it, but this time, I had to fight the urge to shrink. To cave in on myself until I felt worthy of being looked at.

“I didn’t dance for months after we came here to Live Oak,” she said matter-of-factly. “Outside of demonstrating in classes.”

“You dance almost every day now,” I said, surprised by that.

She lifted an eyebrow at me. “Keeping tabs?”

“Yes.” No use denying it.

She drifted toward a patch of blooming flowers that were tall enough to reach my chest.

“Why was that?” I asked, wheeling to her side.

She took a few photos of some hydrangeas with her phone, though I couldn’t confidently say their exact color. I didn’t really think about my colorblindness often, especially with how mild my type was compared to others. But right now… it felt like a loss to not see the flowers how she did .

“Because I didn’t want to risk thinking too much,” she said, pocketing her phone and stroking her finger along a leaf. “About what I left behind. The mistakes I made. The ones I might still make.”

A gentle breeze blew Ireland’s hair away from her face, and I let out a disbelieving laugh.

She raised an eyebrow. “What?”

I shook my head. “You just read my mind, is all.”

Cole had been right. Ireland was scary, but not for the reasons he thought. It was those indigo blue eyes that saw right through you. That mouth that frowned often but told the truth, even when it was hard.

Her heart that felt deeply for others, that ached so easily that she did her best to hide it from harm.

She picked up a torn hydrangea petal from the ground and rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger, then frowned at her hand. “Cole said you used to work out together almost every day.”

“Cole says a lot of things.”

She huffed. “True.”

Besides chair yoga before the surgery, I hadn’t really taken Cole’s advice to find ways to exercise.

“When you started dancing again,” I said, wanting to know more about what’d happened between meeting her and moving here. “It helped?”

“I don’t know. But at some point after I got back into it, it felt safe enough to look at the world again. To not look at my feet in the hallway and instead risk looking at the people around me.”

The truth, even when it was hard.

“I do miss it. Not as much as walking on my own two feet, but yeah….” I combed my hand through my hair. Cole would probably squeal in delight if I asked him to go with me in the morning .

“Hydrangeas stain,” I said, moving closer to better see the dark smudges on her fingertips when she frowned at them again. “You’re not supposed to put them in wedding bouquets or use them for boutonnieres because of that.”

The instant intrusive thoughts were the worst mixture of happiness and horror.

Wedding bouquets.

Ireland in a dress, carrying blue flowers.

But would Pops be there?

Would Beck?

“Huh.”

I blinked out of the spiral and watched as she turned her hand in the sunlight between us.

“Your Grams had them?”

“What?”

“Hydrangeas.”

Oh.

I nodded. It was harder to picture Grams and her gardens now, after so many years, and that felt worse than it had before.

“Well,” she said, pulling me back yet again. “Next time, we can ask Pops about them.”

My heart thrashed as the important things became clear above the mess that was everything else.

Next time.

We.

I never knew affection could be so painful. That falling in love would be like this, unfolding alongside the most difficult moments of my life.

But that was undeniably what was happening here.

What had already happened.

“Do you feel guilty for wanting them to remember?” I whispered.

Her smile was sad. “Yes. ”

“Does it get easier?”

“Yes. And I feel guilty for that too. You might too.”

A breeze swept through the courtyard again, and I closed my eyes against it, inhaling deeply. Maybe I needed to see if Cole wanted to go to the gym soon. I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day twisted up like this.

Ireland inspected her stained fingers again, and I focused on that—something that could be fixed.

“Come on, Indigo Girl.”

I opened the Locc’s back door, and she huffed playfully as I directed her inside.

When we made it halfway down the hallway, I spotted the open door of the classroom and directed her into it.

There were a couple sinks built into a long row of counters along one wall, with a few glasses of paint-stained water lined up behind them.

Taking my knee off the scooter, I grasped Ireland by the hips and boosted her onto the counter.

We shared a soft smile, remembering last night, as I wet a napkin with warm water and soap. She pulled her phone out, looking like she was sending a text, then put it back down.

She looked at me intently for a suspended beat of time when I reached for her hand, but then she gave it to me.

I swirled the wet napkin on her ring finger, feeling like I had a secret.

Maybe I did.

Her thumb came last, and the moment I finished, she took a deep, shuddering breath. I gave her a questioning look, wondering what was going through her mind, but she just shook her head.

Maybe we both had things we weren’t ready to reveal today.

I tossed the napkins into the trash and bracketed her legs with my arms, bracing my hands on the counter. Leaning in, I nuzzled my cheek against hers, then pressed a kiss to it.

A knock came at the classroom door, then another one, louder this time, and I looked over my shoulder as Cole sauntered inside, a gym bag slung over his shoulder and his hair tied up.

He grinned at us, looking like he’d gotten a full night’s rest instead of what had to have been thirty minutes at most.

“It’s lift o’clock, Addy babe!”

I raised my eyebrows at him, then turned back to Ireland with an expression that said, “You texted him?”

Her slender shoulder rose just a fraction that said, “I’m not sorry either.”

I pressed my forehead against hers.

“Thank you.”