Page 48 of Finding Home (Willow Valley #1)

FORTY-EIGHT

CHLOE

I sneak around my parents’ house to the back deck, hoping to find my brother, likely having his morning coffee. I smile when I see Hannah sitting on his lap as they hold their coffees, staring out over the property and enjoying the silence together.

Hannah spots me first and smiles. “Morning, Chlo.”

“Morning.” I climb the steps and take a chair across from them, hugging my legs to my chest as I rest my chin on my knees.

“What’s wrong?” Hannah asks, worry filling her voice.

I close my eyes, fighting my tears, because apparently nearly forty-eight hours of almost non-stop crying hasn’t emptied my tear ducts yet.

“I, uh…” I haven’t said the words out loud yet.

When I showed up at Brinley’s, she took one look at me and my suitcase and knew exactly what had happened.

She pulled out the emergency ice cream stash, and we sat in silence watching nostalgic romcoms and eating our weight in junk food. “I left Everett.”

Hannah sits up in shock, setting her coffee on the table as she stares at me. “Why? You two seemed so in love. The way that man looks at you is everything.”

I hear Grayson’s deep breath, and Hannah turns to look at him before turning to look back at me.

“Don’t tell me your brother was right. The last thing he needs is to hear those words, he’ll let it go to his head. ”

I chuckle. Of course, she makes me laugh at a time like this. “What did he say?”

“He said you’d be in your head about what happened the other day and turn inwards and do what was safest, not best. If you’re telling us you left a man who looks at you the way Everett does, a man who holds you the way he did and let you sleep on top of him while he was in a hospital bed and glared at Grayson when he said you could talk to the point of annoyance, you’re doing what you think is safe. ”

Now I’m crying again, because I know all of that about Everett is true. When Everett looks at me, he doesn’t just look at me, he sees me. He looks at me as if I’m his home. All of this has me questioning everything even more than I was.

Why am I walking away from all of that? We were building something special. I had a place and person I felt safe with. Does that make this fear worth it or even counteract it?

I’m torn between feeling like I’m acting like a petulant child and like I’m acting like someone who is preserving their peace in the best way they know how.

I look at Grayson and ask, “How’d you do it? How did you make the choice to risk it?”

He looks at Hannah and kisses her cheek. Her eyes flutter closed, and she leans into him, a soft smile on her lips.

“I knew in every fibre of my being that Hannah was worth it. She was and is the best thing to come into my life, worth whatever pain I may experience.”

Hannah’s eyes water, and she wipes at a tear that finds its way down her cheek.

“Love isn’t easy,” Hannah says. “Love is one of the hardest things you’ll ever experience.

You need to nurture it, feed it, take care of it.

As much as we like to think love just exists, it doesn’t.

With family and those we choose to love, we spend time nurturing it.

They call them love languages, but they’re more like love food, how you feed your love for the people in your life.

Grayson fed mine by always being there. The quality time and actions he did to show me I was special and wanted and so unbelievably loved.

Grayson, as much as he may deny it, is fed by words of affirmation and physical touch.

I make sure that every day, I do something to feed him that. ”

She leans forward, and Grayson’s hand protectively finds her hip so she doesn’t fall off his lap.

“Loving someone comes with fear every day. Nothing in this life is permanent, but loving someone, truly loving them, is worth all of it. It’s worth the tears, the worry, the pain.”

She smiles over her shoulder at Grayson, and he tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, smiling right back at her.

“We didn’t start in a conventional way, but I wouldn’t give Grayson up for anything. Loving him and being loved by him is my greatest treasure in life.”

Seeing them together and watching all that Grayson has overcome since they got married has me starting to wonder if I can muster the same strength.

Grayson’s gone from doing everything he can to avoid Willow Valley to having spent weeks here over the last few months and planning future trips.

I know he still deals with that trauma. He told me he’s going to therapy regularly, doing what he can around his schedule at the hospital, but having Hannah by his side supporting him has given him a strength I don’t know he would have found without her.

That’s really what finding your person is, isn’t it? That one person who brings out the best in you in a way that may even surprise you. Someone who supports you through all of life’s ups and downs, laughing, smiling, and crying with you along the way.

I feel in my bones that the only person for me is Everett. He’s the only person who will make me feel like I’m becoming the best version of myself. If I’m not with him, I’ll be single for the rest of my life.

Needing time to process and think, I push up from my chair and say, “I love you guys,” kissing them each on the cheek.

Grayson catches my wrist before I can take a step away. “It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to need to think and process, but don’t take too long. You don’t want to be me and two years later still pining after what you could’ve had if you just pushed past the fear.”

I nod and climb down the steps, stopping to look back at them before I round the house. They’re smiling and whispering to each other, kissing each other softly as Grayson’s arms tighten around her, pulling her closer as though he’s never going to let her go.