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CHAPTER 39

JILL

I ’d slept with my Brawler’s jersey next to me in bed. In fact, I’d slept with both mine and Grady’s which felt like a rather pathetic and worrisome thing to admit, so I was quick to put them both away in the morning, just in case LeAnn or my mom—or god forbid, Joey—stopped by unannounced, as was often the case these days. They were worried about me, but the looks of grave concern had passed. Now it was just heightened precautionary status.

But even if I looked okay enough, and was functioning well enough, I still felt like an empty shell.

Seeing Grady had been both what I wanted and the worst thing that could have happened. It reopened all the wounds I’d felt since he’d left. Missing him was like an attempt to free dive, the harder I buried my heartache the more the pressure built. I was holding my breath all the time, and going through the motions was wearing me down.

As I walked up the block toward the bank, I watched a handful of leaves get caught in one of those mini tornados. They swirled around each other up against the side of the building, rising up into the air only to be dropped back down and start over again. That’s exactly how I felt; like the winds of loss had a hold on me and spun me up and down, completely out of my control. My old therapist would have said this was grief. But I didn’t care if it had a name, I just wanted it to end.

Making my way up the sidewalk my eyes locked on an unpleasantly familiar face. Adam was staring at me, as if he’d just spotted me, too, and was calculating the odds of whether I’d be willing to walk right past him or if I’d deviate from my path.

But I was done letting him have a say over any part of my life.

“No bodyguard today?”

Seeing him that day at the baseball game had brought on longing, but none of that remained. I knew what real longing felt like now, and nothing I’d felt for him had compared.

Gone too was the frustration from the boat tour, so when I went to walk away and he fell into step with me like a child who couldn’t stand being ignored, I let him.

“Come on, Jill. All I ever wanted was to talk to you.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” I replied, my eyes on the entrance to the bank up the street. But then I stopped short, because that wasn’t true. “Actually, I do have one thing.”

He sat back on his heel, a sort of pleased smirk on his face that I knew Grady would have been inclined to forcibly remove.

“I’m glad you left.”

Given how far off the rails I’d gone, that might be hard to believe, but it was the truth.

“That’s not what I heard.”

“Well, sure,” I admitted, giving him just as arrogant of a look. “It probably stroked your ego to hear how years of your manipulation had fucked with my head so badly I wanted my own abuser to take me back.” I leaned forward, because he wasn’t smirking anymore. “But I’m not her, Adam. And you’re still the same little man trying to intimidate and control me.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.

“Save it. We’re nothing to each other. I’m not doing this little dance anymore. Get over it. The next time you see me, just keep walking.”

I turned and carried on up the street, my pulse hammering in my ears. The fact that he wasn’t still walking with me gave me hope the message had finally sunk in. The days of him making me feel anything were over. I had other people to make me anxious and question my worth, namely Mrs. Carmichael at First Bank of Maine.

“Hello, Jill. Come on in,” she greeted me with a wide smile, which was not at all the welcome I’d gotten last time I’d met with one of her colleagues about this idea. “Can I get you some coffee? A water?”

“I’m okay, thank you,” I said, reaching into my purse for the folder I’d brought.

I’d revisited my earlier research, updating the numbers and getting some fresh case studies. The ladies who run Trope Trove in New York had been so kind as to give me a sense of their start-up costs and break-even timeline. I hadn’t been as well armed last time, so if I got denied again, at least it wouldn’t be because I’d failed to make my case.

“Oh, good. One sec,” she said, jumping up to open her office door. “Cash, come on in.”

I spun in my chair as my oldest brother sauntered in with a chuckle. “Good to see you, Sherry.”

Sherry ? Since when was my brother on a first name basis with my banker?

“We were just getting started.” Mrs. Carmichael—Sherry—took a seat behind her desk, and opened up a folder of her own. “I took a look at the space in mind. It seems pretty perfect for a little bookstore.”

I wasn’t sure if I was having a fever dream or what, because I could have sworn that woman had just sounded optimistic about my request and my fuck-up brother was sitting beside me with a grin on his face like he’d expected her to say that.

“I think, based on the numbers you sent over Jill, we can make this work.” She paused, looking between us. “Assuming you and Cash are on the same page.”

On the same page? My head was spinning. I looked over at him, and he laughed harder. When he leaned toward me, I leaned closer, too, trying to hide just how far from ‘the same page’ we really were.

“It’s your call, and I won’t interfere. But I’m happy to co-sign with you.”

I sat back, staring at him. A million questions flooded in. When I couldn’t find the words to form any of them, Sherry stood up.

“I’ll give you a minute.” She saw herself out of her office and closed the door.

“Take a breath, Jilly.”

“But what is happening?” I scratched at my forehead, trying to mesh the two disparate images I had of my brother into the one sitting in front of me.

“My company does business here. That’s all.”

I jerked my head back. “Your company ?”

He nodded, like he knew I didn’t think him capable of running anything on his own. “Yeah, I’m a carpenter.”

Cash had always been so good with his hands. He’d been wearing a tool belt since he was a kid, I just never imagined he’d have turned that into something profitable enough that he’d have pull with the bank.

“Listen,” he said, looking over his shoulder as if he half expected Sherry to burst in. “You won’t owe me anything. I won’t get a say or make any decisions. I just figured it might be harder for you to get this on your own. And I’m happy to help.”

He wasn’t just happy to help, he wanted to help. I could see it in his eyes. Cash wasn’t as stoic and thick skinned as he wanted people to think.

“I don’t know what to say,” I muttered, feeling my face flush with embarrassment for having thought so little of him all these years. But being wrong had never felt so good. “If you’re okay with the risk—because we both know I can’t promise anything—then of course I’ll take your help.”

He gave my shoulder a squeeze, the Cash version of a hug. “I know you, Jilly. I’m not worried.” As he sat back the door opened and Sherry peeped inside.

“Are we ready?”

“Ready,” Cash answered, his smile maybe the brightest I’d ever seen it.

“Ready,” I added, just as Sherry took her seat.

“Fantastic. Let’s make a deal.” She laughed at her own joke harder than anyone else, but her energy was contagious.

When we walked out an hour later, signed loan documents in hand, I felt a wave of anxiety and excitement crash over me.

“You okay?” Cash asked, eyeing me with a hesitant grin.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s been kind of a crazy couple of months.”

He took a handful of steps toward his truck parked on the street. “Just take it one step at a time. You’ll be fine.”

“And if I’m not?”

“Then you’ve got me.” He said it so casually, so matter of factly, it was as if the last decade of our lives apart hadn’t even happened. “I’ll stop by this week to see how you’re doing.”

He went to get into his truck and I called out in a rush. “Thank you, Cash.”

“No worries, bean.”

I watched him back out, heading out of town. It had been years since I’d known where he lived, and clearly I had no idea what he did for a living. The details of his life were ones I hadn’t even tried to glean the few times we’d crossed paths. I felt like shit about that now, and promised I’d work on it. If he didn’t want me to know, so be it. But it was time I at least started asking.