Page 42

CHAPTER 41

JILL

“ O h those look so nice!” my mother exclaimed, drawing the attention of everyone in the store. Cash returned her hug, but then quickly turned back to the shelves he was building me. They did look very nice, so my mom wasn’t wrong.

I’d seen more of Cash in the last few weeks than I had the last few years. But we’d slipped pretty easily into a groove. His carpentry skills were no joke, and he’d made me the most beautiful custom shelves I’d ever seen. I couldn’t wait to pile them full of books and watch people lose their minds.

“Mom, what are you doing here?” I waved her over, getting her to follow me back into the office so the rest of the team could keep working. I had a couple of part-timers working on installing lights, and one young girl named Ashlee getting my computer systems and social media up and running. She was going to stay on once the store opened to work the floor and keep our Instagram feed lively. I wanted nothing to do with it.

“I was just stopping by to bring you something.” She had that overly cute look about her, like she was about to kick over a hornet’s nest and knew it.

“Bring me what?”

I hadn’t noticed the large tote hanging off her arm until right then, and she dropped one strap to pull out a large picture frame. “I think this needs a place of prominence here,” she said, her cheeks rounding on a bright, wide smile.

As I took the frame from her, my heart wrenched. It was the article about Grady and I, a huge photo of us pasted across the front of the paper. I’d hated that photo when it was taken, but now it just served to remind me of what I could never have. So, I hated it more.

“Mom, I don’t want this.” I tried to give it back to her, but she shook her hands, scowling.

“Jillian, don’t be like that. You should be proud of what you did with that program.”

It wasn’t the program I didn’t need reminding of. Although, that wasn’t exactly a bright spot either, considering I got fired anyway.

“I know, Mom. I’m proud, okay? I just don’t need to look at that all the time.”

“Why not?” Her confusion was so genuine it made it hard to be angry with her. I set the thing down on my desk.

“Staring at Grady doesn’t feel good. I don’t need to be reminded every day.”

She sat down in the chair next to my desk, like she wasn’t going anywhere for a while, so I reluctantly sat down too.

“Reminded of what? Of how good you two were together? Or that he’s three hours away?”

Ah . She wasn’t as clueless as she wanted me to believe. I blew out a breath, trying to figure out the best way to describe heartache to someone who’d married her high school sweetheart. She had no idea what this felt like.

“He has his life and I have mine. I don’t enjoy being reminded of that. Of how good we were, and that in the end that didn’t matter.”

“Pish,” she said, scrunching her face so hard her eyes disappeared for a second. “That’s a load of horseshit and you know it.”

My eyebrows shot up. Since when did my mother use language like that? “I don’t know it.”

My mother pointed at the photo of us in the frame. “You think something like that just lands in your lap, ready to go, no compromises, no challenges?”

“Like you and Dad faced challenges, Mom? You basically met on the playground and have been best friends ever since.”

She smiled at that. “Well, sure, that’s what it looks like. But you’re forgetting that in order for us to work, we had to make some serious decisions about our future a hell of a lot younger than you are now. We didn’t go to the same college by accident. We didn’t buy that old farm on a whim. The things we did for our family didn’t just happen, Jill. Give me a break.”

It appeared I was the one stepping on a hornet’s nest. “Sorry, I just mean, this isn’t the same thing.”

“No, you’re right.” She folded her hands in her lap, her lips pursed together for all of three seconds before she went on. “But the thing I’m trying to say, darling, is that the reason you and Grady aren’t together isn’t because he lives in Boston or works for the NHL or travels too much. And it’s not because you live here and have this amazing new store, either.”

“Oh?” I rolled my eyes, but waved my hand for her to go on.

“It’s because you’ve never believed you could have him.”

My back straightened. Had she known about my crush?

“You always looked at Grady like he walked on water, and maybe that’s how you still feel. But I think you found something far more human in him this summer, and that scared you even more. Because that meant that he wasn’t the dream you’d accepted was always out of reach. It meant he was a regular man who was completely attainable. But only if you were willing to risk it.”

I might still think Grady walked on water. At least a little. But she was right, he was a whole lot more to me after this summer than he’d ever been back when we were kids. But that wasn’t holding me back. That’s what was breaking my heart.

“How exactly would that work, Mom? Me trying to run the store and him always gone? That’s not a relationship.”

Her sigh was half a laugh. “Oh, honey, yes it is. A relationship is whatever you make of it. Late nights and long drives and missing each other and sexy typing—or whatever you call it.” My face flushed, but she kept going. “You’re putting up a million roadblocks, but not one of them is more than you can handle. So long as you handle them together.”

It was so enticing, to believe her, to see a way where I didn’t get into bed every night stretching my hand to the other side, yearning to have him there.

“I don’t know if I can make that work, Mom. Missing him now hurts so much, but what if that’s what I end up doing even when we’re together.”

“It’s a different kind of missing, honey. One is the forever kind, and the other isn’t.” She nudged the frame. “It doesn’t seem like the forever kind is working out so well.”

It wasn’t just missing Grady. His whole life was framed in the public view. To be with him would mean having eyes on me, and the pressure of that was almost just as bad. But as I watched my mom look lovingly down at the photo of Grady and me, I felt a fresh sting of longing. Was I giving up too easily? Was I taking for granted what we had by expecting it to come without any strings or compromises?

I’d never thought of myself as someone who took the easy way out, but as my mom left—the frame still sitting on my desk—I worried maybe she was right. Grady had always been so far out of reach I’d never wanted to admit how much I loved him. And yet as a messy, broken, determined man, I’d fallen even harder. I just wasn’t sure if that would be enough.