Page 9 of Waiting for You (Balsam Cliffs #3)

I’ve typed out a message to Evelyn eight different ways and deleted each one. What do I say? S orry I was the biggest heartbreak of your life, Rome knows about our past, and I know you’re staying so let’s be friends? That was the first message I deleted. The last said “I still love you.”

None of my options were great so I settled for nothing. My luck is Neil would see it.

“Hello? Are you even fucking listening to me?” Liam asks from his seat across the table.

“Yeah, I’m here. Sorry. The Harvest Festival. Booths. Broken.”

He rolls his eyes at me. “No. I asked you to pick between these designs for the vendor events.” He pushes three pieces of paper further toward me with his drawings on them.

Before I can answer, there's a clanging in the kitchen, followed by women’s voices. I freeze when one of them sounds so familiar I could conjure her up in my dreams.

“Jesus, man. Go fucking talk to her so we can finish this damn conversation.”

“Sorry.” I look hard at the three designs. “I like this one,” I say, pushing the middle one toward him. “It’s cleaner, could go with more themes, and looks easier to disassemble and reassemble.”

The voices are drifting into the office from the kitchen and I shouldn’t be listening but I’m desperate to see if she tells them what happened the other night at the gala. Not that I was looking, but I didn’t see her in any of the photos on the news.

“Spill it, girl. Wyatt told me you came home crying last night.” Emma says.

“He’s a rat.” Evelyn chuckles. “I left Neil. He thinks that I’m going to…” Pans clang around on the steel table, obliterating the soft voices that I could hear.

“Shut up!” Violet’s voice comes loud and clear over the sudden silence in the kitchen.

“I know. So when he…” More clanging. Goddamn it.

“Don’t you have an intercom system or something?” I sneer at Liam.

“You could just go talk to her. Tell her how you feel. You never know what she thinks, or how she feels if you don’t ask her.”

“Nope. Not opening that wound again.” I shake my head.

“If you ask me, I don’t think it ever closed.” He raises an eyebrow. “Are you ready to tell us what happened? Rome left right after you, and refuses to talk to anyone about it. Says it’s your story to tell.”

“Sure as shit not ready for that at all.”

“Okay. We’re all here when you are, you know that right? Including Rome.” He gathers his designs, putting the one we chose on top.

“Yup. I’m good. Really. I made my bed, now I’ve got to lie in it.”

Do I though? She’s not with Neil anymore, and now Rome knows everything. He got his punch in. What’s keeping me from her? We loved each other once, can we love each other again? Can I get her to forgive me for all the heartbreak I’ve caused?

“I’m gonna grab a breakfast sandwich on my way out. Meet you in the barn around four?” I ask him with my hand already on the door to leave.

“Sounds good. See you then.”

I nod, then promptly push the door open to the kitchen and find three heads swiveling in my direction.

“Good morning,” Violet greets me.

“Hey Hunt, you here for breakfast?” Emma asks, already walking to the refrigerator to get my favorite breakfast sandwich.

“Yeah, I was meeting Liam about the Harvest Festival. He wants to build a new set up for the booth space. Figured I’d grab a sandwich since I’ve got some errands to run today before I come back to meet Liam.” I stop at the corner of the island, looking at Evelyn. “Hey Evelyn. You look… nice today.”

Emma nearly chokes herself trying not to laugh at me. That wasn’t my smoothest line yet. But I’m just testing the waters.

“Hi,” she answers curtly and turns her body away from me. Violet gives me a look of pity and Emma is still trying to contain her laughter while she heats up my sandwich.

I walk toward Ems, not wanting to embarrass myself any further for now. I know I have a long road ahead of me if this is something I’m really going to go after.

“Here you go big bro.” She hands me the sandwich, and leans into me. “She told us. About you and all that happened. Don’t give up. I think it’s in your favor.” She kisses my cheek and skips back to the girls. “You can leave now. We’re having a girls' brunch.”

I don’t wait for anyone to tell me twice. I take my sandwich and run. I need to plan what I’m going to do. The Harvest Festival was always her favorite time of year. Maybe a grand gesture there will do the trick.

But it also opens me to public humiliation.

Good thing I have all day running around to different warehouses to get supplies for the new jobs we’re starting in the next few weeks to think about everything.

Rome: Everyone is coming to Rebels tonight. You free to join?

Me: Yeah, I can be there soon after I finish up at this site.

It’s been almost four months since my best friend has invited me anywhere and that’s on me. Now that he knows some of the truth about Evelyn and I, maybe I can explain in actual words why it hurts so bad for me to watch him get the life I always wanted.

I idly wonder while I clean up the site for the night if everyone now includes Evelyn.

Her moving home is something that came out of left field for me.

I knew when I got out of the military that I’d have to see her around town occasionally, but moving back?

That’s a lot more interaction. It’ll be harder to watch in everyday life and pretend that I don’t love her with every bone in my body even after all these years.

Maybe it’s time to make nice with both Rome and Evelyn. I don’t want to turn into the resident grump, taking the title that Liam left behind when he met Violet.

Climbing into my truck, I sniff the air. Maybe a shower is needed before I go to Rebels. It was unseasonably warm today working in the sun with my crew, lugging lumber.

An hour later I’m sitting in my truck in the parking lot.

Staring at the blinking neon logo for Rebels.

I had a lot of confidence going into this earlier but now that the time to suck it up and see Rome after how I acted over the summer is here, I’m not so confident.

I need to apologize to him first and I’m not sure how to even start the conversation.

Taking a deep breath, I shut off the truck and hop out, dragging my feet to the door. When I push the doors open, I see my siblings sitting at the table in the middle of the large space, near the stage for the live bands.

As I walk toward them, I slowly see each of them turn to look at me, no one greets me and soon I see why. Rome is standing at the edge of the table talking to everyone. He must not have told them that he invited me.

Ironically, he’s the first to greet me. “Hey man, glad you could come.”

“Wait, you invited him and he actually came?” Cooper asks.

“Looks that way. Hey, guys,” I say standing next to Rome.

“Do you mind if we go talk in my office before the night gets busy?” Rome asks, looking at me, not caring that everyone is watching us.

“Yeah.” I step back, letting him take the lead down the hallway to his office. A little unsure if this is going to be the opportunity I needed to apologize or if he’s planning to kick my ass and leave me in there to bleed out for what I did to Evelyn.

He pushes his office door open, holding it for me to pass by him.

“Is this where you murder me?” I ask.

“I mean if that was the plan I probably wouldn’t have made the announcement in front of about ten people and have it on camera that I was the one to walk back here with you alone.” He chuckles.

“That’s a good point.” I collapse into the chair across from his desk. “I’m sorry that I was an asshole when we found out about you and Ems. You didn’t deserve it.”

“I did. But so do you. Evelyn left Neil,” he blurts out.

“Yeah, I know. I overheard them at the inn the other day. But I don’t know why you’re telling me.”

“Because now that I’m not a dumb teenager or twenty-something with his head up his ass, I can see it all so clearly now. You love my sister. Like she is the love of your life. You don’t get over that kind of love, because it’s exactly how I feel about Emma and I’d never get over loving her.”

“Easy to say when you’re married and she doesn’t fucking hate you for everything you’ve done.”

“She did. God, she hated me so much. She tried everything under the sun to make me grow some balls and tell you about us. I fucked it up, but she forgave me because we love each other. And trust me when I say I know that Evelyn loves you too.” He rubs his face, “Listen. I read those letters. All of them. And that kind of love doesn’t go away.

Not even when one person does a real good fucking job pretending to hate the other, and the other person just becomes numb to her life and follows whatever people tell her to do. ”

“What does that mean? Numb to her life?”

“After you deployed, after she got that final letter, she just stopped living. She stopped caring about… well… anything. She spent a year or so just kind of avoiding the world. Then Dad convinced her to move to Portland and be his little protege. When I left the agency to open Rebels, Neil came into the picture. They’ll say they met in college—but they didn’t.

My father set that up. Neil comes from the perfect family, and Eve, God, she was so numb to feeling anything she just went along with it.

The time since the wedding is the most alive I’ve seen her since you left.

I honestly don’t know how I was so fucking stupid back then to miss it. ”

“I don’t know what you all are thinking is going to happen, but I’ll stop arguing with her and quit being an outright ass to her. But there’s nothing there—”

Rome cuts me off. “Tell me you still don’t love her and I’ll let this go. Tell me that you could watch her fall in love and marry someone else, and I’ll leave you alone.”