“So you want him to stay?” she asks softly.
“I don’t know, Liv . . .”
“You know what? I know you do. And that’s okay. It’s okay to have hope, Sophie. When you lose hope, you pull back inside your shell. You forget that there’s more out there for you than dickheads and maintaining a bed-and-breakfast.”
I sag against the counter. “I know. You’re right. But I don’t know if I’m strong enough for this. I mean, I know I’ll be okay, but”—I force a swallow—“it’ll freaking hurt. A lot.”
“Listen to me right now,” she says. “If he leaves, it’s because his hopes didn’t align with yours. It has nothing to do with you. We’re Bates girls. We aren’t victims.”
Her words make me smile. It’s something our mother used to say when we were little. I haven’t necessarily carried that thought process in my pocket, but Liv has. And every time she brings it back out, it hits me in the heart.
“You have to be honest with yourself about what you want,” she says. “Embrace that. Validate your feelings. And then we’ll deal with the end result when we have it.”
I take a deep breath and lift my chin. Liv’s right.
The front door opens, and I hear Holden’s feet coming down the hallway. I close my eyes as my body flips on, anxiety pulsing through my veins. The force clears out my brain, removes the fog, and I know what I want: I want him to stay.
“Liv,” I say, “I gotta go. I’ll call you later.”
“Okay. Good luck. I love you.”
“Love you. Bye.”
I end the call before she can reply.
Holden comes around the corner. He looks as divine as ever with his slightly mussed-up hair and green eyes. Lines mar his forehead but somehow just make him look wiser and more sophisticated.
“Hey,” I say carefully.
“Hey.” He gives me a half smile. “How was your day? The paint in the foyer looks great.”
“Do you like it? I only did a few sample patches going up the stairs, because I want to see it in different light. You know, morning, afternoon, evening . . .” I shrug. “Anyway, how was your day?”
His eyes dart around the room.
“Are you hungry?” I ask. “I thought we could order some pizza.”
Each second that passes pumps another blast of cortisone into my body. Fight-or-flight instincts begin to kick in, and I can feel my body wanting to move. Press. Prod. To end this. Once and for all.
He walks across the room and takes the final two plates from the dishwasher. I step back and watch. He places them in the cabinet slowly, as if this one chore means something special to him.
“My mom always made me unload the dishwasher,” he says out of nowhere. “It was my one constant chore.”
“I had about twenty constant chores.”
He dips his chin but stays silent.
The air in the room is thick, full of anticipation of what’s to come. Because something is about to happen. I see it all over his face. I feel it from the energy coming off him. I hear it in the blood that gushes over my eardrums.
The longer I watch him stand in my kitchen and not look at me, the more definitively I know that he’s made a decision. And as that realization sinks in, as I realize how consumed I’ve been with him today, about what he’d think about the decisions I’ve made for the Honey House, another truth becomes evident too: I love him.
I know by the way I want to grab his face and make him look at me. The way my heart breaks as I see the struggle in his eyes is unlike any empathy I’ve ever felt toward a man before.
I don’t want him to hurt. The last thing I want is for him to be miserable . . . especially if the cause has anything to do with me.
When he raises his eyes and the emotion in them is enough to knock me back a few steps—when it’s enough to draw tears to the corners of my eyes without a word being spoken—I know what he wants to do.
And I know what I have to let him do.
I can’t ask him to stay. Jobe asked Shelby to stay, and it ended so awfully. I did my best to finagle Chad into being happy, and it ended up a wreck.
I won’t put Holden in that position. I won’t put myself in it either. I respect both of us too much to do that.
Taking a deep breath, I say a silent prayer that I’m wrong. That he’s going to tell me he wants to stay and is worried about how I’ll respond.
Please, God. Please.
“When my mom was dying,” he says, the words barely audible, “I used to sit by her bed. At first, we’d watch television. And then we’d just talk. But as time went on and she got weaker, I’d do most of the talking. I’d take her hand in mine and hold it, hoping she’d feel it somehow and know I was there.”
I walk across the room and wrap my arms around him. He sags against me, resting his head on mine.
“The last time she really said much that made sense, she told me to promise her that I would remember that everything happens for a reason,” he says.
Tears pool at the corners of my eyes. I don’t reach to knock them away because it won’t matter. More will take their place again and again.
I know what’s coming. He’s going to go. And I have to find the strength Jobe had when Shelby left and the strength Gram had when I left for college, and let him go too.
Because the truth is, Holden McKenzie isn’t mine. He was on loan to me. He was sent here to teach me something, maybe just to have hope again. To understand love. To know it in its realest form.
Wetness streaks down my cheeks as he presses a kiss on the top of my head. His chest rumbles next to me, but I don’t have the ability to look up at him. I can’t.
“For what it’s worth,” I say, the words blurred by my emotions, “you were a good husband.”
He laughs, his lips pressed against my hair. “Oh, sugar.”
My laughter mixes with his, a sad melody that feels like a punch in the gut. My heart bleeds as he holds me for what will be the final time.
“When are you leaving?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” He takes my shoulders and spins me. When I don’t look at him, he lifts my chin with the pad of his finger. “Montgomery offered me a position today that will consist of him grooming me to be an executive.”
“That’s great,” I say, tears sliding down my face.
He catches the wetness with the pads of his thumbs. It’s such an intimate gesture that it only makes me cry harder.
“I don’t want you to think this is about you. Because it’s not. It’s about . . . me. I guess. About the things I need to do and the promises I need to fulfill.” He looks at the ceiling and sighs. “I know you won’t go with me, but if there’s any way . . .”
I shake my head. “My home is here.”
He looks down and nods. He takes me in, his gaze boring into my soul. I stand before him and let him see what he wants to see.
“What should I do?” he asks. “Do you want me to stay? Go now? What will be easier?”
Never leave.
I suck in a hasty, shaky breath and then clear my throat. “You might as well take the Band-Aid off and just go. Why delay the inevitable?”
His eyes fill with a sadness that kills me. A surge of pain envelops me, and I want to wail—full-on sob until my voice becomes too weak and my body too tired to expel that kind of energy.