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“I still can’t fucking believe I told you about her,” I muttered, scrubbing a hand along my jaw, now fully covered with a beard. “I swear, you put something in that sangria.”
She laughed loudly. “Oh, my boy, you had those words locked and loaded. You had one drink before you were spilling your guts, and there’s no point in lying about it.”
I grimaced, which made her smile.
She wasn’t wrong, unfortunately. Maybe it was the days, weeks, and months of hardly conversing with anyone beyond a hello on the path, ordering food in a café when I stopped, or getting a room when I took a break. When Margot and Robby came alongside me on that last stretch, I felt like a shaken-up bottle of champagne, and they knocked the cork loose with their warmth and kindness.
“What would I say?” I said, voice hardly more than a rough whisper.
Margot took another sip of coffee. “Oh that’s an easy one. Tell her how you feel. That you walked hundreds of miles, and she was with you every step of the way.”
Elbows braced on the table, I sank my head in my hands and stared down at that blank piece of paper. “And what if how I feel is a giant, fucking tangled mess? I’m not cut out for serious relationships, Margot. I’ve spent myentirelife avoiding them, watching the absolute fucking misery that comes from chasing and chasing some idea of perfect that I don’t even know if it exists.” I lifted my head and gave her a look. “How many kids do you know that felt like that? That being in love or trying to make someone else happy was a fucking death sentence to any sort of freedom or independence. Do I want to subject her to that? That’s rooted just as deep inside me as anything else. Cynics don’t make for very romantic partners.”
“Bollocks,” she tossed back. “What do you think I am? Robby’s the one always making us stop to look at the beautiful views, wasn’t he? The one chatting with you that first day because he thought you looked lonely. It wasn’t me, was it?”
My eyebrows arched. “Not at first, no.”
“Trusting people isn’t just about letting them see what’s inside you,” she said, leaning forward to settle one of herwrinkled hands on top of mine. “Sometimes you have to trust that they can show you a different view of the world than the one you thought to be true. A different view of love and friendship and life. Do you think she’s one of those people?”
My hand tightened on the pen, my chest heavy and my brain racing.
Could I do this?
I closed my eyes.
I could never regret you, Jax.
Soft lips and sweet smile, and the noiseless sound of my aching heart getting ripped from my chest to follow her when she left. And she didn’t even know.
“Yeah, she is,” I answered immediately.
“Well then,” she said with a satisfied smirk. Margot tapped the paper. “Get to writing, young man. That way if you die on the way home, they have something to bring her a little bit of comfort.”
I gave her a long, steady look. “That’s fucked up, Margot.”
She laughed. “We’ve all got a bit of darkness in us, Jax. No point in trying to hide it.”
Picking up her coffee, Margot took a moment to squeeze my shoulder, then go off in search of her husband. Pen in hand, I watched them trade a quick kiss, then Robby showed her some of the pictures on his camera. The little girls darted past the table again, chasing pigeons in search of their next meal.
The busyness around me—people and sound and smells—felt a bit like the inside of my brain. Too much to filter through. But if I took a step back and pushed past the defiant stubbornness circling my feelings for her, I found some clarity.
My lips inch up in a small smile, thinking of her standing in my kitchen with wet hair and big eyes. I took a deep breath and started writing.
Chapter 11
Poppy
“Poppy, comeon, we’re going to be late.”
“I had to pee, okay? I’ll be right down.” I blew out a short breath, tugging my leggings up and turning to the side to study my profile in the mirror. “Geez Louise,” I muttered. “There’s no hiding it now.”
The little nugget was no longer making me puke up all my food, which waslovely, but I also couldn’t really hide the bump anymore either. Not that I was hiding it from anyone that mattered. My family had known since the beginning. My mom came home about an hour after Parker made The Great Pregnancy Test run, and my tears started afresh when I told her. She cried too, but hers were happy tears, notholy shit existential crisistears like mine.
“More grandkids isalwaysa good thing,” she told me, holding my face in two hands and kissing my forehead. “Don’t you worry about a thing, sweetheart.”
My sisters were cautiously ecstatic, babying me even more than normal, and being surprisingly not-pushy when I didn’t make any clear leaps to announce paternity. My brothers gave big, tight, supportive hugs—something they’d always been good at.
Cameron’s girlfriend, Ivy, was the only one who straight out asked the thing no one dared ask.
