Take a Chance (Chance, #1; Rosemary Beach #7)(20)

I smiled and finally looked over at him. “Is that big brother advice?” I asked.

“The best. I’m full of it. Now, go, get on your jeans and pull on those cowboy boots I sent you for Christmas. We’re going to hang out with the common folk,” he replied with a wink.

I walked over and hugged him. “Thank you,” I whispered.

“Don’t thank me for taking care of you.”

?

The bar Mase found was a good twenty-minute drive outside Rosemary. The bright neon lights in the windows and several trucks in the parking lot had been all the incentive Mase needed to pull in.

“Mud on the tires means there’s good beer here,” he explained, opening his door. I rolled my eyes and opened my door to jump down out of the truck.

We walked toward the door and Mase stopped, then looked back at me. “Try not to look appealing. I just want to play pool and have a beer. Spend some time with my sis, not beat a stupid shit up for coming on to you.”

I laughed, then nodded. What did he think I was going to do? Go in there and bat my eyelashes at everyone who looked my way.

He pulled open the door to the bar and we walked inside. The smell of cigarette smoke filled the air. This was a familiar scent for me. Mase took a deep breath and grinned at me. “I can smell the beer from here. The tap is good,” he said with a goofy grin before heading over to the bar. I followed quickly behind him. I glanced around the large room while Mase ordered us both a beer. I didn’t point out I was underage. I just let him do it.

The pool tables were full and I searched for a booth that was empty. I tried not to make eye contact with anyone. But my eyes found a familiar face. She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at the drink on the table. I watched as a man walked up and spoke to her and she replied without looking at him. The guy shook his head and walked off. The sadness in her profile and the slump of her shoulders broke my heart.

I turned back to Mase. “I see someone I know. Can you let me talk to her alone? I’ll be back in a few minutes. She just looks like she needs a friend.”

Mase glanced out over the crowd and I knew when his eyes found Bethy. He nodded. “Sure. I’ll just be right over here.”

“Okay,” I replied, then made my way over to Bethy. She didn’t look up until I slid into the seat across from her.

The confusion in her eyes turned to surprise. “Harlow?” she asked, then glanced around in case I was with someone else she knew. I could see the moment of panic. She didn’t want anyone to know she was here drinking away her pain.

“I’m here with my brother. No one else,” I assured her, and she looked back at me, relieved.

“Oh,” she simply replied.

I wasn’t good at this. I had dealt with loss. I had lost my mother, whom I barely remembered, and then my grandmama, but never someone I was in love with. Never someone so young with a life ahead of him. “You want to talk about it?” I asked.

Bethy frowned and glanced down at her glass. “I don’t know. Not really.”

I had never been loved or been in love so I wasn’t sure how that felt. How vulnerable it made you. I just knew the hurt I had endured from trusting someone who betrayed me. That had been painful, but it didn’t hold a candle to this.

“Some days I think I’ll wake up and this will have been a nightmare,” she said, still staring down at her glass as if it held all the answers.

I decided the best thing for me to do was stay quiet and let her talk. I was a good listener. I could help her that way.

“But then I wake up and he’s gone. He’s not beside me. He isn’t smiling at me with those pretty eyes of his. I don’t have him to snuggle up to and plan forever with. He was my safe place. I’d never had a safe place before. But Jace had been my safe place. He had taken care of me . . . and I . . . I didn’t deserve him.”

I started to tell her that wasn’t true, but she kept talking.

“He never knew the truth about me. He never knew my secrets. I wanted to tell him everything. But I knew once I did I could lose him, and I couldn’t lose him. Then . . . then Tripp would come home for a visit and I would spiral out of control. The memories, the lies—it all was too much. That night I’d been drinking because I had finally convinced myself to tell Jace the truth. He deserved to know who it was that he loved. And because I was a coward, I drank. And then . . . I killed him.”

I reached across the table and grabbed her hand. “You didn’t kill him,” I assured her. I knew that much. Jace had drowned.

She lifted her eyes to me and the tears pooling in them rolled slowly down her face. “He was out there saving me. I had walked out into the water and almost drowned. It should have been me,” she gulped. “It should have been me. He should have let me go and saved himself, but he wouldn’t do it. He saved me and it should have been me. I was the liar. I was the unworthy one.”

It wasn’t my business. I didn’t know her secrets and I didn’t want to know. But what I did know was Jace would have saved her regardless. Love didn’t just go away because of lies. I loved my dad, and he was very far from perfect.

“He would have saved you even if you had told him these secrets. Love doesn’t just go away. He might have been hurt. He might have even been unable to trust you again. But he would have come after you, because that’s what love does to a person.”