The Last Eligible Billionaire(96)

“I don’t want to go.” Dammit. Now I’m crying. “Hy, it’s too much. It’s—”

She pulls the van to a stop, and I can’t avoid it anymore.

There’s the art hut.

And just like my relationship with Hayes, it’s over.

The door is falling off the hinges. All of the bright designs that campers painted all over the outside of it over the years have washed off with time, so all that’s left is a broken gray building missing a few shingles sitting amidst an overgrown field of weeds and baby trees.

The forest wants its art house back.

“B, go on,” Hyacinth says. “I have to spray these rugrats down with bug and tick spray before I let them out.”

“I’ll get them,” I offer.

“Begonia. Get your ass into that art hut and make sure the toilets still work, because that’s the next thing I’m gonna need, and if I’m gonna be peeing in the woods instead, I have to spray my cooch with bug and tick spray too.”

“Do not spray your cooch with bug and tick spray.”

“Go find me a bathroom.”

“I’m sure the new owners will—”

“Go!”

She’s being such a pill, and I get it.

This is hard for her too.

But my stomach is in knots and I want Hayes.

There.

I said it.

I want Hayes.

I don’t want to walk into my dad’s old art hut, the place I discovered my entire mission in life, all by myself when the last person that I thought could love me tried to recreate it for me and then couldn’t tell me he loved me.

I want him here with me.

I want him holding my hand and telling me that I can do this. That I can walk into this building that meant so much to me so long ago and tell someone else how to rebuild the dream I let go of forever ago.

God, I miss him. He’d squeeze me in a hug and tell me I can do this, and then he’d tell me he’d buy the whole damn place for me, which I’d tell him was ridiculous and unnecessary because I’m finding another job, a real teaching job that’s not just summers working for peanuts at a camp, and I can’t just pretend I’m a kid at summer camp for the rest of my life.

I don’t want him to buy me a camp.

I just want him to love me.

And here I am, thinking I was finally getting over this, and instead sobbing to myself as I walk through the doorway of my dad’s art hut to meet some random stranger who’s expecting a mature woman who’ll have ideas on what to do with a summer camp.

“H-hello?” I call as I push through the creaky door. My voice sounds like two frogs are fighting over a bug in my throat, and I can’t stop sniffling, and everything’s blurry.

And that’s before someone inside answers my call.

“Begonia? What’s wrong? Who hurt you? I’ll kill them. I’ll fucking—”

I trip at the achingly familiar voice, but I don’t fall, because two massive arms and a solid chest are suddenly holding me against the softest fabric in the world, and I smell the Maine seashore, and my heart can’t decide if it wants to be in my throat or if it wants to burst out of my chest, because Hayes is here.

He’s here.

“Don’t cry.” He sounds on the verge of tears himself, desperate and aching and alone, and it only makes me sob harder. “Begonia. My sweet angel. Please—”

“Don’t call me that.” I try to push him away, but my arms don’t get the message, and instead, they circle his waist and hold on for dear life. Two more minutes. Just two more minutes of pretending this is real. “Don’t call me that.”

His arms tighten around me, and he presses his face into my hair. “I’ve fucked this up again, haven’t I?”

“W-what—you—here?”

“I missed you.”

My brain tries to process the words, but all I manage is absorbing the pain in his voice.

The pain, and the fear, and the desperation.

Everything his mom told me comes flooding back, and I squeeze him harder.

I can’t be the person who does all the loving. I can’t. But he’s here.

He’s here when I need him to be, like he materialized out of thin air, and—oh my Georgia O’Keefe.

“You bought my camp.”

“It’s too much. I know. But I can’t go small, Begonia. Not for you. Not when I—when you—it’s yours. It’s all yours.”

“You can’t buy my love!”

“I know. I know! But I—Begonia. I—”

He stops, cutting himself off abruptly with a curse, the words he won’t say hanging in the air between us, and my heart flips inside out.

He bought my dad’s camp. He’s here. He wants me.

But he can’t say the words.

Is he here because he loves me? Or because I’m the easiest path to whatever it is he thinks he needs?

Can I do this?

Can I risk continuing a relationship with a man who might not be able to love me?

“I’m so sorry, Begonia.” His voice is hoarse, and I can feel his pain. “I should’ve told you. I—god, I haven’t said this to anyone in fifteen years. I can’t do words. Words don’t matter. Not when they’re tossed about so carelessly, when they’re twisted and manipulated and used for anything but what the word is supposed to mean—but I can show you. Begonia, let me show you. Please. Please let me show you. Don’t leave me before I can learn to believe in the goodness of the words you need to hear.”