Trouble (Dogwood Lane #3)(85)

“Shit. I am. I need to get out of here,” he says. “But I’ll leave you with this: imagine how you feel right now and then how you’ll feel when you see her with someone else. Then consider how much you love her and know that no one else will ever be able to love her like that.”

Love her? What?

What’s he talking about?

“See ya, Matt,” he calls across the room. Then he gives me the biggest “I’m right and you can suck it” face I’ve ever seen a person make.

Fucker.

I watch him walk out the side door, the one he came in yesterday with Avery.

Love her? Is that what this is?

“Yup.” Matt sticks the end of a screwdriver in my side.

“Yup, what? And that hurt, by the way,” I say, rubbing my ribs.

“Ah, that hurt? Imagine if it was a sawhorse after you dropped four feet.”

I roll my eyes.

“I was yupping what you were just wondering,” he says.

“You don’t know what I was wondering.”

“Oh, I bet I do.”

I cross my arms over my chest. “Fine. What am I thinking right now?”

“That you hate me.”

“Maybe you are good at this.”

He snorts, smacking the end of the tool against his palm. “You do love her.”

I turn away from him.

I’m not even sure what that means. If I love her, wouldn’t that mean I’d be chasing after her with my tongue wagging, like Dane did Neely? Or that I’m being a yes-man, like my mom was to my dad? Or coddling her like she’s dipped in gold, like Meredith does those damn dogs?

What does love even mean? How the hell am I supposed to know?

“You let her walk away,” Matt says simply. “You did it because you thought you’d fail her.”

“Because I would.”

“And you let her go because you didn’t want to do that to her. Because you love her.”

I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to fail her. I don’t want to make her anything other than happy every day of her life.

My head spins. Everything seems to be going fast, swirling like a tornado inside me. Over the top of the ruckus, against the hiss of the wind, I hear her laugh.

I’m fucked.

I think I’m in love.

“I’ve said all I can say,” Matt says. “If you want to ruin your life, that’s up to you. But you have about an hour to get it figured out and get in here and actually help me, or I’m calling Dane and having him come. He was up all night with a sick Neely and a sick Mia. So if he comes . . . God be with you.”

Matt leaves me standing in front of the mural. My gaze instantly goes to the sketch of the lake, and my grandfather’s voice comes back to me.

“You’ll be okay. You’re strong,” he said. “But you’ll need this spot. Trust me.”

“But what if I can’t get here? Then what?”

He grinned. “Then you think about me, and I’ll help you.”

“What do I do?” I ask the half-finished sketch. “What do I do now?”

The answer comes to me slowly—in pieces. Colors. Feelings.

There isn’t a voice that tells me how to go about things because that would be too easy, but I know it all the same.

I glance over my shoulder at Matt.

He has my back no matter what. Even when I’m a dick or not particularly helpful, or when I forget to order the mushrooms on his pizza, he’s still there.

That time I miscalculated on a job and cost Dane $700? He forgave me.

When I broke Neely’s favorite cookie jar, she let me come back.

And even when I give Claire tons of shit, she still likes me.

No matter how many times I mess up, my friends are still there. We figure it out. And I don’t even worry about it too much, because I know they love me.

Maybe Avery could love me too.

“Thanks, Grandpa,” I whisper as I turn away from the sketch. “Matt, I’m gonna need more than an hour.”

I rip a piece of cardboard off the paint box in front of me and jog to my truck.

“And tell your brother I’m going to need a vacation!”





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

AVERY

You’re awfully quiet today,” Lorene says.

I give her the best smile I can. “I know. I’m sorry. Long night.”

“Oh, I remember those days,” she says wistfully. “What I wouldn’t give to be young again. Getting old is hard. Your brain is the same as it always was, but your body just won’t work anymore.”

“You get around pretty good, though.” Harper looks at me over Lorene’s hair. “There are days when I feel like you get around better than me.”

“I do,” Lorene says. “But I’m not going to if I keep pretending I’m not almost a hundred years old.”

I press on the small of my back. It’s tight from sleeping on the couch last night, or trying to. I didn’t even go to bed. Having slept in Penn’s for the last few nights, I didn’t want to imagine him behind me. Or on top of me. Or whispering in my ear when he thinks I’m asleep.

“I feel like crap, and I’m not even thirty,” I say.