Well Matched (Well Met #3)(88)

Another text came back. While my heart soared at the chime of the follow-up text, a few moments later it came crashing right back down again at the response. Yeah. They’re fine. He’d answered me, sure. But barely. This wasn’t a text chain from someone who was reestablishing a connection. This was dismissal.

Dismissal that I totally deserved. I’d broken his heart that night in the parking lot at Jackson’s—hell, I’d broken mine too—and texting him out of the blue like nothing had happened wasn’t the way to get him back.

Get him back? I shook my head, my scoff loud in my empty kitchen. No. It was time to move forward. Not look back. The real estate agent’s business card was on the kitchen island and I picked it up, tapping its edge against the counter. It was time to call her. Time to list the house and get on with my life.

I picked up my phone and the screen came to life with that last text from Mitch. Part of me hoped he would send another text and keep our conversation going, but he hadn’t. He wasn’t going to. My heart sank so low that the spark had gone out of calling the agent. I tossed the card back to the counter. Maybe it wasn’t quite time yet.



* * *



? ? ?

“What’s the matter?” Emily passed me a vanilla latte and shooed me over to one of the small tables by the window. Her boss, Chris, had taken one look at my face when I’d arrived at Read It & Weep and told Emily to take a break to talk to me.

“Nothing.” I stared down into my mug. Emily’s latte art was still pretty bad, but it was getting better. I could almost tell that was supposed to be a leaf. Almost. I sighed. “Everything.”

“Okay.” Her voice was neutral. Pleasant. She sipped her coffee and looked out the window as though she had all afternoon to sit with me until I figured my shit out. I didn’t have the heart to warn her that she’d be sitting there forever.

“It’s just . . .” I sighed. “It’s time to list the house.” I couldn’t sound less enthusiastic about it if I’d tried.

“But that’s good, right?” Emily said gently. “It’s what you’ve been working toward all this time.”

“Yeah. But now that it’s time . . . I don’t want to go through with it.”

“Okay,” she said again. “So what do you want instead?”

Mitch. Nope. I couldn’t say that. Besides, it wasn’t just Mitch, was it? “I think I realized something.” I watched my sister, wishing she could jump in and help me out here, but she just raised her eyebrows. Waiting.

Fine. I had to do this myself. “I think that Willow Creek is my home. It always has been.” I sounded miserable as I said it out loud.

“Okay . . .” The neutral tone was still there. “So why do you sound like that’s a bad thing?”

“It’s just . . . I’ve been planning to leave this place since the day I moved in. I didn’t get involved. With the neighborhood, with Caitlin’s school. All I could think about was raising Cait, you know? Getting her grown up and out of here. And now that she is, it’s time to go, and . . .”

“And now you don’t want to?” Emily asked carefully.

“I mean, I have all these book clubs, you know?” My laugh was as thin as my joke, but Emily gave me a sympathetic smile, humoring me. “And . . . when Robert showed up for Cait’s graduation, it was like the whole town had my back. People I didn’t even know. And there’s you and Simon. You’re my family, and that means something. And there’s . . .” My throat closed, and Emily reached across the table, laying a hand over mine.

“There’s Mitch.” Her steady quiet voice was getting me through this whole conversation, and I clung to it like a rope, navigating me out of this maze of emotions.

“God, yeah. Mitch is . . .” I drew in a shaking breath and blinked hard. How could I explain what he meant to me? What he’d done for me? But this was Emily I was talking to. I had a feeling she already knew. “Well, he’s Mitch, isn’t he?”

Emily’s lips quirked in a smile. “Best one I know.”

My laugh was a little more robust this time. I swiped at the tears on my cheeks that I didn’t realize had fallen. “Shit,” I said. “He really does love me.” A terrible thought came to me then. “Or he did.”

Emily squeezed my hand. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that changes his mind that fast. You love him, right?”

“Yeah.” Suddenly it was the easiest thing in the world to admit. What the hell had taken me so long? “But what about my plans?” It was the worst argument, and I knew it as soon as I said it.

“Hmm.” Emily thought about that, or at least pretended to. “You list the house yet?”

I shook my head. “I was about to, but . . .”

“Yeah.” She took another sip of coffee. “You started looking for a new place? Near work you said, right?”

“Right. And no.” I’d always meant to start looking, but I’d never gotten around to it.

“That’s what I thought. Okay.” She set her mug down. “I think those plans were great for Ten Years Ago April. Maybe even Five Years Ago April. But plans can change. People can change.” When she smiled at me now her eyes were bright with tears. “You taught me that, you know.”