“Thanks. Yeah.” What else was there to say?
“No other siblings? Or what about your dad, if they were still together?”
“I’m an only child. And they were, but he’s never been very invested in the business.” I shook my head. “Ironic, considering she started it here to be with him.”
“But he doesn’t want to keep it?”
I shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. At first, after she died, we grieved together, I suppose. I moved in with him for a bit, and we kind of took care of each other for a while. Or at least, I took care of him. Cooked, cleaned, did all the things she did, you know? But after a few months, it was like… he was fine. It’s hard to explain. He just kind of checked out.”
“How so?”
“At first, it was minor. Like, he would avoid talking about her or how he was feeling. And then, he started scaling back from work but spent less and less time at the house. Then, a few months ago, he told me he was retiring early and moving to Phoenix. He sold the house. I moved into the apartment above the shop. We barely talk anymore.”
Spelling it out like that felt so harsh, so simple. Woefully inadequate to describe the complicated way my relationship with my dad had disintegrated over the last year.
A year of grief counseling told me it was more than just a neglectful father. I knew everything about Seattle, from the shop to the house to evenmeprobably, reminded him of that pain. I knew that grief looked a lot of different ways for a lot of different people, and he needed space, just like I did, to process his loss until we could heal our relationship.
But there was another part of me that would never stop being the little girl he’d raised. One who needed her dad.
Ronan was quiet for a moment, like he knew I was processing right along with him, but he didn’t look away. In fact, he looked like he was studying me closely through the screen.
“What?” I pulled at a loose wave that had come down from my bun. “What are you looking at?”
“Is it fucked up that I want to kiss you right now?”
I stilled. “You—what?”
He shrugged, utterly unapologetic for his potentially inappropriate desires. “I think I answered my own question. ButI do. Or hug you or something like that. I don’t know. This is honestly confusing as fuck. Maybe…”
I couldn’t help leaning closer, like it might help me read him better. “Maybe what?”
If it was messed up that he wanted to kiss me, maybe I should have admitted that I was currently imagining how it felt to be tucked up against that broad, warm chest, those arms wrapped around me, providing a kind of security that was so odds with his otherwise chaotic personality.
I didn’t, though. I just waited and watched.
He had incredibly long eyelashes. A dark fringe that swept over his cheekbones when he blinked, adding to that “bedroom eye” effect. When he looked straight into the camera, I shivered with the need to crawl right into the screen and into his arms.
“Maybe I don’t like to see my wife hurt when I can’t do anything about it.”
My wife.
I searched for a joke, but again found none. We stared at each other for a moment through the screen, like the distance and technology between us was the real farce instead of this conversation.
Is this why people got married? To have a person be there for them? To adopt a new family when theirs left or disintegrated or just couldn’t be that anymore?
It had to be.
Megan had found her person. I knew it the first time I went to dinner with her and Kevin and discovered mid-conversation that he knew something about her before I did. I’d been replaced—and why not? They were getting married. They were each other’s people.
But Ronan Black was not and never would be mine. A trickster, a sly manipulator, handsome, yes, but not even closeto the kind of stability he was emanating right now through the screen.
I wasn’t sure what he was doing. But being my person—my real husband—wasn’t it, and never could be. The sooner I got that out of my head, the better.
“It’s fine. I’ll figure it out. In the meantime, there’s just a lot to do before the wedding this weekend,” I said. “Speaking of, the rehearsal dinner is in about an hour, and I need to get ready.”
The odd spell between us snapped.
“Rehearsal,” Ronan repeated. “Right. Yeah. Should be fun. Good little break.”