“She did.”
She turned to look at him. He had taken off his sport coat and slung it over his arm, and he had his hat in his other hand. He looked he’d spent his whole drive over here trying to remember how to breathe.
She knew the feeling.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“Please.”
“If I offered you bleach right now you’d say yes, wouldn’t you?” she teased lightly.
“Yes. Yes, I would.”
“Apparently, it’s a yes day for everyone around here,” she observed.
“Let’s hope so,” he said under his breath quietly enough that she didn’t think she was supposed to hear it.
She headed inside hiding her smile from him.
The kitchen was warm and smelled like the loaf of bread she’d set on the counter to rise before she left for the school. She put the loaf in the oven, poured them both coffee, and handed him the cup. “Porch?”
“Porch,” he agreed.
The two chairs sat together facing the lake.
Tessa headed for Makayla’s chair but Dillon stopped her a light touch on her elbow. “One of can be comfortable and one sort of comfortable, or we can both be miserable. Sit in your rocker. I’ll grab a porch step.”
They sat there in companionable silence as the wind whispered through the willows by the lake. A Canadian goose honked, and Bonnie and Clyde answered back. Hamlet snored audibly through the living room window. Makayla’s voice drifted out of the barn, telling Murphy all about the talent show and how much fun it had been.
Tessa took a sip of her coffee and looked at the man who’d built her chair.
“So,” she said.
“So.”
“Are we going to do this or are you going to pretend the last two weeks didn’t happen?”
He took off his hat set it on the porch boards beside him. “I owe you an apology.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I’m not going to pretend I have a good reason for ghosting you. I had reasons. Just none of them were good. I did, however, figure a few very important things during that time.”
“Like what?”
He looked up at her and she saw, for the first time, the full weight of the past two weeks in his face. He hadn’t slept much. The skin around his eyes was tired in a way she recognized because it lived in her own mirror at the moment.
“When Makayla told me about Connecticut,” he said, “I heard Lexi in my head.”
“I figured.”
“The luxurious lifestyle you grew up in. Fancy music academy. All that money. I told myself the most useful thing I could do for you was disappear before you had to disappoint me.”
She set her coffee down on the arm of her chair. “Dillon?—”
“I’m not finished.”
She nodded and let him continue.