“I’m hungry. Let’s go.”
“Twist my arm,” she jokes, but she’s already slipping on her sandals and pulling on that baby blue sweatshirt again. It looks so cozy I want to wrap my arms around her. With the wind and the sun fully gone now, it’s cold outside. Bree shivers when she turns around to lock the front door.
I stand behind her, looking at Colby’s outdated front door that could definitely use a coat of paint. “The song is nearly there. Do you think your label will take it?”
She spins to face me, her eyes wide. “Nearly there? I don’t know if I can sing about Jaida offering megrace, Benny. It’s going to take some major swallowing of my pride to publicly say half of the things we wrote tonight.”
My gut twists. “You didn’t mean those things?”
Her brow pulls together. “That’s not…I always mean what I write. But maybe not toward Jaida. I feel awful about what I did. My platform was built on boosting self-esteem and empowering women. I spit in the face of all that with this stupid song. And for what? My pride? To expose a fake? A lot of good that did.”
I lean one shoulder against the wall and shake my head. “I won’t ask what happened between you to warrant that…attack. I’m guessing it was pretty bad.”
Bree’s cheeks go pink.
“In the public beef you guys have, though, she just became the victim,” I say, “and everyone loves an underdog.”
She shakes her head, pressing her fingers to her temples. “Where were you when I needed a reasonable sounding board?”
“Is your mom not…” I don’t even know how to finish that sentence, so it hangs between us.
“She loved the song,” Bree mutters.
The Belacourt matriarch probably knew it would cause an enormous stir and would put Bree’s name at the top of every headline. Anything to make a sale, right? She definitely wasn’t expecting her daughter to run away.
Bree’s eyes fall closed as a gentle breeze reaches us in the alcove of the doorway. “I want to keep pretending this isn’t happening.”
As we simultaneously write a song to fight the problem? She’s wanting to keep the world pushed away? I can help her do that. Bree came here to get away. This is meant to be a safe space. She’s choosing to spend time with me because I provide that for her.
That feels like an honor. I don’t know if I’ve fully processed what happened today and how I feel about Bree’s choices, but I know how much she regrets making some of them. At the end of the day, I know she’s not a vindictive person, and I can offer her grace for being human and doing something she regrets. She is clearly remorseful.
Maybe she doesn’t regret the things she said, but she certainly wishes she hadn’t said them.
“We can pretend,” I finally say.
Her eyes lift to meet mine. The dark brown pools are warm and grateful. She sways toward me. “I don’t know what I did to deserve landing on your floor, but it’s the best thing that’s happened to me in ages.”
A chuckle rumbles from my chest. I can’t help the utterwarmth filling my body. It’s not even real praise, but I feel like I won an award. “I’m not convinced you didn’t plan that.”
She wraps her arms around herself. “Youarethe reason I chose this town. I remember you saying it’s where you would choose to go if you ever needed witness protection. In my defense, I thought you lived in Montana.”
I lean closer. She looks so cold, and we should take this to my house so we can get warm and start dinner, but neither of us move. I know why my feet are planted firmly on Colby’s front porch—this spell will break the moment we leave, and I really love talking to Bree with her guard down. The energy buzzing between us is palpable. I could run my fingers through it like sand on the beach and probably feel the individual grains.
Once we shift, the spell will break. She’s vulnerable and skittish, and I’m enjoying being the person she turns to more than I should.
She leans her shoulder against the wall so she faces me. A shiver shakes her shoulders briefly, but she still doesn’t make a move toward my house. “So whydidyou move here from Montana? I know it’s for your grandma, but that woman is spunky. She seems capable and independent.”
“She’s spunky, but she still needed me.”
“Weneed you,you mean,” a voice calls over my shoulder. Colby appears from the dark space between our houses and plants his feet on the porch beside me, his megawatt grin flashing at Bree. He sticks a hand out. “Hi, I’m Colby, the better-looking cousin. Andyouare Bree Belacourt.”
13
BREE
I’ve been found.
It takes a moment to put all the pieces together. The man standing beside Benny is a few inches taller, his hair is lighter, and his shoulders are broader, but otherwise the men look very similar. Colby’s eyes are a striking blue, and they’re fastened on me with amusement.