Page 18 of When I Fall In Love

“I’m sorry,” she says, eyes downcast. “I’m just…”

Hurting. Angry. At a loss. Torn to pieces with grief. I get it. I reach for her cheek and wipe at a tear that still lingers. God. She’s still so soft and warm and beautiful. So goddamn beautiful. I pull my hand away. “You’re going to be okay.”

“I hate being this weak.”

“I know.”

She looks away and swallows audibly, clearly forcing her emotions down. “This is goodbye, Hunter.” She meets my gaze, and we take each other in for one last moment.

“I know.” I push my hands into my pants pockets, the desire to pull her back into my arms just so strong that I don’t trust myself in this moment. “You’re good to get home?”

Beth laughs, a wet, sob-laced chuckle. “I’m a city girl now. I look after myself.”

“I never doubted it.” I glance up the street. I’m done with San Francisco. My life, for what it’s worth, and a pile of problems are waiting for me at home. “It’s been good catching up. Say hi to Kyle when you speak to him next.”

“Will do. Please do the same at home, Bill and May, Raiden… and everybody else.”

That awkward moment when we each have to go our separate ways stalls us for five torturous seconds, but then she turns and hurries toward the office building where her car is probably parked in the underground garage. For all I know she uses the subway or bus or something.

The reality is that I know nothing. I watch her walk away for the first time in my life. When they left Ashleigh Lake all those years ago, we didn’t say goodbye. Her leaving was more like the amputation of a perfectly sound limb by a blow I didn’t see coming.

I spin in the opposite direction and groan a rather loud fuck for anybody listening. I’ve just cocked this all up to perfection.

As I walk back to my hotel I pass two green spaces, both filled with tents where homeless people have parked for the week, or night, or however long they get to stay. This makes me so angry that for a moment I’m solving world problems, never mind my own. Seeing the makeshift shelters by default brings my mind to Bob, our own veteran who camps out in Ashleigh Lake. Bob depends on me. So many people’s lives are connected with my own and with my business back at Ashleigh Lake, it’s as if they’ve become part of my inner being.

I’m almost at my hotel when my phone rings, and for one stupid moment the notion that it’s Beth with I’m-never-selling-Collingwood-Farm vibes calling me back. I glance at the screen. Raiden. We haven’t spoken in almost a week. My younger brother has been busy: extracting himself from his job in Boston, getting the life he always wanted on track, and getting laid. The last one, a lot.

“Raiden. What’s up?”

“Jeez, Hunter, I hear you’re in San Francisco and meeting with Beth Anderson?”

“It’s Beth O’Neill.”

“Oh. Derek says that Collingwood Farm is for sale? How the hell? I can’t begin to add it all up.”

And math is Raiden’s strength. I drag a hand through my hair. Good old Ashleigh Lake. I’m not even gone a day and the whole freaking town already knows my business. And that we’re fucked. Yeah. Right now, I can’t even think of a way to save the factory and dairy from going under. Reduced production means retrenchment… Some staff will have to go.

“Hunter? Talk to me, man.”

“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” With Georgiana? It is after all almost eleven at night on that side of the country.

“Not yet. Tell me, what’s going on?”

The last thing I want is to decompress and analyze the last couple of hours with the blood relation that had a firm hand in this fuck-up. Not that Raiden knew or understood what his three-day missing-person stint did to me, to my life, and how it had impacted all the decisions I’d been forced to make at the time and going forward. Fifteen-year-olds tend to be selfish like that. And it doesn’t help arguing with them either—they always know best and can argue to a point that you question your own rational mind and sanity.

“Can I fill you in when I’m back?”

There’s a beat of silence. “Yeah, sure. We drove through from Boston earlier and are back at the boathouse. When are you back in Ashleigh Lake?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Already?”

“Yes, there’s nothing here for me.” I’ve got a business to run, and my problems aren’t going to solve themself with me cruising the bay to go see the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Okay, check in here when you’re back and we can socialize your problem and come up with solutions.”

“Sure thing.” By the sound of it my problem has been ‘socialized’ to the bone already. I can’t wait to see what Ashleigh Lake is going to come up with to make all of this shit go away.

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