Page 111 of Lessons in Heartbreak

The endearment slipped out, and I swiped a hand over my face while my heart hammered wildly in my chest.

“You,” she whispered, voice thick with emotion. “Griffin, I ... I don’t even know what to say. When I think about how much you must have spent ...”

I bit down on my grin. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Griffin,” she admonished. “I found the name of the shell company that bought the land and traced it back to you.”

“Did you?” I murmured. “I might need to do a better job hiding my tracks.”

“You bought the land for me,” she said quietly, and I could hear the tears. “I can’t believe you’d do that.”

I’d do so much more,I almost told her. Instead, I said, “It would’ve been a fucking shame to lose that view from your office.”

On the other end of the phone, she was quiet. “That simple, huh?”

No.

Not even close.

“Nothing about my life feels simple,” I admitted tiredly. The sun had gone down enough that I could finally see bright little specks of stars in the midnight-blue sky. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have her there with me? “But that decision did, if you can believe it.”

She inhaled shakily. “Thank you. It’s ... it’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

“Did it make you smile when they told you?”

“Yes. I swore in front of the library trustee when she showed me the paperwork.”

I laughed. “Worth every penny, then.”

“Why did you do it, Griffin?” she asked. “And don’t say it’s because of my office view.”

The fact that she wouldn’t let me off the hook had me smiling, a hand rubbing absently over my chest. She’d never make anything easy, and there was something about that that made me so fucking happy.

Before I answered, I swallowed. “There’s a big tree in my backyard,” I said. “It’s got the same kind of branches like the one that was in betweenour yards growing up.” Instead of giving me shit about the slight shift in direction, Ruby just listened quietly. “I’d looked at a couple houses before I saw this one, and I don’t know—when I saw it ... I just felt like it was a sign.”

“Of what?”

Even during this eternal month without her in my life, Ruby was pushing me. In the way we should be pushed when there’s something in our life we’ve been too scared to do. My throat was crowded with a hundred things unsaid, and I forced the answer out past all the others.

“That maybe it’s not too late to be a little bit like the people I admire,” I admitted in a thick, emotion-roughened voice. “That I can see the things about them and try to do what they’d do without losing the good parts of myself.”

“Must be quite a tree to remind you of that.”

“Youremind me to do that, Ruby.” I sat up and ran a hand through my hair. “I kept thinking about that weeping willow tree that you loved and those little kids in the creek, and I knew what you’d do if you had the money. You wouldn’t even think twice about doing it for one of your friends.”

Ruby sniffed, crying quietly on the other end of the phone.

“Don’t cry, birdy,” I urged. “It’s fucking killing me.”

“Sorry,” she said in a tear-thick voice. “I wish I could give you a hug to thank you.”

I dropped my head back and exhaled a harsh puff of air, arms aching to wrap tight around her. “I wish you could too.”

“Will you come see it when it’s all done?” she asked tentatively. “We’ve already commissioned a few local artists for sculptures, and a landscaper is working up final plans for the butterfly garden.”

I smiled. “Couldn’t keep me away.”

“Okay.” She sighed. “Great.”

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