Page 41 of Sweet Summertide

“No, Mother, you want me to be you,” Holly said. “When are you going to see that no matter how much you want me to be something else, I never will. I love you, but you need to start believing in the person I am and not the person you wish I was.” She felt liberty in blowing a hole in the perfect façade her mother had built around herself, but there was a sadness too at the realization that this is all their relationship would likely ever be: one disappointment after another.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” her mother said with a fake grin.

“You’re just sorry that I made a scene at your stupid party. It’s your fault though. Did you think I would feel pressure from you cutting me off and having all these people around so that I would just say yes to him, and we could all have a celebratorydrink or two afterwards. You, as the proud mother-of-the-bride-to-be, and me as the glowing woman who was given the keys to the world?” Holly took two more mimosas and handed one to her mother. “Well, congratulations. You just ruined any chance of me trusting you again.”

Holly skipped the toasting and drank the whole thing. She slammed the glass on the counter and the stem broke in half, causing it to crash against the wooden surface. She turned and walked out the front door, not sure when she would return to one of her favorite places on earth, now tainted by her mother’s scheming.

This is how Teddy must have felt when she worked to undermine him,she thought. The sun beat down on her with the same heat she felt boiling up in her heart. A mixture of heavy sadness, like the humidity clogging her lungs, and the freedom she felt, like a breeze kissing her skin, reassured her that the easiest road probably is the wrong one.

She was looking forward to her date with Teddy more than ever now and wanted nothing more than for him to hold her in his arms.

CHAPTER 21

Theodor checkedthe time on his Peugeot one more time. It was official, it didn’t look like Holly was coming. So much for turning the page on their budding romance. If friends can become enemies, and go back to being friends again, then what was to stop Holly and him from becoming enemies for a second time? He felt stupid for trusting her. She really seemed to be into him, but now he was just a loser being stood up by the prom queen.

It was too early for him to go to sleep, though he looked at his bed on the other side of the room like it could solve all his issues to have a whole night’s rest. Since deciding to open his chocolaterie, he hadn’t slept an entire eight-hour stretch. At first his mind was plagued with all the planning and to-do lists, then he lost sleep over his across-the-street rival, now he would be replaying every interaction he had shared with Holly, wondering where it all went wrong.

He flipped his phone around in his hand. There was no way she was as bad as he thought her to be. During the firefly parade, she had shown a different side of herself to him. She was vulnerable and carefree. No way was that woman who wasso gleeful about catching a lightning bug, the same woman who would stand him up now.

Opening his messages, he texted her to see if she was alright. After staring at the screen, the text stayed on ‘delivered’. If she read it and then ghosted him, at least he could deal with it. Perhaps something had happened, or she was somewhere where she couldn’t write back. She had her event at the farm earlier, but he looked at his timepiece again, it should have ended hours ago. Perhaps Alfonso would know where Holly was, or he could get in touch with Holly’s right-hand, Millie.

There was nothing to do but march up to Harbour House and find Alfonso. Taking his linen shirt off the hook by the front door, he opened the door only to find Holly standing on the other side of the threshold. Black mascara painted her cheeks with streaks, and her eyes were red. What he assumed had been a pretty yellow dress at one point, was limp against her body and her hair sat in a messy pile at the crown of her head. Once the shock came and went, he pushed the door completely open.

“Sorry, I think I’m late,” she said, and he felt convicted by his shame at having thought she could be capable of standing him up in the first place. “Can I come in?”

He couldn’t say a thing. Her appearance begged a dozen questions, but it wasn’t until she stepped under the glow of the ceiling light that he saw the extent of her pain. “Holly, your shoulders are really burned. What happened?”

She plopped down on the end of his bed. Her eyes stared blankly ahead into the room.

Without being asked, Theodor went into protector mode. Every nerve in his body was firing, telling him to take care of this helpless creature. He took a clean washcloth and doused it in cold water. Sitting on the edge of the mattress and beside her, he placed the cool rag on her sunburn, being careful not to rub it. “It looks like you walked through the desert today. This is bad.”

“I don’t feel a thing,” Holly said in a monotone and breathy voice.

“You will later. I thought you were at the farm today?” Theodor said and moved the wet cloth to the other shoulder. Her strapless dress had done nothing to shield her from a blazing sun. He unzipped the top inch of the back of her dress and saw the demarcation between her fair skin where it had been protected and the angry, torched skin that hadn’t been. “Did someone hurt you?”

“I was so upset. And my car’s in a ditch.”

He moved the rag again. “Holly, you’re not making sense. I need some more information.” Her eyes caught his. Tears pooled in her waterline, and he used the back of his finger to wipe them away. Using the damp cloth, he cleaned the mascara from her cheeks and soothed her skin. “That’s better.”

“I never want to see my mother again.” Holly straightened her spine and the skin on her back took an almost purple hue.

“Let me rinse this out,” Theodor said and walked back across the room to the small kitchenette where the sink was. “I might have some aloe too. Keep telling your story.” He dug around in the bathroom while she continued.

“She surprised me with more than just horses. She and my ex ambushed me with basically a proposal. He said he would give me everything I want, and then he tried to drown me with a ring.”

Theodor was rightly confused, but one thing he was certain about, she had come to him with her woes. And that made him feel good about where they were with their relationship. “I feel like there’s more,” he said and returned to her side with the green aloe gel. “May I?” he asked with his finger resting on her zipper.

She nodded. Theodor unzipped the dress down past her waist, exposing her bare back and the hardly visible tan linefrom her bikini strings. The previously sun kissed skin looked like nothing compared to the burn area. He swiped the extra pillows from the mattress surface, and she laid down on her belly. Her bare feet dangled off the end of the bed, which he didn’t mind because they were so dirty.

“You said no, to the proposal?” Theodor squirted the gel into his hand and warmed it just a little with the heat of his palms. He began at the center of her back and used minimum pressure to smooth the aloe over her skin, careful not to create any friction.

She relaxed under his touch and sucked some air through her teeth.

“Sorry, it’s cold,” he said.

“No, it feels good. Keep going and I’ll keep talking.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said and realized he shouldn’t enjoy touching her skin as much as he was under these conditions, but it felt good to care for her. A few minutes earlier, he had been livid and hurt that she had stood him up, now he was prepared to scorch earth for her.

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