Page 114 of The Beach Shack Summer
“There it is,” she said quietly. “Decision time.”
Luke read over her shoulder. “That’s four months away.”
“Four months to decide if I’m keeping a foot in that world or...” She gestured around Sam’s studio, boxes half-unpacked, her life in transition. “Or if I’m really doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Staying. Not just helping out for the summer.Actually staying. Building something here instead of there.”
“What would you build here?”
“I don’t know yet. My client base is growing. I could make it work remotely. Or...” She pulled off the suit jacket, feeling lighter. “Or I could do something completely different. Margo mentioned the festival needs better marketing coordination. The whole town could use someone who understands digital strategy.”
“Smaller scale than twenty-million-dollar hotel chains.”
“Different scale. Not smaller. Just... different.” She found herself leaning against him. “Is it crazy that I kind of don’t want to renew the lease?”
“Is it crazy that I really hope you don’t?”
She turned to look at him. “Luke...”
“I know it’s only been a few months. I know you have a whole life up there. But Meg, these past weeks with you here...” He touched her face gently. “I keep thinking about you leaving and it feels wrong. You belong here.”
“My two-thousand-dollar suit disagrees.”
“Your two-thousand-dollar suit doesn’t know about midnight fish tacos.”
“That’s true. She’s very sheltered.” Meg felt tears prick her eyes. “I worked so hard for that life. Gave up everything for it. And now...”
“Now?”
“Now I think maybe I was building the wrong thing all along.”
He kissed her then, gentle and sure. When they pulled apart, she was definitely crying.
“Hey,” he said softly. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just... decades of climbing the corporate ladder, and I think I’ve been happier in the last month than the last two decades combined.” She gestured at the boxes. “What do I even do with all this stuff?”
“Keep what matters. Let go of what doesn’t.” He picked up the magazine with her feature. “This Meg did important things. But she’s not the only version of you that matters.”
“Beach Shack Meg matters?”
“All the Megs matter. The one who color-codes Tyler’s chaos. The one who teaches Stella about business. The one who sits with Margo at Circle meetings.” He paused. “The one drinking three-hundred-dollar wine from a coffee mug in her mom’s abandoned art studio.”
“When you put it like that...” She leaned back into him, feeling the solid warmth of him, the steady presence that had been there through every version of herself.
They sat in the quiet, surrounded by the remnants of her old life. The expensive wine was making her honest. Or maybe it was Luke. Maybe it had always been Luke.
“I don’t want you to go,” she said softly. Not tonight. Not ever, maybe, but she wasn’t quite ready for that admission.
He was quiet for so long she wondered if he’d heard her. Then his arms came around her, holding her close.
“I don’t want to go either,” he said into her hair.
She turned in his arms to look at him, really look at him. This man who’d taught her to surf, who’d waited twenty years, who knew every version of her and somehow wanted her anyway.
“Stay,” she said. Just that. Just the word, but weighted with everything they hadn’t said yet.
