Page 105 of Silver Linings
“What if—” I pause, my words breaking off at the thoughts swirling in my head.
“Say it. Don’t hide from the pain,” Nan encourages.
I take a deep, shuddering inhale. “What if I’m not enough?” I’m shaking my head as new tears form in my eyes. “I don’t think I could survive it. Not from him.”
Kena moves to kneel in front of me so I’m now looking down into his warm face. “Do you honestly think he thinks that?”
I shrug.
Nan cuts in, her tone resolute. “I need you to listen to me now and hear what I’m about to say to you. I don’t know where you got this idea that you’re not enough, but it’s a lie you’re using to keep yourself from being truly happy. You’re running scared. But the unavoidable truth is—every time you give a piece of yourself to someone, you run the risk of being hurt, but that doesn’t mean love will only end in pain. You have to realize the people around you want to show up for you, love you, if you’d only let them close enough. I would have been on the first flight out to be at your opening, threat of probable death be damned.”
I let out a shuddering breath. “I’m scared. What if he wakes up one day and decides to leave?”
“Ah, my girl, that’s the silver lining of it all, isn’t it? When you allow yourself to be brave, to do the thing that scares you most, only then will you really learn who you are. We have to choose to risk our hearts every day to truly know what it is to love and be loved. Tolive. Sometimes, it doesn’t work out, and we learn valuable lessons, but sometimes, it works so perfectly, we don’t know how we survived without it. There’s no point to this floating rock in the sky without love.”
Nan might have a point. I was just having a hard time grasping it while my heart was in tatters.
“So tell me,who are you, Silver James?”
thirty-one
. . .
Who are you?
I’ve been mulling over Nan’s words since I had to leave her and Kena to come open the store. As I walk up to the shop, every thought leaves my body when I see the door slightly ajar.
I know I locked up last night.
My irrational brain supplies every worst case scenario, and the one leading the charge is the attacker from all those weeks ago coming back for revenge. I would never recover financially or emotionally if the store was robbed.
I slowly approach the door, pushing it open, peeking my head in and smelling sawdust and something chemical. When I step inside, my body comes to a full and complete stop so abrupt, I nearly drop the second coffee I picked up on my way over with money Nan gave me to get food because I lookedpeaky.
Hendrix is here.
Hendrix is here?
And he’s on the second floor? Staining the banister?
Question after question swirls around in my mind like a tornado. Where the hell has he been? How is he up there when the staircase is broken? Why are there tarps covering myshelves? Why is there sawdust on the floor? And why on Earth does he look so goddamn delicious?
“What are you doing?” The words come out of my mouth without me even realizing it.
Hendrix whips his head down to me and smiles, but his gloriously beautiful grin fades as he takes in the look on my face, the dark circles that are no doubt under my eyes. Slowly, he sets down his staining rag and bucket and makes his way down the stairs. I brace myself for the areas I know are broken, waiting for them to creak and snap and send Hendrix tumbling down. But with every step down the stairs, there’s silence, the boards are quiet beneath his feet until he’s stopped in front of me.
“Sunshine, I—” he starts, but I quickly interrupt.
“Where the hell have you been, Hendrix?”
Out of nowhere, there’s a crash upstairs before I see Sam and Jae’s heads pop up, both men looking sheepish, and brandishing their own staining supplies.
“Sorry.” Sam starts to canter down the steps with Jae on his heels. “Let us just get out of here before you start laying into him.”
“Try to avoid his pretty face when you start swinging, Silver,” Jae says as he claps Hendrix on the shoulder.
I watch them smoothly exit the store, and when I turn back, I realize Hendrix never took his eyes off me, the gold striations blazing brighter than the rest with a look of determination.
He goes to reach for me, but I step out of his hold, and his hands and face fall. “There’s nothing I could do or say to make this right.”
