Page 41 of A Vintage of Regret
“ Same thing it always does. I say something stupid that I’ll regret later… this is later. I’m just trying to deal with my grief… and mom… and that’s?—”
“A lot. I get it. I do. She threw me out of her house.”
Grant chuckled. “I was there, remember?”
For a long beat, neither of them spoke, and all she could do was remember her mother’s cruel words on that fateful day. Her calling Riley ungrateful. The accusatory tone. The shrill of her voice had haunted her dreams for years.
The sound of a TV droned in the background and the muffled thud of something—maybe a cupboard door—closing. She and Grant had made so much progress since she’d been home, and she wasn’t ready to lose that connection while it was still so fragile and new.
In an effort to keep him talking, and because she genuinely wanted to know, she asked, “Care to tell me about Robert Wilkerson and how Mom got involved with that?”
He exhaled loudly. “The Ponzi scheme… I warned her. Robert was bad news even in college. I cut ties with him for a reason. But she didn’t listen, and when it blew up, she washumiliated. Still is. Now she just blames everyone else—like she always has.”
A wry smile tugged at Riley’s mouth. “Sounds familiar.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he muttered, but there wasn’t much bite behind it.
“I’m just saying, maybe the two of you are more alike than you realize. We all have a little piece of her in us. Look at me. I push people away and slam the doors behind them.”
“I suppose that’s true.” He sighed again, softer this time. “We’ve got to stop making this harder on each other than it already is.”
“That would be Mom, and there’s nothing we can do about her,” she said. “But… we can call a truce and find better ways to communicate.
Another pause. “I can do that.”
After they’d said goodnight and ended the call, she sat there for a long moment, phone resting on her knee. It wasn’t forgiveness, but it was something.
She texted Erin:Coffee tomorrow? My treat. Stone Bridge Café?
A reply came almost instantly:9 a.m.
Setting the phone aside, she leaned back into the chair, gaze drifting toward the vineyard. The light was starting to soften, the sky turning that rich, burnished color that always made her think of endings.
A knock startled her.
Standing, she smoothed her sweater out of habit. She checked the peep hole before opening the door. Bryson stood there—hands in his pockets, eyes warm and safe in a way that made her breath catch.
“Hey,” he said, voice low.
Her hand tightened on the doorframe, something unsteady sparking in her chest. “Hey.” She leaned against the frame fora heartbeat longer than necessary, taking him in—the way the fading light caught in his hair, the faint crease between his brows like he’d been debating something the whole way over. “What are you doing here?” she asked, softer than she’d meant to.
His mouth tipped into that slow, crooked smile that used to undo her. “Thought you might need some company.”
A dozen responses crowded her throat, but instead, she stepped back, opening the door wider. “Come in.”
As he crossed the threshold, the air shifted, warmer somehow, threaded with the familiar scent of his cologne. She closed the door behind him, allowing her fingers to brush the wood just long enough to ground herself before she turned to face him.
“Bryson…” she started, but the words tangled. There were too many things she wanted to say and not nearly enough courage to say them all.
Unreadable, he held her gaze. “We need to talk. But first, maybe we just… sit.”
Something in her shifted. Stilled. All the anger from earlier, when Monica had glided into the tasting room like a whispered threat, vanished. It didn’t matter anymore. Monica had never actually been the problem, and that was a cold, hard truth that Riley had to come to terms with.
Bryson leaned back in the chair, letting the silence sit between them. The lamplight spilled gold over the table, catching in Riley’s hair and painting the strands a gleaming amber. Outside, a light drizzle tapped a steady rhythm on the partially open window, the scent of damp earth sneaking in.
She sat curled into her chair, one leg tucked under her, a half-full wineglass cradled loosely in her fingers. Her eyes were far away—not cold, but shuttered, the same glint he remembered seeing when she was trying to hold her ground.
“Monica wasn’t the real problem,” she said finally, her voice so soft he almost had to lean in to catch it. “I mean that kiss, it hurt, but I knew you would never cheat on me. Never initiate anything with someone else. Not even when we were broken up, because we were never really broken up for long.”
