Chris clapped him on the shoulder. “Let her calm down. Talk to her.”
“And say what? ‘Sorry for being a product of my father’? ‘Turns out I’m more like him than I thought. Business comes before people without me even realizing it’?”
Chris squeezed his shoulder. “It’s a choice, man. We choose who we end up being. Good or bad, you don’t get to blame him. He may have laid the groundwork but we’re paving our own path.”
Noah walked away, paced the empty living room. He needed some damn furniture. He needed to start his life here rather than choosing random jobs to chip away at. He needed to focus. To figure out what he truly wanted.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed Everly tapping her fingers against her thigh. When he looked at her face, her lips were pressed into a thin line.
Noah sighed, his lungs deflating like a balloon. “What?”
Her eyes widened. “I didn’t say anything.”
His brother looked at his girlfriend, reached for her hand to thread in his own. A sharp pang hit Noah in the sternum. He didn’t wantthat.Did he? Chris got lucky when he found Everly but that kind of forever was absolutely not for everyone.
“You don’t have to. I know you’re thinking something. Tell me. I want to know.”
When Everly sat on the bottom step that led to upstairs, Chris sat beside her. “Chris’s right. It’s all your choice. Your father isn’t here making decisions for you. You need to trust yourself. Trust your feelings even if they surprise you. If you don’t like how you made Grace feel, change it. Let her see you. Not who you think you have to be. There’s obviously a connection between the two of you. Whether you acknowledge it or not is also your choice. It sounds like you’re going to be neighbors for a long time. You don’t want this between you. You’ve been restless since you got here. Stop running in circles. Make things right with Grace.”
Noah shook his head, not sure whether to laugh or bang his head against the wall. “So, what? Follow my heart?”
She just laughed.
“You don’t say much but when you do, you make it count.”
She beamed at him. His brother was a lucky guy. “Back at you.”
They stood to leave, but something had been circling his brain for days—since the last time at the rec center. He looked at Chris. “You remember the park we used to go to?”
Chris nodded. “Sure. With Gramps?” He glanced at Everly. “Our grampa used to take us to this park. We’d go for walks, he’d tell us about his plans. He liked to get out of the boardroom, see the city we were part of. He wanted to build a community center at the entrance of that park. We’d stand in the spot he chose, listening to his vision. We stopped going when he got sick. Then we grew up and he was gone. I went back to that park when I was nineteen. Just to… walk.”
Everly put her hand on Chris’s back. “That’s a nice memory.”
Noah picked up the story from where Chris left off, painfully aware of the lump in his throat. “They built condos on it. It’s not a park anymore. I was in college when Chris phoned to tell me it was gone. We hadn’t been there in years but in the back of our minds, it was there when we wanted it to be. Until it wasn’t.”
He tipped his head back, closing his eyes as it thudded against the door. “I’m tired of slapping down money and walking away like what I bought doesn’t matter. I want something to matter. Like that rec center did. Like this house does.” Like Grace’s house mattered to her. The one he’d tried to buy just because he could.
“You’ll figure it out. Sounds like you already have for the most part,” Chris said.
Maybe. Now the question was, what did he do about it?
He dialed Josh’s number, putting the phone on speaker as he worked on cleaning up the rest of the kitchen.
“Hey. I was just about to phone you. Kyle and the guys will be there at nine tomorrow. They’ll finalize anything that needs to be done but at this point, we need to put them on hold until you hire one of these designers. Did you talk to any of them yet?”
Washing the counter, he replied, “Yeah. I’ve narrowed it down to three. They’ll come see the space, give me some ideas, and I’ll be able to choose the one that fits what I’m imagining.” He eyed the sketches Grace left. He’d need to return her sketch book. He wondered if she realized she’d left it. She was really good. It was too bad she was still a student. Not that she’d want to work with him anyway. Not now. Plus, he wanted to be in that magazine, and that meant big-ticket names.
He blurted out his question before he lost his nerve. “What’sthe best way to apologize to a woman?” Noah asked, squirting soap into the stream of warm water.
“What’d I do?”
“Hurt her feelings.” Even saying it, never mind imagining the look in her eyes, made him feel like he could be sick.
“Hmm. Dick move.”
Noah bit back his growl. “Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
“This is going to sound radical but if you’re serious…” Josh said.
