“Someone,” I corrected quietly, even though I could tell by the look on his face he knew. “Maddox and I… I don’t know what we are exactly, but it’s the most real thing I’ve felt in years. And Maya, and this whole town that’s somehow started to feel like home.” I laughed, but it came out shaky. “I know that sounds crazy. I’ve been here for what, less than three weeks?”
“It doesn’t sound crazy at all,” Tommy said gently. “Sometimes you just know when something fits.”
“But this opportunity…” I gestured at my phone. “It’s everything I thought I wanted. My manager keeps saying this is what we worked so hard for, and he’s not wrong.”
Tommy was quiet for a moment, and I could see him weighing his words. “Is this whatyouworked so hard for, or what yourmanagerworked so hard for?” His voice was careful, nonjudgmental. “Because sometimes those things aren’t the same.”
The question hit me like a punch to the gut. I opened my mouth to say of course it was what I wanted, but the words wouldn’t come.
“I had a similar choice just a few months ago,” Tommy continued when I didn’t answer. “Stay in New York, following a career track that looked perfect on paper, or try something different, something unexpected. I struggled with the idea that I was giving up everythingI’dworked so hard for, so I know exactly how you feel.”
“What did you do?”
“I came here on my way to my ‘something different’ and found something even more different… but so fucking perfect.” His smile was soft, certain. “Best decision I ever made, even though it scared the hell out of me at the time.”
I stared at him, something loosening in my chest. “Do you ever regret it?”
“Never. But I realized something important—I’d been making ‘smart’ decisions that were making me miserable. Following a preconceived script for what my life should look like instead of asking what would actually make me happy and allowing that idea of what a happy life looked like to change.”
We sat in comfortable silence for a moment, sipping our drinks as snow continued to fall outside the window.
I thought about waking up in Maddox’s bed, about Maya’slaughter, about feeling like I belonged somewhere for the first time in my adult life.
Tommy let out a soft laugh. “Isn’t it wild how many of us work hard to fulfill the dreams of an ignorant teenager?”
I glanced at him over the edge of my mug. “How do you mean?”
“I was fourteen when I decided to become a doctor. I researched the hell out of it and came up with a dream and a path to achieve that dream. Then I ticked off all the boxes on the path until I had it all in the palm of my hand.” He shrugged. “What I had was a fourteen-year-old’s idea of a happy life instead of anactualhappy life, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said softly.
I thought back to the day I’d left home. How I’d been bound and determined to prove I could succeed on my own. My idea of happiness had been making lots of money and doing it my own way. Not by joining the family business and being the cookie-cutter Perfect Son my parents wanted, but by impressing people with my own…something. My own special sauce. My own talent. My own achievement.
And now, here I was. Successful because I was a pretty man who was good at standing next to pretty things in pretty clothes.
The sound of my snort was unexpected, causing Tommy’s head to snap up. “What?”
I started to laugh. “I just realized I was so fucking determined to succeed without my parents, I ended up building a career based on the same fake persona bullshit that they raised me with. Talk about irony.”
His forehead crinkled with confusion. “Fake? You don’t come off as fake on social media. Are you justthatgood at it?”
I shrugged because I couldn’t stop laughing. It was either that or cry.
Tommy frowned again and came around the island, reaching for my elbow to pull me over to the sofa. We dropped down into the soft cushions before he turned to face me. “Was the story about the one-footed duck made up?”
My laughter stopped with an aborted kind of hiccup. “The one in Melbourne? No, that duck only had one foot. He was born that way. Cute little fucker. You saw that?”
He nodded. “And when you posted the link to the donation site for the duck rescue place, was that made up?”
“’Course not. Jesus. I learned about the group from a woman on the plane next to me. She and a bunch of volunteers go out?—”
“Not the point,” Tommy said with a patient smile. “The point is, you met someone with a cause that pinged something in you, and you used your platform to make a real, authentic impact. To do some good.”
I blinked at him.
“So tell me about the most fake post you ever made,” he said, settling back into the cushions.
I thought back to all of the many posts I’d made and the various sponsorship clients I’d had. “The rave review of Destina Suites on the Jersey Shore,” I muttered. “Although I was careful not to actually say I liked it. I pointed out the things that were good about it and tried to make it sound better than it was without actually misleading people.”
