“Hey, man. You want to get a drink?”

I looked up from cleaning up my station to see Parker there. We were the last two in the shop. We’d even sent Jess home so she wouldn’t have to wait around for our last appointments. Something was up with her, I didn’t give a fuck what she said about it just being me projecting.

I knew perfectly fucking well how messed up I was, thank you.

Pretty sure everyone else knew it, too.

Which was probably why I was getting the surprise invite from Park.

Park was a cool guy and an amazing artist. He’d been at Sailor’s Grave since a couple months after I started, and I didn’t know much else about him. He was quiet. Not a dick, just not the most outgoing. He always came along for drinks or barbecues or whatever else cropped up, but he never did the inviting.

Until now, apparently.

I considered declining, but why not? What the fuck else was I going to do? Go home and wallow? I’d had a couple weeks of that shit. I was topped up enough for a lifetime.

I couldn’t even go to Mom’s and let her and Connor distract me. No, something was up with her, too. A couple times recently she’d all but blown me off when I’d mentioned stopping by. Connor had nothing to say on the subject, which made me even more suspicious. Connor had something to say about everything.

At least Park was giving me something to keep busy. “Yeah, just let me finish getting this all sorted.”

I got back to it, storing everything, giving all the equipment and my station as a whole a full clean, and then taking the small trash can to the back and dumping it. As I made my way back through the shop, I thought about why it had to be now that I didn’t want to do a goddamn thing that Park decided to reach out.

It’s probably because anyone in a mile radius can tell you’re a heartbroken asshole, I thought.

Yeah, the last few weeks had been horrible. There was no way to sugar coat it. I’d been in a shit mood from the minute I’d walked out of the Disciples’ clubhouse that day. I’d gotten a taste of what it was like to have the woman I wanted—the woman I’d started to need in my life—and had to give her up.

Oh, and while I was on the subject of sugar-coated things, I’d not had a decent sugar fix in a while either. Kate had been right all those weeks ago when she’d been in getting her tattoo, the grocery store couldn’t give me what Sugar’s Dream did. It couldn’t give me my sweets fix that was worth it, and it certainly couldn’t give me face time with my girl. But that was her job, and after every other way I’d crossed the lines with her, I knew I had to leave that as a safe space for her to be.

I couldn’t even get Jess to go for me, knowing that if Kate was working, she’d know the real reason.

So I was womanless, cupcake-less, and fucking miserable.

Yeah, I seriously needed to get out and stop the pathetic shit. I’d let her go. I’d had to. I couldn’t live the rest of my life like this because of that.

Drinks with Parker tonight, then I’d tackle making myself be more engaged tomorrow. I’d fake it until I made it if that’s what it took.

Anything had to be better than this.

Back at my station, I grabbed a couple sketches that I was finishing off, putting them into my bag so I could head out. Tomorrow I was off, but I had a couple pieces for clients coming in over the next week that I wanted to put in some work on.

Maybe I’d come in and do that here, just to get out of the house. I could chill with Jess for a while. If I didn’t push—because I should probably learn my lesson on that at some point before I fucked up again—she might be more like her normal self and I might be able to manage that, too.

I threw my bag over my shoulder and went up to the front, only to stop. It wasn’t just my feet that froze. My head, my lungs, my fucking heart.

Kate was there, being let in the front door by Park, but her eyes were already on me.

I didn’t know what she was doing there. What I did know was that she looked incredible, even frowning. After all the distance, she looked more incredible than ever.

Park, looking between us and rubbing the back of his head, was the one to break the awkward silence first. “I’ll head out,” he offered, getting enough of the situation to know he wanted to excuse himself. He looked to me, “Raincheck.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, only able to get that one word out.

He didn’t waste time getting out of there, and I couldn’t blame him.

When the door shut behind him, it was like the already thick tension became too much.

“Gypsy—”

“Lee—”

Fuck, that name. It hurt just to hear it, and her flinch told me she felt the same.

I recovered first.

“What are you doing here?” It wasn’t an accusation, I didn’t want it to be. Even though it killed me to have her so close, I’d gladly let her stay if she needed it.

“I…I need to talk to you,” she stammered a little, worrying her hands.

I hated seeing her nervous like that. My first instinct was to deal with that. Whatever she needed to talk about could wait.

“Come sit down,” I offered, leading her over to my station by rote.

She followed, but she hesitated at the entry, running her fingers over Connor’s handprint there.

“He’s so sweet.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, not wanting to rush her but aching to know what she was here for.

“Like his brother.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. After everything that happened between us, I didn’t expect her to say that.

“Kate—”

“I hated asking him to keep the fact that he’d seen me from you, your mom did, too.”

Wait. What?

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been over to your mom’s house several times over the last few weeks,” she admitted.

What the hell was happening?

“Why?”

“When you left that day, I realized you were right. I wasn’t ready. If I had been, it wouldn’t have been so hard to talk to Daz in the first place. I wouldn’t have freaked out over the things he said.”

“I don’t love him. I can’t. I won’t.”

You’d think, at some point, those words would stop feeling like a bullet in the chest each time they came to mind.

So far, that just wasn’t true for me.

“But you were wrong, too,” she kept going. “You said it wasn’t okay that you pushed me, but I needed it. If you hadn’t, I’d have stayed trapped in that same cycle of grief—maybe forever. It was you that gave me a reason to try and break out of that.”

She still didn’t sit, so I kept on my feet, too. She started fidgeting again and my eyes went to her hands.

No rings.

My heart started beating hard in my chest.

“I was certain it was going to blow up in my face, but I knew I had to try something, so I went to your mom. Margot, she’s been helping me.”

“Helping you what?” I asked, even though I was sure I knew the answer.

“Let go.”

Fuck.

I tried to hold it together. I tried not to start hoping, but it didn’t work.

“Where are your rings?”

She looked down, running her thumb over the space where they once were.

“I took them off. It was time.” She gave a sad shake of her head. “It was hard, but Margot was with me the whole time. She talked me through it, told me about how hard it had been for her, too, but how much it helped to take that step.”

Christ, I couldn’t believe Mom had been helping her this whole time. That was why she kept blowing me off because she had the woman I was pining over at her house.

“She helped me through a lot. I know there’s no magical cure for grief. She told me herself that she still feels it all the time, but she’s helped me figure out how to keep it from consuming me. She helped me get to a place where I can see what I want, and I feel ready to go after it.”

Please. Please. Fucking please.

“What’s that?”

She didn’t answer that. Instead, she shook her head a bit, a small smile forming on her lips. “I came in here so prepared, and you’re kind of throwing me off everything I wanted to say.”

“Say it. Whatever you wanted to, just say it.”

She bit her lip, taking a few steps my way until we were only a foot apart.

And then, she destroyed me and put me back together all at once.

“I do love you. I was scared hearing Daz imply that it might be true because I wasn’t ready, but when you walked away, when you took on that pain because you wanted to spare me, I knew it.

“I can let myself love you. I loved Joel, part of me always will, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t give that to someone else.

“And I will do whatever it takes to show you that’s true. I want to move forward, and I want to do it with you.”

There was not a thing on this Earth that could keep me rooted to that spot hearing her say that. She’d barely finished when I had her pressed against me, and my mouth was on hers.

My gypsy, my Kate.

I pulled away, just enough to actually say the words I’d held in too long, “I love you.”

It was her that kissed me that time, and nothing in my life had ever felt sweeter.