CHAPTER 24
“I knew it!” Jess pointed at Brynn with her knitting needle.
“Shh.” Both Brynn and Ali admonished their friend.
Silence was more than just the golden rule in knitting club, it was the platinum rule. Brynn was a new member of the Needlepoint Mafia but even she knew that. Tonight was the first chance she’d gotten to talk with her friends since her emotional rollercoaster of a night two weeks earlier. She’d given them the CliffsNotes version over text but this was the first face-to-face they’d had. Ali had been busy with work and family, Jess had been busy with work and the wedding, and she’d been busy with work and her mother.
Shea had insisted on staying for a couple of weeks to make sure that Brynn was okay. She’d left four hours and twenty-seven minutes ago. Not that she was counting, or anything. Brynn loved her mother, but her relationship with her was definitely better in long-distance form.
Jess lowered her volume but not her enthusiasm. “I knew that there was something about him!”
No one could argue that Jess had said that from the beginning.
“So your dad hired him?” Ali spoke so quietly that Brynn had to resort to lip reading.
“Sort of.” She’d learned the art of whisper-talking when Ryder was a baby and went through a phase where he’d wake up anytime he heard her voice. “He had it put in his WITSEC agreement.”
Jess looked all too pleased with herself that she’d been the one to know there was something not adding up with him. “So the restoration of the theater was just a cover?”
Brynn nodded as she cast on.
“But his work was beautiful.” Ali whispered. “Did someone else come in and do that?”
“No. He really did learn that from one of his stepdads, Duke.”
He’d told her about Duke the first night that he was in town. Ten weeks had passed since that fateful night, but it felt more like a lifetime.
“One of his stepdads?” Nothing got by Jess. “How many does have?”
“Eight,” Brynn mouthed.
“So if the woodworking is just a cover, why is he still in Whisper Lake?” Jess asked harshly.
“For Izzy.” Brynn’s heart squeezed thinking about him leaving before the holidays. “He promised her they could stay so she could finish the semester.”
“Aww,” Ali said wistfully.
“No awwing,” Jess snapped, prompting a few dirty looks from the women around them. She lowered her voice. “He doesn’t get an ‘aww.’”
“Why not? I think it’s sweet that he’s staying for Izzy. I know Ricky’s happy that she gets to stay till the end of the semester. And, yes, he should’ve come clean about who he really was, but he was here to do a job. But, did he lie about anything else?”
Did he? Brynn realized that was the million-dollar question. She didn’t know how to trust him. After everything she’d been through with her father and Max, she already had issues in that department. Even if it wasn’t done in the same spirit of premeditated deceit, it didn’t change the fact that he represented himself as something he wasn’t. And she just wasn’t sure she could get past that.
“You’re taking his side?” Jess said with disgust.
Ali looked between her friends. “I’m not taking his side, just playing devil’s advocate.”
“Exactly.” Jess nodded. “You’re advocating for the devil.”
“He’s not the devil.” Brynn defended him.
“Wow, he’s even got you doing it.” Jess shook her head to indicate that Brynn and Ali were hopeless.
“Have you talked to him? I mean, since everything happened.”
“No.” Brynn had been so overwhelmed that she’d told him not to talk to her and that she needed time. He’d frustratingly respected her wishes.
Even when he moved out of the apartment he’d left her a sweet note explaining that he’d be staying in town until the end of the semester for Izzy. He said that he knew she needed space and time to think and so he was giving her that. He said he’d be there if and when she was ready to talk.
And that was something he hadn’t lied about. He’d given her all the space and time she needed, which was driving her batshit crazy. She knew the mature thing to do would be to tell him she was ready to talk. But she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. She wasn’t sure why, but she couldn’t.
“Ms. Daniels, I see you’ve been practicing.”
Brynn looked up and saw Mrs. D standing over her.
“I have, yes.” Brynn hadn’t been sleeping well, and unfortunately her beloved romance novels weren’t as much fun to read when she kept envisioning the hero as Axel. When she found herself getting jealous of the heroines in the fictional stories she knew she had to put the Kindle down. So, instead of reading, she’d been knitting at night.
It wasn’t nearly as satisfying, but at least she was getting better.
“I heard that Mr. Vaughn and his sister moved into the B&B.”
“Yep. They did.” And he and Izzy were all Karen could talk about. Her morning walks were filled with stories about how brilliant Izzy was and how handy Axel was. He’d refinished and stained the stairs and railing and was working on restoring the intricately hand-carved corbels.
Brynn knew that Mrs. D was on a fishing expedition, trying to see what her reaction was and if she could glean any information. But she was not about to take the bait. She kept her face pleasantly blank until Mrs. D gave all three of them pointers and moved on to her next “victims.”
“Oh, speaking of the B&B, I heard Austin is back in the states.” Ali said quietly when they were alone again.
“He is.” Karen had told her that Cliff and Alma’s grandson had been honorably discharged a few months prior.
“I always had the biggest crush on Austin Stone.”
“I think every girl in Whisper Lake had a crush on him.” Brynn spoke from experience. “Who couldn’t with those—”
“Eyes.” All three of them finished in unison.
Austin Stone lived in New York with his mom, and to a small-town Midwestern girl, that was pretty much the epitome of cool. It also didn’t hurt that he had dark, emerald green eyes, thick lashes, and a body that rivaled Mark Wahlberg in his Calvin Klein ads.
“Isn’t he engaged?” Ali asked.
Jess hissed. “He was. But I have it on good authority, Facebook, that his fiancée is expecting a baby. With someone else.”
“He owns the B&B right?” Ali asked both Brynn and Jess. “Is he going to come back here?”
Brynn shrugged. “I don’t know. Karen hasn’t heard from him.”
“Well, if he does come back, maybe he’d be a good candidate.” Jess nudged her.
“A good candidate for what?” Brynn asked.
“For getting over Liar McLiarson.”
It really bothered Brynn that Jess was being so hard on Axel. “He didn’t really lie. He’s not the bad guy. I don’t think he meant for things to happen the way they did. And he did try to tell me. Yes, maybe he could’ve tried harder, but it’s not like he was doing it to hurt me. He was in a tough situation. Honestly, if I were him, I don’t know if I would’ve done anything differently.”
Jess and Ali both stared at Brynn for a beat before giving each other high fives.
“I can’t believe it worked.” Ali smiled.
“I told you.” Jess winked.
“What? What am I missing?” Brynn was used to them having inside jokes or references she didn’t always totally understand, but this one went completely over her head.
“She was good cop,” Jess said as she pointed to Ali and then herself. “And I was bad cop.”
“Jess and I were talking and from the texts you were sending we really couldn’t understand why you were so upset with Axel, and she thought maybe you didn’t really know either. So, she said that we should play good cop, bad cop. I’d stick up for him and she’d put him down to see how you really felt about him.” Ali nervously rushed to explain.
“Wow.” Brynn looked between her friends. “That’s actually kind of genius.”
“Oh good.” Ali let out a breath.
“I’ve been saying I’m a genius forever, I’m glad you’re finally on board,” Jess joked.
The girls chuckled and were shushed by several other knitters in their area. They spent the rest of the club discussing the play that was happening in two weeks and catching up on Jess’s wedding plans. They’d decided to get married in the summer on the pier. Ali talked about the boys and how Kade kept dropping hints that he wanted to start trying for a baby.
As Brynn sat with her friends, she didn’t feel the same twinge of envy that she used to. It was replaced with a different emotion. She’d never honestly believed that she would find someone that she’d feel the same about as her friends felt about their significant others. Now, Brynn knew that not only she could, she had.
And somehow, knowing what was possible was worse than thinking it was impossible.