I was home, however briefly, I definitely wasn’t going to tell Em. I had no problem telling Deacon to shove it when he got too preachy. He was like that old lighthouse on the eastern end of the island. He could withstand whatever you threw at him and emerge frustratingly, obstinately unchanged.
Em was more like the wildflowers that grew along the dunes. More resilient than you’d expect, but still in need of protection. If for some reason there were no rooms open at the Wisteria, Em would have zero qualms wheedling and pestering me to stay with him and his boyfriend, Tate, in the Gothic mansion Tate was trying to restore.
Em was about as threatening as Roxie at her meanest, which was to say that he’d bark twice before rolling over and asking for belly rubs, but he had those puppy-dog eyes, too. Eyes that would say I was personally hurting him by refusing to sleep in a bed last inhabited by a Victorian-era ghost. Eyes that would silently ask why I still had so many walls up eleven years after our parents had died.
Em didn’t understand that those walls were the only thing keeping me standing. He didn’t know that what lay hidden behind them, ready to jump at the first hint of weakness, was so much worse.
I was my walls at this point, or I was nothing.
So, no. I wasn’t going to tell my brothers I was here, and I wasn’t going to stay. Summersea and I didn’t get along. I was going to go to this meeting, make my excuses, and get back off the island as soon as possible. Back to the mountains. Back home.
Behind me, Roxie snorted gently, and even though I knew it was just chance, I shot her a defensive look.
“What? Tennessee is home. Just because I grew up here doesn’t mean anything.”
She didn’t respond. Obviously. But I could have sworn she was staring at me in the rearview mirror, her soulful eyes refusing to let me off easy. I rolled my windows back up angrily, sealing the salty air out again.
Tennessee was home. Summersea was just a place I’d once thought I belonged. A place I’d left behind—for good.
I would never have come back today if my hand hadn’t been forced. My boss—well, technically my ex-boss, since my position had been suspended due to funding cuts—had set up this meeting. If I didn’t owe her, well, pretty much everything in my life, I would have said no in a heartbeat.
But the fact was, when I’d shown up in the Smokies at age eighteen with a backpack and twenty-three dollars to my name, Hetty had found me a job at the National Park, and a place to live, and it wasn’t her fault her budgets kept getting slashed. Or, I supposed, her fault that the job offer she’d found me happened to be on the very island I’d escaped a decade ago.
At least, I didn’t think that last part was her fault. Hetty did have a bit of Deacon’s meddling gene, so it was possible she thought it was time for me to go home and experience personal growth or some shit, but I’d decided to be magnanimous instead of suspicious.
See? Nice. I could do it.
Sometimes.
So I was taking the interview as a favor, but I wasn’t going to take the job. I just wished that Tom, the man I was meeting, hadn’t insisted on doing the interview on Summersea instead of the mainland. I’d almost choked when Tom had suggested meeting at The Roastery, a coffee shop in Adair that Deacon’s friend owned.
I’d racked my brains for another location and come up with an outdoor juice bar in Palmetto, where the furniture was all fair-trade, reclaimed wicker or some shit, and each juice cost twelve dollars, minimum. I didn’t like the idea of sitting out on the sidewalk where anyone could see me, but there was no way I was leaving Roxie in the car for the whole meeting. It was only the first week of April, but the air was already sweltering.
I parked my Jeep a block away, putting on my sunglasses and pulling my baseball cap low before getting out. Stupid, really. Em and Deacon would recognize me or my car on sight.
And Julian—well, he might not know what kind of car I drove now, but I doubted a pair of sunglasses would be enough of a disguise. Not when there was no power on earth that could stop me