The Story Of Us - Teri Wilson Page 0,70

copy of Persuasion. Take your pick.

Fortunately, Anita had hired extra help for the day so she remained her perfectly unruffled self, the perpetual calm in the center of Jamie’s storm. Anita took one look at her, then led her to a stool behind the front counter and held both her hands while Jamie poured her heart out. She told her aunt everything about the day before, from the pretty pink dress and the anticipation surrounding her dinner with Sawyer to the confrontation with Dana Sutton, and the realization that she’d let herself forget what Sawyer had come to town to do.

“I knew it. I could feel Sawyer slipping back into my heart and I should’ve stopped it immediately.” She sliced a hand through the air, as if it would have been just that simple to cut off her emotions. In a perfect world, it would. In a perfect world, her bookstore wouldn’t be in danger, either.

Anita reached to tuck a lock of Jamie’s hair behind her ear and then cupped her face. Her hands smelled like roses and baby’s breath—like Valentine’s Day itself. “No, you shouldn’t have. Never stop love. Just because you love someone and it doesn’t work out doesn’t mean there isn’t value in the experience.” She released Jamie’s face and shrugged one shoulder. “Even the dentist.”

“Matt,” Jamie said flatly.

It would have been so easy to convince herself that Matt was the right choice for her, especially now that True Love was on the brink of closing its doors. He’d been ready to share his life with her, and he was a good man.

But he wasn’t Sawyer.

“Matt.” Anita nodded and gave Jamie a tender smile. “I mean, you learned something from him, didn’t you?”

She had. She’d learned she wanted to hold out for her wow instead of settling for something that just wasn’t right—but look where that decision had gotten her. “I don’t want to look back. At least not with Matt. But, is that all there was between me and Sawyer? The past?”

Maybe she was just confused, lured by the sweeping feeling of nostalgia that had come over her when he’d walked into True Love Books after so many years. He’d come back into her life in almost exactly the same spot where they’d first met, the bookshelf where fantasy met the classics. But maybe the notion that they belonged together after so much time apart was the fantasy.

Her throat grew thick. Falling in love with Sawyer again hadn’t felt like a fantasy—it had felt real. It had felt true. But everything had gotten so complicated that she wasn’t sure what to believe anymore.

“I’ve seen how you two look at each other now, and there’s no doubt about how you feel.” Anita’s smile grew wide. “And I think it’s always been there. That’s how it is with true loves.”

She made things sound so simple when, in fact, they were anything but. True love was about fate and destiny. It was about invisible forces bringing two people together in a way that couldn’t be stopped. If what they’d found was true love then it should be easier than this, shouldn’t it?

“Here I am, about to lose this bookstore that I practically grew up in—where he and I met—where I have put my heart and soul.” She let out a shuddering breath. “All for a project that he is a part of. How can that be true love?”

Jamie shook her head and thought about the first thing Sawyer said to her when he came back to Waterford.

But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

He’d quoted Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet, specifically. It had seemed so lovely at the time, so romantic, even with his inaccurate balcony reference. She’d been so swept off her feet by those infamous words that she’d forgotten that Romeo and Juliet didn’t end in happily ever after. It was a tragedy.

No matter what happened with the Ridley project, there was no happy ending to be found here. Not when one of them would be in for a major disappointment. That didn’t sound like a romance to Jamie, and it definitely didn’t sound like true love.

But as Aunt Anita was quick to remind her, she and Sawyer weren’t characters in a book. They were living, breathing people, and the real world didn’t always play by literature’s rules. That’s what made it real instead of make-believe, fact versus fiction.

“True love doesn’t have to be perfect,” she said. “It just has to be true.”

Just a few hours later, Jamie