Only in Your Dreams (The Mountains are Calling #2)

25. Finley

I show up at Nora’s house the next morning crying. I’ve been doing a lot of that over the last two weeks, especially yesterday morning with Grey. I hope he will give Maine a chance, and when I told him that this morning, he just smiled, kissed my forehead, and told me he loved me again.

Everything inside me quaked to say it back, but I held myself in check. I couldn’t tell him as I was sending him off to Maine to check out a new job. I need him to feel free to leave if that’s what he wants. Even if it breaks me.

Which I think is what’s happening when Nora opens the door and finds me sobbing on her doorstep. She ushers me inside without even asking what’s going on. She’s heard all my internal thoughts for the last two weeks, and she thinks they’re bullshit, but she’s the best kind of friend and is supportive anyway.

“It’s french toast day,” she says, her small, warm hand on my back as she leads me into the kitchen. I imagine this is what she’s like with her kids, how she’s a natural caretaker. Nora was made to be a mom, and every time I’m around her, I wonder if I can ever hope to do it half as well as she does.

When I walk into the kitchen, tears staining my cheeks, Veer and Devina just stare at me from where they’re seated in highchairs at the kitchen table, their hands and faces sticky with syrup and stained from berries.

“Did you get your period?” Veer asks me in his little voice, completely serious, and my head swings to face Nora.

She shrugs, falling back into the seat I imagine she was in before I pounded on her door. “It’s never too early to learn about women’s health.”

She’s right, of course, so I take a seat in the one opposite hers and nod solemnly at Veer, because really, waking up to my period had been the icing on the cake this morning. Now I’ll have to sit alone on my couch all weekend, eating tubs of ice cream with a heating pad cooking my reproductive organs while my boyfriend is a thousand miles up the coast, deciding whether he wants to leave here for good.

I’m so tired of this feeling, of giving away pieces of myself and waiting to see if someone will like them enough to keep them. Or if they’ll return them, broken and shattered, and try to find someone or something that doesn’t require quite so much work. I want to believe that Grey will still choose me after examining every option, but the truth is, I’m not so sure. And the waiting is going to kill me.

Nora watches me, her face contorted in a concerned expression. “Are you okay?”

I shrug, but I know she can tell the answer.

I think I expect her to say something encouraging, but I’m wrong. She only sighs and says, “I still don’t understand why you told him to consider the job.”

This isn’t the first time she’s said this. For the last two weeks, as I was working through what I should do, she’s been telling me to get my head out of my ass and tell him I love him. I almost did so many times, but every time, I backed out.

I want him to know his options and still choose me, or else I’ll always be waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to regret staying here in this town with his toxic parents who make him feel like shit and in a job he probably won’t be able to advance in as a newer hire, where the person he considers a father figure is no longer here to make the word seem brighter for him.

Staying here means giving up so much, and I want him to know what he’s getting himself into.

I shake my head, not having the energy to explain all this again. Instead, I just say, “I want him to pick me. Is that so bad?”

She holds my gaze. “But does he know you’re picking him? From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t seem like many people have chosen him , and you sent him off to Maine without telling him you’d pick him.”

Her words slice through me, cutting me to the core. I don’t know how to respond. My stomach knots, nausea roiling through me, my heart stopping and starting again, beating faster than it should.

I can see last night in my mind’s eye, Grey telling me over and over again that he loves me, and me not saying it back. Not giving him the words that so few people have in his life, the words he needs to hear more than anything else. That he’s loved exactly as he is. That he doesn’t have to be anyone but himself, and he’s still worthy of love.

Nora watches me process what she said, then pushes out of her seat, moving behind the kitchen counter. She loads up a plate with french toast, drizzling it with syrup and powdered sugar, adds a scoop of scrambled eggs and a handful of berries that she’s mixed into one big container.

She sets the plate in front of me with a fork and napkin before sitting back down across from me. “All I’m saying is that you love him, and I think he deserves to know that. Being loved by you is something special. You are something special, Finley, and I think if he knew you loved him the way he loves you, there wouldn’t even be another option for him.”

Book club intrudes on my weekend plans to rot on my couch with ice cream and a heating pad. I try to beg out of it, saying my cramps are too bad, but Nora shows up at my door and tells me to get up and come on.

It’s Saturday, and I haven’t been able to get her words from yesterday morning out of my head. I thought I was doing Grey a favor by sending him off without telling him my feelings, but now I’m wondering if I sent him away not knowing if he’s wanted, just like he’s always feared. It kept me up all night, staring at my ceiling, wishing he was beside me instead of cold, empty sheets, so I could tell him.

I need to tell him I love him. It’s a tangible ache, like the empty kind you get in your stomach after going too long without eating. It’s gnawing at my insides, and I have no idea how I’m going to go two more days without telling him.

Last night, I almost blurted it out when he called me, but this isn’t something I want to say over the phone. I want to see his face, watch his mouth stretch into that smile that makes my knees weak, press my lips to his dimple, get lost in his eyes as they sparkle like sunshine on the lake in the middle of summer.

I’m weak when Nora shows up, and she takes advantage of it, dragging me through my apartment, dressing me in something other than the sweatpants and the heather gray T-shirt I stole from Grey’s house the last time I was there. It’s his favorite shirt, and it smells like him. I’ve been sniffing it like a crazy woman since I got home from breakfast yesterday morning and pulled it over my head, loving the way the soft, worn fabric felt against my skin.

Now, I’m in a sundress, a yellow one that Grey told me he loved. It has ties on the shoulders that he’s always toying with, like he wants to tug and see what happens. Nora also looks cute, in a long white eyelet skirt and matching top. She always gets dressed up for book club because she says she doesn’t get a chance to for anything else, and so the rest of us have started following her lead. It makes the whole thing feel extra special. Like we’re going out instead of squirreling away in one of our homes, talking about books and getting tipsy on cheap wine.

As much as I usually look forward to book club, tonight, I would rather be anyone else. No amount of Nora’s efforts to doll me up can conceal the redness rimming my eyes, the way I look like I’ve been through the wringer and come out significantly worse for the wear.

And my friends notice right away. Stevie first.

“What happened?” She looks protective, her brown eyes glinting. Stevie is usually quiet, pensive, always watching and listening, so she misses nothing. It’s uncanny.

I try to wave her off, but the four sets of eyes on me aren’t giving me any leeway. Sighing, I sink down onto Wren’s soft, worn leather couch.

The house she shares with my brother is pleasantly cluttered, the kind of cluttered that means people live and love here. I think of Grey’s quiet, clean house and my tiny apartment, too small for any kind of company. It makes my chest ache.

“I…” When I trail off, not knowing how to finish the sentence, Wren moves to sit beside me. She looks less tired than she has the past few weeks, now officially in her second trimester, and she’s glowing.

Her hand settles on my knee and squeezes. “Is it about Grey?”

I nod, thankful she brought it up, because saying his name feels too painful. “I sent him to Maine.”

Wren’s brow crinkles in confusion. “I thought he was visiting Charlie.”

“He is, but Charlie wants him to move there, has a job lined up and everything.” My breath comes out like a hiccup. “I told him to take it seriously, see if it’s something he wants. He can’t stay here just for me.”

Her lips twitch, holding back a smile. The reaction is so shocking that I don’t even know how to respond.

“Just for you?” she asks, that smile still playing at the edges of her lips. “Finley, his family is here.”

I shake my head, my throat aching with the lump lodged there. “You know what his relationship is like with his parents.” Actually, I don’t think anyone really knows the extent of it. I know I didn’t. But she at least knows how strained it is.

“I don’t mean his parents,” she replies gently, squeezing my knee again. “I mean Holden, Jodi, June, me.” She pauses. “You.”

The lump in my throat grows.

“He couldn’t leave us, Fin. It would wreck him.” Her eyes fasten on mine. “But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t need to hear how much you want him to stay.”

I let out a shaky breath, my heart pounding in my ears. Wren is right, of course. Grey belongs here. In Fontana Ridge. If not with the family he was born with, then with the one he chose.

I let my eyes drift around the room, settling on each one of my friends in turn. “I didn’t read the book.”

It feels good to get it off my chest. I’ve spent the last month wrapped up in Grey and have barely had time to focus on anything else.

Alicia stares at me as if I’ve grown a second head, setting her wineglass on the coffee table with a clink. “If you think we’re talking about some dumb book tonight, you’re out of your damn mind.”

“I think she should go to Maine,” Nora says.

Stevie perks up from where she’s seated on the arm of Holden’s favorite chair. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“I found a flight that leaves tonight!” Alicia yells.

My head swivels between the four of them, then I focus on Alicia. “What? How did you possibly find that so fast?”

“No time for questions,” Wren interrupts, jumping out of her seat. “Come on, we need to get to your place so we can pack. When’s the flight?”

“In three hours.”

Stevie’s brow wrinkles. “That’s not much time. The airport is almost an hour away.”

“Shit, we’ve got to hurry.”

The four of them are pushing their feet into shoes, but I don’t move from my spot on the couch. When they’re ready to go, they finally look at me, eyes wide.

“What are you doing?” Wren asks. “We’ve got to go.”

She goes so far as to pick up the sandals I slipped off by the door, walking them to me and dropping them at my feet.

“I didn’t say I was going to Maine.” I clarify, “I’m not going to Maine.”

She blinks at me. “Why not?”

I flail my arms helplessly, trying to figure out what answer to land on. I end up saying all of them. “I have the shop. I don’t have money to drop on a plane ticket right now. I can’t just show up on someone’s doorstep.” And the most important. “He might not want to see me.”

Alicia looks me square in the eye. “Bullshit.”

I sputter, staring at her, unsure of how to respond to the casual way she shut down all my best excuses.

The real reason is that I’m still scared. Grey may belong here, but I might have pushed him away by telling him to go. He told me he loves me , and I told him to leave. Knowing him, I know how vulnerable that had to make him, and it makes my heart feel like it’s splitting in two.

“We can cover the shop,” Wren says, not moving from her position by the front door, her hand resting on the handle.

Alicia interjects. “And the plane ticket. At least, I can help.”

The other women chorus their agreement, and emotion clogs my throat, tears fighting to break free.

Nora pierces me with a look. “And you were invited. We can look for a bed-and-breakfast or something as a backup plan.”

I’m out of excuses.

“The real question,” Stevie says, watching me with that signature intensity of hers, “is whether you want to go.”