“Wendy. Goddamn her,” Laney said with a shake of her head. “How can we help?”

“Just keep the front running so I can salvage what I can, where I can.”

We broke the meeting with a plan—Kash and Jett would finish breaking down the installations. Laney would check on Mom. Marcus would get the rest of the store ready to open.

And I would escape to the back.

The second I could, I did, dragging myself to storage. I clicked on the lights to assess our stock, but when I looked around at the space—our space, mine and hers—I felt the last bit of my will crack and shatter. The pieces we’d worked on. The old rocking chair with the blanket slung over the back. The pile of hay.

I lowered myself to sit in the hay, dropping my head to my hands, closing the world out. The familiar scent of this place, like old wood and sweet hay and fragrant florals drifting in from the greenhouse. It wasn’t a realization of my mistakes, and it wasn’t a marker of loss.

Because I’d known what I had to lose from the start.

And despite how I’d tried to keep her, I might have lost Tess for good.

TESS

I bolted out the back door, blinded by the sun and drowning in the heat. The block I traveled home was navigated through a sheet of tears, my destination in my forethought and a thousand emotions bubbling beneath it.

Just get home. Get home. Get home. When you get home, then you can break.

The stairwell was cool and dark, my composure crumbling with every step. I unlocked the door. Stepped inside.

The one place in the world I needed was home, and the picture of this place was tangible in my mind.

A picture that no longer existed.

The walls were white but for the accent wall of Mom’s ugly, old wallpaper. The kitchen, white and pristine, Carrera marble countertops to replace the old pea-soup formica, backed by subway tile.

It was beautiful. But it wasn’t home, not anymore.

Everything had changed. And all because of Luke.

Before he’d come back, everything had been perfectly normal, perfectly predictable. But ever since he’d walked through the door of Longbourne again, it had been nothing but chaos. What had once been stable, secure, familiar, was turned upside down, inside out. The shop. My home.

My heart.

I couldn’t look at the room. I needed my place, my safe place, the one place I knew hadn’t changed.

“Tess?” Dad called from his study. “That you?”

It wasn’t me. I didn’t know who I even was anymore.

But I followed the sound of his voice to face what I could. When I passed the threshold, his face ran a gamut of emotions—concern, sadness, pain, anger.

“What happened?” he asked.

I drew a shaky breath. “The installation broke. We didn’t get the feature.”

“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”

A weak smile touched my lips, forced and aching with falsity. “I … I just need some time. Rest.”