The corner of his mouth twitched in a grim smile and he shook his head. “You saw what I let you see, what I let everyone see. We were fucked up, Lily, and in some ways still are. But this place means everything to Gray, and he means everything to me. Jacob, Hudson, Kenna too. It keeps us together—or mostly,” he added. “And it’s ours.”

“You’ve earned it,” she said.

He nodded. “And we’ll find a way to keep it. We have to, if nothing else to prove that Richard Kincaid didn’t take it away from us. He didn’t win.”

She got that he and the rest of the Kincaids had their self-worth, their very identity tied up in this place. Saving the place was so much more than just saving a family business to them.

So much more.

But she wished that Aidan could see that they had worth with or without the resort. “You work your butt off,” she said. “No one can say you all didn’t try hard enough. Have you thought about getting your dad to help, seeing as this is his mess?”

“Not happening,” he said in a tight tone she’d rarely heard him use. A tone that said drop it.

She got it. He didn’t want to go there. In any case, she believed they would save the resort, because she wanted it to be true, for him. And because she believed in him. She always had. That had never been the problem.

Their gazes locked and held.

“It killed me when you left,” he said quietly. “Not as much as letting you put this ridiculous mud on my face, but close.”

She stilled and stared at him, a little dizzy with the abrupt subject change.

Not to mention the frankness of the statement in spite of the infused humor.

It killed me when you left. “You … you never said.”

“Didn’t get a chance, but believe it. You going without a word devastated me. I kept imagining you trying to get over Ashley’s and your dad’s deaths on your own.” He shook his head. “But you made it clear you weren’t looking back. Even now it’s like that. You’re here for the job, but you still have one foot out the door, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice when the next, better job comes along.”

This was painfully accurate. “I had to go like that, had to cut the ties or I couldn’t have done it,” she said softly. “I just couldn’t stay here and face … everything.”

“That’s my point, Lily. You didn’t have to go it alone.”

Said the guy who’d always had a pack of siblings to pull together for support. But she realized there was something more, something he hadn’t said.