“How…” Tears burned at my eyes as the possibility sank in that I might’ve hurt Holden too much to come back from it.

“How do you make up with him?” Presley guessed, and I nodded. “Move back in with him, for starters.”

“What if he doesn’t want me there?”

“Right. You need to apologize first.”

“I feel like I need a grand gesture or something.”

“Grand gesture, like what?”

“I could buy him a boat or something,” I said in a monotone. “Except he doesn’t really want a boat.”

“Girl, you bought him a damn brewery. I don’t think buying him something is necessary.”

“Probably right. What then?”

“Strip for him? I don’t know. I get the impression that all that boy needs is you.”

If that was true, then we were set, because all I needed was him. Well, plus a job. Whatever. That could come later. One thing at a time.

I needed to plan out a visit to my husband.

Chapter 25

Holden

The dinner crowd had thinned out to almost nothing. I’d never been so relieved it was Sunday and that we slowed down and closed earlier than other nights. I felt like I’d worked a forty-eight-hour shift.

Riley was coming along well, learning fast. Another couple of shifts together and I’d feel confident she could handle it on her own. I’d left her in Seth’s office fighting with the server schedule for the next week, glad to have that task off my hands. I’d let Dakota, the bartender, go home early tonight since there was no one seated at the bar and I could handle any last-minute orders that came in. She’d stocked the bar but had been in the middle of cleaning when I told her to take off, so I hunkered down to wipe everything clean and do the rest of the closing duties.

I was bent down, scrubbing the inside of the under-the-counter fridge, not paying much attention, when someone walked through the bar toward the dining area. It was forty minutes till closing. We could still seat people for another ten minutes and serve them. My eyes felt like sunken hollows in my head thanks to very little sleep in the past two nights, so when I stood up and saw a familiar brunette following Natalie, the host on duty tonight, out the door to the deck, I squeezed my eyes shut to clear them and did a double take.

The woman didn’t quite dress like Chloe, but I could swear that was her.

My heart raced as if someone had floored the gas pedal, and I craned to the side to see around the vertical deck heater between her and me. Though her hair was thrown up in a messy bun and I’d rarely seen her wear it like that to leave the house, I was certain it was my wife.