Chapter 16

Ash curled into herself, having made it home and into her pajamas. It didn’t matter that it was barely lunchtime, and she hadn’t eaten yet. She’d lost her appetite about the time Burke had lost his voice.

How could he have just stood there and said nothing?

Her breath shuddered as she exhaled, but she held back the tears. She opened her last text from Milo, sent months and months ago.

I’m just not as serious about us as you are.

Anger surged through her, and Ash jammed her finger against the phone until the options came up. She deleted the text stream from Milo, something she should’ve done a long time ago. Maybe she’d hoped he’d sent the text on a whim.

She’d tried texting him several times after that, but he’d never responded. Never called her again. She’d never heard from him after that, and last she heard, he’d moved to a smaller island to pursue his dreams of writing a novel.

No matter where Milo was, the fact remained that Ash had allowed herself to date another man who wasn’t anywhere as serious about them as she was.

“Why?” she asked herself, placing the phone face-down on the bed beside her. “And why Burke?”

Without him, she had no one.

Even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t true. She had friends around the island. Hope and Charlotte. Zara. Even Kayla and Krista would wrap their arms around her and talk bad about their older brother if Ash wanted them to.

She had her family. Leo and Gen and her niece and nephew. Her mother.

So she’d run alone in the morning, along a different beach. Big deal.

But as she rolled onto her back, she knew it was a very big deal. Her phone rang, and she knew who it would be before she even looked at it.

Sure enough, Burke’s name and grinning face sat on the screen. She wanted to ignore him, but she wasn’t fourteen, so she picked up the phone and answered the call.

“Ash,” he said. Nothing else.

She certainly wasn’t going to carry this conversation. She’d already said everything on her mind anyway. “You called me, Burke,” she said, prompting him in a slightly acidic tone. Maybe very acidic. She wasn’t sure she cared at the moment.

“I was not pretending,” he said, but his voice lacked its usual oomph.

“You know what, Burke? It doesn’t matter.” Ash sat up, apparently one more thing to say to him. “You’re not ready for a relationship with me. I know it. You know it. Let’s just take a break until you figure things out.”

“I don’t want to take a break.”

“Tell me you’re over Bridgette.”

Burke’s hesitation said it all. Ash exhaled, about to do one of the hardest things she’d ever done. “Burke,” she said as gently as she could. “Figure things out.” She thought maybe she should say she’d still be there once he did, but she didn’t know if she would or not.

Maybe her crush would wither by then. Heaven knew Burke didn’t do a whole lot very quickly.

In the end, she said, “Call me later,” and hung up. How much later he’d call, Ash had no idea. It didn’t matter. She’d survived for a couple of years while he was at off-island finishing school. And she’d survived seeing him every day when she wanted more than a running partner.

She had plenty to do at work, and she could find other people to spend her free time with. Inspired by the amount of sewing she needed to do, she pulled herself from bed, redressed, and went back to work.

After all, Burke did not get to alter her daily life simply because he’d proclaimed that he’d never want to get married.

As she drove back over to her sewing studio, a tiny voice in her head whispered, He asked Bridgette to marry him over and over and over.

So the same conclusion he’d reached about her now applied to Ash.

He wanted to get married. He just didn’t want to marry her.

Ash kept herself so busy, she couldn’t drag herself out of bed at five a.m. to run. She told herself she wasn’t avoiding Burke. She was simply taking care of herself, and she needed more than six hours of sleep, what with the fall wedding on the island coming up. And the bride was wearing her dress and had already posted about it several times on social media.

She called in lunch orders so she wouldn’t have to leave her shop. She spent longer and longer hours at her mom’s house, even after she’d fallen asleep. And Ash seriously considered getting a dog. Then a cat, as she could leave it home alone for long hours and not have to worry about where it would go to the bathroom.

But she couldn’t bring herself to go down to the animal shelter. Was she really going to become the crazy cat lady? She wasn’t that hopeless. Was she?

She decided that, no, she wasn’t. So no cat. No dog. Nothing to look after but herself, and though she spoke to other people and attended more meetings than she cared to, the loneliness was crushing after only a week.

So she called Charlotte on a day they didn’t have a meeting with a bride and said, “Do you have time for lunch?”

“Yes, if we eat it here.” She lowered her voice as she said, “Hope’s upset about a lost client. Not one of mine, but yeah.”

Hope Sorenson owned Your Tidal Forever, and she was usually fair and friendly. But she could get in a bad mood if things went wrong. Ash got it. When she had to unpick an hour’s worth of work and start over, she wasn’t great company either.

“How do you feel about sushi?” she asked Charlotte.

“Uh, Dawson and I had sushi last night.”

“What do you want?” Ash would go anywhere and get anything. She simply couldn’t sit in her studio and dine to the sound of her own chewing.

“Pizza?” Charlotte asked. “I know that’s not like traditional fare, but I’m tired of all the seafood. I just want a piece of pizza.”

Ash smiled. “Hawaiian?”

Charlotte laughed and said, “Whatever. Just bring a lot. It’s been a week already and it’s only Tuesday.”

Ash couldn’t agree more, and she agreed to be at Your Tidal Forever in a couple of hours. She pulled out a new bolt of fabric she hadn’t cut from yet and rolled it out on the table.

She’d just measured a new bride yesterday, and as chiffon was a tricky and finicky fabric to work with, she might as well get started today. Other dresses needed to be finished first, but with Ash’s new ten-hour days in the shop, she had plenty of time to make her deadlines.

Marking and cutting the fabric, Ash managed to pass the time. Get things done. Mark things off her list. She ordered two pizzas online and left the shop. The September sunshine wasn’t quite as brutal as July, but it still leant plenty of heat to the island. She walked down the sidewalk toward the sound of the waves against the shore. After crossing the street, she could get all the way to the water.

A dog barked, making her heart skip a beat. Then two. Was that Dolly? Was Burke here? Getting tacos from Manni’s?

Her gaze swept the crowd, but it was impossible to see individuals. And she hated this panic inside her, that she couldn’t even walk across the street without worrying over whether she’d see Burke Lawson or not.

She’d lived on this island as long as him, and she shouldn’t have to feel restricted in where she went or what she did.

She perched on the edge of the beachwalk and watched the waves in the distance, wishing she were brave enough to leave the island. Maybe I will, she told herself, but her phone chimed out that it was time to go get the pizzas.

So she stood and walked down the street to get those first. She could plan a getaway any time. Right now, she just wanted to eat a meal with someone who didn’t ask her why Burke wasn’t with her.

Charlotte had piles of paper strewn across her desk when Ash arrived. She looked up, a pair of reading glasses on her nose and said, “Thank the stars,” with a heavy sigh. She pressed a button on her desk phone and said, “Riley, she’s here.”

“I walked right by her desk,” Ash said, searching for a place to put down the pizza boxes. “She wasn’t there.”

“She’s hiding out in the back,” Charlotte said.

Riley entered a moment later. “I saw her on the security tape.” She closed Charlotte’s office door behind her. “Hey, Ash.”

“Hiding out in the back?” Ash asked.

“Put the pizza here.” Charlotte cleared a space on her desk while Riley blew out her breath and rolled her eyes.

“Then I can see when Hope is coming,” Riley said. “And still do my job.”

“So, Hope’s not here?” Ash said, setting the pizza on Charlotte’s desk.

“No, thank goodness.” Riley collapsed into one of Charlotte’s chairs. “Did you get the barbecue chicken?”

“No,” Ash said, feeling a pinch of guilt for a reason she couldn’t name. Maybe because the barbecue chicken was one of Burke’s favorites, and she simply didn’t want to have anything that reminded her of him.

“I got all-meat and a supreme.”

“Both great.” Charlotte said, opening both boxes. “I’m starving.”

They fell into silence for a few minutes while they ate, and then Charlotte said, “So tell us about what’s going on with Burke.”

Ash flinched but managed to finish her bite of pizza. “Burke? Nothing’s going on with Burke.” And that was the sad truth.

Charlotte eyed her but didn’t say anything else. Riley finished her pizza and wiped her mouth. “Girl, you were head-over-heels for him. Something happened.”

“Well, that’s true,” Ash said. Way too much to tell right now. They only needed the cliff notes anyway. “We broke up a couple of weeks ago. He doesn’t want to be serious.” Ash wished her chest didn’t feel like it was caving in on itself. She wished she could talk about Burke like she used to, like he was a hopeless man who had a good heart.

She seized onto the fact that Burke’s heart was good. Sure, maybe it was broken right now, but maybe, just maybe he’d figure out a way to fix it.

“He told you that?” Riley said.

“Said it to his dad,” Ash said, “I happened to overhear.” She didn’t want to go into all the details of how their relationship had started as a mutual agreement, but the fact was, it had. And it still stung every time she thought about it.

“You sound a little bitter,” Charlotte said.

“Yeah, well, I really liked him,” Ash said, getting a little choked up on the last word. She shook her head, wishing she’d bought a lot of Diet Coke to go with her pizza. “And it turns out that he just wanted his flower farm.”

“What?” Charlotte and Riley asked at the same time, Charlotte adding, “What does that mean?”

“It’s nothing,” Ash said, shaking her head again. She didn’t want to badmouth Burke. “It’s nothing. We’re nothing. It’s over.”

And those words sounded final. They sounded true. They sounded like the drawer closing on her plans to ever sew her own wedding dress.