Bitter Truth (Hawthorne Vines #1)

Another is the reason I came back.

“See you at dinner,” she tells me, that same soft smile on her face as she pushes up from her seat and goes inside.

I look back to the property spread out before me, the long rows of vines that stretch farther than I can see.

As beautiful as this vineyard is, I can’t help but hate being back here.

I hate the interactions I’ve had with my brother and father.

And I hate that I have to add this whole mess with Wes into the mix.

It would have been so nice to keep that sweet memory of the kind, attractive guy who helped fix my flat and made my pulse race. Instead, that guy has been claiming my bench late at night, invading my space and my home and my life.

My heart nearly shoots out of my chest when my cell phone rings on the table in front of me. I take a second, my hand to my chest, to catch my breath.

Then I pick it up and look at the screen, my lips tilting up even with my sour mood.

“Hey, V.”

“Don’t hey, V me,” I hear from the other end of the phone. “It’s been five days since you left, and I’ve heard nothing from you. You could have died!”

At the sound of Vivian’s theatrics, I break into a real smile.

“I only drove to the other end of the state, not Mars,” I reply. “I wasn’t going to die.”

“Look, weird shit happens at gas stations in the middle of nowhere, okay? Trust me, I know.”

I laugh at the accuracy of her words, thankful for her distraction from the bullshit going on in my life.

“So how is it being back at Hawthorne House?” she asks me, and I can just picture her sitting on her patio, overlooking the water, sipping from a glass of wine like we did on so many evenings together.

“It’s … still here,” I answer, not really sure what else to say.

“Yeesh, that bad, huh?”

I sigh. “I think I made a mistake coming home, V.”

“My couch is always available if you want to bring your cute little butt back to LA.”

“I couldn’t do that to you two. Besides, you know Roger hates me and would never be able to get over me invading his space.”

“Roger is a little shit who can suck it up,” she replies, and I smile at the image of her aging cat’s narrowed eyes every time I visited Vivian at the apartment she shares with her boyfriend in Santa Monica. “But really, M, if you want to be here, I can make it work.”

My heart twists, because I know she’s being serious. And if circumstances were different, I might have taken her up on the offer.

But Paul made it clear the last time we talked. There is no future for me in LA, and it doesn’t matter that V is on the ladder to success. There’s nothing she can do about it.

So … her couch isn’t really an option. Staying in LA wasn’t an option.

The only real option for me was returning home and giving myself a chance to figure out what’s next.

“I appreciate it,” I tell her. “I really do. But we talked about this, V. You know that—”

“I know, I know,” she cuts me off. “I just wish things were different.”

“Me, too.”

We sit in silence for a long moment, neither of us saying anything, just enjoying the closeness, even though we’re so far from each other.