Bitter Truth (Hawthorne Vines #1)

Hell, everything with her is easy. The laughter, the conversation, the way she turns me on.

I’d tried to be as honest as I could with her earlier without intentionally making things more difficult. For me or for her. Just talking about the other night in the kitchen sends little sparks of need flickering through me. Remembering the way she fell apart under my touch is indelible in my mind. Of course I replayed it at least a dozen times when I was back in my cabin later that night, desperate to relieve the tension.

But Murphy doesn’t need to know those things. If she really knew exactly how interesting I find her, how much she turns me on, how amazing I feel when I’m near her, I’m not sure if she’d let me pull away so easy.

And part of me thinks she feels the same.

She has her own walls up, whether from her family’s issues or whatever she left in LA. I can sense it, and I can’t help wanting to know why.

“What was it like balancing being a waitress with the singing stuff?” I ask casually, hoping she’ll want to open up to me about it.

“Not too terrible. After nine years of trying to get my name out there and trying to make connections, I was starting to feel a little exhausted, to be honest.” She pauses. “I’ve never actually admitted that before. Not even to myself.” She is studiously focused on the dirt and gravel along the side of the road where we’re walking. “It makes me wonder if I wasn’t really cut out for it all.”

When she finally looks over at me, she must not like something in my expression.

“It’s okay, you can tell me you think I was stupid to try to be a singer. Everyone else did.”

My brow crinkles. “What? I don’t think it’s stupid.”

“You don’t?”

I shake my head. “No. I think it’s incredibly brave.”

She looks surprised at my answer. “Well, you’re the only one.”

“Really?”

Murphy nods. “My family thought I was crazy for moving so far away. That I was too young and went too far for a dream that was out of reach.” This time, she’s the one who kicks at the dirt, her foot connecting with a small rock that shoots forward and rolls to a stop about ten feet in front of us.

“Well, they’re wrong. And unless they’re the ones who picked up and moved away, who took on all of the uncertainties and risks that come with striking out on your own, they don’t get to judge your choices like that.”

Her eyes are still on the dirt road, and she kicks the rock again once we reach it, but I can tell she’s listening intently.

“They should have told you what they really thought, which is probably that they were sad you left, and they missed you while you were gone, or that things were more difficult for them while you were away. But most people don’t like to get vulnerable that way because it makes them sound selfish. And it is selfish. It’s selfish to make someone else carry your emotions because they’re a burden you don’t know how to carry yourself.”

Murphy stops suddenly. I come to a halt and face her.

“You know, I’ve never had anyone explain things to me like that before. Are you sure you want to be a chef and not a therapist?”

I laugh, and she does too, before we start walking again.

“God, I wish I had my shit together enough to be a therapist.” This time I kick the rock Murphy has been nudging along. “But alas, I’m just as fucked up as you are.”

“Oh, thanks a lot.” She laughs.

“Everyone’s fucked up, though. We all have trauma and emotional baggage from our past that we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy.”

At that, I kick the rock a little too hard and it shoots way out in front of us.

“Just because you were starting to feel exhausted in the end doesn’t mean anything except that you were on a hard road. Going after your dreams isn’t supposed to be easy. There are supposed to be challenges and things that knock you off-balance. It’s that line from Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own, you know? ‘If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.’”

“Yeah,” she says, her voice suddenly much more quiet and melancholy.

I can feel her wanting to say something else, so I keep my mouth shut, hoping that she’ll get whatever it is off her chest. That she’ll share whatever this thing is that she’s carrying around inside her.

We approach the rock again, but Murphy passes it by without even looking at it.

And the longer we walk without saying anything else, the less likely I think it is that she’ll end up sharing whatever is swirling around in her mind.