Hope collapsed in on herself, tucking her knees to her chest and cradling the bottle of beer between them, looking down at the label like it held the answers to the mysteries of the universe. She very deliberately did not meet my eyes.
“Hope?” I pressed, “did something happen?”
Chapter Nine
Griffen
Why did you think I would leave? Do something special? I’m not that interesting.”
I stared at her, speechless. Not do anything special? Not interesting? The little girl who’d made up stories of fairies under the toadstools, who’d built a drag racer out of scrap wood and an old skateboard, who’d won the science fair four years in a row and never brought home anything less than an A?
It seemed so obvious to me that she was made for anything other than staying home under Edgar’s thumb. She looked shocked that I’d expected anything different. “Where did you go to college?” I asked.
A half shrug of one shoulder, her eyes still on the label of her beer, her thumbnail scraping at the damp label so it peeled off in long, curling strips. “I went to UNCA. Lived at home with Uncle Edgar. He wanted me to work for him, said he needed someone he could trust. I helped Prentice with some of the admin he and Ford didn’t have time for.”
“And that’s it? UNCA’s a good school, but you were a straight-A student. When I left, you were already taking college classes in the summer. I would have thought you’d go to Chapel Hill if you wanted to stay close to home. You could have gone anywhere. Even if Edgar didn’t want to pay, you could have gotten a scholarship.”
Hope’s eyes flicked up to mine, the normally warm cognac-brown guarded. Troubled. “Not everything is about money, Griffen. I didn’t want to go away to school. I didn’t want to leave Sawyers Bend. Uncle Edgar needed me. I owe him.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d said those words. I owe him. I owe you. They irritated me in a way I didn’t understand.
“What about what he owes you? More than a life trapped in this town—”
Hope erupted. “There’s nothing wrong with this town, Griffen Sawyer.” She slammed her empty beer on the coffee table, cheeks flushed, eyes glittering. “Just because you left doesn’t mean everyone else wants to.”
“We’re not talking about me,” I shot back.
“Aren’t we? Because you don’t know anything about me and Uncle Edgar. I do owe him. I owe him everything. And no one owes me anything. I’m lucky to be where I am. I have a job. I have a home. I have a nest egg in the bank. I’m safe.”
“And that’s enough?”
Hope shoved up from the couch, her glare scathing. “Griffen, you have no clue what you’re talking about. I get that the heir to the Sawyer fortune thinks he’s owed something in life, but life owes you jack shit. The lot of you are a bunch of spoiled brats. Sterling aside, you all work hard. I’ll give you that. But you should have so much more than money. You should be a family, and you’ve thrown it away over petty grudges. All of you let Prentice manipulate you, let him set you against each other, then you whine about it.”
“I haven’t even been here,” I protested weakly. Hope wasn’t interested.
“You have no idea what it’s like to have nothing. To be hungry. To be afraid. So don’t talk to me about who owes me what. I know what I have, and I know what I owe.” Hope stalked to the kitchen for another beer. I sat where I was, stunned speechless.
I’d wondered where my Hope had gone. Here she was. Her temper was as much her as the fairy lights on the ceiling. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it.
Or how much I needed to hear everything she’d said.
She was right about us. Sawyers knew how to work, but that was about the only good thing you could say about us. We knew shit about being a family. Maybe if Darcy had lived to hold us all together… but she hadn’t.
I didn’t think we’d lost all chance of being a family. I couldn’t forget the way Quinn had shepherded Sterling out of Harvey’s office, or how Royal and Tenn walked out side-by-side. They ran the Inn together and by all accounts had made a success of it. They couldn’t do that if they hated each other.
But still, Hope wasn’t wrong. We’d been given everything. We hadn’t squandered the money, but the rest? Family, history—that, we’d thrown away. We could blame Prentice—he’d sown the seeds of our discord, after all—but we were adults. We’d made our own choices.
I watched Hope come back, her eyes everywhere but on me, and I realized something else. I knew Edgar had brought Hope to live with him when she was a child, but I didn’t know why. I’d always assumed her parents had died. After her outburst, I realized there had to be more to the story.