He wanted to. He did. But he also reminded himself of what had happened last time. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
Michael stared at him with the knowing look of a longtime friend. “You afraid of getting attached in case she leaves again?”
“Her life is in New York. So’s the guy.”
“Yeah, but after all of this with her dad, do you really think she’ll still go back? Leave Rayna Jo? Her home is here,” Michael said, a scowl on his face. “And now she’s not engaged so…”
“Regardless, I’m going to pass,” Oz said. “I might walk over later. Text me if something needs done, though, and I’ll pitch in.”
Michael tapped the porch railing with a hand and nodded.
“Yeah, okay. Later.”
Oz lifted his head in a nod of goodbye and watched as Michael retraced his steps and backed out of the driveway.
When his friend was out of sight, Oz got up and took the pages inside, deciding a break might be the next step. He’d always found that a walk on the sand cleared his head and refilled the writing well, so to speak, and given the emotions tied to this particular document, he needed all the clarity he could get.
He wanted to get it right. No, not right. Perfect. It had to be perfect. Especially under the circumstances.
Oz locked up and jogged down the steps, crossed the street to the boardwalk, and then took the first bridge over the dunes to the shore.
His father had met a woman visiting from Florida and hit it off two years ago. They’d married a year later and now spent winters there and summers in the mountains. Oz had bought the house from his father and was grateful to have access to all of the homes whenever he wanted to visit. But Carolina Cove was and always would be home.
The sea breeze made the hot, muggy day tolerable. He paused long enough to take off his flip-flops and shove them in his back pocket for safe keeping. He’d lost several pairs over the years to people stealing them when left behind near the dunes.
Umbrellas and beach chairs crowded the sand, and the pier nearly looked to be shoulder to shoulder with fishermen lining the railings and tourists ambling down the middle and out to the T.
Summer was his least favorite time on the island, but the introverted writer in him also liked the bustle of traffic and range of accents he heard as he strolled along the water’s edge.
Oz walked beneath the pier, and the sudden change from sunlight to shade left him momentarily blinded. Maybe that’s why he didn’t recognize Devon until she was right up on him.
“Hey,” he said, shoving his sunglasses on top of his head. “Sorry, the light change got me.”
She paused and bent, hands on her knees while she caught her breath from her run.
“No problem. I, um, managed to sneak out for a bit while Mama’s sleeping.”
“How’s she doing?” he asked, watching the expressions flickering across her beautiful face.
“Not good. She kind of had a breakdown this morning. Logan was there and he gave her something to calm her down, but she couldn’t stop crying, even though she didn’t know why. It freaked her out.”
“Understandable,” he said, studying her. “How are you doing?”
Oz saw the way she stiffened at the query.
“About last night…”
“What about it?”
She yanked on the bill of the baseball cap she wore, pulling it even lower to shade her gorgeous eyes.
“That was… What I mean is you caught me off guard. But nothing’s changed between us.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and hated that the cap kept him from fully seeing her face. “I dunno about that. I think a lot of things have changed.”
“Not the big things, the important things,” she said. “My life is in New York now.”
Her words echoed his statement to Michael, but it didn’t mean he hadn’t recognized the bit of hope that had sprung up somewhere in his psyche. “Life is wherever you make it, Devon. And this will always be your home.”