Chapter 20 Amanda

Chapter 20

Amanda

I never thought I could be an overthinker until I opened my big fat mouth in a moment of panic and got myself a fake fiancé.

Now, I’m overthinking everything.

Did Dane mean it when he said he had a crush on me in high school? Does Lorelei know? What would’ve happened last night if Mrs. Briggs hadn’t dropped off that gift? Was he kissing me because he knew she was coming and we needed to get caught looking like a couple madly in love?

Or was he kissing me for the same reason I was kissing him?

I like him.

I like him more with every minute we spend together. And we’re breaking up in two days, and we haven’t talked about how, and I want to kiss him again, but instead, I’m staring at the dresses I packed and thinking that neither one of them will work for the anniversary party that starts in an hour.

“Quit overthinking,” I whisper to myself.

I close my eyes, mix up which dress is where in my mind, and I get ready to point when a voice behind me says, “The red one.”

The other thing I’m overthinking about?

How after Mrs. Briggs left last night, Dane quietly said something about taking Chili out, and that was that.

No discussion about the kiss. Nothing else about what we’re both hoping to get out of this. And today, he was on his computer when I got up.

“Work problem” was all he said.

Like it’s normal for him to have work problems on Saturdays.

I fixed him an iced eggnog latte and let him be.

And now, forty-five minutes before we’re supposed to be at his grandparents’ party, he’s weighing in on my dress.

Did he hear my telepathic invitation to come offer an opinion and put me out of my indecisive misery?

I peek over my shoulder at him. “What if your grandma’s wearing red?”

See?

Overthinking.

“What if she’s wearing gold?” he replies.

“Good point.”

I’m in a towel, fresh out of the shower.

Semifresh out of the shower.

I’ve been standing here longer than I want to admit.

Dane doesn’t seem to notice what I’m wearing. Or not wearing. He just nods to the dresses again, repeats, “The red one. If you’ll let me know when you’re done, I need five minutes in the bathroom.”

He slips back down the hallway.

He’s not rude. I don’t feel dismissed. I believe he’s been untangling a work mess all day, and I know he didn’t get the hours in this week that he needed to for work.

But I only have a couple of days left with him.

How is it that a week ago, my life was completely fine, and today, I’m a wreck because I’ll soon be headed back to New York solo?

And how is that the top problem on my mind when Grandma deserves to retire and Mom deserves to know she’ll be able to one day, too, and I can’t offer them a better option than me moving home, which is one thing I still can’t see myself doing?

I’ve texted with my brother a lot this week.

He’s madly in love with his new bride, and he adores Italy.

He’s not coming home.

Ever.

And he doesn’t have any magical solutions to the bakery either.

Even if we can solve this family feud, I don’t see Grandma and Mom jumping at the chance to have anyone outside of the family take over. They’ve never said the phrase we have to keep it in the family so the Silvers don’t get it , because it’s always been assumed the bakery would stay in the family.

But the clear answer to this problem is one day we’ll have to sell the bakery .

Which means I have to give up New York if we want one day to be many years’ worth of days from now.

Maybe they can give me a few months so that I can see my play done back home.

Back home. New York is back home to me.

But it can’t be. Because I have to move home to Tinsel to help Mom with the bakery.

I won’t cry. I won’t cry. I won’t cry.

I take the red dress into the bathroom to change, then grab my hair and makeup supplies and move to the small powder room off the kitchen so Dane can have the shower.

When I emerge thirty minutes later, he’s ready.

Despite the lingering heat, he’s in suit pants, a white button-down, and a Christmas tie.

His hair is slightly damp and freshly combed. He’s also freshly shaven, and he smells like a hayride on a Christmas tree farm.

I don’t want to go to this anniversary party.

I want to stay here and turn on some Bing Crosby and Brenda Lee and have a private party, just the two of us, where he offers up some miraculous solution to my bakery problem that will work just as well as his plan to end our family feud.

He visibly swallows as his gaze rakes up and down my body, and his voice is husky when he says, “You look beautiful.”

I blush, a mix of pride and desire making my chest swell. “Thank you. Here. Let me just ...”

His tie isn’t crooked.

Not in the least.

But I go through the motions like I’m straightening it for him anyway.

His breath catches. Mine speeds up.

“Thank you,” he says, as if he doesn’t know it was absolutely fine.

Maybe he likes it when I make excuses to touch him while we’re alone.

“Do you have a large collection of Christmas ties, or do you stick to the snowflakes for general all-purpose winter wear?”

My voice is throaty. I might as well be purring.

And all-purpose winter wear ?

Still overthinking.

“Just snowflakes.”

My hands rest on his chest as I finish fiddling. Did I make it crooked? Or is it okay? Should we show up with his tie crooked to suggest that we were having our own private pre-party?

That would keep selling our story.

“I saw the most gorgeous snowflake dress once in a little boutique in SoHo. Your tie is like that dress in tie form.”

Someone take my mouth away from me.

Please.

Dane’s lips quirk up at the corners, though, and I suddenly don’t care that I’m babbling about dresses in tie form.

“You must have to beat potential girlfriends off with a stick when you smile like that,” I blurt.

He blushes.

Could he be any more charming and perfect?

“I make sure to wear my pocket protector when I leave my house,” he says. “It helps.”

He could walk out of his house in a hazmat suit, and women should fall all over him.

“We should—” I start, my hands still resting on his chest, feeling his heart beat while the engagement ring sits heavy on my finger, as he says, “I wish we didn’t have to—”

“Same,” I say at the same time he says, “You’re right, we should.”

We stare at each other for a beat.

And then we both smile.

Smiling leads to us cracking up.

It’s ridiculous.

But it’s also like being in a warm, cozy bubble of safety where no one’s trying to attack anyone else, where no one’s fighting, where no one wants to fight, where I’m not realizing I have to give up my home to move back to Tinsel, and likely where we both feel a little off-kilter.

Is he off-kilter?

I am.

I can’t remember the last time I crushed this hard on a man.

I’m so distracted by myself and my overwhelming attraction to Dane that I almost trip over Chili on the way to the front door. Dane gives him extra pats and a treat while I stutter an apology.

And then we’re headed out the door.

Except there’s a big rock sitting in the middle of the front porch.

And I don’t mean a rock like the one on my finger.

I mean a stone rock.

With an envelope underneath.

I freeze, then look up at Dane.

This is a change.

Whoever dropped it off wasn’t afraid of being seen if it’s all the way here on the porch. And it was not here two hours ago.

I took Chili out for a short walk. I would’ve seen it.

“Did you—” he starts, then shakes his head.

“Put it there?” I guess.

“See who put it there.”

“Oh. No. I was—”

“Getting ready,” he finishes for me.

He squats and retrieves the envelope, then tosses the rock off the side of the porch to join the rock bed scattered around the holly bushes.

I lean into him while he slides a finger under the flap and gently opens it.

And then we both devour the words on the paper, each of us holding one side of the letter, his free hand at the small of my back.

My dearest sister,

We received your update that Maud’s dowry was sent, but that rapscallion Anderson boy claims what he received was not what was promised, and he refuses to return it to our family.

“Oh my god,” I whisper as I scan the rest of the letter.

Dane makes a noise.

I look up at him, then back at the letter.

If George Anderson is my great-great-grandfather ...

He’s also a dowry thief.

He started this.

He stole something from the Silvers. He betrayed them.

“It’s my family’s fault,” I whisper. “The feud is all my family’s fault.”

I know it’s not my fault.

Logically.

But my family did this to Dane’s family. We started it. We started it, and then we passed down the lie from generation to generation that we were the better family. That they were at fault.

And I didn’t realize until exactly this minute how ingrained it is in me that we , the Andersons, were the victims.

Even when I was friends with Lorelei in grade school, there was a part of me feeling like I was the bigger person for being able to forgive her family for what they did to mine.

And how dumb is that?

How ridiculously stupid is it that even as a child , I’d been told so often just how bad Lorelei’s family was that I occasionally had a sense of superiority over my friend?

I adore her.

I meant it when I said I’d donate a kidney to her. She’s one of the kindest, most genuine people I know. And I know it’s not my fault that I was taught to believe the Silvers were bad, but on some level, I believed it .

While it was all a lie.

It was our fault.

“This is one side of a story,” Dane says. “We need the other half. We need to know what the dowry was. We need to know if he gave it back. Or what his reason was if he didn’t.”

He’s trying to make me feel better, but I have this sick feeling in my stomach that the letters aren’t wrong.

That whatever happened, it’s on my ancestors.

Not his.

“The bigger point,” he adds quietly, “is that whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault.”

I hear him, but the same part of me that used to think look how special I am for being friends with a Silver is now saying you have asshole running through your blood . “Yours either.”

“Or Lorelei’s or Esme’s or your brother’s.” He tilts his head at me. “Is your brother a dick?”

I find a small laugh. “No. I’ve texted him since I got here and heard his news. He thinks the feud is dumb, too, and if he wasn’t living his best life with his new bride in Italy now, he’d be sighing and going behind Grandma’s back to be nice to Lorelei and Esme and you too. Of course, if he wasn’t living his best life with his new bride in Italy, we wouldn’t be doing this, because he’d be taking over for Grandma at the bakery and I wouldn’t have told Grandma that we were engaged ...”

Dane pulls me into a hug, putting his shirt in danger of my makeup. “It’s not your fault that any of our ancestors did anything to any of our other ancestors,” he repeats.

I set aside all my internal guilt at realizing I still have work to do to fully banish all thoughts, ever, forever, that the Silvers are evil on any level. “But I feel like it’s my job to tell my grandma.”

“Don’t tell her it’s her fault. Ask her what she knows about her own grandfather. Get her story. Get his story. We need the whole truth from all of our relatives so the whole damn town can move on.”

He’s right.

The town needs this.

But I can’t quite make myself not feel guilty for the weight of what my family might’ve done.