The Winter Berry House

by Caroline Flynn

  ‘Because Branch accidentally hit him with his truck,’ Kait finished for her.

  ‘Keep telling yourself that.’ Allison rolled her eyes. ‘That might be part of it, but not the whole reason. That man hates Branch because he has the one thing Zach never will.’

  Kait arched a brow. ‘And that is?’

  ‘You.’

  A lump formed in her throat as her friend’s words settled between them, heavy and tangible. She wasn’t sure anyone had ever voiced the suggestion out loud about Zach’s jealousy where she was concerned, but Kait had to agree with Allison, albeit reluctantly. Zach had been directing disdain in Branch’s direction long before the accident. ‘Had,’ she corrected. ‘You said Branch has me. He had me.’

  Allison didn’t even try to hide her amusement. ‘Yeah, right. Keep telling yourself that, too.’

  Her gaze flitted from Allison to Paige and back again, but Kait saw the same glimmer in their eyes. They weren’t buying her half-hearted detachment for a second. ‘Are you sure you can’t tell me what to do? I’m driving myself crazy.’

  Allison’s smile faded, and she pushed her coffee cup away, giving herself room. ‘You have to decide what you want. It’s that hard and that simple.’ She paused to cast a quick glance at Paige, who gave a sympathetic nod of approval. ‘Don’t think about Janna, and don’t think about Zach. In the end, it can’t be their happiness that dictates how you handle this. At the risk of being crass, look where that way of thinking has gotten you so far.’

  ‘I don’t sacrifice my own happiness so others can have theirs.’

  Allison opened her mouth, but Paige reached out and covered her mouth before she could speak. ‘I’m pretty sure Allison is about to tell you to keep telling yourself that, too. You know, in her charming, sarcastic tone.’

  She chuckled at Paige’s warning as Allison batted away her cousin’s hand.

  ‘Precisely, my dear Paige. And while I didn’t exactly say you sacrificed your own happiness for others, you hit the nail on the head. That’s exactly what you do, and you know it. Kait, things went awry when you were eighteen, and what did you do? You stayed here in town, played nurse to the man who was injured by your ex’s mistake, and even put yourself through two years of a relationship with him despite knowing you didn’t love him.’

  Kait opened her mouth to protest, but Allison wasn’t done.

  ‘After that,’ she continued, ‘You moved in with Janna after her own relationship went south, putting up with the on-again, off-again shenanigans between them because you didn’t want Janna to feel like she had no one else to turn to. When she got pregnant with the boys, it sealed both your fates. That jerk she was with took off, leaving her with two more mouths to feed and a chip on her shoulder the size of Texas. I don’t blame Janna for that, by the way, that’s not what I’m saying. But that whole situation left you with something, too.’

  ‘What?’ Kait wasn’t sure how she felt about having the last eleven years of her life summed up so quickly. Or so accurately.

  Allison’s gaze connected with hers. ‘It left you with someone else to look after,’ she replied tenderly. ‘Someone else to focus on. Kait, you’ve spent the last decade looking after everybody else, running yourself ragged in the process, just so you didn’t have to think about the broken heart you never quite got over.’

  She desperately wanted to slam her fists on the table and tell Allison she was wrong. That she didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. But having it laid out before her, from the mouth of a good friend, the impact of her words hit her with the force of a tsunami.

  ‘Allison—’

  ‘You want to know what I think?’ Allison leaned back, pausing to give Kait a moment to compose herself. ‘I think you’ve got a second chance here. I know a horrible thing happened and it ripped you and Branch apart. But that was a long time ago. You two were just kids. Besides, you’ve said it yourself that you’ve always had unanswered questions. I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and I find it hard to ignore that everything seems to have come full circle. You still love him, and he still loves you. You can ask all the questions you want, but I think, in the end, that’s really everything you need to know.’ She shrugged, like it was the easiest decision to make in the world. ‘You wouldn’t be playing Christmas elf with him and helping with Addie’s house if there wasn’t still something there. You owe it to yourself, Kait. Take that second chance.’

  ‘Just like that.’ Kait didn’t understand how she had walked through the front door of the coffeehouse with the weight of the world on her shoulders, and somehow her friend had succeeded in summing it up and making it sound like the answers she needed had been there all along. All she’d had to do was actively seek them out.

  ‘Just like that,’ Paige repeated, leaning forward on her elbows. ‘Besides, I saw this Branch fellow you’re so conflicted about. He’s handsome, Kait, I’ll give you that one.’

  It was Kait’s turn to let her mouth gape. ‘When did you see Branch?’

  ‘The same day I did,’ Allison replied, grinning. ‘Jay Forrester brought him by for coffee, then I sent him over to the bakery. Not just for doughnuts, either. I wanted Paige to get an eyeful of the infamous man she’d only ever heard about. You know, for just this type of occasion.’

  ‘You knew I’d end up calling you both for emergency girl-talk.’ She didn’t know whether to be affronted that they hadn’t said anything before now, or elated that her friends knew her so well.

  ‘Darn straight.’ Allison looked mighty pleased with herself. ‘And I’m going to have to agree with Paige on this one. Branch Sterling has got some rugged good looks going on.’ Waggling her eyebrows, Allison chuckled when Kait waved a hand, dismissing her and the suggestive gleam in her eyes.

  ‘You’re right.’ Kait threw up her hands, defeated. ‘I should just give up now and fall head over heels, madly in love with him,’ she laughed playfully.

  ‘From what I hear, you already are.’

  All three women’s heads swiveled at the sound of the raspy voice. Immediately, Kait regretted blurting out the words she had just said, even if they were spoken in jest.

  Sonya Ritter stood at the head of the table, clad in a black T-shirt that matched Allison’s and a Cheshire cat grin.

  ‘Oh, Kait,’ Sonya continued, sounding like she pitied her, ‘everyone who’s somebody in Port Landon knows the unfortunate story of the dreadful circumstances that sent that Sterling boy packing. It’s no secret.’

  ‘Gee, thanks, Sonya.’ Kait bit the words out, though there was a hint of sadness in them as well. She was never going to outrun the past, and she knew that, but Kait was a bit surprised to hear Sonya, Port Landon’s resident matchmaker, say something negative without throwing her own dash of positivity into the mix. Sonya loved to meddle – lived for it, really – but she did it for good reason, always expecting the best possible result when it came to the matters of love. Usually. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  Being Allison’s only full-time employee, Sonya probably had a list of a gazillion things she should be doing, yet the older woman looked in no hurry to head back behind the ordering counter, and Allison had a faint cheeky grin on her face. She was in no hurry to send Sonya away, eager to hear what the town’s beloved matriarch had to say about Kait’s off-the-cuff comment. The older woman’s opinions about love and her seemingly magical ability to bring two people together were legendary in their tiny town.

  ‘Well,’ Sonya replied, hands on her hips, ‘what I don’t think you know is that, not only does everyone know how the story began—’ She sent a fleeting glance toward Allison and Paige, something passing silently between them that Kait couldn’t read. ‘—but we also know how the story’s going to end.’

  ‘The story did end,’ Kait argued, watching as the older woman’s bob haircut barely moved as she tilted her head curiously. ‘More than ten years ago.’

  Sonya, in typical fashion, allowed her slow, knowi
ng grin to speak for itself, letting a silence ensue that became thick with tension. Kait could feel it, the realization washing over her that her friends and Port Landon’s mother hen knew something she didn’t.

  Sonya moved so slowly, so rhythmically, it was as though Kait’s gaze couldn’t follow her movements. She was just suddenly there, leaning down, close to her face, the scent of espresso and caramel syrup wafting from her in comforting waves.

  ‘I knew that boy’s grandmother,’ Sonya whispered. ‘Even better than you did. Addie told me things, dear.’

  ‘Like … like what?’ It made sense that she and Addie talked, but it never occurred to her that Branch’s grandmother might have had things to say about Kait. About that night. Or that she might have voiced them to a friend. Grandma Addie just wasn’t the gossiping kind.

  Sonya didn’t speak for a moment, but when she did, her words were clear and concise. ‘Addie knew, just like I do, just like everyone does, that eventually that boy would come back to town. And when he did, he would bring the remnants of his bruised and battered heart with him.’

  The air was thicker now, it had to be. Kait couldn’t take in an adequate breath. ‘Why?’ It was an odd question, but all she could muster.

  ‘Because his story isn’t over, dear.’ Sonya said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘And neither is yours. You want to know how I know?’

  Kait wanted to scream Yes!, but the dizziness she felt, the proverbial precipice she was standing on, made it impossible to formulate a coherent sentence. She nodded.

  Sonya stood up straighter, and the fog surrounding Kait seemed to lift and dissipate along with her. ‘Because you two aren’t together, where you belong,’ she replied simply. ‘Yet.’ With that, Sonya offered her up a wink and walked away without another word.

  Chapter 14

  Branch

  When Branch took the time away from work and made the solid plan to come back to Port Landon for an entire month to do what needed to be done with his grandparents’ house, he knew it would be hard. Really hard. He never expected anything less.

  But he didn’t expect this.

  Sure, he figured there was a chance he could run into Kait. Port Landon was only so big, after all. But it had taken less than two full days to come face to face with her.

  It took just as long for him to fall smack dab back in love with her, too.

  Many times, Branch had wondered what it would be like to see her again; how the conversation would go. In every scenario he came up with, she put him in his place, telling him he had a boat load of audacity showing up here now, or she ignored him completely like he didn’t exist at all.

  But she didn’t, which proved two things.

  She was still in town, and she was still Kaitie.

  His Kaitie.

  He didn’t have a clue what to do about it, though.

  Well, it wasn’t that he didn’t know, it’s just that Branch’s thoughts on the matter weren’t the only ones he needed to consider. He wanted to believe her thoughts resembled his own.

  They weren’t over. Maybe they never had been. And that thought both gutted him and exhilarated him simultaneously. So much time wasted, but so much brightness that lay ahead.

  In theory, anyway. He had spent the past eleven years living to work, his job permitting him the reprieve from having to face his hometown and the backlash he was so sure would come. Working in northern Canada at a remote mining location, his schedule offered him a two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off lifestyle. He would board a plane and head into the job site in Alberta, staying at the on-site lodging camp and working twelve-hour shifts for thirteen consecutive days. On the fourteenth day, he boarded that same plane and headed back home, a term he used loosely for the closet-like studio apartment he rented in Grand Rapids, furnished by the landlord and only an eight-minute drive from the international airport in decent traffic. He lived there when he wasn’t working, sure, but it wasn’t home to him.

  During his allotted two weeks away from work, Branch usually spent the first few days sleeping, exhausted from the previous stint of workdays and desperate for a good three nights’ rest in a bed that was more than a simple cot. Once his fatigue lifted and he felt more like himself, however, Branch never quite knew what to do with himself. If he didn’t steal away for a few days to visit his grandparents, he didn’t have much else he could call a social life. He didn’t have friends to hang out with, had no garage to tinker in, and he certainly didn’t date.

  Branch Sterling, for all intents and purposes, had become a recluse at the ripe old age of twenty-nine. It hadn’t really bothered him before now, though. Maybe that was because he tried not to think about it, resigned to the life he led and working himself to the bone to keep his body and his mind occupied when he could, but the likelier reasoning was her. Kait. His reason for everything.

  There was a difference between wishing, hoping, and praying for another chance to prove to Kait that he was the kind of stand-up man she had once believed he was, and having a real chance at obtaining that second chance. Until he held her against him, danced slowly, and kissed her tenderly, that was all he had really held on to – hope. Just was a sliver, a meager one that had become more frayed and brittle with each year that passed.

  But he had held on to it, nonetheless. Now, Branch wasn’t just fueled by his hope, he was fortified by hers. Kait hoped, wished, and prayed for the same thing.

  That realization in itself was enough to have Branch rethinking everything. It should have been simple; stay on course, stay driven, and stick to the solitude he had come to expect. Then, leave his hometown.

  Except, this was his hometown. The only home he really remembered. He knew the cliché; people spent their entire teenage years waiting for the chance to get out, only to find themselves looking for every chance they could to see the lights of their hometown once they had grown up. Maybe he was a walking cliché, but for a man who had no family left, no friends, and no real roots, he had managed to walk back into Port Landon and unearth a house he could call his own, a long-time friend who welcomed him home without hesitation, and his first love.

  It sounded like home to him.

  Now, with Kait’s pretty face and alluring eyes never far from the forefront of his mind, Branch was seeing his hometown in a different light, through the logical, rational eyes of a man about to turn thirty. He wasn’t a wild-eyed teenager anymore, and neither was Kait. She had stayed in Port Landon, growing and gaining her strength within the town instead of without. She had been front row and centre in the aftermath of the accident but she stayed, nonetheless.

  For the first time, he wondered if he had been wrong about his hometown’s reaction to his mistakes. He wondered if Jason was right, that he’d been so keen on hating himself for it that he hadn’t realized he was the only one. That the community had never been out to exile him the way he’d exiled himself. The town was still here, reminding him he was one of their own. Kait was still here, too, which made Branch wonder if maybe, just maybe, he could stay as well.

  The notion was momentarily debilitating. As he went about pulling the last three-foot plastic candlestick in line with the others that lined both sides of the driveway, he realized how easy it could be. The house that loomed over him, though dated and in need of a little TLC, was his. So were the contents inside. It was daunting and gut-wrenching, but a pure and simple fact. Grandma Addie and Grandpa Duke had left everything they had to him in their will, and that made him the proud owner of 14 Crescent Street. He had a home, Grandpa Duke’s Bronco, Grandma Addie’s old Buick, and everything he needed to turn the house and property into a home. A real home. His home.

  All he needed was Kait. And truth be told, now that Branch had witnessed a fleeting glimpse of what it could be like to hold Kait’s hand and take on whatever life wanted to throw at them, he wasn’t certain he had it in him to walk away from her for a second, final time.

  His lack of roots weighed heavily on him as he struggled w
ith the candlestick, attaching its electrical cord to the other one four feet away. Tonight, all eight of them would light up the driveway like it was a path to Santa Claus’s home at the North Pole. Well, if he owned a Victorian home with an attached garage, that is.

  He just got the last of the cords plugged in when the sound of tires crunching on ice and snow announced a vehicle pulling into the driveway. Thinking it was Jason, Branch didn’t turn immediately. That was his first mistake, seeing as he might have had time to compose himself if he had taken the opportunity to glance over his shoulder.

  ‘That’s an awful lot of Christmas decorations.’

  Branch, still crouched near the outdoor electrical outlet, sprang to his feet. ‘Zach,’ he said, surprised. ‘Sorry, I thought you were someone else.’

  His Oakley sunglasses reflected Branch’s shocked expression. In his crisp khakis and his leather shoes, Zach looked comfortable, professional, and unfazed. It only increased Branch’s discomfort.

  ‘Let me guess, Kait?’

  It wasn’t so much the mention of her name that set Branch on edge, but the smug way Zach sneered it. Like there was a joke he was missing, somehow. ‘Actually, no,’ he replied, fighting to keep his tone neutral. ‘Not until tonight, anyway.’ It was the truth, but the insinuation had Zach’s jaw just as clenched as his was. ‘I thought you were Jay, to be honest,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘Jay Forrester.’ Things needed to be civil between them. He was Kait’s friend, after all.

  ‘Right.’ He couldn’t see Zach’s eyes, but his head swiveled one way, then the next, his hands shoved in his pockets as he assessed the exterior of the house. ‘Look, I was just driving by and saw you outside. Thought I would stop and see if you’ve given my offer any more thought. Although, I’ve got to say, this is quite the festive scene you’ve put together in the front yard, especially for a man who says he’s only in town until the end of the month.’

  Branch couldn’t be sure, but hidden under all his questions and calm inflection, he thought he heard a veiled threat. At the very least, Zach was doubting Branch’s word, and that was enough to raise his hackles. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard that Kait and I are going to hold a dinner here on Christmas Eve in Grandma Addie’s honor. So, I’m decorating the way my grandmother would have, Zach, nothing more.’ He thought of adding that he didn’t have to explain himself, but he managed to swallow down the defensive words.