“So you were having doubts even before?”

I shrug. “If you’re asking if her affair felt like an out, yeah. If you’re asking if I was a little relieved…yeah to that too. If she hadn’t had the affair, would I have figured out that our marriage would be an unhappy one in time to call it off? I don’t know.”

To my relief, he doesn’t give me shit. Just nods slowly with that thoughtful look on his face that he gets whenever he’s gearing up to interfere with my life.

“What are you going to do?” he asks. “A part of me hoped that she just sent the invitation to me, knowing it’d be a way to get your attention. But everyone has one, Preston.”

I feel a surge of rage so intense I literally don’t know what to do with it, and it’s all I can do to slowly set my coffee back down and brace my hands on the counter while taking deep breaths.

I want to rage that this isn’t fair. That it’s not my fault that Yvonne’s being a stubborn bitch who’s trying to manipulate me down the aisle.

But of course it is my fault, at least partially so.

I don’t regret calling off the wedding, not for one second. But I do regret that I didn’t see the warning signs that she wasn’t going to take the rejection lying down.

In my defense, I genuinely thought that disappearing would help get it through her thick skull that I wasn’t coming back around, but clearly I’ve made a major judgment error, because she’s just called my bluff in a big way.

And hell if I know how to get out of it.

“I’ll deal with Yvonne,” I mutter, picking up my mug once my temper’s subsided slightly.

“How?”

“I don’t fucking know, man,” I snap. “You got any ideas how to call off a wedding?”

“I’m working on it,” Vaughn says.

I’ve known the guy long enough to be aware that this is his go-to evasion when he doesn’t have a clue, but I can’t really blame him. I don’t have a clue either. I mean, obviously I can just not show up on the wedding day, but I’m not such a dick that I’m cool with letting a few hundred people show up at a church for a wedding I don’t intend to be at.

“Okay, next problem,” Vaughn says.

“Jesus, there’s more?”

“You asked me to keep an eye on your email, the one that’s public record on the company website.”

“Yeah? So? Nobody ever writes to that one except requests for charity donations, and you can just forward those to the public relations office.”

“Yeah, mastered that, thanks,” he says dryly. “I’m more concerned about the world-renowned superstar who sent an email to that address a couple of weeks ago thinking she was reaching your father.”

Jenny.

Fuck. I forgot that that’s how she got in touch with me.

“She sent another email. This morning.”

“How? She doesn’t have Internet access here,” I say, feeling a little trickle of panic. Not that it’s up to me when Jenny ends her “information diet,” but it’s belatedly occurred to me that just as the Internet can give her information she doesn’t want about herself, it also has a shitload of information about me. “What did she want?” I ask, strangely more tense about mention of Jenny than I am about any mention of Yvonne.

He gives me a curious look, no doubt noticing my reaction. “She wants to buy the place.”

“What place?”

He rolls his eyes and lifts an arm, gesturing in a circle. “This place. God knows why, but she wants to know if you’d consider an offer.”

“No. Hell no.”

Vaughn blinks. “What the hell, man? Just give it to her. Get rid of the dump.”

I’m already shaking my head. “It’s not for sale.”

He looks incredulous as he slowly sets his mug down. “What is going on with you? You can’t mean to stay here.”

I scratch my eyebrow and don’t respond.

“Talk to me, Preston,” Vaughn says quietly.

I don’t respond, because there’s really nothing to talk about. I only know that I need more time to figure shit out. What I want, who I am, what’s next. And I need to do it here.

This may sound weird since I’m not a musician, but I get why Jenny Dawson was so obsessed with this place that she remembered it and returned a decade after a summer vacation here.

It doesn’t make sense. It’s old. Run-down. It’s not even remotely convenient to modern life.

But there’s something about it that calms me. It’s one of those places where you hear your thoughts louder and more clearly than anywhere else.

And Jenny wants to buy it.

Reluctant as I am to sell, I feel an odd sense of camaraderie with the little seductress. We have nothing in common save for a fucking intense physical attraction, but we have this. This house.

“I just need a little more time to figure things out,” I say, meeting my friend’s eyes.

He nods slowly. “Fine. But you don’t have much. Your wedding date’s at the end of August.”

Two months.

Fucking Yvonne.

“Finn texted me,” Vaughn says, helping himself to more coffee.

“ ’Bout Yvonne?”

“That. And your new tenant.”

I tense. “What about her? He hasn’t said anything about her being here, has he?”

“Even he’s not that much of a dick,” Vaughn says. “But he does think you’re screwing her.”