“I’m going to have one later and you can have a bite—just one—of mine,” Emma said with a wink.
“Deal,” she said.
“What else do you miss that you had to give up?” Emma asked.
“You and Delilah. Kolaches. Memaw,” she said, even though an image of Cal Delaney popped into her head. His wide muscled shoulders, icy-gray eyes and chiseled jaw. The way he’d looked when she’d been straddling him on his front porch. A jolt of awareness went through her and she turned away from her sister, looking down at the pile of books nearest her. The cover showed a shirtless man wearing a pair of low-slung jeans with washboard abs… Cal had abs like that. He could probably—
“Didn’t you miss anyone else?” Emma persisted.
“Who could compete with you, Ems?” she asked.
“Of course, you did. I meant—okay I stink at this. Delilah told me that one of her kitchen workers saw you leaving the Delaney ranch late on Monday night…so…”
“So?” she asked, stalling for time. She wasn’t ready to talk about Cal but then again, she hadn’t come to any great conclusions on her own.
“Are you getting back with Cal?” she asked.
She glanced up from the books, looking around the booth, which was empty at the moment, and then turned back to her sister. “I don’t know. My timing stinks as usual, with Rose and everything. But I like him.”
“Yay. I was hoping you’d say that. What about joining the community committee? Then you can see Cal and help out in town. Dad is really keen to retire in a few years, but he won’t unless he feels like we Corbyns are doing our part.”
“But—”
“Don’t you dare say what I think you’re about to say,” Emma said. “That’s nonsense.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” she said, laughing. Her sisters were both fierce in their defense of her and how they always made sure to remind her she was a Corbyn too.
“What were you going to say?”
“I don’t want Cal to think I’m stalking him,” Amelia said. “I’m trying to give him space and see what happens.”
“Give him space?” Emma asked. “Men aren’t like that, honey. How many times have Mom and Memaw both said you have to show them what they want?”
“A lot. But I’m not sure what worked for them will work for us. Plus…I can’t talk about this now, but stuff happened…and then I was me and made it awkward. What’s the drill here?”
“Are you kidding me? You can’t drop that and then be all how do I do this job? I want to know more.”
“I’ll tell you later. I don’t want to talk about it here.”
“Fair enough. But I’m not letting you out of it,” she said.
“I need some sensible advice,” Amelia said. “Now what do I do?”
“Just ring up the sales and put the money in the cash box. Pretty straightforward. I’m going to be working with you for most of your shift.”
“Good, we haven’t had much time to catch up. I had no idea you were so busy,” she said. “Honestly, whenever I thought about your job, I pictured you sitting behind a desk, reading and then shushing people who are too noisy.”
Her sister shook her head. “That’s so insulting. It’d be like me saying when I thought of you modeling, I pictured drinking water and making bitchy faces.”
“Uh, yeah, that’s what I did. It’s called living the dream,” Amelia said, sticking her tongue out at her sister.
“I know it’s more than that.”
“I know your job is too. It’s just when I think of you, you’re always tucked away and reading.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Joey said, stepping into the booth. She was another librarian who worked with Emma.
“I agree,” Amelia said. Realizing she was surrounded by serious bookworms, she decided to stop teasing her sister.
The hours flew by as she worked her shift with Emma and Joey.
“Hello, ladies. I hope I’m not too late.” It was the familiar rumble of Cal’s voice.
“Perfect timing. Joey and I have to run over to the Fuhrmann statue for story time with the kids,” Emma said, taking Joey’s arm and leading her away with a wave over her shoulder at Amelia.
Her sister was meddling and Amelia couldn’t say she minded. At least this way, she’d have something to talk about that wasn’t the way she’d left.
“How’ve you been?” he asked.
“Okay. I’m sorry for the way I took off the other night,” she blurted out. Yeah, good thing she didn’t have to talk about that, but she’d never been good at doing what she should.
*
Cal couldn’t help but laugh at the way she’d said that. He just shook his head. “Honestly, don’t sweat it. This has been one of the oddest weeks of my life.”
It had been, but he didn’t want to go into that. Today, he was doing what he’d been trying to master for most of the week. Faking it. Just smiling when he could, talking to friends and neighbors who knew him and had learned that his sister was gone.
When Emma’s text had come through a few minutes ago, it had been a godsend. He’d noticed August Wolf walking toward him and had decided he wasn’t ready to talk to him. His attorneys had been taking care of paying for the repairs to August’s storefront wine shop since Rose had clearly been responsible for the accident. He hadn’t really had a chance to get to know August, and today, he simply hadn’t been up to a casual chat. So he’d texted Emma that he’d come right over.
But maybe this hadn’t been his best idea. Talking to Amelia wasn’t a hardship. She’d been on his mind a lot this week and frankly, when he’d been close to wigging out and losing his sanity, he’d remembered her in his arms on the porch swing. It had sort of been his touchstone to sanity. It gave him something to think about, but not worry about.
He hadn’t been the one to walk away, so he had no guilt with their encounter as he sometimes had back in his playing days. But that was a long time ago and he scarcely recognized the man he’d been.
“I bet it has. I wasn’t sure what you needed so I decided to give you some space. But I felt like such a weasel after I left you that night. I just didn’t know what to say. Sometimes, I’m one big hot mess…okay not sometimes. I mean Delilah would say—”
He put his finger over her lips. She was talking too much, something he’d noticed she did when she was nervous.
“It’s okay. Thank you for coming to her service and wake.”
“You’re welcome,” she said and then hugged him. He pulled her closer than he should because he could tell she’d meant the embrace to be a friendly one, but he needed more. Everyone he’d spoken to had been so gracious that it was starting to leave him a little bit on edge. Every once in a while, it became too much and he made use of the punching bag he had in his office, hitting it until his knuckles hurt and the feeling passed.
“Hey, do you want to spend some time together later? I have to head back to the Outlaw Tequila booth, but maybe after that?” he asked.
She stepped back as a couple with two kids entered the Friends of the Library booth and greeted them. More people followed and he helped them before they were alone again.
“I’d like that,” she said. “I hear there’s a band playing live music somewhere in the park. It might be nice to see if your dance skills have improved since homecoming junior year.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” he said. “I’m pretty much the master of the sway and of course, I can do the Cotton Eye Joe.”
“Of course,” she said. For some reason, Last Stand High School’s PE program had included a two-week block of country western dancing when they’d been in tenth grade. “Me too. I have to be honest—I never used those skills in New York.”
“Mrs. Jones promised wherever life took us, we’d appreciate knowing the dance moves. For myself, I did use them once—when our team made the playoffs. For some reason, we did a very bizarre version of it as a promo for our fans.”
She shook her head
. “How did I not know about this? Is it on the web?”
“God, I hope not,” he said, but laughed at the memory. Rose had thought it was the funniest thing ever and had made a gif of him doing it. He smiled at the memory. The pain was still there, but this time, didn’t hurt as much as it had. Which made him feel sort of guilty and sad. But before the feeling could take root, Amelia rubbed his back.
She knew.
She got that he was dealing with each moment and balancing between what was happening and what had happened.
“How?” he asked.
“In no way did my problems with my family match your loss. But when I found out everything from my parents, it was the same. I would have this happy memory and then suddenly recall I wasn’t who I thought I was.”
There was so much more to this woman than he’d realized, and he couldn’t help himself as he leaned down and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held him close.
He heard the sound of clapping, and he lifted his head to meet Finn’s gaze.
“The library is a lot friendlier than I remember.”
He shot his brother the bird and ignored him. “Are you here to work the next shift?”
“Hell, no. Braden wanted me to stop by and tell you that you don’t have to come back and work the booth. Javier and his team from Tequila are there. They are doing a demonstration and they’ll cover your shift.”
“Great so I’m free. Want to spend the afternoon with me?” he asked.
As soon as the workers arrived for the next shift, he took Amelia’s hand in his and led her away from the booth toward the food section. He wasn’t going to think about anything except this day and this moment. And for now, that would be enough.
*
Nothing had gone according to her plan since she’d come back to Last Stand and she was beginning to think that was a good thing. When they wandered to the section that had all of the food booths set up, she realized it was going to be harder than she thought to resist the funnel cakes, and other junk food. Especially since Cal hadn’t met anything fried he didn’t like.
“Have a bite of this. Oh, my God, you’ll love it,” he said, holding out a fried Snickers bar.
She leaned in and his fingers brushed her chin as he held the bar close enough for her to take a bite. She held a napkin under her chin as she did so and then closed her eyes when the explosion of fried, sweet goodness hit her mouth.
“That is good,” she said, swallowing.
“Want another bite?” he asked, wriggling his eyebrows at her.
“No. You have it,” she said. He polished it off before spotting another food booth that he wanted to stop in.
She knew that she was going to have to run at least five miles tomorrow but seeing Cal enjoy himself was totally worth it. She stopped mentally tracking the calories of each bite and decided to join him instead.
He was ordering a smoked barbecue plate when she walked over to him with two mugs of local craft ale. “Make it two.”
“Finally getting hungry?” he asked, as he paid for the plates, taking them from one of the local high school athletes whose club was sponsoring the booth.
“Yes,” she said leading the way to a bunch of tables that were set up under a shade tent. They found a seat on the edge where they could hear the live rock ‘n’ roll music playing.
She took a long sip of her beer and closed her eyes for a second as she felt an odd sense of déjà vu. It had been so long since she’d been home, she’d forgotten what it felt like to be a part of something. But suddenly that feeling was back. And she relished it.
She felt justified in staying away for so long but after talking to her mom, she’d realized that her parents were just people. They were doing the best they could, the same as she was. The revelation had been a long time coming.
“What are you thinking about?”
“My mom.”
“How’s that going? After what you told me, I think I’d have a hard time forgiving too,” he said.
“After our night together, I went home and found Mom there. She sometimes can’t sleep, so she’d walked over to my place,” Amelia said. “She talked to me about the past and it was not what I had expected at all.”
“Was it good?” he asked.
“Yes, it was. I mean, there is still a teenager in me who’s holding on to a few things, but as a woman, I get the choices she made. It wasn’t easy for her or my dad,” Amelia said. “I probably sound like a brat saying that.”
“Not at all. I think it would be hard for anyone to deal with that. No matter your age,” he admitted. “I was really hard on Rose when she told me she was pregnant. Now, I wonder what the point was. Should I have just let her and TJ live together? Maybe I was—”
“Stop,” she said, putting her hand over his. “Looking back, it’s always easy to see what you should have done. That’s not productive at all.”
“Rose made choices too. Part of it was influenced by you but from what I remember of her as a girl and from what you said, she was as strong-willed as the rest of you Delaneys. There wasn’t a thing you could have done to change her mind once she made it up,” Amelia said.
“That’s true. But maybe if I’d done something different… It’s those kinds of thoughts I’ve been trying to avoid. But I just can’t.”
“I know,” she said. Her heart ached for the pain in his voice. “One thing I know for certain is that everything you did was out of love. I’m pretty sure she knew that too.”
“I hope so. I yelled at her the morning she left. No one knows that but me and Rose, since everyone else was gone. We had a fight about TJ. I thought he’d flaked out again and she screamed at me to butt out of their lives. Then later in the day, I found out that TJ was trying to get a loan from the bank to open his own business,” Cal said, putting his fork down next to his plate.
He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t need to. She saw the regret and the castigation he was putting himself through. “What did you do? Try to stop the loan?”
He shook his head. “Of course not. I wouldn’t do that.”
“See, you weren’t as bad as you think you were. Rose and TJ were young. Heck, I know better than anyone that at that age, you want the world to think you have your shit together. But she was probably just winging it, hoping it all worked out. The fact that you didn’t have a picture-perfect last moment is okay too, because it means that your relationship was real. You fought, you loved, you had each other’s backs and you probably teased the heck out of each other. Remember that you were her big brother, Cal. She loved you.”
Chapter Eleven
“Where’s Lane today?” she asked as they walked through the craft area a little later that afternoon.
“We divided the day into shifts. Finn had him for breakfast. Those two both love sugary cereal so they start the day with that. Then Finn races him around the dirt track on the back of the property,” Cal said.
“That sounds dangerous,” she said. “Is it safe for Lane?”
Cal pushed his plate away. “Yeah. Finn rigged up one of those kiddie car engines in a go-cart so it doesn’t move fast and the weight is distributed on the frame so it won’t flip. He had his head mechanic Zim help him. They were both so proud when they gave it to Lane last Christmas.”
She smiled at that. She could totally see Cal’s car-crazy, speed-loving brother wanting to get his nephew into a vehicle. Even if his nephew was only a toddler. “When is your shift?”
“In about twenty minutes. I’m taking him to the rides. Wanna come?” he asked wriggling his eyebrows at her. “I promise you lots of junk food and some rides that won’t make the food come back up.”
She did want to come with him. But was it the best idea? She probably shouldn’t be encouraging anything that would deepen the relationship between them. She was in Last Stand for now, because her mom needed her. But that didn’t mean she’d be staying for good. Besides, she was a mess. Look at her crazy behavior when they’d
slept together.
He had a look on his face that she hadn’t seen since before Rose’s accident and she didn’t want him to lose it. She didn’t want to think about why his happiness meant so much to her, but she knew that it did and she wasn’t going to let him down. Or herself. She might not have come home looking for closure to the past but the truth was, she’d never forgotten Cal. Seeing him again had reminded her of how much she had always cared about him.
“I’d love to. Do we have to go back to the Outlaw Tequila booth to get him?”
“No. I think Bray took him to the storytelling that Emma was hosting. Let me text him and find out where he is,” Cal said.
He took his phone out for the first time since he’d been with her. It was something she really appreciated since most of her dates before coming back to Last Stand always had their phone in their hand, scrolling through their social media feeds, more engaged with the device than her. But Cal was different.
He always had been and that was why she liked him. She realized that she was kidding herself if she thought she was doing anything this afternoon for Cal. She was doing it for herself. Ever since she was sixteen, she’d felt that there was something broken and wrong with her, that she was someone unwanted and unlovable. More than anything, she had wanted to be worthy of someone’s love. To belong.
Well, shit.
She hadn’t expected to get that deep while she was sitting here watching Cal. But there it was. Unexpected, but true. She’d lost her place when she’d learned her real parents had no relationship and her biological father hadn’t wanted her. She knew that Jasper loved her, and she knew he wished she was his true daughter.
“He’s going to come and meet us,” Cal said. Then his brow furrowed as he took in her face. “You okay?”
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