by Brenda Novak
Hoping he’d had the decency to leave out the more embarrassing details, Harper hitched her purse higher on her shoulder. Axel wasn’t all that great at keeping secrets, but he wasn’t vindictive. If he’d told Karoline, it was because he was hurt, or suddenly insecure, not because he was out to get her. But still... “I learned that Axel isn’t the only man in the world, I guess,” she said.
Her sister studied her closely. “And how did you learn that?”
“By meeting someone I found—” she searched for the appropriate word “—interesting.”
“You mean attractive.”
She thought of Tobias, how he’d put on her skates and kept her from falling every time she wobbled on the ice. He was big and strong and kind. She also thought of his smile—how sexy it was—and the way he kissed and did other things that were even more enjoyable. “Interesting and attractive.”
Karoline’s jaw dropped. “So you are dating someone else.”
Was that all Axel had said—that there was now another man in the picture? “One date isn’t ‘dating’ someone.”
“It’s a step in the right direction. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was nothing.” She held her breath, waiting to see if her sister would contradict her. If Axel had told her she’d slept with this other man, Karoline would definitely have something to say about it.
“You’re not planning to see him again?”
Harper let her breath go in relief. Apparently, Axel hadn’t said too much. “No.”
“Why not?”
Because she knew where it would go if she did. “I’ll be returning to Colorado with my kids, where I’ll get back on my feet and continue to heal before I risk my heart again.”
“He knows that?”
“Of course.”
Karoline didn’t respond right away. After a few seconds, she said, “That’s why you won’t accept Axel’s calls...”
Harper raked her fingers through her hair. “It’s not that I won’t accept them. It’s more that...that there’s no reason for him to call me. He ended our marriage. And now that it’s over, I need to move on. If I’m talking to him all the time that’ll be much harder. If he needs something, he can always text me.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”
“Then you should be glad.”
“I am. I’m just wondering who this other guy is. Don’t tell me he’s the one who gave you the rose...”
Harper didn’t see any harm in admitting that. “As a matter of fact, he is.”
“What’s his name?”
“Does it matter? You won’t know him. He’s never heard of you or Terrance. He’s only lived in Silver Springs for five months.”
“Does he have any kids?”
“No. Never been married.”
Karoline nodded, obviously satisfied with her answers. “Well...I’m ecstatic that you seem to be on the road to recovery.”
“I am on the road to recovery,” Harper insisted. “It’ll take some time, but...I’ll get there.”
Her sister nudged her. “Axel is pretty freaked out,” she confided with a gleeful chuckle.
Harper couldn’t help being a little pleased. “What’d he say?”
“He asked if I knew who you were seeing. If he was a decent guy. If he’d be good for the girls. But I bet it wasn’t about the girls at all. I bet it’s hard for him to imagine another man taking his place.”
“He didn’t consider that possibility before? Didn’t believe I’d ever move on?”
“You’ve always been so in love with him, I honestly doubt he did. The entire world is falling at his feet right now. How dare you defect?”
“I didn’t defect.” Harper’s mind wandered to the night he’d first said he was unsatisfied in their marriage. She’d never experienced anything quite so painful. After he’d mentioned the word divorce, she could hardly breathe. “He kicked me to the curb.”
“Exactly. As far as I’m concerned, it serves him right that you’re not waiting around, hoping to get him back.”
Harper wasn’t sure she’d go that far. She wasn’t pursuing him, but she did want her family to be whole again, and, to a point, she still loved Axel. She supposed part of her always would. They’d shared ten years of their lives, had two children, belonged to each other’s families. It wasn’t easy to unravel all of that.
But if he didn’t love her in return, and she couldn’t make him happy, she wasn’t going to continue to plead with him. “Who knows how I’ll feel tomorrow.” She shrugged. “I’m just taking it one day at a time.”
“That’s all you can do.” Her sister slipped an arm around her and lowered her voice. “You’re stronger than you know. I’m so proud of you,” she said, giving her a squeeze.
Harper winced. She doubted Karoline would be proud of how she’d come to be where she was at, but she didn’t see how it would help the situation to confess.
She smiled as her sister began to propel her toward Space Mountain so they could wait for their families.
Everly and Piper were just coming out of the ride, both of them laughing, when her phone vibrated with another text.
“I bet this is him,” she told Karoline, but Karoline was no longer listening. She was moving forward, talking to her twins, who were telling her she just had to go back on the ride with them.
Harper pulled out her phone. But the text wasn’t from Axel. It was from Tobias:
How are you?
Her heart began to pound. She’d been so tempted to contact him, so tempted to see him again.
Telling herself she wouldn’t respond, she slid her phone back in her purse. But when everyone else was preoccupied with choosing a Disneyland sweatshirt to take home, and she stood off in a corner, waiting for Everly to try hers on, she couldn’t resist taking her phone out again—just to read and reread those three words with his name attached.
* * *
After parking in his own drive, Tobias checked his phone one last time. Harper hadn’t responded to his text.
He told himself not to be disappointed; after all, it was what he’d expected.
Still, he couldn’t help feeling let down as he climbed out of his truck. When he closed his eyes, he could still smell her hair, feel her skin. He’d never been so into someone.
It’s probably only because you can’t have her. Forget you ever met her.
Trying to shrug off the melancholy that’d set in along with some more bad weather, he turned his focus to the night ahead. On his way home from work, he’d stopped and bought groceries. He didn’t feel like going out, so he was planning to cook. But since he’d missed learning the basic skills most other people picked up in young adulthood, he wasn’t very good in the kitchen. He could make a few things—mostly breakfast. If he did dinner, it involved a steak, a burger, some kind of fish, a burrito or a chicken salad. Or he simply opened a can of soup. Not a very extensive repertoire, but he got by. And normally, whenever he went to the trouble of making a meal, he invited Uriah to join him.
Uriah did the same for him. They were both often alone at night, so it made sense. They usually finished the evening with a game of chess. Unlike cooking, chess was something Tobias was very good at. Uriah couldn’t beat him, but he liked to try.
Thinking it was time to give the old man another chance, Tobias left the groceries in his truck and started toward Uriah’s house. They’d grown so comfortable with each other that he would often knock, open the door before Uriah could even respond and shout that dinner was at his place tonight. But before he could get that far, he considered the possibility of having to invite Carl, too, and changed his mind. If Carl was going to be there, he’d rather eat alone.
Reversing direction, he strode back to unload the groceries.
He’d already put the perishables in the fridge and formed
his meat patty when he realized the onion he’d bought hadn’t made it into the house.
Damn. He needed it for his burger.
It was much darker out than it had been only fifteen minutes earlier, and it was raining again, but he didn’t bother to put on a jacket. He wasn’t going to be out long.
Hunched against the cold, he searched his truck. Sure enough, the onion had fallen out of the bag and rolled under the seat. He’d found it and was almost back inside when he heard raised voices.
“Give me those keys! You don’t have a license!”
“Oh, my God! Will you chill out? I’m just going to get a six-pack. It’s right down the street.”
Tobias leaned around the corner of the house to take a peek at what was going on. He could see two figures in the halo of the porch light at Uriah’s house. Carl and Uriah were outside, arguing.
“Then you’ll have to dust off the old bicycle in the garage and ride that in the rain, because I’m not letting you get behind the wheel,” Uriah said.
Carl wrenched open the door of his vehicle despite his father’s protests. “I’m almost forty years old. You have no say over what I do!”
“Are you going to force me to call the cops?” Uriah grabbed the door handle, trying to stop him. “Do you want to go back to jail? Is that what you’re after? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you do this.”
Carl yanked the door so suddenly it nearly made Uriah fall. “You’d do that, too. Wouldn’t you?”
“Carl, don’t make this any harder than it has to be. We can live without beer for one night,” Uriah said, speaking more calmly. “I’ll pick some up tomorrow.”
Setting his jaw, Tobias strolled down the drive, tossing the onion between his hands to keep them busy. He wanted to throw it and break Carl’s windshield, but he knew the psychologist he’d worked with at the prison would say it wasn’t an “appropriate response.” They’d talked a lot about appropriate responses, mostly because what was appropriate in prison—because it was inevitable or sometimes the only way to survive—wasn’t appropriate out of prison. And while he’d learned to cope with living on the inside, she’d wanted him to understand that living on the outside would require a different set of skills.
“What’s going on?” he asked as if he didn’t already know.
Clearly agitated, Uriah gestured toward his son. “I can’t let him drive. If he gets caught, he’ll be in even more trouble than he is already.”
“I’m not going to get caught!” Carl snapped. “It’s a straight shot. I’ll be back in less than twenty minutes. I don’t know why you need to get involved. I can run my own life.”
The argument could be made that he didn’t do a very good job of it. Everyone pretty much agreed on that. But Tobias decided the psychologist he’d worked with at the prison would also counsel him not to say so. That will only escalate the situation, she’d say.
Problem was, deep down he wanted to escalate the situation, because he was dying to teach Carl a lesson. But now that Tobias was out of prison, he was choosing to use diplomacy instead of brute strength—even though, in this case, he was convinced brute strength would get the message across much faster. “There’s no need for anyone to go anywhere,” he said. “I just got back from the store. I’ve got plenty of beer.”
Uriah looked relieved and hopeful that this was a solution Carl would accept. “Hear that? Tobias has beer,” he repeated as if Carl couldn’t hear for himself. “There’s no need to go anywhere. And I can get some more tomorrow.”
When Carl’s gaze shifted between them, Tobias thought he was about to flip them both the bird and drive off. Carl glanced into the driver’s seat of his car, but Uriah was still hanging on to his door, and Tobias was ready should anything that threatened Uriah happen. Maybe those two factors made Carl realize he should just let this one go.
“Fine,” he said, now sullen. “How many cans ya got?”
“Enough,” Tobias said.
Carl glared at him. He understood that Tobias had only stepped in for Uriah’s sake and seemed to resent the interference. But finally he stalked into the house and slammed the door.
“Thanks,” Uriah murmured. “And don’t worry. This won’t happen again.”
“How do you know?” Now soaked and chilled to the bone, Tobias continued throwing the onion back and forth.
“Because I’m going to hide his keys.”
Tobias flung his wet hair out of his face with a quick toss of his head. “And what about your keys?”
“I’ll hide those, too.”
“I don’t think that’s the answer. If he demands you give them to him—”
“I can manage,” Uriah interrupted.
Tobias wasn’t convinced. He held up the onion. “I’m making burgers, if you’d like to come eat and get away for a while.”
Uriah frowned. “I’d love to. But I don’t dare leave him when he’s like this. For all I know, he’ll burn down the house while I’m gone.”
Tobias felt his eyebrows go up. “You just said you can manage.”
“Yeah, well, we both know I was lying.” With a sigh, he started toward the house.
Tobias caught his arm. “So what you’re really saying is that you’re going to take your chances.”
“It’s what Shirley would want me to do,” he replied, his voice even softer.
Tobias shook his head. “No. I don’t think she’d want you to risk yourself for his sake.”
“I’m getting old, Tobias. If I could help my son get stable before I pass away, I’ll consider whatever I’ve gone through or will go through to be worth it.”
Tobias didn’t think it was possible for Carl to get on an even keel. That would take too much effort on his part. He had to see the need and want to change, or nothing would happen.
He opened his mouth to say so—but then he closed it again. How could he be so sure Carl would fail? He didn’t know what the future held. He only knew that Uriah was essentially asking him to back off and let him have this chance to try. And if anyone should be willing to offer others a second chance, it was him. Uriah, Maddox, Jada, Maya, Aiyana and Atticus had all been kind enough to give him a second chance, hadn’t they? “Okay,” he said. “I’ll get the beer.”
Tobias carried a six-pack over to Uriah’s and put it on the kitchen counter without speaking to Carl, who sat in the living room, in Uriah’s recliner, glowering at the TV. He seemed to have lost his desire to have a beer, which made Tobias suspect he’d been more interested in scoring some weed. Although marijuana was now legal in California, it was definitely something Uriah wouldn’t get for him.
“Have a good night,” he told Uriah.
Uriah stepped outside onto the stoop with him. “I appreciate your patience,” he said.
Tobias jerked his head toward the house, to indicate Carl. “He’s lucky to have you. I just wish he realized that.”
To avoid getting any wetter, Tobias jogged back to his own house, where he finished cooking his burger and ate his dinner while watching TV.
Afterward, he felt at loose ends, frustrated and worried about the situation with Uriah and Carl, and he couldn’t quit checking his phone, hoping that Harper would respond.
An hour or so later, he was lying on the couch, watching the news while he considered going to the Blue Suede Shoe to shoot some pool—he figured it might help get his mind on other things—when he heard a knock.
Assuming it was Uriah, and wondering if he was going to have to play referee again already, he yelled, “Come in.”
The door swung open. But it wasn’t Uriah who walked into his kitchen; it was Willow from the Eatery.
13
Oh, shit. Tobias had never responded to Willow’s message with those brownies! He’d had a lot of other things on his mind and, hesitant to hurt her feelings, he’d put it off.
That was a bad decision because now here she was.
“Hello.” He jumped to his feet.
She closed the door. “It’s so cold tonight.”
“Yeah. I was out earlier. It’s chilly.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “What’s going on?”
“Didn’t you get my brownies?” she asked uncertainly.
What was left of them was sitting on the counter. “Yes. Yes, I did. And they were...er...delicious.” He gestured toward the plate. “As you can see, they’re almost gone.”
Obviously self-conscious, she hugged her coat close as she looked up at him from underneath her eyelashes. “What about the note? Did you get that, too?”
“I did, yes. And I was going to respond. But...I’ve been really busy.” He knew that was a lame excuse, but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
“So...are you interested? I mean... I’ve had a thing for you ever since I first saw you.” She blushed and glanced away.
Tobias reached out to touch her elbow, a gesture intended to soften his words. “You’re a beautiful girl, Willow. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just that... Well, you’re too young for me.”
Her eyes widened. “What does age matter? I’m old enough. I’m an adult. I turned eighteen last month. I told you that at the diner, remember?”
“I remember, but—”
“You can’t get in trouble for anything we do.”
“That’s not the only consideration. I’m thirty. That’s twelve years’ difference.”
“I don’t care!” She grabbed his hand and brought it inside her coat to her heart—at least, he thought that was her intent, but whatever she was wearing seemed to be low-cut, and the softness of her breast filled his hand.
Clearing his throat, he pulled away. “We’re in very different stages of life. I mean, you’re still in high school.”
“Yes, but I’ll graduate in the spring. What’re a few months? After that, I could even move in here with you.” She lowered her voice. “If you wanted me to. Think about having this in your bed every night.” When she dropped her coat, he realized she wasn’t just wearing a low-cut blouse or sweater. She was wearing red see-through lingerie with black high heels.