But however long it was, Eli was there when it ended. However long it took for me to let go of it all, he would still be there when I was done. He was the rock who withstood my storm of sorrow. He was still there, holding me. Comforting me. Never leaving.
Just like he promised.
“Thank you,” I murmured thickly.
“You never have to thank me for this,” he replied raggedly. “I want all of you, Laurel. Every last beautiful piece.”
“Even if they’re broken?”
“Then I want every last broken piece. They’re all beautiful to me,” he insisted with a small smile. “You should know by now that broken doesn’t bother me. Broken is just a chance to build something new.”
“I feel like there’s nothing left to build from,” I admitted weakly. “Like the only thing that’s filled me up over the years has been hurt, packed down by its own volume and fortified by distance.”
And it was a hollowness like I’d never felt before.
His lips pressed gently to mine, grounding the frayed pieces of me that remained. “There is everything left to you, sweetheart.” He kissed the corner of my mouth. “Everything you need.” And then the other corner. “Everything you need for what’s meant to be.” His nose brushed mine and my eyes flitted open. “And everything to gain, if you’d just let yourself.”
My lips parted with a sharp inhale. “I thought you weren’t going to convince me to stay?”
“You don’t have to stay, Laurel. I’ll never stop you from running if that’s what you have to do. But what I have to do” —he bent closer, his words turning into steel—“is be there for you no matter what you choose, to leave… to love.” My breath hitched. Love. “Because one day, you’re going to realize you can’t escape love any more than you can escape loss. And that day, I’ll be there, waiting patiently, because what we have is worth waiting for, is worth fighting for… is worth losing for.”
“Eli…” I drew a stuttered breath.
“But until then, I’d like to take you home and make you dinner.” His eyes darkened. “And then make love to you for the rest of the night… if that’s alright with you.”
I gulped, shivers running rampant up and down my spine.
“Take me home,” I told him, crossing a line I swore I’d never cross again.
And, as he wrapped his arm around me and walked me back to his truck, I realized just how dangerous Eli Dowling was to my heart… because even if I left him and this town, he’d still be with me… around me… like water ebbed in and filled even the smallest space between particles of sand, he’d swept in and filled himself into the million tiny spaces between the broken particles of my heart.
Laurel
It was a room.
A mess, but a room.
It had been three days since the beach and almost a week since they’d started repairing the pipes. But today… today, the drywall was finally back up, covering the ripped up and repaired plumbing veined through the walls.
Eli and the brothers worked their tails off to get it done as soon as possible—not because they wanted it to be ready to sell but because Eli was doing what he promised: whatever it took to make this place—and me—whole.
I folded my arms snugly over my chest.
It wasn’t finished. And in some ways, a blank canvas was more frightening than the torn-apart shreds. At least destruction made clear the choices. The blank walls only screamed possibility. For good or bad.
And not just here.
For three days, every time I looked in the mirror, I saw steadiness. I saw structure. I saw the shadows under my eyes were less, the light in my gaze was brighter, and how my chest breathed a little deeper without so much weight.
And I saw all my possibilities. Here. At Roasters. With him.
And somehow, even the tiniest steps I’d taken in grief, but forward toward healing, were more frightening than the sea of numbness I’d been treading.
There were so many good possibilities for me—friends, family, love. But the cold ocean of loss lapped at my feet, a constant reminder of how fragile it all was. How it could all be taken from me in an instant. Again.
The bell dinged behind me and I looked over my shoulder to see Josie and Eve walk inside, smiles warmly painted on their faces and their arms full of goods.
“Wow, look at this,” Josie sighed. “I just can’t believe it.”
Josie became a regular face in my life. Even before the album incident, but especially after, she supplied us with breakfast and enough pastries to feed an army each morning, and most afternoons, we stopped there for lunch. In just over the course of a few weeks, seeing her, even if only for a brief minute, became something I’d begun to expect and enjoy—another fixture in the column of normalcy.
“I told you, you were going to be so surprised.” Eve grinned, hardly a drop of sadness left in her gaze when she looked around Roasters anymore. Unless she was looking at Miles.
Josie reached for my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “There is no such thing as too far gone, isn’t that right?”
I swallowed through the vise around my throat and managed a weak nod, my nose wrinkling with a warm, sugary scent. My brow creased. “What is that…”
Josie’s eyes lit up like spotlights. “Apple fritters.”
My heart stuttered. “What?” I took another deep drag of the fruity-sweet smell.
“I’m almost positive this was your grammy’s recipe…” she added confidently, nodding to Eve to open the pastry box she held, letting a wave of the heady aroma infuse the air.
She grabbed one of the perfectly fried pastries, balancing whatever she carried with her other arm, and handed the sticky treat to me.
There was no arguing with the look on her face. Not that I made a habit of turning down pastries anyway…
It was still hot. Almost too hot. Almost. But as I bit into the sticky sweetness, the burst of fruit over my tongue, and the scent of apples rushing up my nose, it was both everything I remembered yet something new. I didn’t know if it was exactly the same as my grammy’s, but it was so good it didn’t matter.
“It took Cammie and me several tries, but I think we got pretty close even if it’s not exactly the same,” she said proudly, nodding to Eve who clearly had been forbidden a taste until they’d arrived here.
“It’s amazing,” I said, my hand covering my mouth that was still full of food.
She put her hand up as though to tell me a secret. “Let me give you a little advice. It’s never just about what you have, it’s about how you use it. The recipes we tried all had the same ingredients, but how we used them… that was what made all the difference.”
“And how did you use them?” Eve chimed in with a satisfied moan. “Laced with crack?”
“Eve!” Josie chided as we all laughed and then asked, “Where’s Eli?”
I shivered at the mention of his name.
“Here.” The rough molasses of his voice echoed into the space, coating my spine in a layer of inescapable warmth. “Just working on clean up in the back.”
“I brought a little—”
“Damn,” he broke in. “Are those what I think they are?”
Josie nodded with pride.
His hand found the small of my back as he joined our little group. He always found a way to touch me when we were together. Sometimes to comfort. Sometimes to steady. And sometimes, because the lust burned so electrically in his eyes that he needed to touch me in order to ground it.
Every time we were together—which was almost every waking and non-waking moment of the last few days—I reminded myself of our expiration date. I reminded myself there were no strings—no anchors attached to our relationship. There was nothing but him and me.
Except the more time we spent together, I realized that nothing was everything.
And I wanted everything.
And the tide of fear at my feet grew higher.
“Eli, you’ve done a wonderful job,” she gushed, patting hi
m on the back when he bent forward to greet her with a hug.
“Oh, it’s not just me,” he replied with a grin. “And not even the twins.” He used his thumb to point at me. “This one right here is a force to be reckoned with.”
My mouth dropped open and heat flooded my cheeks. “I wouldn’t say that…” I mumbled.
The plumbing I’d stayed away from, but other than that, I’d cleaned and organized in the back, spackled and sanded the new drywall, patched the old drywall once we pulled down the wallpaper from the rest of it. And next week, I’d be painting. And then decorating.
And I could finally start the process of selling it… a thought that used to come with relief now made me uneasy.
“Oh, she always was.” Josie winked at me.
I’d helped from the start because I wanted it to be done.
Over the weeks though, something had changed. A lot of little things, actually. Little seeds. Harmless. Easily crushed. Yet determined to bloom.
“Eli!” Miles yelled from the back, drawing our attention. “What the hell is that amazing smell? Mick keeps insisting it’s him and I know for-fucking-sure that’s not the truth.”
“Apple fritters!”
“Holy shit! Bring some of those back here!”
Eli chuckled, and Josie shooed him and Eve to the back to distribute her treats to the twins.
Heat drained from my body as his fingers disappeared from the small of my back. The two of them walked and talked back into the storage room, leaving Josie and me alone.
“You put a lot into this place, Laurel, and it shows,” she told me, pride brimming in her voice.
My mouth dried up. “I didn’t… I didn’t do much.” My protest was weak. “What could I do? I haven’t been here very long. And I’m… leaving soon.”
I was leaving.
I repeated the words because, like a muscle, the more I exercised my decision to leave, the stronger it would get. Only this muscle was broken because the more I insisted, the weaker it got.
“Laurel, sweetie.” She sighed and reached around my shoulder to pull me against her side. “You came here after a decade gone… you came back to the loss of your pap, your family’s business in shambles, and, I’m sure, to the memory of your parents. You came back when a lot of people in this world would’ve cut their losses and stayed away.”
I shifted my weight, unsure if I could believe that.
“It looks like now was a good time to bring this over.” She gave me a brave smile and extended her arms that held something large wrapped in a towel. “Mick made this.” As she unwrapped it, I recalled his mention of it—and how he didn’t know where it had gone. “I took it with me during the clean-up to make sure it stayed in good hands.”
She handed the richly stained wood plaque, the strong grains etched with my pap’s favorite saying.
Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
“You came back, sweetie. I know it might not seem like much, but you’re here, giving of what little you have left.” She brushed a hand over her cheek, and I knew she was trying hard not to cry. So was I. “And you’re doing what you can for Roasters and for us. And that is more than enough.”
Next I knew, Josie’s arms were wrapped around me, the wooden board awkwardly between us.
“We hurt for you when you left, but we still loved you. And we’ll still love you if you have to leave again,” she whispered, rubbing circles on my back. “Whatever you decide, what matters is that you love yourself for your choice in the end. Follow your heart.” Her embrace tightened. “That’s all your pap would want.”
Her words settled in me just as surely as she held me.
She pulled back as Eli joined us again, discreetly wiping the tears from her eyes as I did the same.
I felt his focus on me, steady and supportive.
“Okay, I should get back to the bakery. I don’t want to leave Cammie alone for too long,” Josie said to us with a watery smile. “I just wanted to drop these off. I’ll see you both tomorrow at the restaurant.”
I murmured a heartfelt goodbye even though I hadn’t fully decided on whether or not I was going to go to the opening of Ash’s restaurant. Josie enveloped me in one more hug before she turned her attention to Eli.
As they talked, I held the wood plaque out in front of me again to take another look, running my fingers over the smooth grooves in the wood.
I hope I’m doing what I can, Pap…
“You okay?” I looked up to Eli, seeing it was just the two of us once more.
I nodded, scrunching my brow for a second and then replied, “I’m moving forward.”
Instead of using the hurts and memories to build another wall around my heart, I used the strong blocks of emotion to create a path into the future, and I took one step at a time.
Eli kissed my forehead, and I sagged into him.
I shouldn’t want his warmth or his strength like I did. Even now, I didn’t need to lean into him. I was okay. But I wanted to feel him. I wanted his arms around me.
And I was really starting to want that constant presence for much longer than the few weeks I was giving myself here…
He hummed, his lips dragging against my hair as he said, “Don’t make plans tonight.” His voice turned low and ragged as he pulled me against him. His heat and hardness overwhelmed me and the constant ball of need always present in my stomach now flared to life.
I tipped back to look at him and laughed, rubbing my hips against his, feeling the length of him grow. “Why would I make plans? You’ve commandeered every evening—”
“Commandeered?” He growled, bending down to murmur in my ear, “I didn’t realize all those little cries you make as you come all over my cock were complaints.”
A delicious shiver ran laps up and down my spine. “Okay…” I agreed with breathless desire. “Maybe commandeered wasn’t the right word.”
“Don’t make plans,” he growled again, his lips coming for mine when I pulled back, feeling my phone buzz in my back pocket.
I hesitated, not recognizing the number even though the area code was from Carmel Cove.
I almost sent it to voicemail, but something stopped me. Giving Eli an apologetic glance, I bit my lip and answered, “Hello?”
“Hi, Laurel?” Instantly, I recognized my cousin’s voice.
“Jules? Hey. I didn’t recognize your number.” I met Eli’s eyes now that he knew who was on the phone. “What’s up?”
“Don’t make plans,” Eli mouthed with a rough whisper, letting his cinder-filled gaze caress my body with a trail of sparks before he left me to the phone call and strode toward the back of the shop.
“I just… wanted to see if you were still in town or not.”
“Yeah. I’m going to be in town for a bit,” I told her. A bit that teetered dangerously close to forever. “Roasters needed a lot of work but it’s finally starting to move along.”
“Oh, good.” The amount of relief she felt seemed strange for where our relationship was at, especially after our talk at the resort the other week. “Are you busy today? I have some time… free… that I can get away…”
A week or so ago, I wouldn’t have been thrilled with the idea of meeting up with Jules considering how strained things were between us. But now, enough little things had changed that I didn’t want to walk away from my cousin again. Especially when her voice barely masked a layer of desperation.
“Um, sure. Do you want to meet me at the house or in town?” I suggested. “There’s a pub a few blocks down from the coffee shop if you want to get some food. Kind of looks Irish but I’m not sure what the name is…”
“The Carmel Pub?” she filled in the blank.
Like magic, the name emblazoned in gold on the dark wood sign flashed in my memory from the night after the memorial. “Yeah, that’s it.”
“I’d rather—if it’s okay,” she stammered. “I’d rather meet at the coffee shop.”
“Oh.” My brows creased,
noticing the layer of dust on my sneakers. “It’s a little bit of a mess, but if that’s okay with—”
“Yeah, I don’t mind,” she broke in adamantly.
“Then sure,” I agreed, brushing more drywall dust off my pants. “I’ll be here all afternoon, and I’ve got some apple fritters.”
Because, honestly, who couldn’t use an apple fritter right now?
There was a pause and then she said, “I’ll see you soon.”
When she hung up, I glanced around the empty, hollow shell of a room.
But it wasn’t the ingredients that were important—the walls, the floor, the pipes—it was how they were used.
And today, like always, Roasters would be used as a safe space.
Laurel
“Laurel?” Jules’ voice echoed unsteadily from the entry just after the bell chimed.
I’d spent the rest of the afternoon with the twins, Eli, and Eve—until she had to leave to teach a yoga class—cleaning up and rewarding ourselves with more fritters.
And when only Eli and I were left, I told him he could head back to the house, that I was okay to wait for my cousin. I felt his hesitation. In his sharp look and raw kiss. But she’d called me. She needed me.
“Hey.” I came out to greet her, the apple fritter I’d warmed in the oven for her in my hand.
We stood there for an awkward moment before I stepped close to pull her in for a hug. Her hesitation melted into an embrace that felt like she was clinging to a life raft rather than my warm hello.
“Thanks for waiting,” she murmured as she drew back. “My parents wanted to talk to me about the winter events at the resort and I wasn’t expecting it.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I extended my hand and offered her the pastry which she accepted with a grateful smile.
I took a quick glance over her. Her hair was pulled back, though not as harshly as the other times I’d seen her. Instead of the white today, she wore black jeans and a black long-sleeve blouse that had a high neck with a bow that tied in the front. But it was her face, the pristine serenity that normally characterized it was gone. Like an old masterpiece, from a distance, the same image was still there. Up close, I saw the fine fractures in her eyes and the faded color in her cheeks.
Beholden: A Small-Town Standalone Romance (Carmel Cove Book 1) Page 23