“But, as far as him being mad at you or loving you – well, those aren’t what you’d call mutually exclusive. Just ask your grandma. She’s loved me every day of the last fifty-four years we’ve been married and she’s spent at least half of them spitting mad at something I’ve done or said.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. He was right about that. She didn’t know what it meant for her situation, but he was definitely right about that.
Chapter 7
Connor
The sound of the doorbell roused Connor from the almost trance-like state he’d been in. His head snapped up from the carburetor he’d been working on, parts strewn all across the drop cloth that lay across his kitchen table.
He glanced down at his grease-covered hands and called out, “Be right there.”
Damn it. He didn’t have time to wash the grime off. He’d just have to be satisfied with a quick swipe of the rag over the black streaks and hope that was good enough.
He opened the door and froze in place.
Luna stood there, looking beautiful and fragile. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her skin was pale. His heart clenched in his chest. “Shit. Did something happen to your grandfather?”
Her mouth formed a small ‘o’ shape and her brows shot up. “Oh, God, no! Sorry to scare you like that.”
His breathing slowed slightly. He hadn’t even realized it had sped up and gotten shallow until it slowed enough for him to breathe comfortably again. He stepped back and gestured her inside.
She stepped in, her eyes roaming over the room. He was glad it wasn’t a total disaster. Yeah, if he’d known she was coming, it would’ve been a hell of a lot cleaner than it was, sure – but it was fine.
Her eyes came to rest on the greasy pile of metal sitting on his kitchen table. “Wow. What’s that?”
“A carburetor,” he answered simply. He didn’t see any need to expand on it. After all, she hadn’t even told him what she was doing here yet.
She turned to face him. He was struck again by her watery eyes and air of vulnerability, so different from the confident and kickass girl in his memory. A shudder ran through him, along with a compulsion to wrap his arms around her and protect her from anything in the world that might try to hurt her.
But that’s not your place anymore, he reminded himself. That’s not who the two of you are now.
It wasn’t new information—in fact, it was information that he’d had to keep repeating to himself on a loop lately—but the mental reminder came with a punch in the gut. Seeing her there, it was almost like the years melted away, leaving them to slip into their old, familiar rhythm.
Almost.
Because the years and the pain that separated them were there, too. And those were just as real as the love. And that wouldn’t change as long as he didn’t know what the future held.
A small, trembling smile teased at her lips. “I just spent four hours with my grandfather in his hospital room.”
So, that explained the fragility. “How’s he doing?”
She nodded. “Good. Better than I’d imagined, actually.” She breathed out. “You should’ve seen the stuff that was going through my mind before I walked into that room. Trust me, it was gnarly.”
“I can imagine.”
She reached out and brushed her fingertips against his arm, never moving her eyes from his, almost as if the touch were an afterthought. Electricity crackled over his skin, radiating out from the points of contact.
His brain froze. All he could hear was the pounding of his heart echoing in his ears. It was so loud that he almost missed what she was saying. He had to work to focus through his racing pulse and engage in the conversation.
It was worth the effort, though, when he heard what she’d come to say.
“I almost had a panic attack right before I walked into his room. All of these terrible pictures were rushing through my brain. Grandpa Serge, pale and barely there, with machines pumping his heart and breathing for him. I didn’t think I could bear to see him like that. I just stood outside his room, nearly hyperventilating and letting the images control me.”
“I can understand that,” he said through the tightened muscles of his throat.
“But then, when I walked in, I realized that, even though it was hard seeing him there in that hospital bed, it was nowhere near as bad as the moments before I saw him, if that makes sense. Because before I walked into the room, fear of the unknown was making me crazy, filling my mind with insane possibilities and keeping me hostage to them.
“But as soon as I walked in and faced reality, no matter how hard it was, at least I was dealing with the truth, you know? Facing it head on.”
He nodded. He wasn’t really sure where she was going with all of this, but honestly, it was just kind of nice to listen to her talk.
She took a step closer, turned earnest eyes up to meet his. “I realized something, Connor.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve been doing the same thing with us. All these years, not wanting to come back to Valentine Bay. Not wanting to face having a conversation with you. If I would’ve asked myself why at any point, I don’t think I even could’ve explained it to myself. I didn’t know why I did the things I did. But now I think I might be coming to understand it.”
“Okay.”
“I think it was the same thing that was going on when I was standing outside that room – fear taking over and making something loom larger in my brain than it did in reality. The longer we went without talking, the more afraid I got when I even thought about calling you, or – God forbid – setting foot back in Valentine Bay.”
“I can understand that, I guess,” he said, and he realized it was true. There were things in his life that he’d never taken charge of, and maybe that hesitation could be explained by the same type of fear she was describing.
She took both of his hands in hers, then, and looked straight into his eyes with the kind of clear-eyed gaze that only someone who’d recently been rocked by an epiphany could manage. “I don’t want to be controlled like that anymore,” she said, her voice low and steady. “I want to take control. I’m back here, back in Valentine Bay. That’s part of it. But talking with you, having a really honest conversation – that’s the other part.”
He swallowed hard. Shit, how many times had he imagined some moment like this, tried to will it into existence by the sheer force of his mind? It had always seemed like some “too good to be true” fantasy when it was only in his head. Now that it was really playing out in front of him, though, he was wary.
“I don’t know, Luna. I’ve spent a lot of time getting used to you not being in my life. A lot of effort building a world where you don’t figure in. I don’t know if I’m willing to risk that.”
Her eyes filled a little and his heart broke.
Just a few minutes ago he’d been consumed by the instinct to protect her from anything that might hurt her – and now he was the one doing that hurting.
She drew in a shaky breath. “I can understand that. But let me just ask you one thing.”
“Okay.”
She looked straight at him, her gaze clear and focused. “Are you happy? I mean, really…deep down? Us, whatever ‘us’ is, being unresolved – it doesn’t bother you? Because if you’ve truly moved on, of course I don’t want to topple your life.
“But, as for me, it doesn’t matter that I’ve tried to get past this. It doesn’t matter that I have a whole other life that is completely separate from us, and from Valentine Bay. There’s something deep inside me that wants resolution, even if it’s small, and late. No matter how far I try to run, it keeps coming back to this.”
He turned and walked into the kitchen. Her voice hit his ears as he went through the archway that separated the two rooms. “Um, okay…am I supposed to follow you…or…?”
He popped his head back around the corner, a small grin on his face. “I’m gonna wash my hands. If we’re going to have this conversation, I’m
not going to do it with streaks of grease all over my fingers.”
Chapter 8
Luna
Luna sat down on the couch while she waited for Connor to come back from the kitchen. She balled her fingers up in her skirt, then squeezed them between her knees. Anything to keep them from trembling as violently – and visibly – as they were.
She was glad that Connor wanted to talk. But at the same time, she was terrified. This whole “getting outside of her comfort zone” thing was new…like, less than twenty-four hours old kind of new. It was scary and uncomfortable – but worth it. As nervous as she was, she knew that for sure. Whatever the outcome of this conversation, it would be worth it.
Nothing was worse than hiding. She was done with that.
Connor came back into the living room, wiping his hands on a towel, which he then tossed onto the kitchen table on his way to the couch. Her eyes locked in on his hands as the terrycloth fabric rubbed over them. His long fingers. His rough palms. His strong wrists.
Hoooo, mama…..
She had to shake her head a little to clear the lust fog forming behind her eyes. Now wasn’t the time for that! Now was the time to strip her heart bare, not her…um, everything else.
Connor settled into the cushions on the other couch, which sat at a ninety-degree angle to the one she occupied. Even though they were technically on different pieces of furniture, their knees were only a couple of inches apart. She could feel the heat radiating off his legs and it raised gooseflesh on the bare skin of her calves.
She drew air deep into her lungs and closed her eyes to center herself. Damn, this was hard. Keeping her wits about her when she was distracted by strong emotion was hard enough, but trying to focus through both that and lust at the same time? COME ON! It was almost too much to ask.
Still, she was determined as hell to get through this conversation – and, more than just get through it, she wanted to be present and clear-headed enough to do it right. She didn’t want to spend the next ten years suffering through moments of mini-epiphany, where something would pop into her head and she’d be forced to say, damn it, I wish I would’ve asked him this, or I wish I would’ve thought to say that!
She opened her eyes and looked at Connor full in the face. She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t. So many things washed over her at the same time – nostalgia, affection, pain, longing. They bunched up in her throat and made it impossible for words to pass.
Luckily, like he had so many other times in the past, Connor took control. “Why don’t I get the ball rolling?”
She nodded gratefully. It would definitely be easier to just respond to questions or statements, versus thinking of things to say off the top of her head.
He returned her nod with a quick, sharp one of his own. “Okay, then. Let’s just dive right in. I understand why you wanted to break things off when you went away to college. That’s pretty normal, actually. But why the total freeze out after? Why did you act like I was radioactive? Like the whole town was?”
The words hit her like tiny knives to the chest. I mean, that was really at the heart of it, wasn’t it? The thing she’d been trying to figure out herself for years.
“I mean…” her eyes drifted down to her lap, unable to meet his. “It was all I could do to drive away from you the first time. I felt like a part of me was being physically ripped from my body. I had to repeat a mantra in my head to force myself to keep driving. ‘Straight ahead, hands on wheel, foot on gas.’ I must’ve chanted it in my mind a thousand times on that drive.
“I couldn’t imagine bringing myself to do that again. I didn’t think I’d be able to. I really thought that if I came back here, I’d never leave. Never make something of myself. Never make my grandparents proud. After all they did for me, that was the least I could do for them.”
She looked down at her lap, trying to put together anything else she could say to explain it. Silence stretched between them, until finally Connor said, “You do realize how lame that is, right? To think that the only place you could ‘make something’ of yourself was anywhere but here? With anyone but me?”
More knives, directly in the chest. She didn’t care. She deserved it. “I’m beginning to. Yeah.”
More silence, until he said, “Okay. So, you admit it, then. You were an idiot.”
Her head snapped up and she saw a small, rueful smile on his lips. Breath escaped her lungs in a violent whoosh and all of the tension seeped out of her shoulders. The whole thing was sudden, like the strings being cut on a marionette. She hadn’t realized how damn tense she was until she relaxed, like not realizing how hungry you were until you smelled a sizzling steak.
“I was. Definitely. Full admission of idiocy.”
He laughed. It was a soft sound, not full of joy – but not bitter, either, and that encouraged her. “Look, Luna,” he said, “we’re cool. Things are fine between us. I mean, sure…we have a lot of history and pain in our past. But what teenage couple doesn’t? That’s kind of what the whole ‘first love’ process is about.”
Her heart clutched in her chest. Of course, he was her first love. She’d used that phrase in her own mind to describe their relationship many times. But to hear the words popping so casually out of his mouth made her lose her breath a little. “Okay. Great,” she murmured.
“Not so fast,” he amended. “You’re not off the hook that easy.”
“Cool. I can take it. Come at me, bro.” It felt so good to tease with him again after all the years of radio silence. Their energy crackled in the air between them, sending tingles skittering over the surface of her skin.
He shook his head. “Hopefully it won’t be too painful. All I want is for us to keep in touch. Not like we have to talk every day. But, now that we’ve reconnected, it would feel too weird to suddenly go another decade or more without speaking.”
Her cheeks flushed with pleasure. “I totally agree. In fact, I’m going to be sticking around Valentine Bay for a while. That’ll be a good way to kick things off.”
“A while? How long?”
“Not sure exactly. At least through the new year. Grandma Grace needs someone to man the grill while Grandpa’s laid up, and I guess that’ll be me.”
“What the hell? She’s keeping Main Street Eats open while your grandfather’s in the hospital?”
Luna groaned. “I know, I know. Believe me, we’ve had this conversation. But she’s stubborn, and she believes people will forget about them if they close up.”
“Forget about them? They’re one of, like, four places to eat in town.”
“You’re preaching to the choir. But she won’t listen to me. Honestly, I think it’s more that she needs to keep up a sense of normalcy than anything else. I think it’s a way to pretend that nothing’s really wrong.”
“That makes sense.”
“And, of course, she’s not going to forgo the annual Free Christmas Dinner, even if Grandpa’s not up to being back at the grill by then. She said that just because she and Grandpa are going through a trial doesn’t mean they turn their backs on those who’ve fallen on hard times.”
“That sounds like her. But who’s going to be with your grandfather while you and Grace are running the restaurant?”
Luna rubbed her forehead in an attempt to stave off an oncoming headache. “Believe me, I’ve brought that up, too. But it doesn’t seem to matter. Apparently we are opening on Monday at the normal time, no matter what. Full steam ahead.”
Connor nodded. “Well, I have a solution.”
Luna’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? Because I feel like all I’ve come up with are more problems. A solution would be a refreshing change of pace. Whatd’ya got?”
“At opening time on Monday, it won’t just be you and Grace. I’ll be there to help.”
Luna’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. Then you guys can switch off spending time at the hospital and taking orders. I’ll run the grill.”
“Holy shit, C
onnor. That’s…can you even do that?”
He shrugged. “I mean, it’s been a few years since I worked the grill with Serge but, I think I can come up to speed pretty fast.”
“No, Connor,” she chuckled. “I meant, can you take time off to do that? I mean…God, I don’t even know what your job is. Are you sure they’ll be okay with it?”
He inclined his head toward the automotive parts on the kitchen table. “You’re looking at it. I restore classic cars. I’m working on a ’71 Charger for Jet Valentine right now. Trust me, when I explain about Serge, he won’t mind the delay. In fact, he’ll probably insist on it.”
Luna felt a warmth in her belly that was only partly due to Connor’s offer. It was also about the town. She knew Jet Valentine, just like she knew most people in town, and she knew Connor was right. There was no one in Valentine Bay who wouldn’t do just about anything they could to help her grandparents. Or her, for that matter, even though she hadn’t been back in ten years. This was a really special place – and one she’d stayed away from for far too long.
“That’d be great, Connor. Beyond great. Thank you.”
He leaned forward and nudged her knee playfully. “There’s another big advantage of me helping out at the grill, you know.”
“Oh, really? What’s that?”
“We can get a head start on that whole ‘keeping in touch’ thing.”
Chapter 9
Luna
Strolling down the main street of Valentine Bay after leaving Connor, Luna was overwhelmed by one of the strongest sensations of déjà vu she’d ever experienced. If she hadn’t known better, she would’ve sworn she was wearing jeans and a tank top with converse on her feet, her de facto uniform in high school.
Unbreak My Heart (Valentine Bay Book 5) Page 4