Always & Forever: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love Collection, Books 1 - 4)

by Brenna Jacobs

  She’d already gotten to “who needs a guy with moods like that” by the time she walked through her front door when a text came in.

  It’s Aidan. That was an eye-opening chapter. Let’s talk about it?

  What? She couldn’t keep up. I thought you were upset with me.

  Instead of texting her back, he called. “Why would you think I was mad at you?”

  “You left in kind of a . . .” She wanted to say snit but didn’t think he’d appreciate it, so she finished with, “mood.”

  “Oh, man. I’m sorry. I didn’t think about how that would look to you.”

  “I don’t think we’re doing so great at not making every conversation we have an apology.”

  “I can’t think of anything you need to apologize to me for, but go ahead if you want to.”

  That made her smile. “No, this is all you.”

  “I’m sorry for making you think I left because I was mad. I had this idea I needed to chase down, that’s all.”

  “Got it. So you want to talk about this writing challenge now?”

  “I’m not a phone talker. Let’s get together, maybe over dinner? How’s your schedule look next week?”

  Next week? She thought he’d want to compare notes soon, and she deflated the tiniest bit. “It’s pretty open. Maybe not Wednesday. Maggie and I like to—uh, we have a thing every week.” She wasn’t going to confess to him that they got together to watch one of the trashiest dating reality shows on TV.

  “Em?”

  She realized her attention had wandered. “Sorry, what was that?”

  “What were you about to say? You and Maggie like to what?”

  “We just have a show we like to watch together. It’s a standing date between us.”

  “I’m a TV junkie. Sports, mostly. But I like a good scripted show too. I study the pacing and all that, watch how they’re wrapping stuff up in an hour. Guess the writer brain never turns off, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What show is it? I could use something new in my rotation.”

  She drew a blank and couldn’t think of a good fake out. “The, um, medical one.”

  “ER: New York?”

  What if he watched it too? She panicked, trying to think how to get out of the tiny corner she’d painted herself into. “No, the other one?” She didn’t mean for it to come out as a question.

  “Huh. I don’t see any other medical ones on the program guide. You don’t remember the title?”

  “Ugh, fine, Mr. District Attorney. It’s not a medical show. It’s Eligible. Happy now?”

  That met a long silence. A painfully long silence.

  He cleared his throat. “If he doesn’t pick Sarah H then he’s an idiot.”

  “Don’t judge me for—wait, what? You watch it?”

  “My mom and sisters are obsessed. I get looped in on the family group texts. But can we pretend that I didn’t confess to watching it?”

  “If we can pretend that I didn’t confess either. But he should definitely pick Sarah H.”

  “I have no idea what show you’re talking about. So what would you think about coming over here for dinner?”

  “There? Like your house?”

  “Yeah. But it’s fine if you don’t. We can meet at a restaurant or something. I thought it might be easier at my place”—her heart tripped the tiniest bit— “with our laptops and stuff.” Her heart resumed its normal rhythm. Oh. Right. A working dinner.

  “No, your place is fine.”

  “Great. How about . . .” He paused and she heard pages rustling, “Monday?”

  She agreed and they hung up, a text arriving a few seconds later with his address.

  She spent the rest of the weekend forcing herself to finish the Swedish crime novel, often re-reading sentences when her mind wandered, ultimately tossing the book at the wall when she reached the end and the victim got answers but no justice.

  Ugh.

  She also worked on her own manuscript, dropping in a dozen more armadillos as she followed Victoria’s story, sheer curiosity driving her forward as she forced her mind to ignore how poor the writing was. She’d never separated story from writing before. They were bound up in her mind, but Victoria, it seemed, had things she wanted to do and was ready to do them once Emma pulled the metaphors out of her way.

  As she packed up her laptop to head over to Aidan’s on Monday night, she hoped that he was finding as much value in this challenge as she was, but she didn’t see how he possibly could.

  She drove over in a state of, well, not nerves, exactly. She tried to give the feeling that tingled through her a name, but that was the best she could come up with: tingle. A specific, Aidan-induced tingle that skimmed along her nerve endings and curled through her stomach, playful and charged all at once.

  When she reached the turnoff for his place, she slowed, curious about the kind of house he would choose. Three weeks ago she would have guessed something excessively manly, either a rustic-looking cabin or one of the steel and glass abominations that people who didn’t understand Whidbey sometimes built. Now, she wasn’t so sure. He had planes and angles to his personality that were more complicated than that.

  He lived on a narrow road lined with houses that sat nestled close together, and she was surprised to find the house at the number he’d given her was a modest but graciously proportioned Scandinavian-style farmhouse, a nod to the Nordic settlers of Whidbey’s past.

  She pulled into the driveway, and his front door opened to reveal him standing there with a dish towel slung over his shoulder, his feet bare.

  She looked down at her own outfit, glad she’d erred on the side of casual. She’d picked dark, slim jeans and a soft cream sweater. She pulled the key from the ignition and scooped up her laptop bag, climbing from the car and heading toward him with a smile. It grew wider as she caught the scent of something warm and garlicky wafting through the open door behind him.

  “Smells amazing,” she said.

  “Crab. Do you like crab?”

  “Do you associate with people who don’t like crab? That should probably be a general policy.”

  “Couldn’t agree more. Come in.” He stepped back to let her pass. “You can set your stuff on the couch.”

  The house was older, big-boned and comfortable with exposed beams and wooden floors. It was a comfortable place, not a showy one, with the front door opening into a small entryway that branched off into a great room with a leather sofa and large TV on one side, and an undecorated dining room on the other. It had a table and chairs but no place settings, and she wondered if it meant they would be eating elsewhere in the house.

  She set her laptop bag on the sofa he indicated then followed him toward the kitchen where buttery notes and the sweet scent of cooked crab joined the garlic. He’d also boiled a large pot of corn to go with it, and his kitchen table was set, complete with newspaper for a tablecloth and plastic bibs.

  “I know. It’s very sophisticated.” He held up one of the plastic bibs. “I catch my own crabs, and I buy these bibs in bulk. I just got these out of the trap an hour ago.” He gestured toward the bay, easily visible through the windows that served as the kitchen’s back wall.

  The view of the Puget Sound was arresting and she walked over to admire it, the first faint blush of sunset beginning in the sky. The water was nearly black, calm tonight without the usual Pacific breeze stirring it up. “This is beautiful.”

  “Thanks. It’s more house than I need, but I couldn’t resist that view. I’ll show you where I work when it’s clear outside a little later. A lot of times I just sit here though. Something about looking out that way clears my head.”

  “That’s how I feel,” she said. “There’s a cafe on Madrona I love because of their view, but I feel bad camping out there for hours because their tables turn over much faster than Mugsy’s.”

  “Dinner is served. I’m proudest of the bread. Made it from scratch. ” He set two crocks of melted drawn butter on the tabl
e, followed by two plates of corn, garlic bread knots and a large Dungeness crab each. He’d already set out the shell-crackers and picks for the legs, and once he held out her seat in a display of old-fashioned manners that felt completely unforced, they each dug into their dinners with loud cracks and laughs at the bits of crab and juice that flew no matter how careful they each tried to be.

  “That was delicious,” she said, as he rose to take their plates. “Let me help you with that.”

  But he waved her back down before she could reach for a single dish. “You’re my guest. Why don’t you go out on the deck and enjoy the view some more? You might see a grey whale. I’ve seen a couple this week.”

  French doors opened onto the deck, so she took his suggestion and stepped outside. The sunset had deepened into pinks and oranges and the Sound had grown pewter. The soft lap of the water where it met the shore twenty yards from his open deck lulled her into an almost meditative state, and she jumped when he opened the door to join her.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay. I zoned out a little.”

  “Happens to me all the time.”

  Instead of filling her in on the finer points of the property or commenting on the view, he gestured to the Adirondack chairs near the edge of the deck. They each took a seat and fell into silence, simply watching the sun set.

  It wasn’t until the colors had deepened the entire sky into a deep purple smudge that an involuntary shiver made her realize how cool it had grown.

  Aidan bounded to his feet and held out a hand. “Let’s get inside where it’s warmer.”

  When she stood, he didn’t let go of her hand. She didn’t want him to. In the doorway, he stopped and pulled her to face him, tangling his other hand with hers.

  “I’m glad you came over,” he said.

  She tilted her head to meet his eyes, sure she would see her own desire reflected there. She did for a moment, then something else flickered through his, an emotion she couldn’t name, and his gaze darkened for the briefest instant before he lifted one of her hands to his lips and pressed a kiss in the palm before releasing her to turn and hold the door open for her again.

  She passed him without comment, but she’d rather have taken a minute to stand on the deck and puzzle through his behavior. He’d wanted to kiss her. She was sure of it. And that look in his eye had almost been . . . concern? Was that it?

  She wasn’t sure and didn’t want to ask. Even if she had wanted to, he excused himself with a murmured, “Be back in a second,” and left the kitchen while she stood, unsure what to do, the view through the windows now gone in the reflection of the kitchen lights on the glass, no dishes to clean or food to put away.

  He returned carrying her computer bag and his worn backpack. Crooking his head at the table, he asked, “Shall we?”

  The mood had changed distinctly in their charged moment at the door, and she didn’t know what it had switched to or how to reset it. She accepted the bag he extended to her and set it on the table, pulling out her laptop as he did the same with his, quietly booting hers up and waiting for him to speak so that she knew how to play the situation.

  Tension crept through her neck and shoulders. This was too reminiscent of David. She’d become adept at reading and managing his moods, choosing the words to say that would soothe or cajole him back to equilibrium. But she’d grown to resent it. One of her biggest regrets of that relationship was that she hadn’t broken it off the first time she’d addressed his moods with him and he’d minimized her concerns, telling her she was reading too much into his quiet. Instead, he’d dumped her when he found someone—another student in their MFA class—who he’d said was a “better intellectual match” for him. The girl had been so quiet in their seminars that all Emma had known of her was her poetry which was so dense and difficult for Emma to understand that she’d wondered more than once how the other woman had even landed a place in the program.

  She didn’t like this mercurial mood shift of Aidan’s, and as the tension spread up to her throat and out toward her fingers, she reached for her screen to close the laptop before it even finished booting up. She wouldn’t do this again, wouldn’t sit and wait out a dark mood that wasn’t her fault. It also wasn’t her responsibility to fix.

  Just as she curled her fingertips around the screen to shut it, Aidan spoke up, no hint of the shadow that had fluttered through his eyes only minutes before. “I can’t believe your crazy idea worked.”

  She paused and met his gaze. His tone was warm, his face relaxed. “What crazy idea?”

  “To write about the bad guy on an ordinary day. I finished that chapter when I got home the other day, and I’ve written three more since then.”

  Curious in spite of herself, she let go of the screen. “What did you find out?”

  “How the world looks to a guy who moves through it like a predator. He sees everything as an opportunity or a trap, and the opportunities are purely about what advantage it gives him in his hunt.”

  Another shiver rippled through her, this one having nothing to do with the temperature. “Sounds awful.”

  “Yeah. But it got me to thinking about how he got that way. What kind of experiences shape someone into that? There are some people who believe a person can be born a sociopath. I don’t. That doesn’t make sense to me, that humans are born good or evil. I think we’re blank slates. Something makes them that way. I went back through my old notes on that case, trying to find answers.”

  She leaned forward, now outright intrigued. “Did you find any?”

  “No.” He smiled at her expression. “You look like I just popped your balloon. That’s how I felt, kind of. Whatever shaped this guy, he buried it deep. He’s the closest I’ve ever come to thinking someone could be born without a conscience. But that’s the advantage of writing stuff that’s based on true stories rather than outright true crime novels. I can give him reasons that make sense to me, and then I can figure out how to punish him for it in the way it will make him suffer most.”

  “That’s . . . dark.”

  “Not as dark as the things this man did.” His expression closed again, and for a minute, he seemed to slip far away. This time it didn’t feel like a mood, but she sat quietly, unsure whether he needed saving from his thoughts. Finally, he blinked and looked at her again. “It’s hard, sometimes, to think about these cases.”

  “Why do you choose to write about them?”

  “Because it’s even harder for the people who are left behind, the ones who lose a daughter or a sibling or a parent to violence.” He cleared his throat. “Hey, sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you out to my house on the dark water to talk to you about the worst parts of human nature. So, how did your side of the challenge go?”

  She leaned back in her chair, trying to find the best way to explain it to him. “It was . . . fun.”

  “Fun? Guess it didn’t have the same effect of turning your writing inside out.” He sounded uncomfortable. She wondered if he regretted sharing now.

  She gave him a slight shake of her head. “I don’t think you understand what a big deal ‘fun’ is for me. That’s never a word I use to describe my process. Necessary, yes. Difficult, challenging, yes. But not fun. In my own way, I think it turned me inside out as much as it did for you. I got pages written in hours that would normally take me weeks. They’re not great pages either. And that feels all right. I’ve never felt ‘all right’ about not great pages.” She wished she could make him understand that what seemed like a small thing to him was a tectonic shift to her.

  His expression changed again. It surprised her how easy he was to read. He’d seemed so bulletproof during their first few run-ins, smug and condescending. But a regular wash of emotion flowed across his face any time she studied him. She couldn’t always interpret it, but if there was one thing he wasn’t, it was expressionless. This time, the look was the same one she’d seen before he retreated into the house instead of kissing her.

  “I think I
need to confess something.” He reached into his backpack and dug a book out, setting it on the table between them. “I read that this weekend.”

  Mother in the Void. Everything inside of her turned still. “Why?”

  “Because you said it was the key to understanding you.”

  Twin emotions competed inside her, a feeling of exposure that made her want to pack up and leave, pulling her dignity and secrets around herself, and a simultaneous rush of pleasure that he’d wanted to understand her. She wasn’t sure which would win out as she watched him in silence, not sure what she wanted to say. “Do you?” she finally asked. “Understand me?”

  He gave the tiniest wince. “No. This only gave me your mother’s version of you. It handed me another piece to understand you, but no, I don’t think it explains you.”

  She hadn’t known she needed specific words from him until he gave her those, and they fit exactly right. “I don’t think I’m much of a mystery.”

  “I do. Your layers have layers. It’s okay. I’m a patient man. Each one has been interesting so far. I’d like to see more.”

  “Why?” It was the first question that jumped to mind. “We’re so different in every way. Yes, we write, but we write so differently.”

  Instead of answering her right away, he leaned back and studied her. “Are you wishing you hadn’t come here tonight?”

  “No.” She didn’t hesitate, because it was true. “But I’m not sure why I did.”

  He tapped her mother’s memoir. “I don’t know how to say this without sounding completely obnoxious—”

  “That hasn’t stopped you in the past,” she said, and he laughed.

  “That’s true.”

  “I shouldn’t have cut you off. What were you going to say?” Curiosity had won out over her dread at hearing whatever it was he thought he’d learned about her.

  “I wanted to ask you about a scene your mom talked about. She’d found you reading a book she didn’t approve of, and she described taking the book from your hands, talking to you about how life is too short for anything less than beauty and pain and art, that escapism was a drug for people who couldn’t face reality.”