She appeared to be thinner since the separation. Jonas’s daughter was staying with Mindy’s parents who also lived in the Cove. Mindy stayed at the hospital overnight, her cheeks sunken into hollows, worry present on her pale face.
He found himself torn between being pissed off and feeling sorry for her for leaving Jonas, which was probably why he kept his mouth shut when she had broken down in his arms.
“This is my fault,” she had cried.
He had said nothing, mainly because there was a large part of him that agreed with her. If she and their daughter, Emily, had stayed, Jonas never would’ve tried to kill himself with a pistol. So in a way, yes, this was Mindy’s fault.
Correction, Connor had reminded himself numbly as burning hot tears pressed the backs of his eyes. Jonas never would have killed himself with a pistol.
The doctor had come out early the next morning to deliver the news. Mindy broke down. Connor’s sister, Kendra, who had stayed the night there, too, hugged him close and cried as well. He felt his emotions shatter in his chest, the shards cutting into vital organs, but he did not cry.
It wasn’t a case of letting himself cry or not. He just…didn’t. He felt the loss. The loss for Emily, who would never see her father alive again. The loss for himself, because his friend had checked out of the game.
That feeling of loss and grief covered him for the next two days. Through the visitation at the viewing—closed casket due to Jonas’s fatal injury. The feeling stayed through the funeral. Through the tense phone conversations he’d had with Faith.
He didn’t go to see her. He didn’t want her to see him like this. Broken. Empty. Like someone had scooped out his insides. She was understanding about it, apologizing and offering, more than once, to attend the funeral with him.
Connor had asked her not to, though he knew she would have come. Faith didn’t know Jonas or his family. She didn’t need to dive into the pool of grief with others wading around—flailing around. They were all at a loss right now. No one knew what to say, or how to comfort one another. Everyone’s face simply reflected the same question. A question that would not soon—if ever—have an answer.
Why?
After the funeral in the freezing, blowing wind, after the pastor droned on over the casket, there was a gathering at Jonas’s parents’ home. Connor kissed Jonas’s mother on the cheek, hugged his sister, and even hugged Mindy and patted little Emily on the shoulder.
The guilt finally hit him when he climbed into his truck. Connor and Faith had been snowed in, which kept Connor from showing up for his and Jonas’s weekly visit. That thought had started out as an angry swirl in his gut after the doctor delivered the news Jonas had not lived. By the time Connor convinced Kendra he was okay, climbed behind the wheel of his Ram, and left the hospital, that anger had morphed into an ominous black whirlwind, sucking up everything in its path.
The winter roads were colorless, coated in piles of snow. Like the landscape in Afghanistan, Evergreen Cove was all the same muted color, the road and trees and land before him washed out—only in shades of white and gray instead of orange and brown.
Death. So damn much of it. It was one of the reasons he’d most looked forward to his tour being up. No more looking over his shoulder, or finding one of his friends’ lifeless bodies.
Apparently, that was something he could not run from.
It was like the cold from the winter had seeped into his bloodstream. He felt nothing. Which was not good, because he should feel something. When his best friend, the man who saved his life, put the muzzle of a gun to his temple and pulled the trigger, Connor should feel fucking something.
At home, he walked into his apartment and looked around at the blank white walls. The muted furniture, the stacks of cardboard boxes. What was he doing? Living half a life. Living like Jonas had lived.
He dropped his keys on the kitchen counter, lifted a knife out of the block, and cut into the tape on the first box he saw. No more was he willing to wait for his life to start. Every one of these boxes marked a time in his life when he was stagnant. Unsure about what he wanted. Living in between decisions.
That wasn’t him. He was all or nothing. Jonas had chosen nothing. Connor refused to join him.
Tape sliced open, he found T-shirts and other articles of clothing in the depths of the box. Some of them were salvageable; others destined to relocate to Goodwill. Either way, they needed washing. He stomped through the hallway to his utility closet, yanked open the accordion doors. He opened the washer’s lid, banging it against the wall, and tossed in the box of clothes. After laundry was started, he reclaimed his knife and tore into a second box.
Books.
He cut the tape off of a third box.
CDs. Movies.
Chest heaving, knife in hand, he looked around his sparse living room. Recliner. Television. Not a shelf in sight.
He needed a couch. A new chair. Bookshelves. Artwork. Stuff that made a “crash pad” into a home. This was not a home.
Since his parents’ house, he had never made a home for himself. The closest he’d come was setting up the indoor greenhouse at the mansion. But even that wasn’t his own space. It was his buddy’s space. A space he was invading.
He tossed the knife onto the counter, went to the refrigerator, pulled out the carton of orange juice, and drank. Then he sat on his recliner, carton in hand, elbows resting on his knees.
This shithole would never be home. It had never felt like home. It never would feel like home. This was the place he’d lived while waiting to find a home.
In that moment, orange juice container in hand, staring blindly at the frayed rug at his feet, he realized he’d already found a home. A place nestled in the woods with a hot tub on the back porch and a missing tree from the side yard.
Missing because he sawed it down and propped it into a corner next to the fireplace on Christmas Eve.
Lifting his cell, he dialed the one man who knew all about finding a home when you don’t have one of your own. He answered on the second ring.
“Donovan,” Connor said in greeting. “I need to talk to you about the cottage.”
CHAPTER 25
Faith’s mind was not on the planning of Gloria Shields’s party. It should be. Their friend and soon-to-be resident of Evergreen Cove would be moving here within a month.
Gloria had found a house and rented the former Make It an Event storefront on Endless Avenue. She’d hired Sofie and Faith to plan a welcoming party for her clients as well as potential clients. Since the Cove had a lot of wealthy residents, and quite a few who made their living via creative endeavors, it was a great idea.
“Are you sure you want to be here doing this?” Sofie appeared in Faith’s field of vision, leaning over her desk in the office in the mansion. “I feel like you should take the week off.”
Faith looked away from her computer and met the concerned gaze of her best friend. “I’m fine. Why?”
“With what Connor is going through, maybe he…needs you. I don’t want to keep you from being there for him.”
“You’re not.” That was the clincher, wasn’t it? Connor didn’t need her. He was dealing with Jonas’s death on his own terms. Despite his proclamation that he had fallen for her, despite the days they’d spent together over the holiday in each other’s arms, he’d done a complete one-eighty. “He needs time alone.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Sofie’s eyebrows slammed down, her tone impassioned. “Donny spent seven years handling things on his own. It didn’t help him.”
Gently, but forcefully, Faith stated, “Connor isn’t Donny.”
Sofie straightened from the desk. Some of the severity went out of her expression. “I know. But he shouldn’t be alone right now. He’s been through a lot.”
“Yeah. He’s going through something and won’t share what it is.”
“He will. I can’t tell you how I know, but he is going to come to talk to you soon. If you go to him”—her eyes flicked around th
e room guiltily before landing on Faith again—“maybe you could speed up the process?”
Faith cocked her head to one side in suspicion. “What do you know? You have to tell me.”
Sofie pressed both hands over her mouth and shook her head. Then for good measure walked out of the office. Well. So much for having a best friend. Best friends were supposed to share all their secrets, but apparently, hers was keeping one to herself.
Faith finished out the workday without asking any probing questions about what Sofie might or might not know. Frankly, she was tired of hearing what everyone else thought she should do. She was also tired of not hearing from Connor. Yes, he called, but only to relay the most basic of information. He was fine. He didn’t want her to worry. He’d see her soon.
The last thing she wanted to do was put herself in the middle of friends and family she didn’t know to attend Jonas’s funeral, but it would have been the right thing to do. It stung that Connor hadn’t wanted her to go. She should have gone anyway. She never should’ve let him talk her out of being there for him.
In her apartment’s parking lot, the asphalt was cleared, but high, plowed piles of snow encircled the light posts. As she took the steps up to her apartment, it was hard to believe just a few months had passed since Connor dogged her every step, followed her home, and insisted on sleeping on her couch to protect her from the bogeyman.
And when the bogeyman ended up being the very man she almost married, Connor still didn’t back off. And when she’d insisted on being independent, he didn’t back off then, either.
But now, in the face of losing his friend, and the moment where she felt like he should turn toward her and not away, he was nowhere to be seen. That was her last thought before she unlocked her front door and found him in her kitchen, twisting a cork out of a bottle of wine.
Forgetting her earlier pithy thoughts, she dropped her purse onto the kitchen table and raced across the room. He caught her in his arms, palm to the back of her head, and held her tight.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she mumbled into his sweater. “I’ve been worried.”
“Told you I was okay, Cupcake.” He kissed her temple and drew her away enough to look into her face. She didn’t need to see his slight smile to know things were going to be all right. She knew the moment he called her by her nickname. “I didn’t want you to worry.”
“I know I said it over the phone, but I feel like I should say it in person.” She held his eyes. “I’m so sorry about Jonas.”
He kissed her lips and thanked her, then turned back to the wine. “Mind if I pour you a glass?”
She snapped her gaze to the bottle, then back to him. “Sure.”
By the time she hung her coat in the closet and kicked off her boots in the bedroom, Connor had two glasses poured and was gesturing for her to sit on the sofa.
She did, sitting next to him and accepting the glass. The nervous butterflies in her stomach beat her rib cage without mercy. Sofie had hinted that something was up, and if proof wasn’t sitting on her couch elevating a glass of Layer Cake Primitivo, she didn’t know what was.
“When I was done with the army for good,” he said, studying the red liquid in his glass, “I knew it would take time to transition back into my life. I estimated a few months, tops.” Subtly, he shook his head. “Was wrong about that. It’s been a few years. Just now getting my business off the ground, finally transitioned away from Dad’s handyman business, but I’m still living out of boxes.”
She reached for his hand and he held her fingers against his palm. He looked at their linked hands for a moment. “Was,” he muttered. “Was living out of boxes.” He met her eyes. “I’m not doing that anymore.”
“That’s good.” Despite her spoken sentiment, she felt as if the other shoe was about to drop. The tension from the realization tightened her grip on his hand.
“Remember when I told you this thing with us, you were all in or all out.”
And here it came. She nodded.
“I have a Christmas present for you. If it’s not too late for you to accept it.”
Oh. That was sweet. “You didn’t have to do that. You did get me a tree.”
His smile was small, the sadness from Jonas’s death still radiating through his flat stare and slumped shoulders. He put the wineglass down, reached into his pocket, and came out with a key. Turning over her palm, he pressed the silver key into her hand. “I bought a house.”
She stared at the key, speechless.
But he wasn’t done. He took her wineglass and set it on the coffee table next to his, then erased the space between them, palming her face and forcing her gaze to his.
“The cottage where we spent Christmas. The fireplace where we ate dinner. The kitchen where…” His smile turned both loving and sinister. “Where you wore the shoes.”
“Connor…”
“It’s yours, Faith. Ours. I’m no longer living temporarily. I’m no longer living apart from you.”
She thought she might hyperventilate. He…bought a house. Bought a house for them to live in…Together. What Connor was offering, what he was doing, was generous, slightly crazy, and way, way too soon. She just moved in here. She’d barely had a chance to make it her own. Heck, he’d spent more nights here with her than she’d spent here alone.
Yet his gesture was also the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for her. It had come from the heart, but she knew the heart was exactly where he was having trouble at the moment. His heart had been recently broken, was filled with grief over Jonas.
Unsure how to react, she managed, “This is unexpected.” She licked her lips nervously and plinked the key onto the coffee table, swapping it for her wineglass. She drank down a few greedy sips.
“Yeah.” He leaned back on the arm of the sofa and rubbed the side of his index finger under his bottom lip, looking very much like he did the very first night he’d stayed with her. “Jonas,” he said, confirming the direction of his thoughts. “After…Everything snapped into focus in an instant.”
“Because of how you are feeling,” she blurted before she could stop herself.
His eyebrows met over his nose. He didn’t look angry, more upset. And like he wanted her to explain herself. She could do that.
“What I’m trying to say is sometimes when we get caught up in the feelings of a moment and, um, we are unable to see what’s really going on in front of us.”
His eyebrows went lower, and his mouth pressed into a firm, angry line.
Trying again, she cleared her throat and continued, “Like when Michael and I got engaged. With that big happy occasion hovering out in front of us, I missed all of the signs he might not be as happy about it.” Except that wasn’t really the way it was. She rolled her eyes at her own inability to relate to Connor. “Not that I was happy about getting married. It was more like something happening because it had to. Because I needed it to.”
Now she was frowning. Was that true? Had she simply needed a wedding to prove to herself she was capable of being married? In the middle of her epiphany, Connor interrupted her.
“In or out, Faith.” He was still frowning.
She blinked at him.
“In”—his frown intensified—“or out.”
Her mouth was frozen open, unable to continue making the point she was not doing a very good job of making. “It’s too soon for me to—”
“Too soon.” His voice had no tone.
“For us to get a house.”
“But not to have sex. Have a baby.”
“I’m not pregnant.”
“No. Guess it’s a good thing, too, since you’re half out already.” He stood and she put down her glass and stood with him.
“That’s not fair,” she said as he darted down the hallway. She would have moved in with him if she found out she was pregnant. Maybe. She bit her lip. Maybe not.
When he reappeared in the living room he was pulling on his brown leather coat over his big shoulders, and looking no
ne too happy about it. “Better I know now.”
She snagged his arm. He shrugged her off.
“Excuse me,” she said, suddenly angry. “You can’t expect to come in here and tell me we’re moving in together and me just…comply. I do reserve the right to say no.” Her heart was thundering in her ears. She didn’t like being on this side of his angry expression. Seeing Brady under it, seeing Michael under it, had been thrilling. Being the recipient of that fury…not fun.
“Yeah, you do.” He stood several inches away from her, and she didn’t like him not touching her. Didn’t like the fact that he wasn’t giving her two seconds to think…to react. To…anything. His eyebrows went up. “Well?”
“N-now? I can’t…I can’t decide now.”
“I decided a long time ago.” Finally, his rough voice softened. His eyes went gentle. He took a step toward her and relief flooded her chest.
“I know.” Licking her lips, she clutched her hands together.
He dipped his head the few scant inches between them to meet her eyes. “I told you I loved you.”
He had.
“You also told me I didn’t have to reciprocate,” she reminded him quietly.
He drew away from her, almost recoiling, his face going as hard as stone. “I was wrong. You’re not halfway out.”
Her heart thrashed against the walls of her chest, but still she said nothing.
“You’re all the way out.” He said this with a sort of macabre acceptance, and she felt her hands begin to shake.
“I’m not out.” She wasn’t. She liked Connor. She liked being with him, talking to him, eating and drinking with him. “But I’m not going to move in with you.”
Nodding, he looked to the door.
“Out, out,” he murmured almost to himself. “There were only two choices, Faith.” He faced her and it shook her to the core to see his eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“Connor.” She took a step toward him.
He stepped back, his voice calm but his words harsh. “What the fuck do you want from me?”
She blinked, stunned by the question. “I don’t want anything from you.”
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