And now the one person he cared about more than anything knew the kinds of insecure thoughts that ran through his head daily. How was she ever going to look at him the same? For the first time in his life, he wished he’d just kept his mouth shut.
Harper lowered herself down next to him and turned until they were nose to nose. She raised her palm to his cheek, caressed his bottom lip with her thumb. His eyelids fluttered. Nothing—and he really meant nothing—had ever felt so good.
Then her lips were on his so fiercely, like she could somehow use them to take his pain away, while simultaneously begging him to let her in. And dammit if it wasn’t working. He wanted to let her take the pain away. To let her in despite his every instinct not to.
His hand came up to her back, spreading over the space between her shoulder blades. He practically crushed her against him. Their tongues danced together, their hearts racing as he forgot about everything outside of this moment, outside of the two of them.
Cowboy pulled away marginally. His hand left her back and made its way to her face. His knuckles grazed the line of her jaw. He’d just made a horrible mistake. Because if he ever lost her now, he didn’t think he’d be able to bear it.
“Promise me something, Midge.”
“What?”
He studied her bright blue eyes, silently praying he’d never have to know what it felt like to miss them. “Promise me you won’t break my heart.”
She sucked in a breath. The pain and concern in her soft eyes sharpened as something changed behind them. Like a puzzle piece clicking into place. Her gaze became sure and focused and filled with some emotion he couldn’t read and didn’t recognize, one he’d never seen staring back at him. It made his chest burn, and he would have given anything in that moment to know what it was.
“I promise.”
Chapter Nineteen
Harper took a steadying breath before bringing her knuckles to the wooden door.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Just a minute,” a deep voice called through the door, setting off a rush of chaotic fluttering in her stomach. She took another sobering breath to try to calm it. He’s just a friend. Friends didn’t get all weak-kneed and anxious when they showed up at each other’s doors at three in the afternoon on a Saturday.
It had been almost two months since she and Cowboy had decided to be friends, and she thought her body would have gotten over this jittery feeling she got whenever she was near him by now. Her nervous system, however, was clearly not on board. Maybe she needed to cut back on all the sweet tea.
She could hear the muffled sound of footsteps coming nearer. The door swung inward, and she was just able to catch the way Cowboy’s face lit up with recognition. “Hey, Midge. How’s it going?”
His blond hair was in wild disarray without the usual baseball cap. Harper also took in his wrinkled T-shirt and rumpled jeans and wondered if she’d pulled him out of bed in the middle of the afternoon. Then her cheeks started to burn as she thought of Cowboy in his bed, only without the shirt and jeans.
“Good, everything’s good.” Her hand came up to adjust her glasses, for some reason causing Cowboy’s grin to double in size. “I, uh—I was just heading back home after checking in on the progress at the B&B, and I wanted to bring you something.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded, pulling a folded square of paper from her back pocket. “It’s a check, to cover all the landscaping you’ve done at the house the last two months. You never told me how much, so this is my best guess.”
Cowboy took the check from her and opened it.
“If it’s not enough, just let me know. I can write you another one to make up the difference.”
He folded the paper and shoved it into his own pocket, frowning down at her. “You really don’t have to pay me.”
“I really do. Especially after Grams practically took advantage of your kindness the last three years.”
“Have you ever known me to complain about a woman taking advantage of me?” he asked with a crooked grin.
“Could you not throw double entendre into any conversation that revolves around my grandmother?”
He shrugged. “Hey, I’ve seen photos of Grams back in the day, and she was a total MILF. Or I guess, technically, the term would be GILF in her case.”
“Oh, God. Please stop.”
“I’m not saying I’m into that kind of thing, but there’s a lot of guys who would jump at a chance with an older woman.”
Harper made a gagging sound. “And that’s my cue to get out of here before I get sick all over your porch.”
“Hey, wait a second.” He reached out and grabbed her arm before she could turn away. “I was just working on the landscaping plans for the B&B.”
“Lots of gardenias, I hope.”
“Naturally.”
She giggled. “Then I’d say you’re on the right track.”
Cowboy pointed over his shoulder. “You want to come in and take a look? Unless you’ve already got plans or something.”
She hesitated. Not because she had anything else to do. Sadie was at Margot’s and would be out for the rest of the night. And it wasn’t like Harper was a social butterfly herself.
What stopped her were the memories of her and Cowboy snuggled on the floor in front of the couch eating takeout and watching reruns of old, classic TV shows, and she couldn’t deny feeling a strong ache to relive those days.
Her head screamed that this was a bad idea, that only bad things could come from being alone with Cowboy inside his empty house. But there was another voice. The same one that had longed for his presence since the day she left for Boston.
“Okay, sure.”
*
Harper and Cowboy sat on the floor in front of the couch, facing each other and laughing hysterically.
“She nearly drove us right through the fence and into the community pool. I swear, I almost pissed myself.”
Harper’s hand flew to her mouth. “Was she really that bad?”
“At first, but she got a lot better with practice. Though she still sucks at parallel parking. And angle parking…pretty much any kind of parking that includes staying between the lines.” He grabbed his beer from the coffee table and took a sip. “Oh, and don’t even get me started on the music. Any time I let her drive my truck, she had to put it on one of those shitty pop stations.”
“Hey, I remember a few times you would listen to some of Elvis’s pop songs with me.”
“There is a huge difference between listening to the King with you in the privacy of my own home and riding around town with Justin Bieber blasting through the speakers for everyone to hear.”
“She didn’t.”
“Oh, she did.”
Harper laughed. “Oh no, poor Cowboy. How on Earth did you salvage your reputation?”
“Still a work in progress. Let’s just say it involves a lot of manly spitting and blasting Hank Jr. through my speakers a couple times a week. But I guess that’s what I get for offering to teach Sadie to drive in the first place.” He eyed the open takeout containers on the table in front of them. “You want any more to eat?”
They’d been going over Cowboy’s landscape design for the B&B for more than two hours when Harper’s stomach started to growl. Cowboy didn’t hesitate before pulling out his phone and placing a delivery order with the town’s one and only pizza place, Sherman’s Slice, followed almost immediately—much to Harper’s relief—by a call to her favorite Chinese place.
Both meals arrived twenty minutes later, and the two went about setting up for lunch, Harper laying the food out on the coffee table, and Cowboy turning the TV to what looked like an I Love Lucy marathon on TV Land, just like they had so many times that summer they were together. They’d settled between the couch and the table, both bypassing the pizza and going straight for the delicious Chinese while Ricky scolded Lucy for yet another one of her crazy antics.
Harper eyed what was left of their meal, contemplating wh
ether she could fit any more inside her. She patted her full stomach. “No, thanks. I’m stuffed.”
“Suit yourself.” Cowboy sat up, reaching for an open container. The pizza lay on the far corner of the table, untouched and all but forgotten.
She watched him devour what was left of the moo shu pork. “I never did say thank you for taking care of them.”
“It was nothing. After a while, it was like they’d become as much my family as Cole and Logan.”
Harper nodded. “Sadie mentioned you three stayed pretty close, but I had no idea how close.” Dinners, regular visits with Grams, not to mention teaching Sadie to drive when she got her learner’s permit. No wonder Sadie had looked at him like the brother she never had. “They were lucky to have you around.”
“I was the lucky one.” He frowned down at the box of Chinese food in his hand. “I wasn’t in a good place when you left, and taking care of them helped keep me from going too far off the deep end.”
“Oh…sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay. Friends can talk about this stuff, right?” He sniffed. “Hell, I was a wallowing mess when you were gone. Blubbering over a tub of ice cream while clutching a picture of you in my hand and watching The Notebook every night.”
“The Notebook, you?” she asked, trying to match his teasing tone and almost succeeding.
“All right, not The Notebook. And technically it was a bottle of whiskey instead of ice cream.” He laughed. “What about you? How did you fare after it all?”
“About the same as you, it sounds like. I was lucky Aiden was looking for a roommate. He took me in, helped me nurse my wounds, kept trying to get me out of the apartment.”
“Any luck?”
“Not really. I pretty much went back to that girl I was before. Focused on my schoolwork. I tried to keep busy so I wouldn’t have time to think about anything else.”
“Were you happy?”
“I thought I was at first, but, the longer I was there, the more I missed home and Grams and Sadie. I called them a lot, but it wasn’t the same. Then classes got harder and I struggled, even had to retake a few.”
His eyebrow arched. “I find that very hard to believe.”
“Believe it. In fact, when I got the call about Grams, I’d been on the verge of failing out of the program altogether.” A heavy weight lifted from Harper’s shoulders the second she said it. It was the first time she’d been able to admit her med school failures to anyone but herself. “By the time I got home, part of me was relieved to be back and away from that place.”
Cowboy’s hand reached for hers where it sat on her knee. His thumb dragged over her knuckles, and he sighed. “I’m really glad you’re back, too.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “You were my best friend. Losing you was like losing half of myself. You here now, it’s like having that part of me back.” Harper knew exactly what that felt like. As mad as she was about everything, she’d still wanted to find comfort in his arms that first time she saw him again. A piece of her wanted to find that same comfort now.
Harper remembered this feeling. Being this close to him, sharing everything with him. It had started as a game, a dare for a tiny glimpse into the side of Cowboy nobody else saw. Until one day, lying in the truck bed by the lake, he’d shared the truth about his dad for no other reason than he’d wanted to. Because he’d trusted her.
“I’ve missed hanging out and talking to you. I’ve missed this,” he said quietly, pointing between them.
“Me too.” She looked down at the rough, calloused hand holding hers, at the skin of her knuckles tingling under his touch. She recalled in an instant what that hand had felt like running over the flesh of her shoulder, her waist, the curve of her back. A small shiver crept up her spine, raising goose bumps on her arms. She pulled her hand away.
Cowboy’s mouth turned down. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just a little cold,” she lied. She jumped up from her spot on the floor, desperate to put some space between them. “You mind if I grab a blanket or something?”
“Go ahead. I’ve got some of the afghans Grams made me on the shelf in my closet.” He stood. “I’m grabbing another beer. You want me to get you some more tea?”
“Yes, please,” Harper called as she made her way down the hall to the farthest bedroom, the one she knew belonged to him. The door was wide open, and in the center of the room sat a bed covered in red-and-black plaid sheets and a gray comforter. There were some clothes scattered on the floor in the corner of the room, but otherwise it was fairly tidy.
The closet door stood open on the right side of the room, and Harper could see where several colorful blankets sat in messy, uneven stacks on the shelf. There was a small pang in her chest as she pictured Grams sitting in front of the TV with a look of pure peace, her fingers nimbly working the yarn into a series of patterns and shapes.
She would never get to see that look on her Grams’s face again.
“You coming?” Cowboy called from the other room.
“Just a minute.” Harper wiped at the few tears that had escaped and took a deep breath. She would not lose control now. Not here, not in front of Cowboy.
She reached to grab one of the blankets from the shelf, and nearly swore when her fingers only just grazed the corner of one just out of reach. Curse her shortness. She jumped once, twice, before catching the edge of a blanket between her fingers.
An entire stack came tumbling to the floor around her. “Dadgummit.” She knelt down to the floor and snatched one up quickly. She was on her knees restacking the pile of blankets when her eyes caught on a white cardboard box sitting on the floor in the far-right corner of the closet. Normally, Harper wouldn’t have given the box a second glance, except that this box seemed to call out to her. Literally.
She shoved the blankets aside and pulled out the white box, her fingers tracing over Cowboy’s familiar handwriting. Bold, blue letters spelled out one word across the side, the very word that had caught her attention.
Midge.
“Did you find them?” Cowboy asked as he came around the corner into the room. He saw the mess of blankets with Harper kneeling beside them and chuckled. He took a step forward. “Sorry, should have known they’d be too high—”
He stopped, staring down at the unopened box on the floor in front of Harper. His hand clamped around the back of his neck. “Found that, did you?”
“What is it?”
“Not much.” He shrugged. “Just some stuff I held onto from our summer.”
She eyed the box again, wondering what he could possibly have kept. “Can I look?”
He sighed, looking defeated as his shoulders slumped forward. “I don’t see why not.” He lifted the box effortlessly and carried it out the door. Harper leaped up to follow him back into the living room.
“Sit,” he commanded once they’d reached the couch. He waited until they were both down before handing the box over.
She studied it nervously as he placed it in her lap. Cowboy had a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead and ran his hand through his hair.
“Go ahead,” he assured her.
Harper took a deep breath before finally lifting the lid from the box. Her eyes bounced around as she took in the pile of seemingly random items. “What is all th—?” Something familiar on top caught her eye.
“Is this…?” She reached in and pulled out a tiny, green foam cylinder no bigger than her pinkie finger. She almost laughed at the absurdity of it. What on earth was this doing in a box marked with her name on it?
“Is this a Nerf bullet?”
“I stole it that day we got the rest of your stuff out of your dorm at Georgia Tech.”
Her brow scrunched. “When you dared me to play with those guys on my hall?” He nodded. “Why would you keep this?”
“To remember the first time I saw you truly shine. You were so alive and vibrant that day. I wanted to remember it forever.”
Harper turned t
he foam bullet in her fingers. There were words written on the side of it in black Sharpie. Day 28.
She set the bullet aside, pulling out the next item her fingers touched. She recognized the heart-shaped stone she’d held onto while lying with Cowboy in the bed of his truck by the lake. She flipped it over. Day 92.
“That was the day we jumped off the bridge into the lake, and I realized I wanted to tell you things I’d never told anyone before.”
Harper pored through the box with searching hands, finding dozens of little knickknacks and mementos, all things Cowboy had kept from his various dares for her that summer. The red, white, and blue bracelet she’d given him at their Fourth of July cookout. The blue plastic elephant from her drink at the dance club. Even a sparkly pink hairclip she couldn’t place and forgot she’d even had. Each of them had black words in Cowboy’s handwriting. Day 81. Day 50. Day 105.
She pulled out a clear, plastic case housing what looked to be a dried gardenia blossom, the brown petals cracked and brittle yet still lovely, somehow preserved inside its little fortress. The corner of the case read Day 53.
“When was this one?”
“The day we snuck out and went to swim in the lake. You told me gardenias were your favorite, so I took one from the bush outside your window after I dropped you off.”
“It’s beautiful.” She set it back inside the box gently, then took up a small stack of photos she found sandwiched between the side of the box and the picture frame she’d almost thrown across the sitting room of the B&B before Cowboy stopped her, displaying a young, silly-faced Harper.
She flipped through the photos, and she recognized several as the random shots she’d taken of herself or Cowboy or the two of them in the cab of his truck or snuggled on the couch on lazy Sunday afternoons. There were a few photos she’d never seen before, ones Cowboy must have taken without her noticing while she was engrossed in a movie or chewing her lip as she read through sections of the Boston med course catalog on her bed.
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