by K. S. Thomas
“Thanks, but it’s not the bagel. I’m just not very hungry this morning.” I do my best to smile even though he’s still not looking.
Then, the paper is folded down and placed on the table simultaneously to him getting to his feet. He’s grinning. “Pancakes it is.”
“Gun.” But it’s no use. He’s on the move and headed for the center island of my kitchen. Pans are clanging against each other in the cupboard as he searches for the skillet he wants. Next, my mixing bowl is on the counter and a cloud of flour dust fills the room.
“Chocolate chips?” he asks, already pouring half a bag into the bowl. They’re white chocolate, my favorite.
“You really don’t need to do this, Gun.” I walk up beside him, stopping right before I get in his way.
He ignores me. “Raspberries,” he says to himself, spinning around and moving toward the freezer behind him where he retrieves a frozen bag of the red berries. I didn’t even know I had any. Then he’s in the fridge getting out God knows what. “Here, catch.”
Before I have time to react, an egg comes flying at me. I make a last minute attempt to grab it, hit it too hard and it breaks in my hand, yolk and egg whites running through my fingers down to the floor.
Stunned, I stare at the mess and then at Gun. He’s smiling so hard I’m sure his cheeks must hurt. How he keeps from laughing out loud, I don’t know. “That sucked. Here, try again.” And a second egg is hurled in my direction.
I don’t even have time to shout out, instinct takes over and my palms attempt to cradle the flying yolk bomb once more. Again, I fail. This time I miss and it lands splat at my feet.
“That’s it!” I scream, lunging for the bag of berries just as he moves to throw a third egg at me. I manage to duck before it hits me, at the same time, prying open the plastic bag so I can pelt him with a fist full of frozen raspberries.
“You almost took my eye out with one of those,” he shouts, but he’s laughing far too hard for me to take him seriously. So, the battle continues. Before long, he’s switched from eggs to chocolate chips, both of us racing around the island and taking turns sliding on goopy egg droppings while we continue to make the biggest mess in the history of messes.
I’m laughing so hard I can barely breathe anymore, until my bag of raspberries is empty and I’m out of ammunition. I reach out for the closest thing to me: the flour.
“Wait!” Gun’s deep voice booms through the open kitchen and I freeze, my hand still gripped tightly around the bag. “Up until this very moment, I am still completely committed to cleaning all this shit up. But,” he takes a step in my direction, his finger stretched out and pointing at my flour, “if you pick up that bag and cover this room in thick paste, that’s it. I’m out.” He throws his hands up toward the heavens, indicating the kind of help I’d have to call on. “I mean, that would be it. I’d have to sell the building. You’d have to move.” He shakes his head, slowly smirking again. “There’d simply be no coming back from it.”
Without releasing the flour, I slack my arm and rest against the counter. Who knew a food fight was this exhausting? “Are you calling a truce?” I ask, eyes narrow, voice low and guarded.
He tips his head back, thinking. “Will you accept a truce?”
I twist my mouth back and forth. I’m not sure I will. “I don’t think I like a truce. Nobody wins.”
He comes closer until his fingers press into my hips and he pulls me to him, both of us covered in slime and sweets. “Trust me, we’ll both win,” he growls softly, starting a wave of shivers that starts at my neck and moves all the way down to my toes. I don’t need him to clarify what he means by ‘we’ll both win’. That look in his dark green eyes says it all. He’s about to devour me whole. And I’m going to love every second of it.
Chapter Three
Reed
Jane. I’ve repeated the name to myself at least a hundred times now. It still doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feel natural. Cooper. That’s what I called her. I know it. The proof is in the way it rolls off of my tongue as though I’ve whispered it a million times.
There isn’t much else to go on in the accident report, except of course the most important part – there were no fatalities. She lived. Wherever she is now, she survived the accident, and right now, that’s all I need to know to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
I reach the bus stop and take the first one that shows up. I don’t care where I’m headed. Maybe because I don’t have a destination in mind yet. I just need time. To sit. To think. To Google.
The address listed on the accident report is out of date. I know because I pass right through there every morning on my commute. Used to be old farm houses, now it’s all commercial construction. As if we really need another gas station and strip mall. Regardless, it’s safe to say, Cooper’s not living anywhere near there.
I could call my parents, ask them. It would be the easy, obvious resource, except their track record for sharing information regarding Cooper isn’t exactly promising. So, I’m on my own.
I don’t know how long I’ve been riding the bus from one end of town to the other when I finally get a hit, on Facebook of all places. She looks different. Her hair is longer and her face narrower, but it’s definitely her. She’s stunning, and even on the small screen of my phone, she takes my breath away.
Outside of a profile picture I can barely keep from staring at, her page is either completely private or hasn’t been used in two years based on the most current visible post. I’m almost ready to call this a bust (not counting the picture of her I already saved) and move on, when I see the link to her work page. Cooper Ceramics.
This page is a lot more forthcoming. Not only are the posts current, but there’s contact info, including a shop address.
I look up, almost startled to find someone sitting beside me after all this time. An older gentleman who appears to be completely preoccupied by a novel with pages so worn he must know each word by heart by now.
“Excuse me,” I interrupt him quietly.
It’s almost as if he’s been waiting for me to say something, his attention is on me so quickly, no indication at all of my having disrupted his thoughts or yanked him from his story.
“Yes?”
“Uh,” I glance back down at the phone in my palm, “I don’t suppose you know where we are right now? I’m afraid I’ve lost track of our stops.”
“I assumed as much.” He nods, chuckling to himself. “You’ve been on nearly as long as I have. And I just ride the bus to read.” He tips his head out toward the window and the world beyond. “Living with my daughter and her three children has proved to be detrimental to my reading time.”
I laugh, in part because I’m too anxious to think straight, let alone carry on a real conversation. “I bet. I’m guessing you know this route pretty well then?”
He nods again, still smiling. “Sure do. Next stop is Halifax.”
I have no fucking clue where that is, and for the first time I realize just how small the bubble I’ve been living in really is. I’m barely an hour outside of my hometown and yet I feel like I’ve left the country. Nothing looks familiar. And it should. I’ve been here. Or, at least close. The accident was near the coast. Near here.
I hold my screen up for the man to see. “I’m sorry, I don’t really know the area. Do you happen to be familiar with a place called Cooper Ceramics?”
“Yes, sir, sure am. Got my favorite coffee mug from Cooper. Even fixed the handle for me free of charge when my grandson dropped it last year. Her studio’s on beachside, just a block over from the main drag, easy to find but not in the middle of all the touristy shops and restaurants. Bright yellow building, three stories high. Can’t miss it.”
My heart is pounding so hard and so loud I can barely hear anything else. “Beachside? Beachside, where? Will this bus take me?”
He turns back to face in the opposite direction of where we’re going. “Just missed it. But we’re coming up on the last sto
p before they loop back around, so there’s not much point in getting off until we get back to Canal. You can take the Flex from there.”
“Flex?”
“Smaller shuttle, take you straight to where you want to go.”
Cooper Ceramics. Jane Cooper. That’s my destination. That’s where I want to go.
Cooper
It’s lunchtime when I finally sit down for my pancakes. The very pancakes I had started to doubt were ever actually part of Gunnar’s plan. But there they were when I came out of the shower, sitting on a plate in the middle of my kitchen table in a notably clean kitchen.
White chocolate raspberry pancakes with a sweet cream cheese drizzle. If I ever learn to cook like he can, I’m opening a restaurant. I’d make a fortune. People would line up for miles and miles to eat these pancakes. I don’t know why he wastes his time with real estate. I mean, his overflowing bank account aside, it’s really quite dull. Unlike these pancakes, which are delicious and downright fascinating.
“See, I knew pancakes were a good idea,” Gunnar announces in his charming but undeniably cocky way as he comes strolling out of my bedroom still rubbing his dark brown hair with a towel. Gun has great hair. Long enough to be messy in a dangerously sexy way but not so long that I have to worry about him stealing my brush...or hair ties.
“Seems you’re full of all kinds of great ideas this morning,” I mumble quietly. After all this time, I still get a stupid sort of embarrassed about how easily I get turned on by him. Sexy. It’s not my thing, but it’s definitely Gunnar’s.
“I’m always full of good ideas when I’m looking at you,” his smooth, deep rasp rumbles in my ear from behind as he leans down over my shoulder to kiss my cheek right before he dives in and steals a bite of fluffy pancakes right from the tip of my fork.
“Hey! Those were headed for my mouth, not yours,” I point out the rather obvious, stabbing at what’s left of my breakfast slash lunch with my now bare prongs.
“I see someone’s got their appetite back.” He smirks, walking around the front of the table, draping the towel over the back of a chair as he passes. “Relax, tiger. I made a whole batch. Whole plate stacked at least ten high sitting in the oven keeping warm for you.”
That’s so like him. It’s not enough to just make me the world’s greatest pancakes, he has to make enough to feed me all week. And now I feel like an ass for even pretending to complain about sharing.
“Are you taking off?” I ask, noticing the increasing distance between him and myself.
He glances back over his shoulder, scanning the shockingly spotless kitchen before landing on me with his eyes, an ever present heat emanating from them. His left brow arches the way it always does, and he grins. He’s doing that an awful lot today. “I think my work here is done. For the time being anyway.” Then he winks, and reaches for the door.
“Wait!”
He does. “What?”
I shove the last of my food into my mouth and push up from my chair. “I wanna walk you out.”
His mouth twitches ever so slightly at the corner and there’s a quiet surprise in his eyes. It’s not easy to catch Gun off guard and I’m always pleased when I do. “Careful, Coop. I’m gonna start to think you like doing all this mushy shit.”
I shrug, doing my best to bite back the desire to stretch my lips from one side of my face to the other. “Blame it on the sugar high. Or the after sex buzz,” I say as dryly as I can manage. “Now give me your hand so I can hold it while I walk you to your car.”
He chuckles, but obliges, twining his long, sturdy fingers into mine until our palms touch. Using his free hand, he opens the door and together, we walk out into the stairwell. Taking the steps slowly down from the third floor, we walk in silence nearly the whole way.
“Scared?” he asks, as we come up on the last flight.
“Of what?” I don’t know why I’m playing dumb. I know exactly what he’s asking. Which I guess means the answer is yes. I’m scared.
“Reed showing up. Remembering.” Gun doesn’t look at me. He just keeps taking one step after the other, never once easing his grip on my hand as we go.
“Does it scare you?”
His head shakes back and forth so subtly I might have missed it if I wasn’t boring holes into his temple from staring so hard. “It’s not about me.”
I stop. We’ve reached the bottom. But I’d have stopped either way. “How can you say that? Of course it’s about you. Or, at least about you as well.”
He tips his head toward his shoulder thoughtfully. “Huh. Then maybe I should be scared.” But he follows it up with a wry expression, so I can’t be sure. Doesn’t matter how long I’ve known him, he’ll never be as transparent to me as I am to him.
“Gun,” I start to explain, but he starts walking again, throwing me off my course.
“You love me?”
“I do.”
“And I, you.” He pauses briefly when we reach the main foyer. “All I want is for you to be happy, Coop. If you’re happy, I’m happy. No matter what.”
I’m about to tell him that he can take his selfless bullshit and shove it when the front doors open and we both look up just in time to see my whole world come crashing down.
“Reed.”
“Cooper.” He barely breathes my name, but he says it. And he knows it. And he knows me.
“You...remember?” I nearly choke on the words, my throat twisting into a knot, cutting off all abilities to speak or swallow. I can barely even take in a breath, standing here, face to face with him after all this time.
Tears sparkle in his bright blue eyes, and he smiles, a heartbreaking smile. “I never forgot.”
The words hit me like a blade to the heart, slicing me straight through. It’s painful and beautiful and somehow I know my heart will heal better now having been run through in one smooth motion. Until I feel it. The jagged edge I didn’t see being pulled back out, catching and tearing at me in places I didn’t even know could hurt. But they do. Because Gun just let go of my hand. He just...let go. And then, everything goes black.
Chapter Four
Reed
My eyes are still glued to her face when her lids flutter shut and her jaw goes slack. It’s not until her knees buckle that I grasp what’s happening and lunge for her. I’m not the only one. And, I’m not the fastest. The other guy catches her. The other guy.
“I’ve got her,” he insists gruffly when I can’t stop myself from trying to reach for her myself. It should be my job to catch her. And if the last seven years hadn’t robbed us, it would be. Instead, this other guy thinks it’s his.
“Is she okay? I mean, does this happen a lot?” Her fingertips slide over mine as he pulls her away and out of my reach entirely.
“Hasn’t happened in a long time.” The guy’s jaw clenches and I can tell he’s pissed. This also seems to be the extent of his explanation because he’s turning away from me and heading back up the stairs they just walked down together less than five minutes ago. Only this time, her limp, unconscious body is hanging in his arms and I’m no longer walking in with the excitement of seeing her, I’m struggling not to lose my shit at the sight of her fainting two seconds after she recognized me.
“You gonna make it up those steps or am I gonna have to come back down there and carry your ass up too?” Any other day his comment would piss me off, today it’s spot on.
It’s like he’s the only one here with a clear head. And I don’t even know who the hell he is. I hate that feeling. Especially right now. Because whoever he is, he’s with her. He was holding her hand when they came down the stairs, he’s holding her entire body in his arms as we speak. Maybe I knew him before. Maybe he was always around. But I don’t know, because I can’t fucking remember.
“Reed?” he calls back from several flights above me. He knows me. Or at the very least, he knows of me.
“I’m coming.” I take two steps at a time, suddenly fueled by an innate desire to know what he knows. T
o understand. And, to figure out how much it’s going to take for him to understand that I’m not going anywhere. That from now on, I intend to do the catching again.
When I reach the top floor, I’m greeted by an open door and no sign of either one of them. I pause briefly in the opening. It’s a loft. A large one with a defining softness in the décor that tells me this is her place, not theirs.
A few steps into the loft and I spot them. He’s got her draped over a hot pink velvet sofa littered with an exceptional number of pillows in more colors and patterns than should be legally safe for one’s eyes. She’s still unconscious from the looks of things and he’s crouched down beside her.
“Go grab a dish towel and soak it in cool water, would ya?” It’s a question, but I don’t get the sense he knows how to present those, because that sounded a hell of a lot more like a demand. Regardless, it’s something I can do to help, so I head for the kitchen at the center of the place.
“I’m sorry, what’s your name again?” I’m assuming I knew it at some point.
He frowns, briefly taking his attention from her to look at me. “I thought you said you remembered.”
I turn off the water and wring out the towel. “No. I said I never forgot. Her. I never forgot Cooper. All this time, she’s been like this thought I couldn’t fully form, but knew was there. But that’s it. She’s it. I still don’t remember anything from before the accident.” An event in both our lives I’m sure he’s aware of.
His gaze is back on Cooper, his hand carefully brushing the hair from her forehead. “I’m Gunnar. We’ve never officially met, but Cooper and I have been friends since we were kids.”
Friends.
I hurry over to the sofa with the cool towel.
His hand comes up toward me. “Thanks.”
I don’t move. “Actually, I’d like to do it.”
“What?” His eyes narrow and his disbelief is mingled with undeniable disgust. I don’t care. He doesn’t have to get it.