Seaside Sweets (Love Along Hwy 30A Book 1)

by Melissa Chambers

  Sadie hopped out of the cab and ran toward the front door, bullying her way inside as soon as Bo opened the door. Blake handed Bo a twelve-pack and set a bag of Fritos on the kitchen table. “It’s not like you to take a day off,” Blake said.

  Bo put the twelve-pack in the fridge and pulled out two longnecks, handing one to Blake. “Who says I wasn’t up at 6 a.m. hitting it hard?”

  “Only thing you’re hitting hard at that hour is your pillow.”

  Bo smiled in response and walked to the sliding glass door in his living room. “Jake! Come on.” His black and tan mutt raced Sadie for the door, and they ran free in the fenced back yard. Blake followed Bo outside to the patio, and they sat in Bo’s Adirondack chairs.

  “I should have put one of these up for Sadie,” Blake said, glancing around at Bo’s work on his privacy fence.

  “Still can. I’ll help you. Won’t take us but a few days.”

  Blake frowned, peeling the label off his longneck. “I’m moving, actually.”

  “Oh yeah? Please tell me you’ve finally decided to come over to the dark side with me here in PCB. You’re not quite redneck, but I’ll teach you.”

  “No, I’m moving away…to Kansas City.” Blake hesitated before meeting Bo’s confused gaze.

  “Are you serious?” Bo asked, like Blake had just gut-punched him.

  “Yeah, I’ve got a buddy there. He’s offered me a job.”

  Bo sat back in his seat, setting his forearms on the armrests. “Doing what?”

  Blake thought hard about how to answer that question. “Public service.”

  “Public service?” Bo asked like he was drinking pickle juice. “What does that mean?”

  Blake squirmed in his chair. “Just…you know…working with the public.”

  Bo narrowed his gaze. “Look, I’ve never thought of you as being naïve, but forgive me if I’ve got some questions.”

  Blake rubbed his hand over the top of his head, wishing like hell he would have just lied through his teeth, but Bo made that damn near impossible to do. “It’s legit. I’ve known him a long time.”

  “Okay.” Bo stared at him, his gaze probing, and Blake knew this wasn’t going to end well. “Let me ask you something,” Bo said. “Do you trust me?”

  Blake met his gaze, heat starting to make its way up through his neck. “Of course.”

  “Then do you want to tell me what the fuck’s going on here?”

  Blake’s gut churned, the few swallows of beer he’d taken about to make their way back up his throat. “It’s nothing. I just got a good opportunity.”

  “To move from Grayton Beach, Florida to Kansas City? Something’s not right with you.”

  “Maybe I’m sick of the ocean.”

  “And maybe I’m going celibate. You’ve drug me to the beach more times in the past three years than I’ve been in a lifetime of living here.”

  “Maybe that’s why I’m sick of it,” Blake said, realizing he was starting to sound like a twelve-year-old.

  Bo considered Blake for a long moment. “Are you in the Witness Protection Program?”

  Blake couldn’t help a laugh. “No, dude.”

  Bo inhaled a deep breath and shot it out through his nose glancing around his yard, lips tight. “All right. If this is how you want this to go down, then fine, but I just want to say this to you. For three years I’ve been happy to rattle on about my family and exes, and my childhood memories while you sat tight-lipped in return. That was fine. I figured you had something to hide, and you’d tell me all about it someday. So I’ll be damned if I’m going to invest three goddamned years of my life in this friendship and have you walk away without telling me what the hell is wrong with you.”

  Blake turned his head, not able to look at Bo. He was right. He’d told Blake everything about himself. Blake had lived vicariously through Bo for years. Bo’s family had become his own in a small way. Blake watched Bo with his sister, who he loved more than anyone on earth…their easy dynamic with one another, and Blake had realized that the hole in his chest where family was concerned, that he’d seen as being the size of a penny, was more like the Grand Canyon. Shayla had become like his own sister in a lot of ways. And Bo’s mom like the mother he never had. Bo had become his brother, and sitting here with him now, he couldn’t imagine the day he would walk away from him. But he knew he had to.

  Bo stood up from his chair, forcing it to slide back a foot. “You call me your brother. I’m not your goddamned brother. I’m as good as a stranger.” The door slid back, causing a loud whoosh.

  A storm brewed inside Blake’s head as his stomach swirled with a nest of spiders crawling around and taking bites out of his gut. He gritted his teeth, fist clenched so hard his knuckles went white. The door swooshed back, and before it could close Blake shouted, “Okay!”

  A beat or two sat between them before the door opened back up. Bo had the good sense to walk slowly back to his chair, wordlessly.

  Blake rubbed his forehead, his whole body turned away from Bo. He wasn’t ready to talk. He hadn’t planned for Bo to know about any of this. He’d convinced himself that he was going to Kansas City and would leave Bo and everyone else here blissfully in the dark about him, but he understood now that he couldn’t do that…not with Bo.

  Blake took a long drink of his beer, looking for a little liquid courage. He peeled at the label as he swallowed. “I’m sorry I’ve been so secretive for so long. This is just…it’s not easy for me to talk about.”

  “It’s okay. Whatever it is, you can tell me.” Bo’s voice was gentle, like he was helping a dog who’d gotten hit by a car.

  Blake swallowed hard. He couldn’t imagine how the retelling of this story would go. He’d never talked to anyone about it, not since it happened. He searched deep inside himself for the strength, remembering how easily Seanna told him about her ordeal from this last year. He’d been the only one she’d told, and he’d appreciated that fact—felt honored by it. Bo deserved that same courtesy, but Bo would probably not want to have anything to do with him after this conversation. That was a risk Blake had to take for the sake of the authenticity of their friendship.

  “I haven’t always been a handyman.” There it was. No turning back now.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m a doctor. I was a doctor.” The words laid heavy in Blake’s throat. Bo blinked in confusion, and Blake gave him a second to let the information settle.

  “What kind of doctor?”

  “Emergency care. ER doctor.”

  Bo furrowed his brow. “Okay. What changed for you? Didn’t like the money?”

  “The money was good, but I wasn’t in it for that.”

  “I’m teasing. I wouldn’t think you would have been.”

  Blake nodded, knowing how he was sounding. He just had to get through the next few minutes somehow. “I was engaged, back in Atlanta.”

  “Oh,” Bo said, his shocked tone turning Blake’s stomach over.

  Blake closed his eyes, remembering Tara and that night. This was the part he had to get through. He’d come this far. He just had to figure a way forward. “She was involved in an accident.” Blake shook his head, realizing his words were a lie. “Not an accident, exactly.” Bo just stared at him, waiting for him to get the courage to finish. Blake swallowed down some bile in his throat. “She cut her wrists open. The ambulance brought her to my hospital.”

  Bo narrowed his gaze, confusion…or maybe horror…etched in his expression. “Wow. Had she been dealing with depression, or…” He trailed off.

  “Tara had bipolar disorder. I knew that going in. I was up for handling everything that came with it. I was a doctor. I was qualified…prepared. I was the right person for her.”

  “Are you describing your role as her caregiver or your role as her partner in life?”

  Blake glanced at Bo’s concerned face and then put his gaze back on his beer bottle. Sadie and Jake scrapped out by the edge of the fence, then two seconds later were off again c
hasing a squirrel.

  “As her husband.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “Of course,” Blake said, his chest heating up like it did when he told a lie. Bo nodded as if he believed him, but Blake could see the doubt in his eyes.

  “So, did she make it or…”

  Blake shook his head and then ran his hand through his hair, his lip curled with disgust. “I tried to save her but…” His voice broke. Bo inhaled a sharp breath, and Blake clenched his eyes shut.

  “Blake, man, this wasn’t your—”

  “That’s the thing,” Blake said, stabbing a finger at Bo. “It was my fault. I insisted on being the one to treat her. Kevin tried to get me to leave, but I shoved him. I had to save her. She couldn’t die. I couldn’t stand back and watch her die.” Blake was mildly aware of his face being wet, but he plowed forward. “She was my responsibility. Mine. Not Kevin’s or any other doctor’s, and I failed her.”

  Silence sat between the two of them for minutes, hours for all Blake knew as he sobbed into his hand like a baby. He hadn’t cried about Tara…not once. He hadn’t cried in his adult life that he could recall. And here he was carrying on, and Bo just let him.

  When Blake finally pulled his head from his hand, he found an old-fashioned, red handkerchief on the armrest of his chair. He took it, wordlessly, without looking at Bo, and cleaned himself up.

  “You can keep that, by the way,” Bo said, sporting a small smile.

  Blake couldn’t return the expression. Suddenly he felt guilty for smiling last night…for laughing and dancing like a fool. He had no right to do that.

  “Can I tell you something?” Bo asked, but Blake didn’t answer. “It’s not your responsibility to fix everyone on this earth.”

  “You don’t understand,” Blake said, his voice coming out hoarse.

  “No, I think I do. Look at me.” Blake couldn’t, so Bo rattled his chair. Blake whipped his head around, glaring at Bo. His friend glared right back at him. “It wasn’t your responsibility to fix her.”

  Blake dug the tips of his fingers into his forehead. Bo didn’t get it. He’d never get it. “Yes, it was.”

  “Why?”

  “It just was,” Blake said through gritted teeth.

  “No it wasn’t.”

  “Yes it—”

  “No…it wasn’t.”

  Blake stood up out of his chair. “Yes, it was!” he shouted, his heartbeat racing like a Kentucky Derby champion.

  Bo stood up, too. “Why?”

  “Because I’d…” he took a moment to breathe and lower his voice, “because I’d just told her I didn’t want to get married. I’d told her I was leaving her.”

  Bo stared back at him, his expression etched with sympathy, which Blake despised. He didn’t need sympathy. He needed judgment. He needed Bo to hate him for the sort of person he was. He needed Bo to hit him, hard in the face…right in the nose where he’d feel it the most. He needed to be punched in the gut where his guilt spent all its days and nights festering and climbing around. He needed to feel the pain that Tara felt that night.

  Blake shoved Bo with both hands, and he stumbled backward, unprepared. When he found his balance, he just stared at Blake, bemused. Blake went for him again, but Bo was ready this time and stood steady after the next shove.

  “Hit me,” Blake ordered.

  “Fuck you.”

  Blake went for Bo’s shoulders again to push, but Bo deflected him. Bo was stronger than Blake, there was no question about that. Blake’s workout was what he did for a living. Working with his hands and hauling things around. Bo’s regime consisted of daily gym visits and weekly half marathons. When they fought for fun, Bo was like a kind Rottweiler who knew to take it easy on his Border collie best friend. But Bo lived a happy life with an adoring family surrounding him. Blake had years of aggression in his corner and a life of solitude, shame, and guilt to back him up. He’d take on Bo any day of the week.

  Blake harnessed every bit of anger, frustration, and madness that swirled around in his head on a daily basis, ready to take Bo down, but Bo brought Blake to him in a bear hug, and held him there while Blake bawled. He hadn’t even known that he knew how to cry before today. Bo didn’t say anything, didn’t move a muscle, just held Blake in his arms, and Blake wondered if this was what it would have felt like to have a hug from a dad.

  Blake finally pulled away and walked aimlessly in the direction of the swing set in Bo’s back yard. He wiped off his face, trying to return to some sort of normalcy, whatever that was. “Why haven’t you ever hauled this off?”

  Bo shrugged, walking up next to him. “I don’t know. I guess I thought I’d be married by now with some little bastards who’d want to use it.”

  Blake turned to Bo. “If that’s what you want, why don’t you make it happen?”

  “I don’t know. Today’s your day to be fucked up. We’ll deal with me tomorrow.” Bo grinned at Blake, and Blake wanted to smile back, but he wasn’t sure he knew how anymore. “You’re not God,” Bo said.

  “I know I’m not God.” Blake hated it when doctors talked about God complexes. He’d never considered what he did God-like…quite the opposite. It was his job to save, and if he didn’t do his job right, he failed. It was that simple.

  “Then quit thinking you’ve got to take on that kind of responsibility. You’re a human person. I didn’t know Tara or anything about what happened that night. But what I do know is that you did everything you could to save her.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I don’t? You think I don’t know you and the level of caring you have for people? That’s your whole goddamned business. Helping people. Fixing things.” He let silence sit between them for a moment before saying, “What’s this job in Kansas?”

  Blake rested against the wood panel of the play set. “I’d be working for a hospital under Kevin, my old emergency department boss in Atlanta.”

  “As an ER doctor?”

  Blake nodded, his chest tightening around him.

  “Is this what you want?”

  He met Bo’s gaze. “It’s what I need to do.”

  “But is it what you want to do?”

  He looked away from Bo, finding Sadie wiggling around on her back while Jake chewed on something underneath the bird feeder. “I think Jake caught a bird.”

  “He didn’t catch jack shit. They die and fall from the feeder. At least I won’t have to give him dinner tonight. And you didn’t answer my question.”

  “It’s just time to move on.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know there weren’t any doctor jobs in the Florida panhandle. We must be a super healthy bunch here. No rednecks at all pulling idiotic stunts in need of having a thumb sewn back on or anything like that.”

  “I can’t practice here,” Blake said.

  “Why can you practice in Kansas but not here?”

  “I mean, I’m…eligible, but I can’t.”

  “How come?”

  “That would make a lot of sense,” Blake said. “I’d just tell my patients, ‘I know I’ve been scooping up your dog’s shit for the past three years, but I’m totally qualified to reattach your thumb.’”

  “Oh, I doubt any of your clients mess with fireworks. They’ve got people for that.”

  “You know what the fuck I’m talking about.”

  “No, I don’t,” Bo said.

  “I came here to hide, to start a new life. But I’m a doctor, and I need to practice.”

  “So get a job in Pensacola.”

  “You aren’t getting it. I can’t hide who I am anymore, and I can’t explain to a town full of people who’ve gotten to know me as their handyman or dog walker that I’m their doctor. So I’ve got to leave…now.”

  Bo narrowed his gaze, pocketing his hands. “Does this have anything to do with Seanna?”

  Heat rushed through Blake’s core. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Because I saw the two of you on the dance floor
last night.”

  Blake rolled his eyes. “Along with all of Panama City’s LGBT population.”

  “I’m not talking about the Chicken Dance. The way the two of you were swaying together to that slow song, I thought I was going to have to come out there with a bucket of ice.”

  Blake crossed his foot over his ankle, gripping a pole on the swing set. “I can’t be with her…not that way.” A thought crossed his mind, and he looked up at Bo. “She can’t know about any of this.”

  “Don’t insult me. Is that why you’re running away? So you don’t have to deal with your feelings for her?”

  “I’m not running away. I’m accepting an opportunity. I’ve got a three-year gap in my resume. I’m not going to be an easy hire. Besides, what happened that night at the hospital became sort of a…scandal.”

  “A scandal? How so?”

  A rope cinched around Blake’s heart. “Tara had written a note and made some accusations against me.”

  “What kind of accusations?”

  He inhaled a deep breath, not sure he was ready to keep going, but he knew he had to. He wasn’t dredging any of this stuff up ever again, and if Bo had questions, he wanted them all answered now. “She said I’d abandoned her, and I’d encouraged her to kill herself so I wouldn’t have to be with her anymore.”

  “Fuck,” Bo said.

  Blake glared Bo down. “It wasn’t true.”

  “Well of course it wasn’t true. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”

  Blake closed his eyes, his head stuffed full, his stomach sick from talking openly about this for the first time in years.

  “So how did it all end at the hospital?” Bo asked.

  “There was an investigation based on the note and my insistence to treat her. Everyone we knew was interviewed. Her parents, her friends, everyone at the hospital.”

  “And?” Bo asked.

  “And I was cleared of any wrongdoing. That’s what the official results of the investigation stated.”

  “But not what you feel in your heart,” Bo supplied.

  “So do you see now why I can’t talk to Seanna about all of this? I can’t tell someone who I can see a real future with that I’ve been under investigation for my ex’s murder, basically. Besides, she deserves better than someone who carries around this kind of baggage.”