“Need help with anything?” I asked, pressing against her back and speaking the words against that spot on her neck that never failed to make her shiver.
She did just that and leaned back into me, her voice growing a bit husky as she answered, “Could you start the coffee? The bacon’s about done, and the eggs’ll only take a minute.”
“You got it, angel.”
I moved around the kitchen, filling the pot and dumping the water into the machine before setting it to brew. Once it started, I rested back against the opposite counter and crossed my arms and legs as I watched her work. “Eggs and bacon sound great, Tempie. Haven’t had a normal breakfast in forever.”
“What do you usually do in the mornings?” she asked as she started cracking eggs into a bowl.
“I usually just have coffee. Or I stop off at Muffin Top on the way to the station if there’s time.”
She looked over her shoulder at me as she started whisking and gave me a little tsk. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And I actually am a good cook. I wanted to do pancakes or French toast too, but seeing as you live like a frat guy, I was lucky you even had eggs.”
The coffee finished gurgling, and I grabbed two mugs from the cupboard above. “Next time you cook for me, we’ll do it at the farmhouse. I’m sure you got that place stocked up. How do you take your coffee, baby?”
“Usually with creamer, but since all that’s left in your fridge is mustard, beer, milk, and what I hope to god is cheese, I’ll take a splash of milk and two sugars.” I drank mine black, so I set about doctoring her coffee as she continued to talk. “And speaking of the farmhouse, I need to get back there to take care of Stargazer and Cat.”
I tried not to choke on the sip I’d just taken as I asked through a laugh, “You named your cat Cat?”
“Well, she’s not actually mine.” Tempie smiled and tipped the skillet sideways, dumping fluffy eggs onto the plates next to the bacon. “She kinda came with the house. She’s a wild barn cat, but Reenie kept her fed enough to spoil her, and now she expects me to do the same.”
“And Stargazer?”
“Reenie’s horse.” Her expression softened, her voice coming out hushed as she said, “Well, I guess my horse now. She got her a few years back and asked me to name her.”
My body froze, every muscle pulling tight as my eyes met hers. I could read clear as day what she was saying with them as she looked at me. Fuck me. She’d named that horse for me.
Back when we were together, we used drive my beat-up pickup truck out to a small pond on her family’s land and camp out in the back of it, staring up at the stars for hours as we talked and, when she got older, made love beneath them. That was the spot where she’d given herself to me for the first time. To this day, that was the best gift I’d ever received, and I remembered every single thing about that night like it was burned into my brain for eternity. Besides our spot in the woods, that pond had been the place we’d escape to for some privacy.
“Angel,” I whispered, my chest aching.
She came closer, a plate in her hand, and stopped an inch away. “I never forgot, Hayes. Not for a single moment.”
Goddamn it. She was undoing me.
Before I could say anything else, she handed me the plate and commanded, “Eat. You need to fuel up if you’re gonna spend your day hunting down bad guys.”
I stayed on my feet, choosing to hold my plate so I could watch her unimpeded as I dug into my breakfast. Tempie hopped up on the counter across from me, crossing her ankles together and swinging them to-and-fro as she bit into a strip of perfectly cooked bacon.
Lifting her mug to her lips, she took a swallow before turning her attention back to me. “You know, since we’re starting over and being totally honest, I want you to know that I forgave you for what happened with Krista a long time ago.”
My fork stopped halfway to my mouth. “What?”
Her eyes once again glinted with sadness before she dropped her head and spoke in a low voice. “I knew I made a mistake, Hayes. It took me a while to find the courage to make it right, but when I went to meet you that night in the woods, I was going to ask you to forgive me for ruining what we had. But when you never showed….” She squeezed her eyes closed as though she were in physical pain.
At her words, something dark and ugly slithered up my spine. “Temperance.”
She gave her head a shake, lifting her watery eyes to me and asking, “Why didn’t you come?” on an agonized whisper.
My gut twisted into knots, and suddenly every breath I took felt like being stabbed with millions of tiny needles. “Baby, what are you talkin’ about?”
Her head cocked to the side, and her brows drew together in confusion. “You left me a note, Hayes. The night my parents….” She paused and swallowed audibly. “It was on my bed. You asked me to meet you at our spot that night. I waited for over an hour, but you never came”
Texting wasn’t a thing back when we were together, so Tempie and I had come up with different form of communication. We’d pass notes, in school and out of it. If she wasn’t home and I wanted to see her, I’d climb through the bedroom window she always left unlocked for me and leave a note on her bed telling here where to meet and what time. She’d always loved it, claiming it felt secretive and forbidden. She’d get my note and show up at our spot without fail, usually so turned on by having to sneak around that I’d barely get a word out before she jumped me.
I remembered every single word written on every note we’d ever exchanged.
Except for the one she was talking about now.
Goose bumps broke out along my arms. “Temperance, I didn’t leave you a note that night.”
“What are you talking about?” she clipped in agitation. “Of course you did. I didn’t imagine it.”
Dropping my plate to the counter, I closed the distance between us, grabbing her knees and spreading her thighs so I could fit my hips between them. “Baby, I swear to Christ, I didn’t leave you a note. I thought we were done, and I spent that night doing what I’d been doing every night since you broke up with me. I went out with some of the guys and got hammered to try and forget how fuckin’ miserable I was.”
Her eyes went wide as shock and fear flooded through them. “What?” she asked brokenly. “But… I saw it, Hayes. It was right there on my pillow where you always left them.”
I couldn’t wrap my head around what she was telling me. For twenty-one years I’d driven myself crazy, trying to figure out where she’d been that night, why she wasn’t in her house when her parents were attacked. After their funeral when everyone had gathered back at the farmhouse, I’d tried to talk to her, but she’d looked at me with so much hatred and sadness in her eyes before hissing, “This is all your fault.” That was the last time we spoke before she left town. I didn’t understand then why she’d blamed me, but now that I did, and I was more confused than ever.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said, echoing exactly what I was thinking.
Reaching up to cup her jaw, I asked, “You remember what the note said?”
She gave her head a tiny shake. “Not word for word, but you apologized for sleeping with Krista and asked me to meet you at our spot in the woods.”
I wracked my brain, trying to come up with a logical explanation for everything, but none of this made any damn sense.
“Maybe you just don’t remember,” she tried to reason. “You said it yourself, you’d been drinking a lot. Maybe you were just drunk and don’t remember leaving it.”
I didn’t bother arguing, I could already see in her eyes that she knew the truth. She was just struggling to accept it.
“I don’t want you to worry about this,” I said, cupping her jaw in a gesture of comfort.
“Are you serious?” she snapped somewhat hysterically. “How do you expect me not to worry about this? I mean, what the hell? Who left that note, Hayes?”
“I don’t know, angel, but I’m gonna find out
, okay? I promise I’ll find out what happened that night. You have my word.”
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down.
“You trust me?” I pushed, wanting desperately to ease her mind.
“Of course,” she answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“Then you can trust me on this, okay? I’ll figure out what happened. You’ve got nothin’ to worry about. Odds are it was just some asshole kid pullin’ a practical joke that went bad.”
I didn’t buy what I was telling her for one goddamn second, but I could see some of her tension drifting away as I spoke, and if that helped calm her down, I’d take it.
“You really think so?”
“Yeah,” I answered. I hated that I was lying to her, but no matter what the case was, I’d find out and I’d make it right. That was all she needed to concern herself with. “You know as well as I do that teenagers can be little shitheads.”
“Yeah,” she said on a breath, a shaky smile stretching across her lips. “Yeah, you’re right. Man, teenagers suck.”
A loud laugh rumbled up from my chest. “Yeah they do.”
“Were we ever as obnoxious and annoying as the kids you see today?”
“Of course not,” I replied, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “The level of awesome we were canceled out any chance of being obnoxious or annoying.”
“True.” That smile grew bigger and steadier. “We were pretty badass, weren’t we?”
I gave my head a shake and leaned forward, her mouth too goddamn tempting to ignore. “Absolutely. The badass-est.”
She giggled against my lips. “The most badass in all the land.”
“People in town talk like our relationship was a fairy tale anyway, so it only makes sense that we’d be the most badass in all the land.”
“You know what?” she asked, lifting her arms and wrapping them around my neck. “I think I’m starting to like that the town talks about us.”
For twenty-one years, I’d been hearing the town rumblings about me and Tempie, and for twenty-one years, it set my teeth on edge. But now, with Tempie pressed against me, her arms holding on tightly, I suddenly found that I didn’t mind the gossip at all.
“Me too, angel.”
Chapter Thirteen
Temperance
I ran the brush along the length of Stargazer’s body, taking my time brushing her down after our ride. It would be too cold for long rides soon, and I wanted to give her as much exercise before then as possible, so after getting home and feeding an irked Cat, I saddled her up and took her out until I could no longer feel my cheeks.
After our breakfast and a rather rocky and slightly disturbing conversation, Hayes had thrown me over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold and carried me back to his bed, where he spent the remaining minutes before he had to leave for work doing delicious things to my body that I felt long after I’d come home.
My phone rang from my back pocket just as I closed Stargazer back in her stall. Pulling it out, I saw Rory’s name on the screen and smiled as I brought the phone to my ear. “Hey, babe, how’s it going?”
“You tell me,” she said through the line. “I just walked out of Muffin Top for my daily donut fix, and the place was practically buzzin’. Please tell me the rumors are true and your car really spent all night parked in front of Hayes’s apartment building.”
“Oh my god, seriously? It’s barely after ten in the morning and people are already talking?”
Rory laughed through the line. “Are you really surprised? You’ve been back for months now, and I know you’ve heard the stories still traveling around. Swear to god, honey, I wouldn’t be surprised if parents told it to their kids as a bedtime story, passing down the lore to younger generations. For two decades they’ve had to make up a happy ending since the real-life one didn’t work out, and you don’t think something like this is gonna spread faster than lice through a preschool?”
“Nice imagery, Ror,” I deadpanned, starting out of the barn to the house. “Thanks a lot for that. You’re lucky I’ve already had breakfast.”
“Well, I was thinkin’ of stopping over for a visit. Does that mean you don’t want any of the donuts I just bought?”
I pulled up short of my porch steps. “How many donuts are we talking here?”
“A dozen,” she said with a giggle. “Six glazed and six chocolate iced, all so fresh this box is actually burnin’ my arm.”
I didn’t need to hear any more. “I’ll put the coffee on. See you in ten.”
“Wow. That’s just… wow.”
That was Rory’s response after I finished telling her—step by step, per her order—about everything that had happened from the time I woke up yesterday morning to now. Half the box of donuts had been demolished and the pot of coffee was drained.
“That about sums it up,” I replied, popping the last bite of my donut into my mouth.
She stared at me, flabbergasted, before saying, “We really should have done this with wine.”
My head fell back on a laugh. I’d been doing that more in the time I’d been back in Hope Valley than I had in all the years I’d lived in Chicago. It started with each laugh feeling foreign and strange, but the longer I was here and the more it occurred, the more natural it became.
“So what does this mean for you and Hayes?”
I thought back to the night before, a dreamy expression drifting across my face. “It probably sounds weird, but it’s almost like we picked up right where we left off.”
Rory leaned close, placing her hand on top of mine as she smiled. “That doesn’t sound weird at all, honey.”
For years, I’d been walking around with this hole inside of me that I’d grown to believe would never be filled. It was as if I’d only been half alive, taking half a breath, seeing only half the colors that brightened the world. After last night, all of that changed. My lungs were full to bursting, and everything was in bright technicolor. But most importantly, that persistent gnawing in the pit of my stomach, the annoying throb telling me there was more to life than what I’d made of mine, had grown quiet and still.
“We were together for four years, Ror. Apart for more than twenty, but when I woke up this morning and felt him holding onto me, it was like I’d always been there.”
“You’re happy.” It wasn’t a question. My friend had noticed there were pieces of me missing, and she could see clear as day now that they had all fit themselves back into place and soldered together, making me whole.
“I am.”
“Does that mean you’re staying in Hope Valley?”
She was barely containing her excitement as it was, but when I answered with a firm “Yes,” she lost hold of it completely and threw her hands up in the air with a loud squeal, bouncing around in her seat at my dining room table before leaning in and pulling me into a tight hug.
“Oh my god, Tempie, that’s so great! I finally get my BFF back!”
I managed to disengage from her hold before she choked the life out of me and sat back in my chair, grinning ear to ear. My cell phone rang right then, and both mine and Rory’s heads shot down to where it was lying on the table. At the sight of Hayes’s name on the screen, my belly flipped and she let out another excited squeak.
“Hello?”
“Hey, angel.”
A thrill shot down my spine and came to a stop right between my thighs. At just those two words, an unbelievable ache built up, and I wanted him more in that moment than I wanted another donut from Muffin Top. And that was saying something.
“Hey,” I whispered back.
“Damn, baby,” he said in a low voice. “You can’t say ‘hey’ like that when I’m at work.”
My forehead creased in confusion. “How’d I say it?”
“Like you’re thinkin’ of what I did to you this morning with my tongue and fingers before I got you off again with my dick.”
And suddenly that was all I could think about. “It’s not my fault,”
I argued back. “You started it when you called me ‘angel’ in that sexy voice of yours.”
Rory made a choking gag noise as Hayes laughed through the line. “My apologies. I’ll try my best to work on that.”
“Liar,” I said on a giggle. “Did you call for a reason, or was it just to fight about who turns who on the most.”
That got me a full-on laugh, and knowing I was the one to give it to him was like winning a medal. “I was callin’ to see if you’ve had a good mornin’ so far.”
God, he was too much. He knew I’d had a shitty morning the day before, and he’d taken time from work just to call and make sure this one was better. A ridiculously giddy grin stretch across my face. “I have. Took Stargazer out for a ride, then Rory stopped by with donuts.”
“From Muffin Top?”
“Of course,” I scoffed.
“I was also callin’ to see if you’re free Saturday night.”
I furrowed my brows as I did a mental scan of my calendar. “Yeah. As far as I know. Why?”
“Good, then that night’s all mine. The case I’m on is gonna keep me at the station late the rest of the week, but I’m takin’ you out Saturday night.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“A place called The Groves. I managed to get us a reservation for seven thirty. The food is out of this world, but it’s an upscale joint. You got a dress?”
He was taking me to dinner at a fancy restaurant with amazing food that required me to dress in something other than the jeans and T-shirts I’d spent the past few months in. That was when it hit me. Holy crap. This was our first official date as adults.
We’d been teenagers when we broke up, so a night out for us back then consisted of the drive-in burger joint, the movies, and whatever party all our friends were attending. It might have felt like Hayes and I had fallen right back into place, but Saturday night was going to be something brand new for us. A first. And I couldn’t wait.
“I think I can manage to pull something together,” I teased.
Come Back Home Again (Hope Valley Book 2) Page 11