Stardust Valley (Firefly Hollow Book 9)

by T. L. Haddix

  Eli’s jaw was white from tension. “I don’t think so.”

  He started to push his chair back. Sophie’d known Eli long enough to realize that he was two seconds away from punching Jeff.

  Hoping to prevent bloodshed, she spoke up. “So tell me, Jeff, do you still cry out for your mommy during sex, or did you finally outgrow that? Since we’re reminiscing and all.”

  All movement around the table stopped, and her words echoed through the suddenly quiet room. Even the waitress, who’d come in with her arms loaded down with food, paused.

  “Because I seem to remember this party back when we were kids where you and your… date didn’t close the door all the way. And you were begging her to spank ‘her’ little boy harder because you’d been bad, and that’s the only way you could get off. I’m only asking because we’re catching up on old times and all, and it wouldn’t be fair to leave anyone out of the fun,” she said innocently, smiling at him coldly.

  He stared at her, stunned. A florid tide of color washed into his cheeks, leaving them mottled. He glanced around the table, hands clenching by his sides, then stormed off toward the front of the diner without another word.

  For several seconds, no one spoke, then the waitress moved to set the dishes she carried on the table.

  “I’ll be back with the rest in a minute.” She turned and left, a snicker sounding as she went around the corner.

  Sophie was mortified, and she was afraid to look at Noah. But as Eli slowly sat back down, Noah picked up his glass and saluted her with it.

  “I think you win,” Noah said.

  Eli was shaking his head, his eyes full of anger and sorrow as he looked at his brother. “I’m sorry.”

  Noah shrugged, and Sophie felt him sigh. “Not the first time I’ve run into him. And he’s always like that. But now I have something to hit back at him with. He really did that?”

  She nodded, her cheeks warm, as she accepted a plate of food from the waitress. “I was looking for the bathroom and couldn’t find it. You remember Willow Clark, right? Lived in that huge house up near the hospital? Well, I swear her house had more rooms and halls than some mansions I’ve been in. Anyhow, I went down the wrong hall and… they weren’t exactly being quiet. It was traumatic, let me tell you.” She shuddered as Sydney snorted with laughter. “Thank God it was during our senior year and I didn’t have to talk to him much after that. I couldn’t look him in the eye for weeks.”

  She saw that Eli still wasn’t appeased. Given that he’d been the one to reveal, albeit indirectly, the truth about Noah’s abilities to Jeff, she wasn’t surprised. He still had a lot of guilt, something that would take a lot longer than a few smooth months to eradicate.

  “He shouldn’t have that knowledge,” Eli said quietly. “It’s my fault that he does.”

  This time, Noah’s sigh was audible. “He shouldn’t, but he does. And at this point, does it matter whose fault it was? I don’t think so. Besides, as much as I’ve not always felt fondly about my abilities, I have to say I’d much rather be able to do what I can than be in his shoes. That’s awful. Can you imagine? I mean, really, I have hang-ups, but damn.” He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and he even gave a small laugh. “I’ll bet he’s a lot nicer the next time I see him. If he’s not, I’ll make sure to remind him of this. He’s a sales rep at one of the lumber places over in Pikeville.”

  “I knew he had to be in sales with that attitude,” Molly said angrily. “How can you laugh at that, Noah? How could you let him say those things?” She glared at Eli. “You should have flattened him. One of you anyhow. I don’t think it’s a bit funny. Not one bit. Excuse me.” She shoved her chair back and stormed out.

  “Well, that went well,” Noah said dryly. He glanced at Sophie. “Let me out?”

  “Of course.” She stood.

  He slid out of the booth and laid a hand on Eli’s shoulder. “This might go better coming from both of us.”

  “I was thinking that.”

  As they walked out, Sophie and Haley exchanged a worried look. Sydney and Sawyer, however, didn’t seem concerned.

  “Should we do something?” Haley asked.

  “They’ll be fine. This has been building for some time,” Sydney said. “She’s seen that Noah and Eli are fine now, but she’s not believed it. At least, not that the peace would last past the first big challenge. They’ll convince her.”

  Sophie shoved back her plate. She’d lost any interest in eating. Seeing Jeff again had just served to remind her of all her misery from thirteen years ago. She picked up her coffee mug and took a sip of the bitter brew.

  “It hasn’t been easy for Noah—being here all these years, I mean. Has it?” she asked Sydney, including Sawyer in her look. “You’ve been friends for a while, right?”

  He nodded. “Regardless of anything that happened when you were kids, he’s got a heavy burden to carry. And no, carrying that hasn’t been easy. But he’s done well enough. Not to say the family doesn’t worry about him,” he said, glancing at Sydney, “but he’s stronger than people give him credit for being.”

  “I know he’s strong, but with all due respect, that doesn’t mean he’s happy. That he doesn’t have scars,” Sophie told him bluntly.

  Sawyer sat back and studied her. “Most of us have scars. That doesn’t mean we can’t move on and find happiness.”

  Sydney laid down her fork. “It surprises you that he’s got scars though. Or maybe the nature of the scars?”

  With a shrug, Sophie set down her mug. “Maybe. I should go. Thanks for inviting me along. I’m sorry it didn’t turn out better.” She stood and pulled on her coat. “And thanks for getting the repair guy out. I’m sorry about that.”

  “Don’t you even start,” Sydney told her with narrowed eyes. Her quirky smile took all the sting out of the words. “I swear, you’re so stubborn you could be a Campbell.”

  “Or a Gibson,” Sawyer said dryly, his grin wicked.

  Sydney, who’d been a Gibson prior to their marriage, smacked his arm lightly.

  Despite her inner turmoil, Sophie laughed. “You two are something else. Haley, keep them out of trouble.”

  Haley saluted her. “I’ll do my best, but I make no promises.”

  As Sophie paid her check and went to her car, she saw no sign of Molly and the boys. She was glad as she wanted to make her getaway before they came back. Noah’s reaction to Jeff’s taunt had thrown her as much as it had Molly and for a similar reason.

  She’d seen the way Eli and Noah had been healing their relationship. She’d talked to Eli for hours since his return from Afghanistan, after the freak accident that had taken his foot. But she’d not seen a change in Noah, not to the point that she believed he’d really forgiven Eli. Not until today.

  As much as his remarks had stunned her Thursday, she’d been just as stunned this morning. She didn’t know quite what to make of him anymore. It was as if all the angst and hatred and animosity that had been inside him since their fight in high school was gone.

  What she couldn’t figure out was why. And she desperately needed to know why.

  Despite her determination to shove away Noah and their past, she was starting to believe that wasn’t an option anymore. And the realization that she had to deal with Noah was almost enough to make her want to keep driving all the way back to Texas and beyond.

  Chapter Nine

  Noah didn’t see much of Sophie over the next couple of weeks. Work kept him too busy to drop by his grandparents’ house through the week, and though he was friendly with her at Sunday dinner, he didn’t go out of his way to strike up a conversation. To be honest, he didn’t know what to say to her. He was still trying to come to terms with what he’d learned at Thanksgiving, and he was embarrassed about what had happened in the diner.

  After h
e and Eli had calmed Molly down, they’d gone back inside to discover Sophie had left. Noah was afraid to ask why, so he didn’t. If there was anything he’d gotten good at over the years, it was burying his head in the sand, though if he listened to his mother and sister, that was a trait he shared with pretty much all of the male population.

  He had managed to garner the courage to talk to Summer, however, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. He rode his ATV to her house, which was situated beside a stream in a little holler half a mile down the road from the Campbell property. She was waiting for him on the porch, a cup of coffee in hand as she sat in one of the comfortable rocking chairs she’d purchased from him when she first moved in.

  “How’s everyone?” she asked as he parked and took off his helmet.

  He’d just come from dinner at the farm. “Still foundered from Thursday. It was a small crowd today—just Eli, Haley, and me.” He came up on the porch and sat beside her with a sigh. “We need to talk.”

  She nodded, sipping her drink, as she eyed him over the rim. “You mentioned that on the phone. From the look on your face, it’s not going to be a pleasant conversation.”

  Noah leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “It doesn’t have to be unpleasant.”

  Summer snorted. “Just spit it out. This is about Sophie and what happened on Thursday, isn’t it?”

  He frowned and picked at his thumbnail. “Not directly. It’s been brought to my attention that you might have, um, well, developed certain feelings for me.”

  This time, her laugh was fuller, more natural, though it held a good deal of sadness. “You’re a very rare thing, Noah Campbell—a good man. Further, you’re very easy to get attached to. And you’re not hard on the eyes. I like to think we’re friends, but I’ll admit the thought of becoming more than that has crossed my mind. I don’t think I’d be human if it hadn’t.”

  Noah felt himself blush. Aside from a very casual curiosity, the idea of taking their friendship to another level had never occurred to him.

  Summer, not an idiot, picked up on his discomfort. She sighed. “But you never went there, did you?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t be. And please, whatever you do, don’t try to tell me that a good man will come along someday soon and sweep me off my feet. That my knight in shining armor is just around the corner.”

  Noah smiled. “Summer, I fully expect that your knight would be riding a dark horse, wearing tarnished and tattered armor, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m sorry I’m not him.”

  She tilted her head. “Are you really? Because I think you want to be Sophie’s knight, that maybe once upon a time, you were. Can you be again? She is the girl who broke your heart, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah.”

  He and Summer had been friends since she’d moved in, and he hated to think that the casual easiness they’d had was gone. Both of them were scarred and battered, not wanting to get involved with anyone, and coming together as friends had felt natural. And maybe if he hadn’t met Sophie, hadn’t had her imprinted on his heart, Summer could have been the one.

  But he had met Sophie, and he realized now that regardless of where his relationship with her went, there’d never be anyone else for him.

  “And yes,” he said, “part of me really is sorry. I like you, Summer. You’re good people.”

  She shook her head and looked away, and her throat moved as she swallowed. “Your Sophie doesn’t like me. And I can’t say I blame her. After that fine example of foot-in-mouth syndrome I exhibited, I’d be surprised if anyone at that end of the table had a word to say to me.”

  Noah couldn’t argue, and he respected her too much to try to sugarcoat things with a lie. “They’ll come around eventually if you want them to.”

  She held out her hand, and he clasped it gladly.

  “I’ll let you know.” Much like Noah, she was something of a recluse.

  “I don’t know if we can remain friends,” he told her softly. “But I hope we can.”

  She leaned in and kissed his hand, then she let him go. “So do I.”

  But he knew deep down that they couldn’t. He made his excuses and left not long after that, taking his time on the trip back up to the ridge. The trees were bare now, ready for the cold, nasty winter, and the bleakness of the day seeped into Noah’s heart. Much like a cat, he wasn’t overly fond of change.

  Some of the things that had happened over the last few months, like rebuilding his relationship with Eli, were pure, blessed miracles. But those sorts of changes aside, Noah liked his normal, boring, simple life just the way it was. He didn’t like drama outside his fiction and entertainment and never had. Some people thrived on that sort of thing, but it drained him. He went out of his way to avoid it.

  That peaceful calmness Sophie had brought to his life was one of the losses that had hurt the most when everything blew up in high school. Being with her eased something within him. And finding out she’d been playing him all along—or at least believing she had—had stolen that peace. He was torn between wanting to try to recapture what they’d had and wanting to block himself off from her entirely just to stay safe.

  He couldn’t escape his dreams though. Every day he worked long hours, trying to wear himself out so that his body would force his mind to rest. And just about every night, he’d wake up sweating from a dream or the idea of a dream about Sophie. Some of the dreams were sweet. Some of the dreams were so erotic he ended up having to change his sheets. And some were so terrible he wound up pacing on the deck outside his bedroom, moving as quietly as he could so as not to wake Eli. If he got lucky, the bad dreams hit the nights Eli was with Haley. Those nights, Noah could let his emotions out, something he usually did by playing the fiddle that had belonged to Sarah’s father or the piano until he was exhausted.

  A conversation he had with Eli on Monday morning, a week after Thanksgiving, helped ease some of his worries about his brother’s future. Eli bashfully admitted to him that they’d not yet consummated their relationship even though they shared a bed most weekends.

  “She was raised so conservatively when it comes to sex it doesn’t feel proper to rush things. I’d kind of like to wait,” he told Noah as they headed to a job site. “I know what I said to Molly at the diner the other day, about sex needing to mean something. And I was serious, okay? But I’ve not always taken that to heart. I never cheated on Erica, even though I had the opportunity, but after she died, I went a little overboard with women. Not like orgies or anything, but I treated things casually. I don’t want to do that with Haley.”

  “I understand. That’s kind of how I felt in Italy, letting loose to salve the pain, though my experience was more heavy dating than actual sex. It just didn’t work out so well for me. Anyhow, point is, you want to go slow and wait with Haley because she’s special,” Noah said quietly. He’d confessed some weeks earlier to Eli that he’d been celibate for more than ten years. The chaos intimacy caused with his ability was just too much to bear. He laid a hand on Eli’s shoulder. “There’s not a damned thing wrong with waiting. Not a single, damned thing. It shows how much you care for Haley the person and not just how much you like Haley the body.”

  “Exactly. And Haley the person? She deserves to know I’m not just with her for sex. I’m going to ask her to marry me. At Christmas, probably. If I can find the courage.”

  To his surprise, Noah’s eyes stung. He grinned at Eli, laughing, and tightened his grip on his brother’s shoulder. “No shit? Seriously? Oh, man. Really?” He wasn’t surprised, but hearing Eli’s intentions put into words choked him up.

  His excitement was contagious, and pretty soon, Eli was chuckling. “Yeah. I thought I’d try to find a ring this weekend.”

  Noah could have hugged him, and if he hadn’t been driving up a winding road,
he would have done just that. “I’m glad. She’s good for you.”

  Eli blew out a breath. “I’m scared to death. I have to remind myself sometimes that it won’t be like it was with Erica. Intellectually, I know it won’t be—I know Haley’s nothing like her—but it’s still terrifying.”

  Noah imagined it was. For all the trouble Erica had caused him, Noah had only had to put up with her in small doses. Eli’d lived with her. Noah knew that part of the reason his brother had taken so many deployments throughout his military career was so he wouldn’t have to spend time with his late wife.

  Noah had just gotten home from work on Friday evening, two weeks before Christmas, when his phone rang. He and Eli had finished up their project and since Eli had a date, Noah’d handled the cleanup and finalization. Regardless, he was still home before five. Eli’d already been at the house and was gone if the lingering scents of shampoo and cologne were any indication.

  “Hey, Grandma,” Noah said when he answered the phone.

  “Hi, sweetie. Are you busy?”

  “Not at all. I just walked in the door,” he said, laughing as Fig, his long-haired Calico fur-baby, meowed and curled her way around his feet. “Hear my girl?”

  Sarah chuckled. “I do. She’s such a good cat. I’ll have to come visit with her soon. It’s been too long. Anyhow, the reason I was calling—have you had supper yet?”

  He shrugged. “No. I have some leftovers I was going to heat up.”

  “Why don’t you head up here and eat with us? We’ve not seen you in weeks.”

  “You see me every Sunday,” he teased. “Isn’t that enough?”

  Sarah huffed. “Get on with you. I made that roasted chicken you’re so fond of.”