“You bet. Are you interested?”
“Very. My name is Edith O’Hare. I’ve been reading romance for as long as I can remember. But I’ve never heard of anything like this book club before. What do I need to do to join, sweetheart?”
“All you have to do is read our first title, Years Ago, and show up here at six o’clock on December fifteenth.” She snagged a paper flier off the bookshelf and passed it to Edith.
Edith’s bright pink lips curled into a smile, and she reached a hand out to pat Sydney on the elbow. “Oh dear, I hope I make it till then. At my age, you never know.”
Sydney burst out laughing, and Edith sent her a wink. “I’ll stay positive,” Sydney said. “And if I may say so, your hair is stunning. What a gorgeous color.”
“Oh, thank you,” she said, a blush creeping into her papery cheeks. “My granddaughter does it for me. My son thinks I’m batty, but you only live once, eh?”
“Are you into makeup, too?”
“Oh, I love makeup,” Edith said. She clasped her hands together, revealing electric purple fingernails.
“Then you’ll love this.”
Next to the cash register sat a row of cheek stains that Sydney had purchased to entice customers to add one more thing before they checked out. She plucked a vibrant shade of fuchsia for her stylish customer, and as she handed it over, Edith’s eyes shone like jewels under water.
“Oh darling, this is beautiful,” she said. “I’ll have it.”
“It’s on the house.”
“Oh, I couldn’t!”
“You could,” Sydney countered. “Consider it a deposit. You can pay me in the form of book-club attendance. And tell your friends.”
Edith’s brow pinched as if she was in pain, but before Sydney could ask if she was all right, Edith leaned in and kissed her square on the cheek. “You’re an angel.”
At seven o’clock, Sydney shuttered the store and drove Sam’s junker back to Jorie’s house, where she’d been staying for the past few blissful weeks. Jorie spent half her time at Matt’s, leaving Sydney plenty of time to herself, and the rest of the time she was a genial roommate who always brought home pastries from work and kept the common spaces tidy.
Sydney pulled up to the dark house and grinned. Nobody home. She could take a long steamy shower without risk of using all the hot water, watch terribly trashy TV and yell at the idiot characters, and eat cheese and crackers for dinner. She’d never actually lived alone, and staying at Jorie’s was proving to be close enough.
After her shower, she slipped into clean gray yoga pants and a cutoff T-shirt and flipped the TV to the Bravo network. Two chattering blondes greeted her. “Hello, friends.” Once she had her plate of snacks and a steaming cup of tea nestled on the TV tray in her lap, she released a long, deep breath.
Just as she shoved the first cracker heaped with cheddar into her mouth, her phone buzzed with a text. Since the night Connor had texted her, every buzz, beep, and ring on her phone sent her heart into her throat.
She leaned forward to peek at the screen. Sam. Her muscles relaxed. It was one of three messages he’d sent her. Apparently, the others had come in while she showered.
I’m coming over, I need to pick up that book I lent you.
You’re home, right?
I hope you’re not already sleeping? Put your teeth in, Grandma, I’m outside.
Her palms grew slick with sweat, and her heart began to race. The knock on the door sent her leaping off the couch, the crackers scattering across Jorie’s carpet. Sam had no consideration for time or space. He was always popping in and showing up unannounced. While she loved seeing him at any time, she also liked to be prepared. Tonight she wished she’d at least bothered with a bra.
She opened the front door a crack, careful to stay behind the icy wind that slipped in. “Come in, come in,” she urged. “It’s freezing.”
Sam hurried inside and closed the door behind him. When he turned toward her, his face was stony. “Did you get my texts?”
“I just saw them,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You’re so demanding.”
He rolled his eyes, kicked off his boots, and moved past her into the living room. “I’m supposed to see the friend who lent me that book tomorrow, and I need it back.”
He tossed his coat on the back of a chair, helped himself to a beer from the fridge, and then settled onto the couch.
“Make yourself at home,” she said.
He raised a single eyebrow at her. “My dad built this house and my best friend lives in it, so if we’re playing that game, I belong here more than you do.”
The words had bite, but his curved lips told a different story. This was how they operated lately. What began as harmless banter turned into flirting, and she usually fell asleep imagining him taking her roughly into those taut, muscular arms and kissing her like no one ever had before.
“Your dad built this house?” She settled next to him on the couch and tucked her legs up, wrapping herself in a throw blanket.
“Yeah. With Jorie’s dad and another buddy of theirs from high school.” He took a long pull from the bottle, and Sydney watched his tongue catch a rogue drop of beer as it escaped the corner of his mouth.
“Wow, no one ever leaves this town, do they?”
“Not really.”
Except for Olivia. She wished she had a bit of liquid courage in her veins to push her past the fear of the big question. No one, not Jorie or her mother or anyone else in town, had been forthcoming with information on Sam and Liv. She knew she had to ask him.
“So,” she said, dropping her eyes to a loose thread at the edge of the couch cushion. “I have to ask. What’s the deal with Olivia?”
Her eyes flickered over to where he visibly stiffened. Jaw clenched, both hands white-knuckled around the beer bottle. Had she pushed too far? She didn’t care. She needed to know.
“What do you mean?” he asked. He crossed one foot over his knee, paused, and replaced it on the floor.
“I mean, everyone in Pine Ridge has mentioned her, but Jorie told me she’s not your girlfriend. And your reunion at Thanksgiving was strangely icy, so . . . I’m wondering.” She treaded carefully. They’d become fast friends, but this was foreign territory. He didn’t ask about Connor, and she didn’t ask about Liv.
“It’s—” He took a long pull from his beer, and before the bottle left his lips, he lifted it again until the last dregs released with a wet smack. “Very complicated.”
Before she could speak again, he stood up and got another. Maybe she had pushed too far. She’d never seen him have more than one drink, especially if he was driving.
When he returned to his place on the couch, she feared the conversation was dead in the water. He ran a hand over his face and said, “I don’t really like to talk about it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s, um . . . It seems to be something that everyone in town knows about but everyone has their own version of the story, and I didn’t want to pry but . . .” But I like you and I need to know what I’m up against.
His espresso-brown eyes drifted up to the ceiling and he leaned back on the couch, running a hand over his thick, dark hair. He was probably one of those guys who used a shampoo and conditioner in one, but somehow his hair still looked impossibly soft. She was dying to touch it.
“Liv and I dated when we were younger. She cheated on me and got pregnant, and we broke up. She was really young and didn’t feel totally ready to be a parent, so she let the kid’s father have full custody.”
Sam’s eyes remained trained on the coffee table as if reading from a teleprompter.
“She’d always loved to drink, but nobody ever thought she was an alcoholic. I mean, you’ve spent time with the people of this town. Everybody likes to throw ’em back.” He licked his lips. “One day, when Jay was a
bout three, Liv decided she wanted to be a part of his life. She spent a year sobering up and proving she could be a reliable parent, and Kevin, Jay’s father, let her have some time with him. She stayed clean for a few years. She was doing so well. And then about a year ago, right after Jay’s seventh birthday, Pine Ridge cops pulled her over because they saw her car weaving like crazy on Route Nine. She blew a point-twelve on the Breathalyzer, and Jay was in the front seat without a seat belt.”
His lips flattened, and his hands tightened into fists.
“Obviously,” he continued, “she lost any chance at custody. She’s lucky she didn’t get sent to jail. But in the past year, she’s worked harder than I’ve ever seen her work trying to get her kid back. Jay’s the sweetest little boy you’ve ever met, and he’s stuck in fucking Akron, Ohio, while his shithead parents try to figure out which one of them is less of a shithead enough to raise him. So far, Kevin’s winning because he’s got his religious parents on his side. But Liv has a fighting chance because she’s got me.”
Sydney attempted to swallow the lump in her throat. “She’s got you?”
“Her lawyer told her it would look a lot better for her if she had a stable home, partner, steady income. I read all the paperwork, I talked to the social worker, went with her to meet the lawyer a couple of times so that I could hear all the information for myself. This is the only way. So she’s living with me, and I’m helping her get back on her feet.”
He turned to face her, his stare full of fire and fury. She pulled back as if another inch of space would protect her from the heat.
“Oh.” It was all she could muster. Every word of the story was a surprise, like accidentally stepping on a bees’ nest and being stung over and over again.
“Yeah. Oh.”
“So, Jay’s not your kid.”
“No, he’s not my kid.”
She ran her hands over the legs of her yoga pants, trying to soak in every detail. Thousands of questions flooded her brain, and she plucked one out to start. “You and Liv are not really together? I mean, you’re not together now?”
“Nope.”
“But maybe after the dust settles . . .”
“No.” He tucked his bottom lip between his teeth and stared straight ahead of him, clear through the coffee table and to some unknown universe beyond the carpet. “We agreed a long time ago that we weren’t meant to be together. I actually think she really loved Kevin, which is why the whole pregnancy thing messed her up so bad. She wasn’t ready for a kid, and she wasn’t ready to be anybody’s partner. She’s ready now. At the very least, she’s on her way.”
“This is an awfully big responsibility for a friend,” Sydney said.
“Oh, don’t worry.” A bitter smile curled onto his lips. “I’m sure a good therapist would have a lot to say about how my drunk dad factors into all of this.”
Sydney knew she had to be gentle, but she crept one step further. “Do you trust her?”
With the faraway stare still fixed on his face, he slowly shook his head. “No matter how hard she tries, no matter how long she’s been clean, she’s always one beer away from ruining me all over again. I’ve heard the phrase, ‘I’m sorry, I was drunk’ more times than I care to count. After a while, they’re just empty words. Do I trust her? I don’t know.” He tipped his head back, letting the beer flow into his mouth in a steady stream. “Does Jorie have any whiskey around here?”
“Someone once told me alcohol doesn’t solve problems.”
He bent over his knees and buried his face in his hands. A hollow laugh escaped the cage he’d built for himself. “I haven’t talked about this with anybody but her in so long that I forgot how fucking ridiculous it sounds.”
“It doesn’t, actually. It sounds noble.”
He sat up and faced her again, his face manic and flushed. “It’s not noble. It’s me pathetically trying to fix some kid’s life because nobody could fix mine when I was his age.”
A quiet settled over them as he leaned back on the couch again. An owl called out into the dark, and the haunting sound carried over the lake. She knew what it was like to feel out of control, scrambling to hold on to anything resembling stability. She didn’t think any less of him for trying to help Liv and her kid.
“Let me ask you this,” she said. “What is it doing to you to stay in this situation?”
“Financially, it’s no trouble. Emotionally . . . God, listen to me. What a toddler.”
“You’re doing a really selfless thing,” she said. “My advice to you would be to not let yourself get lost in the shuffle.”
He downed the last of his second beer, and she snatched the bottle from him.
“Christ, enough, okay? Jorie’s guest room is occupied, so there’s nowhere for you to drunkenly crash here.”
“Well, well, well,” he said, leveling his gaze at her. “Hello, Pot. I’m Kettle.”
“As you can see,” she countered, “I was sitting here alone with tea. No alcohol.”
“Yes, I can see your sad little snack.” He motioned to the crackers scattered in front of the coffee table and smirked. “Sorry to keep you up, Grandma Sydney. Was it Sleepytime tea? Did I disrupt your bedtime ritual?”
“Shut up,” she groaned. “Either I’m a drunken slut or a boring grandma. I can’t win with you.”
His eyelids grew heavy, and something sparkling passed between them. God, how she wanted him. How easy it would be to traverse the four inches of barren couch between them, crawl onto his lap, and finally experience the solid muscles and soft skin underneath his clothes.
The tension in the room grew to epic heights, and she cleared her throat. Now that she knew the truth about Olivia, she didn’t know how to feel about Sam. Technically, he was single. But for the sake of a fragile little boy and his unstable mother, he was the most committed man in the world.
If she and Sam tended this thing between them, would it shatter everything he’d been working toward with Liv?
A buzzing sound broke through her thoughts, and before she could react, he leaned over to look at her phone. “Sorry,” he said hurriedly. “I, uh, I didn’t mean to look at it. Force of habit.”
She reached for her phone. Connor. A tingling sensation traveled up her jaw.
“So, since I spilled my guts to you . . .” Eyebrows arched, his tone questioning, he waited for her response with crossed arms. A smug smile pressed into his face.
“My story is not so noble.” She checked the message, despite her better judgment.
Still missing you, Syd. I need you. I’m taking some time off before Christmas. Please tell me I can come up and see you.
She closed out of the messaging app and replaced her phone on the table.
He’d written close to fifteen messages in the past couple of weeks, all variations on the same sentiment. Her brain screamed at her to delete the messages, block his number, and move on. But something else inside her, something deeper and unresolved, wanted to know how far he’d go to get her back. How much she was worth to him. How much she was worth, period.
“I’m still waiting.” Sam raised his eyebrows and shoved a cracker with cheese into his mouth. Tiny crumbs clung to his beard.
“You really are a toddler.”
She reached forward and combed her fingers through his soft, bristly beard, sending the crumbs tumbling down to his blue plaid shirt. He licked his bottom lip and the same sparkling thing passed between them again. It was so easy to be around him, to touch him, to talk to him. If she wanted to maintain the platonic nature of their friendship, she’d have to at least resist the touching.
“So, go.” His voice came out rough and strangled.
“Connor’s been reaching out a lot lately,” she said. “That’s it.”
“And you’re considering giving him another shot?”
“No,” she insisted.
She watched her phone in case another message came through. “I don’t know if I could ever be with someone who cheated on me. I’d never forget about it, you know? He fucked her in our bed. We’d have to move. And burn those sheets.”
“Shit,” he said, running a hand over his beard. “In your bed. That’s bold.”
She shrugged. The memory of Connor and the blonde forced a wave of nausea from her gut. “He’s bold. In everything he does. He’s bold in business, he’s bold in his indiscretions, and now he’s being bold in trying to contact me again. He doesn’t do anything with caution.”
“Maybe he’d like to meet Liv.”
She cracked a smile. “Seriously, they might be perfect for each other.”
Their eyes met, and she pressed her lips together, wondering if he was thinking the same thing. Maybe we’d be perfect for each other.
“I think you should tell him you want to meet for coffee to talk about it but then maybe smash his windshield instead.”
A snort of laughter escaped her nose, and she covered her face. She’d never considered herself vindictive or petty, but as she packed a bag immediately after catching Connor in the act, an overwhelming urge to break something came over her. She remembered the weight of his Italian leather loafer as she plucked it from his meticulous shoe rack, the easy slide of his top dresser drawer, and the satisfying crunch of each watch face as it smashed beneath the blows. He broke her heart; she broke his shit.
“I’ll consider it.”
He licked his bottom lip and watched her. The heat from his stare sent shivers up her legs and into her belly. That was it. The look. She’d seen it in the store, at Thanksgiving, and now here. She wondered if he was sexually frustrated on account of Liv. Or maybe they were still sleeping together. Friends did that sometimes, didn’t they? The thought made her more anxious than she wanted to admit.
“I’ll get you that book,” she said, shattering the silence and the moment. She scrambled off the couch and down the hall to the guest room.
A tattered copy of Into Thin Air sat under a pile of clean laundry on her bed, and she retrieved it before spinning around and slamming square into Sam’s brick wall of a chest.
Wild Love Page 14