That magnetism. The thing that made him a star at fourteen and had kept him in the limelight all this time.
I fucking hated it.
"So yeah," I went on, stepping into the lot. "You basically missed it all."
Jonah threw up his hands. "West Ridge was closed!" he complained, distress written in every line of his body. "I had to go all the way up to Johnson Bridge to get across."
"It's been closed two years now," I said pointedly. "Ever since the flood."
He pressed his lips together in frustration and hissed out a low breath of pissed off recollection. "Right."
"If you'd come home since then..."
"I got it, Ruby," he interrupted, raking his hand through his dark hair. For one moment, his face was pure heartbreak, but as quickly as it came, he smoothed it away and forced his face back down into its usual arrogant smirk. He shook his head. "Anything else you want to say or can I go in and be with my family now?"
"Yeah I have something to say." I crossed my arms. "You should wait."
"You said it was almost done, I don't want to miss it." He stepped to the side.
I stepped right into his path. He was a full head taller than me now, something I never remembered about him until I saw him face to face. Or rather, face to collarbone.
He glowered a second and stepped to the right. I countered him.
"We should have had you in the band," he muttered. "You're a good dancer. But let me by."
"No."
"Ruby, he's my uncle."
"And he was my best friend!" I blurted.
He paused and looked down at me. "I thought my sister was your best friend."
My voice broke. "She was. I mean, she is." It was hitting me. Tenses were fucking me up. My words got ahead of my brain, coming out in a desperate, angry flood. "Gid is... he was a different kind of friend, like more of a mentor and I can't believe this! Like, he was working on the school play just last week and telling me about the music he was writing for it and now he's gone and.."
The sobs I'd been holding back all through the service suddenly broke free, which pissed me off because the last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of Jonah King. I wanted to rage at him for too many reasons to even count right now, but instead of quailing under the force of my righteous fury he suddenly pulled me into a hug.
I froze. His arms were around me, my nose pressed into his chest. "It's okay," he breathed. "I know. My uncle was a special guy, for sure."
I stiffened but for some reason I couldn't push him away. I hated that I didn't start hitting him. I hated that I wasn't yelling at the top of my lungs for him to let go, that didn't need his comfort.
Apparently I did. Because as he pulled me to him, my tears came harder and faster. I gulped great breaths, trying to stop my sobs and in the process filled my lungs with the smell of Jonah. He smelled fancier somehow, but I still could detect a little bit of something familiar there, the same scent that lingered in the air when he would pass through the room where Claire, Willa, Sadie and I were playing. I knew that scent and I knew him too, which was why my body sagged into his and I allowed myself to soak his shirt. But I hated him, and hated myself, the whole time I was doing it.
"It's okay," he said again, more hesitant this time. I felt his arms tighten around me, his fingers sinking into the wool of my coat. Clinging, even. Like he needed my comfort as much as I needed his.
His familiar scent was playing havoc with my memories, steeped in tender nostalgia. My body didn't feel connected to my brain anymore.
To my shock, I felt my own arms reach up and squeeze him.
He exhaled in a rush and pulled back. The corner of his mouth tugged into that same studied smile I'd seen on posters and magazine covers my whole fucking life. "Thanks, Ruby. I think I needed that." And in one smooth motion he stepped around me and bounded into the funeral home.
I watched him with my mouth open, wanting to say something but not knowing what the hell it was.
He was such a fucking asshole.
Crown Creek is a small town. Too small to fit something as big as Jonah King's ego.
My best friend's older brother is a huge rockstar now. If he believes that lets him get away with screwing over his family the way he did, he's wrong.
I always hated what he did to them. I always hated him. But then he shows up again. A different man from the one I remember. He's humbled. Grieving.
Lost.
And suddenly I’m singing a different tune. Instead of shouting, I’m saying, “touch me.” I’m saying, “kiss me again.” I’m saying, “please… please.” I’m saying, “I had you all wrong. And I’m sorry.” But I want a future and there’s no future with Jonah King. I’m a small-town kindergarten teacher and he’s a big time celebrity. We come from different worlds, but the music we make together is too beautiful to ignore.
Two pages in and I knew - what you ask?
I knew this new book would be an all-consuming, maddening, impassioned romance I would be blocking out reality to digest. - Jackie, Amazon reviewer
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Excerpt from Fool Me Once
Autumn
Egg nog is disgusting.
There. I said it. Maybe this time I’ll remember and not try to gag it down when it’s offered to me.
But my mother believed that Christmas wasn’t Christmas without a cup of her homemade eggnog in hand. After a marathon cookie-baking session, she opened her fridge and let out such a cry of despair over the lack of eggs for eggnog that my oldest-daughter-guilt kicked into overdrive. “I’ll go grab some,” I promised her, shoving my arms into the oversized parka I inherited — or to be more accurate, stole — from my father.
“Really? Oh, Autumn thank you!” She stole a worried glance out the steamy kitchen window. “But it’s getting worse out there.”
I kissed her cheek. “Didn’t you teach me how to drive in the snow? I’ll be fine. Drink your noxious potion and I’ll be right back.”
My mother’s eyes gleamed at me from over the chipped candy cane mug that was her nog-receptacle of choice. The rum was already coloring her cheeks. “Would I be a bad mother if I told you to hurry?” she asked as she took a healthy slug.
I involuntarily gagged. “I won’t be a moment.”
The nog-gods must have smiled on my mother, because as I waited at the end of her drive, a plow went by, allowing me to jump right behind it and enjoy clear roads straight into town. Nice and Easy Mart actually had another car in the lot besides mine, which surprised me, and as I parked, I caught a glimpse of a really fancy looking car pulling in. Must be one of the vacationers, I thought. Coming in to spend the holiday at their lodge.
No one from Reckless Falls would have a car like that, that was for certain.
The flakes were falling thick and fast and everything was so silent and muffled I felt like I had cotton balls in my ears. I puffed my way to the door and pushed into the overheated warmth, immediately unwinding my scarf and unzipping my parka.
“Hey Mr. Foster!” I called out to the sad-looking old man behind the counter. “Thanks for staying open.”
“Hardly worth the effort,” he grumbled. “It’s just a few flakes, but people act like it’s a blizzard. I’ll tell you, back when I was a kid...”
“I know, right?” I said cheerily, breezing my way to the refrigerated back wall. “It’s terrible.” The jingle of the bell over the door made me sigh in relief that someone else was in here to absorb Joe Foster’s complaints. I just wanted to grab these eggs and get back....
“Autumn.”
At the sound of his voice, my heart skipped and I dropped the eggs. They splattered across the floor in front of me like a Jackson Pollack painting, but I didn’t even care because goosebumps had broken out over the whole of my body just hearing his voice again. Did I really just hear Cole?
I looked up and saw him standing there. Yes, my brain registered dully. That is Cole. He is here.
There was no emotion co
nnected to this thought. Just a clinical observation of the facts.
Cole smiled his smile, the one I still saw when I closed my eyes. He stepped forward...
Wow, his shoes are really nice, I noted nonsensically. Then suddenly I stiffened as instinct took over. “Wait!” I waved him off.
But he didn’t listen to me. Like usual. He moved towards me... and stepped directly into the goopy, shattered egg yolks at my feet.
“Oh.” He looked down. “Yeah.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Yeah.”
“You dropped your eggs.”
“No kidding.”
“I feel like I should be making an egg joke here.”
I swallowed back my irritation. How in the hell is Cole Granger back from the fucking dead and standing in front of me trying to make egg jokes? Is this really happening?
“Please don’t.”
His eyes flicked up from his shoe. Goddamn. Those lashes. Goddamn. “Like maybe ask you how you like them in the morning?”
“Stop, Cole.”
“But I know that already. How you like your eggs. Fried over easy in an obscene amount of butter.”
Anger flashed in my veins. “You need to stop,” I said evenly, gritting my teeth.
His eyes softened. “Sorry, Autumn. I’m just... I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“It’s Christmas, Cole.”
“Yeah. Uh, Merry Christmas.”
I waited for a beat. “I’m Jewish now. I converted.”
He looked mortified. Good. “Oh, shit, sorry. Happy Hanukkah.”
I could only hold out for a second before my lip twitched. “No I didn’t. I’m just messing with you.”
“Oh, so you can give me shit, but I can’t give you shit?” he challenged me, eyes twinkling. God, I always loved that dimple. It was only a certain smile that showed it, so when it appeared it always felt like a secret he kept, just for me.
Stop it, Autumn. Just fucking stop it. I lifted my chin.
“That’s right.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because you deserve to have shit given to you.”
It came out meaner than I wanted it to, and I could see that my words hit him like a blow. The cocky tilt of his head slumped forward and he kind of deflated. That wasn’t what I wanted to see, no matter how badly he’d hurt me. I took a deep breath. “Look, I didn’t mean...”
“No,” he exhaled through his teeth with a slight whistling sound. There were still snowflakes trapped in his hair, even in the extreme over-warmth of the store. I wanted to brush them out of his hair for him, but that would mean touching him and I wasn’t sure I could do that without wrapping my hands around his throat. He licked his lips, making them shine wetly, kiss-ably. “I deserved that.”
“Maybe you did at the time, but it’s been years.” I straightened my shoulders, proud of my diplomatic tone.
“I know. Too long.”
My diplomacy instantly wavered. “No,” I spat. “I wouldn’t say that.”
He deflated a bit more and a perverse part of me liked that I was hurting him. It was shitty and totally against the Christmas spirit, but fuck it. Cole Granger was an asshole and he’d broken my heart.
“You’re here for Christmas?” he asked, deftly changing the subject away from our whirlwind, doomed romance.
I nodded. It was too complicated to get into it much more than that. “Christmas and family stuff. But I live just outside of town now.”
“Really?” The shock of this revelation was evident in his voice. I guess he figured I was serious when I told him I was joining the Peace Corps.
I nodded. “Sometimes you just need to be by the people who love you.”
He winced again, and even though I hadn’t been trying to hurt him, I was glad I’d scored an unexpected point.
“So you’re like, a local again?”
“As local as you can get. I’m a teacher now.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
"Just like you wanted?"
"Just like I wanted," I said, folding my arms across my chest. Maybe my plans about marrying him had crashed and burned but that didn't mean I was going to let the rest of my life get screwed up too.
“What do you teach?” he asked, even though I could tell by the look in his eye that he knew the answer.
I nodded. “That's right. Sharing with occasional crowd control. I’m a kindergarten teacher. Just like I said I'd be.”
He blinked as he processed this new information. Was there sadness there, if only for a second? Fuck him. He didn't get to be sad about me moving on. He swallowed a little. "So Mrs. Hope retired. Finally. Good god, how old was she?”
“She was only sixty-five when she retired, Cole. She just seemed old because you were a kid.”
“She was ancient. Older than the dinosaurs.”
“And damned good at her job too. When she retired, they hired two of us to replace her.”
“Wow, really?”
“Me and Brynn Reese.”
This time when he winced I had no idea why. “There are that many kids in the school? Wow.”
“Town’s changing, Cole.”
“I noticed on the drive in. Not sure I like it that much.”
I had to laugh and I hated how he was still his charming self. It was impossible to stay mad at him and that was the problem. “It hasn’t changed that much. The core of it is still the same. Lots of people either stayed or are realizing that they missed home too much and are coming back.”
This time I had no idea what the look in his eyes meant. It seemed almost wistful, though I knew that Cole Granger had never been wistful in his life. Being wistful would mean he had to admit he missed something... and that he’d been wrong to leave....
Shit. Don’t think these thoughts. He knows you too well, he can...
“You thinking maybe I’m one of those people, Red?”
I’d forgotten how much I loved when he called me that. Loved and then hated it. I lifted my chin higher. “Well, you’re here at Christmas time. That’s a pretty good indication that you miss it here.”
I expected him to protest, but he just smiled his crooked smile. “Winter is the best season here.”
I nodded. “The frozen falls.”
“The smell of wood smoke from a far off chimney.”
“Ah, so poetic.”
“Oh, you like that? Is it turning you on?”
You know what turns me on, I didn’t say. I took a deliberate step back. Away from his maddening nearness. Being so close to him was doing strange things to my body. I felt like I’d lost my bearings, my internal compass needle spinning wildly, around and around. “Keep talking poetry at me, Slick.”
He grinned at the old nickname. The guy knew he could charm the pants off a scarecrow. It might be his only saving grace. “I also like fires when you’re inside too. The heat on your naked skin when you make love in front of a wood stove...”
“Jesus, Cole.”
“What? I’m telling you what I like about winter.”
My cheeks were flaming. “Well, stop.” Too many memories.
He leaned in, deftly stepping around the egg. “Sorry, Red.” I could smell the heat, the wet wool of his gorgeous peacoat, and him. He smelled the same as he did in my memories. “It was good to see you.”
“Good to see you too.” I bit my lip, trying to stop talking, to stem the tide of words, but my tongue just kept moving without my brain. “Where are you staying?”
“Derek’s.”
“How’s your brother doing?”
“Same. Chip on his shoulder the size of the rock of Gibraltar, so everything’s normal in Derek-land.”
I grinned. “Tell him I said hey.”
“I will.”
My tongue was moving again. “Cole?”
“Yes, Red?”
I grinned reflexively. “A couple of us are getting together at Reese’s pub tonight. I’m sure everyone would love to see you.
”
The way he looked at me sent my heart racing. I could feel the blush spreading across my cheeks, even before he asked me, “Are you going to be there, Autumn?”
“I am.” My voice was remarkably composed, given the storm that raged inside of me.
He nodded once, as decisive as could be. “Then I’ll be there.”
“Okay,” I squeaked. My composure was cracking. “See you.”
I waited, staring at his broad back as he walked back up the aisle, grabbed something off the shelf and went over to the counter. I ducked behind an end-cap, listening to the rumbling, creaky sounds of Old Joe’s bitching. Then I waited some more, taking deep steadying breaths.
When the bell over the door jingled, I took a deep breath and began counting. When I reached sixty, I rushed blindly to the front and pushed the door open, hurtling into my car where I slammed the door shut behind me and sped off, my heart racing the whole way home.
It wasn’t until I was back in my mom’s driveway that I realized I had forgotten the eggs.
Cole
My brother Derek was only two years older than me, but he wore those years like a funeral shroud, wrapping himself in his cares to the point where he was almost stooped over.
When I saw him standing there, on the porch outside of the secluded rented carriage house he'd sequestered himself in, I felt a small pit open up in my stomach.
With it came the hollow feeling of regret. I should be here. Helping him. It wasn't exactly fair that he got stuck caring for our parents' place now that they'd fucked on out of here and into a Florida condo. It was just sort of how things worked out, proximity wise. And he was older too. So, that was sort of his job.
Or at least that's how I rationalized it to myself back in New York. But now that I was here, I wondered what kind of toll it was taking on him. Derek’s depression seemed to be on an uptick, or at least that’s what he’d been telling me whenever I bothered to call him up to check.
Soft Wild Ache (Crown Creek) Page 22