Reckless

by Lori Bell

  RECKLESS

  Lori Bell

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Lori Bell

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover photograph by Lori Bell

  Photographed on the cover, Michael Bell

  http://www.justanswer.com/medical/2cc7v-good-blow-head-forehead-right-eye-area.html

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_overdose

  Printed by CreateSpace

  ISBN 978 1539806806

  DEDICATION

  A lifelong bond? Or a lesson learned.

  Everyone we have ever met in our lives and held onto will exist as one of those.

  Some relationships are not meant to be. Others are either effortless or ultimately strengthened from weathering storms.

  This book is dedicated to those of you who know how to let go, and when to hold tighter.

  Chapter 1

  The tires on the full-size silver pickup truck crushed the rocks underneath them as Tate Ryman drove on the driveway that led up at least two-hundred yards to the detached double-car garage. He hit the brakes as he waited for one of the white carriage-style garage doors to lift. When he pulled his truck inside, he didn’t bother to close the garage door again. He just stepped out into the cold outside air and inhaled a long, slow breath through his nostrils. It was freezing and the wind in his face was brutal. But not nearly as brutal as what he had just gone through.

  Tate’s tan work boots, laced up over his ankles, stepped on the rocks outside of the garage as he walked the path up to the house. That one-hundred-year-old, refurbished two-story house had snow white siding, cobalt blue window shutters, and four matching round pillars under the wraparound porch with a high roofed overhang. The brisk wind cut right through his faded denim. He could have used a coat layered overtop his navy blue and green flannel shirt, which was left untucked and flapping at the ends in the wind.

  The entry door to the mudroom was unlocked and Tate stepped inside. He bent over to untie his boot laces, and then slipped out of them right there on the middle of the floor. He left the boots and moved up the two steps which led into the kitchen. His thick white socks on the cream tiled floor felt comfortable and warm. This was the first warmth his body had felt in hours. Tate knew he was chilled to the bone. Raw emotion, not just the weather, was to blame for that feeling.

  The kitchen was dark as the overcast sky wasn’t provid-ing any direct sunlight in the window above the stainless steel sink. Tate instantly smelled the coffee aroma. He looked on the counter and noticed the full, fresh-brewed pot. “Edie?” he called out, but it wasn’t his girlfriend of two years, who lived there with him, that came around the corner and stood in the kitchen doorway.

  Physically, Edie Klein was every man’s fantasy. Tall, shapely, blonde, and flawlessly beautiful. The first time Tate had laid eyes on her at a local bar in downtown Camden, Delaware, he looked twice and he stared long. And so did every other man in the room. Tate never thought a woman like her would give him a second glance, but she had.

  “Syd? What are you doing here?” Tate watched her flip the light switch on the wall. A frosted glass fixture that hung under a ceiling fan above the round wooden kitchen table lit up the room. Sydney Klein stood a fair distance away, wearing an oversized pale pink hoodie, a pair of baggy stone-washed jeans, and white tennis shoes. Tate could not ever remember seeing her with anything else on her feet except for white tennis shoes, any time of year. She was about three inches shorter than her sister and her shoulder-length auburn hair was considerably plain in comparison to Edie’s long blonde tresses. They were night and day –in appearance and personality– for sure.

  “I thought you could use a friend,” Syd answered, making brief eye contact with him before she made herself useful and walked over to the countertop to pour coffee into the empty glass mugs she already had sitting out.

  “Did Edie call you?” he asked, assuming so. They were sisters, but really not at all close.

  “She texted, and said you would be here–”

  “Alone? Because she’s tied up at work?” Tate wasn’t surprised. But, he had reached out to his girlfriend, and a part of him did hope she would put him first this time. Just this once. After all, he did just lose the greatest man he ever knew.

  “She’ll be here,” Sydney defended her sister.

  “Right,” he agreed, pulling out a chair from under the table when she placed both of the steaming coffees down. His on the far end of the table, and hers on the complete opposite. She never did sit close. She always kept just enough distance between herself and this man. And she had her reasons. “Thank you,” he smiled at her, and Sydney glanced down at her black coffee before she looked at him again. His sandy-brown hair was growing out a little around his ears and over his eyebrows. His blue eyes looked sad. Of course he was sad.

  They shared silence while they each took a few sips of their coffee. And then Tate started to open up to her. Sydney was too introverted to pry. But, she knew Tate would eventually talk to her. He always did. They were like two old friends with an easy connection. Tate was more likely to embrace that concept than Sydney. As strange as it seemed, each time she was with him, it felt as if she was starting all over to get up the nerve to talk to him. Really talk to him. But today, especially today, she was trying harder to feel at ease. He was hurting, and she felt pained just looking at him, watching him, listening to him speak.

  “He went peacefully,” Tate began. “It’s just a damn shame that he had to suffer at all to begin with. I mean, Alzheimer’s is just brutal. I think he did know we were there at the end. Mom believes that anyway, and Kathy.” Tate’s older sister, Kathy had been the only one to cry when her father left this world. Rex Ryman’s wife just held his hand a little tighter, encouraging him every inch of the way to just go. And Tate only sat there, close by, feeling both pained and numb at the very same time, if that were possible. His father was gone.

  Sydney was sympathetic. She slowly shook her head. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked, believing her sister was rotten to her core for not being there for this man. Edie should have been beside Tate at his dying father’s bedside this morning. If she loved him, she would have.

  “Keep the store afloat, as you always do,” he genuinely smiled at her. “I’ll be gone for a few days, at least until the funeral is over and I’m sure Ma will have a few things for me to help her with.”

  “You can count on me for that,” Sydney said, knowing she was about to double her hours at Ry’s Market downtown where she had been employed through high school and ever since she graduated eight years ago. She was just a cashier, as Edie enjoyed pointing out to her, but her knowledge of the store reached far beyond checking out shoppers at the register. The Rymans had been good to her. They hired her and she was in their lives long before Edie came on the scene and charmed her way into Tate’s life. And into his bed. She had his heart, that was for certain, as Sydney or anyone else could plainly see. No matter how reckless Edie was with Tate’s feelings, he looked past all of it. He would do absolutely anything for her.

  Tate’s livelihood had been construction. He was a man who needed to work with his hands, but he had spent the last year and a half managing the store for his ailing father. Rex and Mary Lou Ryman owned Ry’s Market and whether he wanted to or not, Tate now managed it. His sister, ten years older, who had moved to Florida with her attorney husband and two babie
s more than a decade ago, wanted no part of it. Except for her share of the stock. Tate loathed being the store manager, but he had done it for his parents. Now that his father was gone, Tate had a decision to make. A decision that he knew would break his seventy-five-year-old mother’s heart. Their store was a part of her and always would be. But, it wasn’t a draw for Tate. He didn’t feel a love for the family business pumping through his veins. For him, being in charge of a market –where scheduling, payroll, ordering groceries, catering, and meeting customer service needs were a part of his everyday routine– felt mundane. Tate preferred the challenge of constructing build-ings from the ground up with his bare hands. And he refused to live his life, day in and day out, growing old inside of that market. Just like his father had.

  “Syd, between us,” Tate said, leaning forward, hovering over his coffee cup, with both of his masculine hands curled around it. Sydney stared at those hands. The hands of a hard-working man. The hands she, long before her big sister ever met that man, had wanted to hold and to feel. Sydney could still remember the first time she saw Tate Ryman. He would come into the market sometimes, and she floated on air each and every time. She was sixteen years old then. And now, at twenty-six, that feeling remained. Stronger than ever. It was like a staple in her heart. “I want you to take over. Be the store manager. For chrissakes, Syd, you know the place inside out. Better than me or anyone else now.”

  Sydney blushed. He was talking crazy. He was grieving for his father. There was no way Tate could have been serious. He could not have meant what he said. I want you… to take over. Be the store manager. “But, it’s a family business, your family’s store,” she heard herself say, and then could have kicked herself for uttering those words. She settled for a self-inflicted pinch in the thigh underneath the table. She wanted this opportunity. She never dreamed of it though. Her only dream was one which was far from reality, and probably never would be. Edie, her sister of all people, was living that dream. In Tate’s arms.

  “My family,” Tate paused, “is incomplete now. My Pops adored you, and so does Ma. Kathy wants no part of the market. You know I don’t either. I was just doing what I had to do. But you, Syd, are a natural in there. I mean, come on, since high school Ry’s Market has been like your second home. You would have left long ago if you hated it, right?” Tate was partly correct. Sure, she felt at ease and in her element, in the job she held since she was a teenager. The root of her sustained growth there, however, stemmed from Sydney Klein’s fear of those jagged edges of change. She always stayed where she was comfortable. She didn’t dare venture out anywhere else. She was like that in her career of choice – and in her personal life. Sydney had a few friends in her circle, but her dating life was null. Her closest friends knew why. She wouldn’t allow room in her heart for another man.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Sydney admitted.

  “Don’t say anything yet,” Tate told her. “Just handle what needs to be done while I’m out, and I’ll talk to my mother. I do want to include her, but she’s so fragile right now, and this really is my decision. It’s my position and I want you to have it.”

  Sydney kept her hands on her lap underneath the table in front of her. They were trembling. She wasn’t scared of this opportunity. She had some faith in herself. She knew it would be a perfect fit for her. Store manager. Tate Ryman had given her something just now. A chance. He believed in her. No one else really ever had. Not like that anyway. And Sydney could feel herself falling even harder for this man.

  And just like any other time when the two of them were connecting, the kitchen door flung open from the mudroom, and in walked Edie.

  Under her long winter white coat, she was dressed to the nines in flared-legged black dress pants that fit high on her narrow waistline, and a skintight lavender turtleneck sweater with a sparkly silver infinity scarf which hung around her neck and rested on her full chest. A chest she paid to have enhanced when she was old enough not to need parental consent. In her black high heels, Edie was every bit as tall as Tate when he stood up from his chair and turned to face her as she rushed through the door and into his arms. “Oh, babes, come here. I’m so, so sorry about your Pops. He was a gem, just the best man ever.” Sydney all but rolled her eyes far back into her head as she remained seated in her chair at the opposite end of the table. Yeah, if he was such a wonderful man in her eyes, why wasn’t Edie there when he took his final breath today? Sydney watched her sister wrapped up in Tate’s arms. He held her close. He adored her, that much was blatantly obvious.

  Edie was still touching him, rubbing his back and shoulders, and placing her hands on his chest when they pulled apart. “Syd,” Edie finally acknowledged her. “I didn’t see your car out front.”

  “It’s in the shop,” she stated, and Tate quickly glanced at her, realizing he had missed seeing it as well.

  “You walked here? It’s freezing out…”

  “A friend gave me a ride,” Sydney replied. Tate was touched. Sydney did not have access to a vehicle, but she had found a way to get there, to be there to support him.

  “Well we do appreciate you being here, especially since I couldn’t be – at a moment’s notice,” Edie refrained from mentioning how she was only on an early lunch break and needed to return to the office again within the hour. She spoke, touching Tate’s face in Sydney’s presence, and he still had an arm around her waist. That hourglass waist. Sydney had been sucking in her stomach flab the entire time she was seated at the table with Tate. She saw how his flannel shirt hugged his biceps and outlined his tight abs. Even through clothes, Sydney could tell how incredibly toned he was. Her sister, as well. It sickened her, and even still she could imagine their fit and fabulous naked bodies intertwined in the heat of sex.

  “I have to go,” Sydney popped up from her chair too abruptly and bumped the table, wobbling her empty coffee mug a bit.

  “What about a ride?” Tate asked her, genuinely concerned about her being out in the cold. He wouldn’t allow her to walk and she knew it.

  “I’ll call for one,” she said, moving awkwardly past both of them and toward the door leading out into the mudroom. All Sydney heard after that was a meaningless okay, thanks for coming, from her sister. And when she looked up gracelessly at Tate, he had given her a genuine smile. She imagined he was thinking, remember what we talked about, as she stepped out of the door and closed it behind her.

  By the time Sydney had walked to the end of the long rocked driveway, she had called for a ride. A friend was en route to pick her up. She pulled up her pink hood, and shoved her hands inside of the front pouch of the fleece sweatshirt. Tate was watching her from the window that spanned almost the entire length of the mudroom. He had stepped out there in his socks to make sure Sydney would get home safely. While she stood curbside in the frigid weather, Edie called Tate back into the house. And he obliged by walking away from the window and going inside.

  Chapter 2

  Tate was relieved that it was over. After two days of everything pertaining to his father’s funeral, he almost felt as if he could breathe again. He would miss his father for the rest of his life, but after hearing everyone else say it to him in recent days, Tate began to believe it. His father was in a better place. He lived almost seventy years of a very good life. Sure, it should have been longer. And healthier his last couple of years. But, life was like that at times. Difficult. Trying. Unpredictable.

  He sat on the bottom step in the mudroom at the entrance to his house. He had ripped up the ugly green outdoor carpet that had been there when he moved in almost six years ago, and he replaced it with prefinished hardwood. He had chosen a barnwood color flooring that looked rustic and outdoorsy. He looked down at his thick white socks planted on that wood flooring now. It was a do-it-yourself project for any man with basic carpentry skills, but for Tate it was as simple as putting a puzzle together. He missed hardcore construction, and he wished the winter would pass quickly so he could get back to it. In the coming
months, his objective was to cut his ties with managing Ry’s Market. And Tate knew Sydney was the answer for him to transition out of the store and back to construction. He pulled out his cell phone from the rear pocket of his faded denim, and he sent her a text.

  Are you free for lunch?

  Tate walked over to the window, stood there, and looked out of it. He lived away from the in-town activity where it was nothing to walk down the street and find a hybrid vehicle following a horse and buggy. It took all kinds of people to keep Camden, Delaware afloat, even the Amish community. It was a small town with great history. Beautiful old houses, like the one Tate had snagged, as well as breathtaking new homes, and everything else in between. Tate’s parents had owned the only small-town grocery store in existence for over fifty years. They were the kind of people who believed in still helping their patrons carry their grocery bags to their car. And they knew them all by their first name. It was sleeting on the window as Tate stood near it. Winters were cold enough there, but temperatures seldom dropped to zero degrees. Clouds were common, and the Delaware Bay winds often caused fog. What Tate longed for and needed right now was sunlight. His wish was for it to be mid or late April when he could get back outside and build something. He retrieved his phone again from his pocket to be sure Sydney had not responded. The volume was maximized, and there were no new messages. She was going to be his ticket to moving on with his life. He needed her.

  *

  Sydney Klein sat in the cramped office at Ry’s Market. There was just enough room in there to fill the space of a walk-in closet, but instead there was a small metal desk and an old worn black leather swivel chair. The only thing not outdated in there was the laptop computer that Sydney was working on.

  It had been five days since Tate asked her to fill his shoes at his family’s market. At first, it felt awfully strange to walk into that cramped office and not be in there to punch her time card, request a day off, or to have something work-related to discuss with someone else who was in charge. Sydney had been on the receiving end of looks at the market from her coworkers, and more than a few questions about why she was in there, and what was she doing all day, and who was going to fill her spot at the register? It stressed her and made her feel frazzled as she unwrapped another Kraft caramel cube from its clear plastic wrapper and chewed while she punched the keys on the keypad in front of her. She always consumed more junk food