A Lot Like Home

by Kat Cantrell

  Isaiah cleared his throat, likely sensing that was his cue to smooth things over. “If you think this building is too small, I had another thought. What about expanding the place where you currently teach?”

  For Isaiah, she had nothing but genuine cheer, blinding him with a megawatt grin. “You know what? I was thinking the same thing.”

  And they were off and chatting about their mutual ideas, ignoring everyone else. Tristan stared at the two of them as if he’d been hit in the face by a tree branch.

  “Guess that’s the first party you haven’t been invited to,” Caleb commented mildly. “Tough break.”

  “Shut up, Hardy.” Tristan scowled. “If we’re not using this as the schoolhouse, what do you want to do with it?”

  The subject change didn’t fool Caleb. Cassidy’s shutout had stuck in Tristan’s craw something fierce. Probably it would be good for him to spend some more time in Cassidy’s company. He could stand to gain some humility in that department. But that was a long game, and Caleb wasn’t in the mood to push it today. He had bigger fish to fry.

  “It needs to be an art studio again,” he said decisively and had the guy in mind to handle it. “That’s right up Rowe’s alley, and he needs a project like this.”

  “Because he hasn’t started drawing again yet?” Tristan guessed quietly.

  That was why he and Tristan had survived a decade plus together. They were in sync in so many ways, which was the only reason Caleb would discuss something so personal as Rowe’s difficult road to recovery with someone else. “Not since the surgery after Syria. Maybe this will jog something loose.”

  Tristan nodded, his lips pursed. “That means I’m still on schoolhouse duty, right?”

  “I need someone I can trust on that. It’s the most important project thus far.”

  The atmosphere in the empty storefront shifted, and he didn’t have to glance up to know that Havana had crossed the threshold. But being aware of her presence didn’t stop the hard punch to his heart when he did meet her gaze. The long red ponytail at her crown swung against her shoulders as she skirted a large wooden block that had probably been a platform for the metal structures that had once apparently been on display here. She had a rectangular leather portfolio under one arm, but he couldn’t seem to tear his attention from her arresting face.

  How did she get more beautiful with each passing day?

  He hadn’t seen her since she’d bailed after his balcony soul-baring routine. He got it. She had no room in her life for a relationship with someone who wasn’t in any kind of emotional condition to give her the commitment she needed.

  “I have some plans drawn up,” she said by way of greeting. “I wanted to show them to you before I presented them to Damian.”

  She’d come to him first. That pleased him enormously. It shouldn’t. There was no competition here, and if there was, both men had already lost. He cleared the dust from his throat that she’d stirred up with her entrance. “Sure. I have a makeshift office in the building next to the antique store. You want to go there?”

  She nodded. “Lead the way.”

  Caleb called out to the others that he was leaving. The walk across the street wasn’t nearly long enough for him to get the wild beat of his pulse under control. He ached to lace his fingers with hers, to bond with her in some small way, just to assure himself that somehow everything would be okay.

  But the magic he’d started to believe in, that he’d felt in the very earth at the springs, seemed to have deserted him, if it had ever really existed in the first place.

  When they got to the shop he’d commandeered for the mayor’s office, he unlocked the door and held it open for her. The sweet brush of her body against his as she entered shouldn’t be such a thrill, but he couldn’t help his reaction to her any more than he could help the impossible roadblocks that seemed to eternally stand between them.

  He shut the door behind him, and she turned, mouth open to speak, but he’d moved closer to her than she’d apparently guessed because she froze. But she didn’t step back, and the space surrounding them crackled with energy and anticipation. No different than it normally did, but he had a heightened sense of awareness that there was also a lot unsaid.

  He didn’t say any of it though. His fingers burned to touch her, and he couldn’t seem to stop himself from reaching out to brush back a stray bit of hair that had rebelled against her ponytail holder.

  She leaned into his touch ever so slightly, and that was all the encouragement he needed to sweep her into his arms. The leather portfolio thunked to the floor as her arms came around him in tandem, and their lips met in a torrid kiss that should have discharged the electricity swirling between them.

  It didn’t. The energy intensified, and he thought he might burst clear out of his skin from all the things that Havana did to his insides. He soared along a bright stretch of heaven until she pulled back, her torso rising and falling as she tried to catch her breath.

  “Caleb—”

  “Don’t say it,” he murmured, loath to break the spell. “Let me kiss you, and then we can argue about it later.”

  When she was under his fingers, their mouths in perfect alignment—and not capable of hashing out yet another variation of why they wouldn’t work together—the world made sense. Barriers vanished. He wanted to stay in that place.

  She shook her head, but not one iota of the vibe between them faded. “I don’t want to argue at all—”

  “Then don’t,” he cut in, emboldened by the indecision he could see flitting around in her gaze. What if they could spend all their time together kissing instead of arguing? Then no one had to think about logic and issues and other stuff that shouldn’t have become such a big deal.

  “Then stop trying to confuse me!” She threw up a hand as if to ward him off, though he hadn’t moved.

  “You wanted that kiss as much as I did. Don’t deny it.”

  “I…” She couldn’t, that much was clear. Probably because she knew he’d call her a liar. “Maybe we can call it a lapse in judgment. Can we leave it at that?”

  “So now I’m that fattening piece of cake you think isn’t good for you, but you can’t resist a taste?” Anger licked through his gut as her back-and-forth started to fray at his temper. “News flash. I’m not the kind of guy you can take a bite of and walk away.”

  “Because you’re that good of a kisser?” Her own temper started flaring in the depths of her blue eyes. “That’s so vain. I can say no to cake all day long, thank you.”

  “Because I’m not going to let you,” he countered, opting not to call her out on that one either since clearly that wasn’t true. “I don’t do things by half. I don’t let go easily. And I can’t stop the way I feel about you.”

  Probably that was the last thing he should have said, but he was so tired of dancing around her. So tired of feeling a little bit broken and wishing she’d hold him together a little longer before bouncing away.

  She went so still he thought about checking her pulse, but then she blinked about twenty times and exhaled. “What way is that?”

  Since she’d asked, he told her.

  “Like the carpet has been pulled out from under me repeatedly. As if I can’t quite catch my breath. Sunlight is brighter when you’re around.” He bit off the rest, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I’m sure there’s more where that came from. But you don’t want to hear any of that because you think I’m going to hurt you, so you don’t even give me a chance. I’m trying here, Havana. Can’t you see how hard I’m working to earn my way into your life?”

  She flinched, recoiling enough to snap her ponytail backward. “Earn your way? Is that what you’re doing?”

  “Yeah.” Too caught up in the reconciliation of his demons, he couldn’t look at her any longer and paced the length of his makeshift office. “I’ve got blood on my hands. I get that you don’t trust me enough to let me touch you with them. Where’s the breaking point though? When will it be enough for you
to finally say, okay Caleb—you can stop now and just be with me?”

  “Is that what you’re waiting on?” she whispered. “For me to recognize that you’ve atoned for what happened in Syria? I’ve never even once thought about that as a reason we can’t be together, because that’s not for me to judge. You have to get that straight with yourself.”

  He shut his eyes for a beat as the truth of that—the inescapable logic—settled deep inside. Those were all hollow excuses for something that shouldn’t be such an insurmountable problem. “Then what’s the real issue here? Why are we doing this to ourselves?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice broke, and her obvious anguish burrowed into his heart until he wanted to pull her into his embrace to hug it away. But he didn’t. This was too important to cut off prematurely because they both hurt. “Every time I think about throwing caution to the wind, I get this panicky feeling in my chest and it makes me shut down.”

  All at once, he got it, cursing himself for being so colossally blind. “This is about you staying in control. Still.”

  She nodded once as if processing and finally arriving at the conclusion that he might be on to something. “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. I’m sorry if you thought this was about you. It’s not.”

  “But you’re making it about me by not figuring out how to stop it.”

  “I didn’t mean to.” She sniffled miserably. “I’m hurting you, which is the last thing I wanted. I tried to keep you at arm’s length to avoid that. It’s your own fault that you didn’t listen to me.”

  “I’ll accept that.” It didn’t change anything to assign the proper blame for this situation. “Where does that leave us?”

  “No place different than before. We’re still working together, and I have my own stuff to sort through before you can say okay, Havana. That’s enough now.” She lifted her lips in a watery smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  That was the tipping point. He threw his own caution to the wind and gathered her up in his arms for a bittersweet embrace that had none of the fire of the first one. Instead, there was a whole lot of understanding, regret, and just plain emotion wrapped up in it.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said into her hair, pausing long enough to inhale the coconut notes. “You have an open invitation to visit the mayor’s office anytime you feel like barging in here to sweep me off my feet.”

  “Noted,” she said with more lightness than he’d have expected, which eased the pinch in his heart.

  Somehow he let her go and spent another twenty minutes in her company as he went over the plans with her. He could do this. Patience wasn’t his favorite virtue, but he had honed his to a fine point as a SEAL. Havana was worth it.

  Nothing had changed. And yet everything had. For the first time, he had hope they might eventually figure this out.

  Eighteen

  Havana’s chest went numb as she walked away from Caleb for what she fully expected to be the last time. Oh, she’d see him again, definitely. The town wasn’t going to plan itself. But she had no illusions about whether he’d really wait around for her to figure out how to stop being such a control freak about everything.

  Men didn’t wait. Not really. Caleb might think he’d been speaking the truth when he’d said he wasn’t going anywhere. He might even do it too, for a little while. Until he found someone else who wasn’t so difficult and then she’d be nothing but a memory. After all, that’s what people did when they got tired of her tendency to direct everything to the nth degree—they disappointed her. Ember and Cole were two really vivid examples of a pattern she’d been dealing with her entire life.

  Havana presented her plan to Damian, got the green light from his investors—with the six-month caveat—and the revamp of Superstition Springs geared up in a big way. She volunteered for cleanup duty since Caleb needed every extra hand he could get. And it was solid, mindless work that had the benefit of obvious progress as a natural reward system. There was immediate gratification as she cleared a wide swath of debris in first one building and then a second.

  This was how she could help for now, and it had to be enough.

  The cleanup task took the better part of a week. She rarely crossed paths with Caleb, which she didn’t believe for a second was an accident. He was giving her space, which she appreciated. At first.

  Eventually she caught herself missing him. At night she drifted to the window of her bedroom in hopes of catching him out on his balcony.

  She’d come to think of that as their place, a private venue where she could count on having an honest conversation with some romance thrown in. But he’d obviously gotten too busy to spend time there. Sometimes she imagined that he didn’t go out on the balcony because he missed her as well, and it was too painful to be out there by himself. Probably it was the former.

  Good thing he never did appear. Because as the week wore on, she’d probably be unable to stop herself from joining him, and then where would they be? Kissing again in a pure rush of feeling and emotion with no clear path forward. That would be awful.

  Except for the kissing part. And the way he made her feel, as if she might float away if he didn’t have such a solid grip on her. That part was so amazing too. She couldn’t help but think about what it might be like if he’d tilted his head toward the bedroom in silent invitation and she took him up on it, following him through the door to a place where they could lose themselves in each other, heightening their bond in the most physical way.

  But they hadn’t gotten that far. Her fault. Mostly it was better that way. Probably.

  At the end of the week, she’d finally moved on to the old art studio. She and Aria had been teaming up in the mornings to fill the large temporary dumpsters that Caleb had rented from a waste management company out of Bastrop. They’d left the art studio for last because it had the most junk still left over from its last tenant in the eighties.

  They’d been working for about thirty minutes when Havana had enough of a pile that she was ready to start making trips to transfer the debris to the nearest dumpster. But when she stepped outside for the first time that day, someone was leaning over near the door, hand over her eyes as she peered inside.

  When the woman straightened and met her gaze, Havana’s hands lost all feeling. The metal scraps fell from her nerveless fingers.

  Mom.

  No. Havana’s throat closed, even as her heart cried out. Her mother was dead.

  This woman was very much alive, with red-gold highlights that Havana had always envied and an attitude problem that eight years hadn’t erased apparently, judging by the sharp angle of her sister’s jutted hip.

  “Ember. What are you doing here?” Havana asked more calmly than should have been possible given how her pulse had skyrocketed.

  Instantly Ember’s face shuttered as they stared at each other. “I could ask you the same thing. I was looking for Aria. The hot new mayor said she was here.”

  Havana blinked at Ember’s off-the-cuff description of Caleb but let it ride. He was a beautiful man, inside and out, so she had no call to pull out her cat’s claws because another female had noticed him. “She is. I am too. Is there something you want?”

  Look how civil they were being. She hadn’t spoken to Ember in eight years and wouldn’t be today if Havana hadn’t come back home. The things unsaid seethed between them, but she bit them back until she had a better feel for how this surprise encounter was going to go down.

  “I’m not sure what business it is of yours,” Ember said point-blank. “Don’t let me get in the way of you running back to your life in Austin.”

  Ah, yes. The famous Nixon temper that had somehow skipped Aria and doled out her share equally among Havana and Ember.

  “Same goes, except I have to insert ‘wherever you ended up’ since you didn’t bother to let me know.”

  Ember sighed and smoothed back her silky curls that even a scorching Texas spring couldn’t wilt. “Is that still stuck in your craw, Van? That was a m
illion years ago.”

  “Funny, it feels like yesterday,” she countered with a fierceness that the situation didn’t warrant, but it had been a long time since someone called her Van. And hearing her sister use it so casually dug at a tender place inside that longed for connection and family and people to care about who cared about her in return.

  Which, outside of Aria, she’d yet to actually cultivate.

  How much of that was her fault? One hundred percent?

  Havana sucked in a breath through her nose, hoping it would calm her. The fallout with Ember was a long time ago. Why was she so stuck in the past? Ember wasn’t a seventeen-year-old girl anymore, knocked up and defiant about it. In fact, she must have a child somewhere around here that Havana had never even met. Was she really going to stand here and argue about ancient history?

  If even fifty percent of the reason Havana felt so empty inside sometimes was her own fault, that meant there was something she could do to change it. She could figure out what Ember needed from her instead of telling her what she needed. Starting now.

  “I’m sorry,” she told Ember sincerely, and with it, the knot in her chest eased. “I was just shocked to see you. I’m not handling this well. How are you? Are you staying in La Grange or someplace else?”

  “With Serenity,” Ember offered cautiously, her gaze tight on Havana’s face as if trying to ensure she didn’t miss the blindside headed her way.

  Caleb got that look sometimes. What was happening with him—or not happening more like—was definitely her fault. She just didn’t know how to stop waiting for him to show his true colors. There was a reason she always tried to seize control of every situation, including the one that had led to her fall out with Ember—she had a bone-deep need to keep giving herself choices and robbing everyone else of them. Then no one had the power to hurt her.

  In turn, she hurt them instead. Not on purpose. But that didn’t change facts. If she wanted to stop, today would be the opportune time to take that first step.