by Amelia Wilde
I look down into my wine. It’s true. Just after Conrad and I started dating seriously, I brought him home to spend the Fourth of July at Lakewood. He was his usual self—focused on having a good time. Now that I look back, he was only interested in having a good time, even if it meant being an asshole to everyone else, including me. Sharon hadn’t liked him, either. My mother was not a fan. And Cece…of course she hated him. I chalked it up to the heat, why everyone seemed to be in an edgy mood.
“No. I guess not.”
Cece’s expression is somewhere between sympathy and serious. I can’t just not tell her. “What happened, Val? You said you’d never come back to Lakewood.”
That makes me laugh. “I said a lot of things when I was eighteen.”
“You meant it, though.”
“Fine.” I sigh. “Things came to a head a couple months ago.” It makes my throat tight to say this. “I had a...” I can’t find the words, but Cece waits. “I realized I might be pregnant.”
Her mouth drops open. “Oh my God, Val, but—”
“I wasn’t.” I rush the words out before she gets any other ideas. “Well, I was, and then I wasn’t.” I can’t bring myself to say the word miscarriage. “I don’t know what happened. Stress, maybe, from the job?” I’d had an entry-level job at a more prestigious marketing firm in the city, but the pay was shit and the hours were way longer than any shift I’d worked at the Short Stack. “Conrad lost his mind. He completely shut down.” His words had been like acid arrows, and it makes me flinch just to think of the conversation we had after I told him I was worried. I let out a bitter laugh. “He was so damn relieved when it…when it ended. He couldn’t even hide it.”
“And then he kicked you out?”
“Not right then. About a week after…all of it went down. I got home from work one day, and he was waiting there to tell me it just wasn’t going to work out. The pregnancy scare had made him realize that he didn’t want to be with me.”
Cece’s lips are curled in disgust. “What a bastard. After four years. Jesus. Also, that’s not a fucking scare. That’s real.”
“That’s when I texted you.” I have to move on from this topic. I have to. Cece nods. “I got a different place and tried to make it work, but...” I let my voice trail off. The rent had been too damn high. The rent, the bills—Conrad had mostly taken care of those kinds of things. He never had to worry about money. “I quit my temp job two weeks ago and moved back the same day. I just need to...” I don’t know what the hell I need to do. “I just need some time, I guess. Then I’ll be on my way.”
“You could just stay, you know.” Cece grins. “I missed you.”
Could I? I don’t know. It didn’t seem like there was much for me in this place when I graduated high school and headed to college. It still doesn’t. But at least I have a friend. And what the hell else do I have to lose? Nothing.
I don’t have anything to lose.
It makes me think of Ryder. Excitement spikes out from my chest.
“Whoa,” says Cece. “What are you thinking about? You look like you just remembered something sexy.”
“I’ll never tell.”
“Yes, you will.” Cece leans forward, eyes bright. “Tell me. Tell me right now.”
Part of me wants to tell her, but another part hesitates. He’s got a daughter, for God’s sake. I’m clearly not cut out for any of that, even if he was interested in something more than a few dates, a fling. I’m sure he’s not. I’m sure of it.
I give Cece a coy look and order more wine instead.
14
Ryder
“Come in!”
The sound of my brother’s voice takes me totally aback. For once, he doesn’t sound pissed off, ready to come after me with swinging fists. And to think he was a nerd in high school. Back then, he never would have raised a hand to anybody. It’s not like he’s ever actually punched me, I guess, but when I joined the Army two weeks after graduation, he was the most irate I’ve ever seen him. Looking back, maybe it was fear that made him so pissed off.
The week before I left was a tense one, to say the least.
“Hello!” Minnie calls the word from her spot in my arms, waving merrily even though I haven’t opened the door yet.
“Wait a second, sweetheart,” I tell her, then take a deep breath and open the door.
We step into the foyer of exactly the kind of house I’d always expected my brother to own: big and tidy and everything in neutral shades. Somewhere, I guarantee it, he’s got an office with one of those computers with three separate monitors or some shit like that. It’s probably in the basement. He’s got an office in town for all his other business ventures. Jamie is one of those small-town entrepreneurs who’s got his hands in every single market, including landscaping. Now that daycare is a done deal, I’ll be going out with him on jobs. We’ve discussed that much in a series of terse texts.
“I’m in the kitchen. You can come on back.”
I shouldn’t be this nervous to see him, but it’s been a few years, and things have obviously changed. I follow the sound of his voice down a hallway with hardwood floors—nice as fuck—and into a wide, bright kitchen. My brother, skinnier than me with dark hair, stands at the sink. His hands work over a carrot he’s peeling, one of those thick orange ones that’s clearly from the farmer’s market.
Lakewood would have a farmer’s market.
“Say ‘Hello, Uncle Jamie,’” I tell Minnie.
“Hi, Uncle Jamie,” she says, looking shy, pulling her baby doll closer in.
My brother takes a deep breath and sets the peeler down in the sink alongside the carrot, then turns. For all our differences, he has the same eyes as I do. And Minnie.
“Hey, squirt,” he says, and then he can’t help himself. He grins at her, and she gives him her biggest toddler smile. Nobody can help themselves around Minnie. “Nice to meet you. Finally.” It’s a jab at me, but a pretty mild one, considering.
I look him in the eye, the three of us standing there in silence. Well, screw that. I’ve got limited time here, and Jamie was never the enemy. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he says back, sticking his hands in his pockets.
“About leaving town without warning you…”
He wrinkles his forehead. “Are you talking about six years ago?”
“Yeah. About that—”
“That was a total di—” Minnie is still grinning at him, and he cuts himself off abruptly. “That—that was a silly thing to do.”
“The silliest thing to do,” I echo him.
“Silly,” says Minnie solemnly.
“I’m sorry.”
Jamie scowls at me for a split second, but Minnie is just too damn cute. “You missed out on a lot.”
“Like what?”
“Jamie, who are these lovely people?” The voice singing out from behind us is somehow familiar, but I can’t place it until she flits by me, moving across the kitchen and planting a kiss on Jamie’s cheek. Then she laughs like this is all some kind of wonderful joke. “Ryder! Jamie didn’t say you were coming to visit.”
I gape at her, my mouth hanging open.
“Hi!” Minnie says, waving.
“Hi, sweetheart! What’s your name?”
“I’m Minnie!” says Minnie, and immediately starts squirming to get out of my arms. “Minnie!”
I finally break out of my own stunned silence. “Poppy Harwood, what are you doing with my brother?” Yes, she kissed him on the cheek, but there’s no way. There’s no way that he and Poppy Harwood, the queen of his class in high school, are—
She laughs, flipping her blonde hair over her shoulder. “He’s a good roommate.” Then she crouches down, a big grin on her face.
Minnie untangles herself from my arms and goes shyly over to her, tentatively holding out her baby doll. “Baby doll,” she says, and then pushes it out another two inches.
Poppy claps one hand to her chest and reaches out to take the doll, still holding it within Minnie’s r
each. “Oh, she’s beautiful,” she says. “What’s her name?”
“It’s a baby doll,” says Minnie.
I have to go back to my brother on this because I have to know how he landed the most popular girl in his class—no, the entire school. Nobody was on a higher tier than Poppy Harwood. Homecoming Queen. Prom Queen. All that shit, and then amplified a thousand times over. And here she is, fawning over Minnie’s doll like she’s just a regular person.
Living with my brother, like he’s not the most regular nerd you’ve ever met in your life.
He glances down at the pair of them and then turns back to the sink. The carrot and the peeler are out in a flash and on a clean paper towel next to the sink, and then he’s reaching into the fridge for a couple of beers.
No formal invitation needed. I’m in.
It feels almost normal following him out to the back deck. It feels almost right. I’ll miss this at the end of the summer when I leave.
The patio has a furniture set—a real, honest-to-god set of patio furniture—and we both take seats. Open beers. Look at each other one more time.
“You have patio furniture, Jamie. What else have I missed?”
“Poppy, for one,” he says with a satisfied little smile that I’ve never seen on his face before.
“Are you actually just roommates? Or did you marry her in secret?”
He rolls his eyes. “No, asshat. I didn’t marry her without telling you.”
“You could have.”
“You’d have deserved it.” He’s damn right, too. I didn’t tell him—or my parents—that Angie was pregnant until Minnie was born. I was that fucking ashamed of the whole thing. Not Minnie herself—I could never be ashamed of her. But Angie—shit. That was a disaster from the very beginning.
“I know.” The words practically choke me, but it’s now or never. “I’m sorry.”
Jamie leans back with a nod and takes a swig of his beer. “So what the hell happened to you?”
How can I explain it to him? I graduated by the skin of my damn teeth, and the Army seemed like a way out of the town we’d grown up in. Southeast Michigan had nothing to offer me. War seemed like some grand adventure. After I learned it wasn’t, Angie seemed like a grand adventure. I didn’t realize until it was too late that she was more of a suicide mission.
I want to tell him everything, but I can hear Minnie’s voice. She’s giggling, and I just can’t get into it now. Not when she could come bursting out here at any second.
“It all went wrong,” I say.
Jamie’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t press me. He was furious when I left home. Furious. But maybe I’ve been seeing it all wrong. Maybe it’s the years since then that have been the worst for him. They were for me, damn it.
“Lakewood’s nice,” he says into the silence.
“Yeah.” I look out over his lawn, at the ring of trees surrounding it that bleed into the forest behind. “I probably won’t stay long.”
“No?”
“Just the summer. I rented a place through August.”
“So you’re just passing through?”
I open my mouth, and an image of Valentine’s cheeks, blushing pink, pops into my head. “Just passing through,” I tell him, but even I’m not totally convinced.
Another swig of beer glides down my throat, and Poppy’s voice floats out the window, singing Itsy Bitsy Spider. Minnie is beside herself with laughter and then joins in, her little voice high and pure. I lock eyes with my brother. Despite how fucking awkward this whole thing is, he’s one of the only people on earth that I trust. “Jamie.”
He gives me a wary look.
“What?”
“I have to ask you a favor.”
15
Valentine
It only occurs to me after I’ve already picked out the shorts that make my ass look the best, put my very best halter top on my bed for the last possible moment, and spent forty minutes on my makeup and hair that we never set a time for our date.
We. Never. Set. A. Time.
I gasp out loud and send my hair straightener clattering to the tile floor in the attempt to snatch my phone from the bathroom counter.
But the phone does me absolutely no good because I don’t have Ryder’s number. And why would I have Ryder’s number? No reason at all, except I stalked him into going on a date with me, and now I have no choice but to...
...but to what? Awkwardly knock on his door, dressed to the nines—at least as far as Lakewood going-out attire goes—and see if he still wants to go out with me? He didn’t come to the Short Stack during my shift yesterday, damn it, and that’s a real loss because not only did I not get to look at him and flirt with him to redeem myself after the whole hiding-behind-a-tree-and-running-away-afterward incident, I didn’t get to confirm our plans.
If I just stay in my house and pretend not to exist, at least he won’t know that I spent all this time dressing up for him.
What time is it, even?
Close to seven. Date time.
I scroll through my contacts list just in case he somehow slipped it into my phone when I was busy embarrassing myself. No luck.
Well, there’s no reason to leave things in disarray just because I couldn’t remember to exchange phone numbers with the guy I’m supposed to be going out with at some point tonight.
That is, if the entire thing wasn’t just a funny joke. Because what man who looks like Ryder is going to go on a date with a woman who hid behind a tree just to look at his glorious body in the sunlight?
And shit, it is glorious. A thousand times hotter than any man I ever laid eyes on in college. A million times hotter than anyone currently in Lakewood. God help me, I want to do all sorts of dirty, filthy things with...
The knock at the door jerks me right out of an extended fantasy involving a solid wood headboard, my knuckles white against the wood, holding on for dear life as Ryder takes me from behind, his hands on my waist. The straightener, which I meant to put away several minutes ago, is still clutched in my hands, a poor substitute for that headboard.
Someone knocking at the door. Right.
I place the straightener delicately in its drawer and force myself not to hesitate at all on the way through the cottage. Damn my parents for replacing the glassed-in door with one that’s solid wood—well, maybe not solid, nothing like that imaginary headboard. I pull it open standing tall, hoping I look at least slightly radiant. This is my chance to show him a different me.
Ryder is standing on the other side of the storm door, and when he sees me, a grin spreads across his face, slow and hot and so sultry I could die. Maybe it doesn’t matter after all that we never set a time. He’s clearly interested, or he wouldn’t be standing here right now. And even if it’s just for one date, the pride swelling in my chest is a salve on the wound that Conrad slashed into my heart.
“Hey,” I say, feeling my face stretch into an echoing grin. Holy shit, he’s hot, even with a shirt on—a plain black t-shirt that still somehow manages to look dressy. Like they always say, sometimes it’s the hanger that makes the outfit. Or something like that. Not that Ryder is a hanger. Not anywhere close.
“Hi, Valentine,” he says, those blues electric on mine.
“I was—” I swallow hard. “I was just thinking that we never set a time, and I don’t have your number, so—” So maybe we should just call the whole thing off, and you could come in, and we could spend some time—I laugh out loud at the thought of saying that to him, then cover it with what I hope is the world’s sexiest smile. “I’m glad you remembered.”
“There’s no way I could forget you.” Ryder’s smile is hotter by the second.
I roll my eyes, feeling the heat flood my cheeks. “I did hide behind a tree. Let’s just get that out in the open.”
He laughs out loud, the sound sending waves of heat down my spine even through the glass pane of the storm door. “You seem to have recovered your confidence.”
I stand up straighter.
“Thank you. I have.” I want to open the door, take his hand, and pull him inside. Then we can let whatever happens happen, even if it’s right on the floor of the cottage’s living room, on the rag rug my grandma made a zillion years ago. But this is a first date. We can’t just— “You seem to be ready to go. Lakewood has two bars to choose from so it could be a wild night.”
Ryder laughs again, and I bend to the table, drop my phone into my purse, and pick it up.
I have the storm door open when he stops me. “Valentine—”
“What?” I’m going to flirt with this man, come hell or high water. I’ve already made enough of a fool of myself. Tonight is going to be different. “Did you change your mind? We could always go back inside.”
“I think you probably should.” His eyes are glowing, and I just barely keep my jaw from dropping to the ground.
“Oh, yeah? Is that what you want to do?” Hot damn I am in my element.
Am I imagining it, or is there a little blush in his cheeks? That would be too much. Me, Valentine Carr, making a man like Ryder blush?
“I can come if you want to, but I think—” He sticks his hands in his pockets, and all it does is accentuate his ripped arm muscles.
“Tell me.” I’ve dropped my voice into the flirtiest possible tone.
“I think you might want a moment to yourself, just to finish—you know, getting ready.”
It brings me up short. A moment to myself? I don’t need a moment to myself. The entire point of this was to get him to come in with me.
At that exact moment, a summer breeze kicks up, caressing the bare skin of my stomach.
Of my stomach.
Which then plummets straight to the earth, because I’m not wearing my halter top. I’m standing just outside the door with a black, lacy, strapless bra on, telling Ryder that I’m ready to go out on a date.
I’m still frozen, hoping this is all some kind of nightmare, when Ryder follows it up like I might not have gotten it yet. “I think you forgot to put your shirt on, Valentine.”