Chapter Fifteen
The next morning Jake woke up to the smell of hot coffee, hot cookies, and hot woman.
He’d recognize Emma’s scent anywhere.
He peeked open his eyes and saw a very bothered scowl on Emma’s sweet, dawn-lit face.
Man, what time is it? I didn’t even feel her climb in the truck bed.
She settled in beside him and placed the fresh cookies on his chest. Then with his attention now caught, she drilled him with a black look. “You could’ve frozen to death out here.”
He smothered back his incredulous laugh because he knew she was being completely serious. “Sweets, it’s April. I was perfectly warm.” In fact, he was downright toasty in his sleeping bag right now. The only reason he hadn’t climbed out of it yet was because it was handling a morning-wood situation for him.
“With my place being so far, it was easier for me to just crash out here after I finished the floors. I always have my camping gear in my truck since I sometimes get the random urge to go off in the woods, so it worked out great.” As exhausted as he’d been, the tucked-away parking spot under the tree across the street from the bakery had been impossible to resist. He’d dragged out his sleeping bag and knocked out the second his head had hit his makeshift pillow.
“Next time, just sleep in the bakery,” she ordered as she continued to fuss over him and tuck him deeper into his sleeping bag, as if she expected him to go hypothermic.
God, he couldn’t get enough of her.
When he managed to rub the last of the sleep from his eyes, he was finally able to get a good look at the still-worried frown she was wearing, which paired perfectly with the suspicious survey she was taking up and down the street around him. As if she was looking for evidence of some ruffian waiting in the bushes to kidnap him out of his truck.
She was killing him. He went ahead and cataloged this as yet another one of the outrageously cute things she did that turned him on. The list was getting pretty big.
Among other things at the moment, in direct relation.
“Emma, you’re going to need to sit about ten inches away from me. I don’t exactly have room for a tent in my sleeping bag.”
A brief pause. Then: “You’re talking in drunken bubbles.” She chuckled, clearly not getting his perfectly lucid meaning. “How late did you get to sleep?”
“Not that long ago.” Between the coffee and the cookies and the feeling of an early-morning, sleep-warmed Emma tucked against his hip, at this rate, he was going to have to turn over completely to keep himself decent. “Honey, really, you gotta shift a bit for me.”
She shrugged and scooted her butt over a bit.
He hissed. “Other direction.”
Her eyes rounded as belated understanding set in real quick. “Oh.”
Soon as they weren’t hip to hip anymore, he was able to pull himself into a seated position and adjust enough to keep his flag from saluting her before taking the travel cup of coffee she was holding. “Woman, why are you up at dawn? I thought I told you to sleep more.”
He promptly stopped his scolding to release a deep male purr of satisfaction over the strong brew Emma had made for him. After that first day she’d tried to poison him with the horrendous decaf, she hadn’t done anything mean with his coffee again. And if he wasn’t mistaken, good ol’ Sally had shared her recipe for double black with Emma because what he was drinking right now was dark-as-night, caffeinated heaven in a cup.
“Don’t turn this around on me, buster. What if some hoodlum had mugged you or something while you were sleeping?”
“Then he would’ve been sorely disappointed to discover a measly twenty in my wallet.” He winked. “Well, that and an extraslim-fit condom of course.” Since the condom he’d left in Megan’s garden had somehow sprouted legs and ended up in his toolbox for all the world to see last week when he’d gone over to help out at the library site for a few hours—he was still living that one down, by the by—Jake now kept it in his wallet just in case.
At the reminder of the funny-ass stunt she’d pulled, which he was still brainstorming a proportionate payback for, Emma smothered a laugh and finally stopped looking so darn worried over his delicate hide.
He picked up one of the fresh cookies she’d put on his chest earlier. It was still warm from the oven. “Did you get cleared to bake already? I thought you had to wait for the town inspection after we’re done with all the repairs.”
“I do. I’m still shut down from cooking commercially, but I have a few projects I’m involved in that are not commercial.” She pointed at a big box of cookies she’d left by the door. “Every week I donate several batches of cookies to the local youth center for snacks and volunteers. The director is so busy because that place runs from five in the morning to ten at night, six days a week. So this is the usual time she comes by for pickup.”
He shook his head. “Just when I think you can’t get any sweeter.” Grinning over that irrepressible heart of gold of hers, he took a big bite of the cookie.
And grew still as a statue.
“What’s wrong?” Emma sat forward, alarmed. “Are you okay?”
Jake took another bite, feeling untethered in time for a brief moment, before he finished chewing. Swallowing, he said almost reverently, “This is the cookie you made for me and my family the day we moved in. You came over and announced they were peanut butter and jelly shortbread cookies . . . and we all thought you were a little nutty until we tasted them.”
There was no mistaking the melted home-churned peanut butter and freshly picked jelly filling, which married perfectly with the crisp shortbread. Each bite sent him right back to that summer.
“That’s actually the first time I created the recipe for this cookie. I can’t believe you remember that.”
“Sweetheart, I remember everything about you.”
A delighted, gushing “Awww” from somewhere in the middle of the street broke up the moment. And had them scrambling to get out of the truck.
Emma hopped out first and headed right over to the woman in her midforties standing a few feet away from his truck, hands clasped to her chest, sappy smile melting all over them.
“Gloria! I’m so sorry—I didn’t even see you.”
“No, no. You stay there, I’ll come back after I finish getting the cookies into the car,” she called out as she turned back around to her station wagon to finish loading up the box of cookies Emma had packed. After slamming the wagon door shut, Gloria made her way over again. “I noticed you two sitting here while I was picking up the cookies, so I’d walked over to say hi. Didn’t mean to eavesdrop, and I certainly didn’t mean to interrupt anything.” Gloria waved his way. “Hi, I’m Gloria. I run the youth center here in Juniper Hills.”
“Pleasure to meet you. I’m Jake. Emma’s carpenter.”
“Oh, you’re the carpenter! I’ve heard so much about you!” She looked back at Emma with a smile. “Again, sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear—I promise I wasn’t doing it on purpose. But I think it’s so great that you two grew up together. Were you high school sweethearts? How wonderful that you’re also going to be working on Megan’s library as—”
Jake barely heard the rest of Gloria’s run-on questions. All he could focus on was the distraught look on Emma’s face, the way she was wringing her hands, the lost shadows in her eyes while she stared hollowly before her as if one of her nightmares were playing out in real life.
Normally he’d let her handle this sort of thing since this was her town, but she looked as though she was seconds from coming apart at the seams. “Emma and I never went to high school together.” Technically true—he’d been sent away to juvie before he’d been able to start. “I met Emma a really long time ago. And actually, we haven’t seen each other since.”
There. Vague but complete. With just enough info to satisfy and stem questions.
“Oh.” Gloria laughed lightly. “Sorry, I guess I let my imagination run a bit there. When I heard what you said, I thought you were reunited sweethearts with this amazing backstory.”
Not exactly amazing. I sort of killed her younger brother and scarred her younger sister before we lost touch for fourteen years.
Yeah, too much information.
When a fog of awkwardness fell on them, Gloria looked back and forth from him to the now-silent Emma. “I’m so sorry—was it something I said? My husband is always telling me to look left and right before I go shoving my big foot in my mouth.”
“No.” Jake shook his head reassuringly. “You’re fine. We’re figuring some things out.”
Emma finally seemed to snap out of the trance she’d been in. “We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms the first time around. Which is why we’ve kept that part to ourselves.”
Gloria nodded vigorously in understanding. “Say no more. I completely understand. We all have a past. Again, I am so sorry to have eavesdropped. It wasn’t intentional. And don’t worry—I won’t say a word.” She walked over to give Emma a quick hug. “Smart thinking keeping this under wraps. Frankly, I make a point to never let the town biddies know any of my business.” She made a zipping motion over her lips. “My lips are sealed.”
Gloria checked her watch and then started hustling back over to her car. “I gotta run to open up the center. Jake, it was great meeting you. Emma, thanks again so much for baking even with all the repairs and things. I swear, some of these kids come to the center just to eat your cookies.”
Emma managed a smile for Gloria as she sped away.
After they were alone again, Jake came up behind Emma and put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. “Are you okay?”
She nodded faintly. “I’m fine. I wasn’t prepared is all. But you handled it great. Thank you for jumping in.”
“No worries. Gloria seems nice.”
She still wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Yeah, Gloria’s great. And we can trust her not to talk about us.”
“Do you want to?” he asked, smoothing a thumb over her jawline. “Talk about us, I mean? Or talk about anything?”
Please. Please let us talk. Really talk.
Though there was more hesitation than she’d ever displayed before, eventually a quick head shake and a plastered-on smile were Emma’s reply. “It’s all good. We’re good.” He could tell she was focusing her eyes on a spot somewhere next to his head.
It was all he could do not to drag her into his arms and just hold her. She looked lost. Not even her grip on her three floral pendants seemed to be grounding her on this one.
He was afraid the reality of their past colliding into their present may have very well broken her. Broken any chance he’d thought they’d had to move forward. “Talk to me, Emma. We can go right back to being Jake and Emma 2.0 afterward I swear. But just talk to me.”
Every second of silence that followed deflated his hope.
A full minute passed.
And then . . . “Do you want to know why I always have Gloria pick up the cookies from me?” she asked softly, catching him by surprise. “I could just as easily drop the box off to her, but I arranged to have her pick it up instead. Do you want to know why?”
He’d figured it was just because she was busy with the bakery in the mornings, but clearly there was something more. “Only if you want to tell me.”
“I started doing the cookie thing years ago. And in the beginning, when I’d go to drop off the box, with all the kids at the center, every once in a while, I’d see a boy there who I would swear on my own life was Peyton. Or an older boy, who looked just how I imagined Peyton would look at that age.” She rubbed her hands over her arms, shaking her head when he offered her his jacket. “I’m not cold.” Even as she said it a shiver quaked across her frame.
Jake didn’t push. He knew all too well what that was like, enduring the bad side effects that came with the memories. On his part, it would feel a bit like penance at times. A toll fee at others. He’d found over the years that the memories never came without some price.
When her body finally stopped trembling, she continued. “I wouldn’t see Peyton all the time. But when I did, it would take every bit of restraint I had to convince myself the mirage wasn’t real. That it wouldn’t be okay for me to run up to that random kid and hug him like he was my dead brother brought back to life.”
“Emma—”
She shook her head again. Right. No comfort. The price to pay.
“But that’s not even the worst part,” she whispered. “Do you want to know what is?”
He was certain it would be worse than he could ever have imagined. But he asked anyway, for her. “What was the worst part?”
“That in the moment when I’d first see Peyton again, for the briefest of seconds, I’d be so happy, so relieved that he made it out of that fire alive.”
He frowned. “Of course you would. Sweetheart, anyone would.”
She simply shook her head. Over and over again. “Don’t you see? If Peyton had survived, then that means Megan would be the one lying in the grave right now.”
That blow coldcocked him out of nowhere. Jesus Christ. Is this what she’s been carrying around for all these years?
Her voice cracked and withered. “So it’s not okay for me to feel that way.” The tears broke free, and shame filled her features. “That’s why I stopped letting myself. I trained myself not to feel. If ever I’d see Peyton’s little face among those kids, I’d make myself not be happy. Not be relieved. Not even for a second.” She stared at the ground, shoulders sagging from the weight of that, a weight she should never have had to bear. “After a while, it just got too hard, so I stopped going to the center. And that’s when I asked Gloria to start picking up the cookies.”
“Emma.” He speared his hands through her hair and gently tilted her face up to his. “Honey, I know it seems like that’s the way you should feel, but it’s not. It’s okay to want your brother to have survived that fire. That doesn’t mean you think, for even a second, that the opposite scenario between your siblings is even remotely okay.”
He could see she didn’t believe him. He wondered if she could even hear him right now. She looked as if she were drowning in her grief right before his eyes.
“Have you talked to Megan about this?”
That jolted her back to awareness. She tore herself out of his grasp. “Of course not. How can I possibly tell her any of this? I’m all she has, Jake. At least Peyton had his mom. So Megan needs me not to feel that way for even a second. Because Peyton had his mom wishing, out loud, that it had been Megan and not Peyton who’d died in that fire.”
A horrified sound broke out of his chest. “What?”
Emma blinked, startled over the vehemence in his growl. She took a step back. He followed.
“Emma, did your stepmom do that? Say that to you? Or to Megan?”
A mask fell over her face. And she retreated behind a wall he couldn’t breach.
“Emma, tell me. Did she? Did you hear your stepmom say that?”
“Yes.” Eyes dull with pain met his. “She used to tell me that it was all my fault, that I killed her son. And she used to say it should’ve been Megan and not Peyton. She never told Megan that, but she told me. Over and over.”
“She was wrong.” He could barely keep the rage out of his voice. His dad may have sent him to juvie, but he never did anything like this. What Emma’s stepmother had done, even if it had been done out of sadness and anguish, was cruel. Abusive. “She should never have said that to you, Emma. That woman had no right to say those things to you.”
“She said them about you, too,” she whispered. “Over. And over.”
Jake backed up a step, forgetting for maybe the first time in his life the path he’d chosen, the burden he’d taken on when he’d falsified that confession. “Maybe I deserve her saying that about me. But not you. Never you. You did nothing wrong, Emma. And Megan’s life should never have been talked about so callously. I don’t care how much that woman was grieving. No one’s life is expendable for another’s.”
The uncanny parallels between their situations wasn’t lost on him. That this was a thousand times worse than anything he’d been made to endure slayed him.
“I didn’t tell you all this so you’d feel sorry for me, Jake. Or so you’d try to fix me.” She took in a deep breath. Then another. Soon the color returned to her face, as did the life to her eyes. But along with it came new, stronger, hundred-foot-tall walls between them.
“I told you all this so you would understand why I need to keep to our Jake and Emma 2.0 arrangement. Why I can’t let the past seep into my present.” Her voice hitched, but she finished firm. “Not even for the briefest second.”
That single resolute statement shifted the ground under him. Almost sent him to his knees. Yes, he did understand now.
“You promised me we could go back to our arrangement after I talked,” she whispered softly. “Did you mean that? Can we go back to being the two strangers who don’t have all this behind us?”
She spared him the pain of asking him outright if he could keep his promise this time.
Unlike that night.
“Of course, Emma. We’re right back where we were before you told me all that.”
She looked at him as if measuring his level of honesty, her level of trust. “Good,” she said after a few long beats. “Then we should probably get started with our day.”
Just like that.
When they both stepped forward to head toward the bakery, Emma halted and made a quick snapping motion as if she’d just remembered something. “You know what? Paul mentioned he’s ready for you to start ordering supplies for the library.” Casual and breezy. She was pulling it off well. “Since you worked all night on the floors, why don’t you take the morning off and head over to the library? I’m not going to be here anyway.”
It was a flimsy way to put some space between them and they both knew it, but this was the first time the fire had come up since he’d started working here. There was no manual for this sort of thing. He wanted to give her time. Space.
Didn’t mean he couldn’t hate it.
He studied her distant expression, willed her to look up at him.
She wouldn’t.
“You sure you don’t want me in the bakery this morning?”
He’d chosen his words carefully. Want, not need. He didn’t want her to just need him there; he needed her to want him there, too.
“I’m sure. Go make brilliant plans and order fabulous things at the library. I’ll see you after lunch.” Her new smile, though dim and fading, was at least genuine.
“Okay,” he said softly, squeezing her shoulder one more time. “I’ll check in at the library and then be back in a few hours.”
They split off to head in different directions.
In more ways than one.