Chapter Two
Charlie couldn’t turn his brain off.
Ever since he’d had lunch with Lucas and his friend had told him that Lila was back in town, he found himself searching for her. Looking down the sidewalk after lunch as he walked to his truck. Watching passersby as he drove to the shop. Then, once he was parked and back inside Southern Dive, he kept finding himself by the front windows that faced the street, watching and searching and generally acting like a deranged stalker. All over a woman he hadn’t seen in more than a decade.
And yet . . .
He thought of the last time he’d seen her, when he was packing up to move to the Keys, the need to leave Crestler’s Key and find an adventure so great he’d felt as though he were suffocating. Added to that, Lucas had enlisted and now Charlie was stuck around town, hanging out with the girl he wasn’t allowed to have and wanting to change that fact so badly he couldn’t think straight.
Lila had helped him box up his things, and when it was finally time for him to hit the road, he pulled her into a hug. He couldn’t help it, he needed to touch her, let her feel how much she meant to him, because he sure as hell couldn’t say it. Even if Lucas was halfway across the country. It didn’t matter.
So he hugged her, breathed in her sunflower and summer scent, and then when he started to release her, she gripped him tighter.
“What am I going to do without you?” she’d asked, her voice shaking, but Charlie forced himself to smile down at her, because he already knew what she would do—live. By that point, she’d been accepted to several colleges and would have the option to do whatever she wanted in life. And she should do whatever she wanted, live, dream, be. He wouldn’t hold her back. So, he said good-bye to the girl in his heart and lost himself in the laid-back lifestyle of the Keys. Shorts and T-shirts and flip flops and a beer in his hand. And it was fun . . . until it wasn’t anymore.
Needing something else to think about, Charlie cracked open his laptop and went to his Instagram page. The only good thing to come out of the Keys/Jade debacle was his Instagram page. Somehow that witch of a woman had helped launch him in the world of social media in a way that he never could have himself. Still, years later, after years of managing the account, he still wasn’t fully comfortable putting himself out there. But it helped that he had regular followers, many of whom had travelled to Crestler’s Key to shop at Southern Dive, the Littleton brothers’ scuba diving equipment shop that had morphed into a clothing store for the outdoorsy type.
He surfed through his phone and pulled the photo he’d taken that morning of Henry chasing some chickens at the farm. He went through the process that felt like second nature to him now, resizing it and adding a filter and background. Then he captioned it “Tastes Like Chicken.” Of course, he would have never let Henry actually get to the chickens, but the picture was hilarious all the same.
Immediately the likes and comments started coming in. There was once a time that he tried to reply to comments, keep up, but with four-hundred thousand followers and thousands of comments per photo now, he could either manage his Instagram comments or work. He couldn’t do both. He chose the latter. Still, he’d keep a look out for and reply if something relevant came up. Plus, he kept a questions/ comments box on Southern Dive’s main website, so people could reach him if they needed to.
Once he’d sifted through the comments from yesterday’s photo—he tried to post daily—he checked the stockroom to make sure no packages had come in without him knowing, then went to work making sure the store was in order, adjusting clothing racks, refolding T-shirts. By the time he was done, it was closing time.
Time to head home . . . alone. For whatever reason, that had never bothered him before, but knowing Lila was in town somewhere made him hyperaware of just how alone he was in Crestler’s Key. In every way.
* * *
So . . . Lila was back in town. In Crestler’s Key. Charlie thought of calling her, but then he had no idea if her cell had changed over the years, and he had no idea where she was staying. Had she bought a place here? Rented? Was she—
He cut himself off before his thoughts went any closer to obsessive.
Twirling his beer bottle in his hand, he stared at his wide-screen, not really watching it, and not for the first time, he wondered why he had bought it. He wasn’t a TV kind of guy. He was a get-outside-and-do-something kind of guy, and nothing made him feel lazier than a damn TV. But it was nine o’clock, and the wings he’d picked up on the way home were long since gone. The truth was, he was lonely.
Lonely in a way that he hadn’t felt in a long time. It was a feeling that rose up within him every time Lucas came back to town, and he felt like an idiot for missing his best friend even before he left, yet he couldn’t push away the dark hole in his chest. And now he found out that not only was Lucas here for only two days, then leaving again, but his sister had returned for good, the single person who Charlie knew could fill in that hole in his heart. Not that he’d go that way with it; after all, he had once thought of her as a sister. That much hadn’t been a lie. But what he didn’t say to Lucas—couldn’t say—was that one single night had changed that fact, and though Charlie had stopped it, he couldn’t help wondering . . .
He twirled the beer in his fingers again, sure that he was just feeling shit that really meant nothing at all. Memories had a way of making you think they were real, live things, when really they were nothing more than past actions that needn’t be repeated.
Especially this one.
Especially if Charlie hoped to keep his head intact.
He took another pull from his beer then grimaced, because nothing had tasted right to him since he’d seen Lucas and heard that Lila was back.
Pushing off the couch, Charlie started for the kitchen to toss the beer when his gaze fell to Henry, stretched out on the floor between the family room and kitchen in Charlie’s open-floor-plan ranch house. But whereas normally Henry would be snoring, deep asleep by now, today he was groaning. Charlie bent down and scrubbed the dog’s ears, but instead of edging closer to his owner, like always, the dog continued to groan, and that was when Charlie noticed the bit of foam coming out of his mouth.
It took him less than ten seconds to grab his keys, cradle his dog in his arms, and head out the door. Charlie wasn’t a vet, but he’d been around animals his whole life on the farm, and he knew that whatever this was couldn’t be good.
The night air was cool for spring, but Charlie hadn’t thought to grab a shirt before heading out the door. No matter; it wouldn’t be the first time Doc Baxter had seen him without a shirt on. Sadly. At least this time, he had on shorts instead of boxers. A shudder worked through him at the memory. And not the good kind.
Charlie had not been home a month after the Jade disaster when he’d decided the fix to the crushing weight on his chest was a distraction. Or a few distractions, as happened to be the case. And one such distraction landed him at the house of a new lady in town and absolutely no idea what the hell her name was. He’d made it through just fine, but finally she asked him to whisper her name in her ear, which should have been a red flag anyway because she kept trying to direct his game. Put a hand here, kiss me there. Then the name thing came up, and he tried to run with sweetheart, which resulted in a look, and his brothers had always said he had too honest a face. Well, sure enough, she tossed him out on his ass, without his clothes.
He’d left his truck in town when she insisted on driving—another red flag—and so he had no choice but to make the trek in his boxers, a full-on walk of shame in plain view of anyone in town who cared to look. And he’d almost made it home, but Doc Baxter was out late on a call to the Carlisle farm. He pulled over to offer Charlie a ride, and the rest was history.
Up until that moment with Henry in his arms, Charlie had managed to steer clear of the town’s old vet beyond a few passing hellos and nods, going as far as paying his niece to take Henry to the vet so he wouldn’t have to endure the look of judgment from Baxter. But desperate and all, tonight, he didn’t have a choice.
Charlie unlocked his truck and opened the back seat, gingerly laying Henry down and patting his head. “You’re going to be fine, boy.” And then as if the universe wanted to give him the finger, the dog pulled back, his head jerking as a guttural sound rumbled from his throat, and then he puked all over the seat.
“Ah, shit.” Charlie scrambled around in search of a towel, something, but coming up empty, had to run back into his house, grab some stuff to clean up, and then try to move Henry, but the poor dog groaned louder and Charlie thought Screw it. “The truck will live. Let’s get you to Baxter.”
He dropped down a few more towels onto the seat and floorboard and then jumped into the driver’s seat, shifted into reverse, backing into the small turnaround to the left, then sped down his long driveway, cursing himself in that moment for wanting to live so far away from the road. And town.
In the moment, he’d wanted peace and quiet, a place where he could go to think. But now, Henry was making that guttural noise again, and Charlie feared what this might mean. Was he poisoned somehow? A virus? Could dogs catch Zika? There had been a lot of mosquitos around lately.
Taking a sharp left turn, he straightened the wheel and prepared for the long stretch of road that was Hwy 243, which led directly into Crestler’s Key city limits. There wasn’t a single traffic light or stop sign to deter him, until he passed the official WELCOME TO CREST-LER’S KEY sign, and then he took the next right onto Riding Lane and pulled into Baxter’s office, grateful to see a light still on inside.
Charlie parked in front of the main door and jumped out. The air was heavy for spring, cloud cover mixed in with the stars in the black sky above. Another hour, and that ominous sky would be pouring down on all of Crestler’s Key. As if on cue, a boom of thunder hit from miles away.
Opening the left back door of his truck, Charlie scooped up his best friend, who thankfully was still awake, giving him hope, and he pushed the door closed with his leg, then set out for the front porch. Baxter’s old dog wasn’t anywhere to be seen, which made Charlie wonder if he should have called before he came. Maybe the light was on, but no one was home. Why hadn’t he called? Now, his cell was in the truck, so he’d have to go back, try to juggle Henry in his arms, open the truck door, get the cell, and then close it back before he could come back to this point.
Frustrated and praying God was listening, he rapped on the door several times. “Come on.”
No sounds came from inside, and Henry’s eyes closed in agony. Charlie’s heart clenched.
He knocked again, harder this time, over and over, his head dropping. “Come on!”
“Settle down, I’m here, I’m here.”
Hope burst inside Charlie at the voice, but it wasn’t the cottony voice of Doc Baxter that met his ears. And it wasn’t Ms. Tracy. He thought back to what Lucas had told him at lunch, about Lila joining the vet office, and as if it’d been there all along, a memory bubbled up.
They were playing in the woods behind Lucas’s house and he had gotten stuck in the barbed wire fencing that surrounded one of the farms. No choice of what to do, Lucas went for help, only to return with Lila, a smirk on her face.
“You boys sure are stupid,” she had said. Then when he decided he didn’t need a girl to help him out. Certainly not Lucas’s sister, with her brains too big for her britches and her continuous need to call out Charlie’s lack of smarts. Forget that. So, he tried to yank himself free, only to get caught more, the barbed wire curling into the flesh of his arm, until he was near tears.
“Settle down, I’m here,” she’d said, her touch matching her tone for the first time. He was twelve then and she was ten, but when her gaze hit his, so impossibly blue, he wasn’t sure how to look away. Suddenly, he wasn’t as concerned with the cuts in his arm and more with making his lungs remember how to function.
Now the animal hospital’s door cracked open, and Charlie’s eyes fell on the person on the other side.
“Charlie?”
For a moment, Charlie forgot why he’d come, forgot his sick dog, forgot his own freaking name. Because the Lila before him wasn’t at all the thin, too tall for her age, too smart for her own good girl he remembered. Oh, no. This person, this woman, she was something else entirely. Which made him wonder if maybe this wasn’t Lila at all.
His gaze fixed on her face. High cheekbones, golden-tan skin, round eyes so blue they made you lose your mind for a second. Full, pouty lips slowly spread into an easy smile, and her once-short black hair now cascaded to her waist in effortless waves that called to his fingertips to comb the strands, to pull them gently, so her chin would lift and he could see if that mouth tasted as good as it looked. Finally, he pulled his attention from her face down to the rest of her and—“Wow.”
She bit her lip in an obvious effort to keep from laughing. “Charlie. . . ?”
“Yeah?”
“The dog?”
As if he’d been shaken from a trance, Charlie startled back, narrowly dropping Henry, who groaned in his arms, and guilt punched him in the gut. “Henry’s dying or something. Can you help?”
Her grin spread, so close to laughter it was embarrassing, but Charlie couldn’t make his brain work properly. “Come on in. Room one, there.” She backed away, holding open the door, and pointed inside to the hall and the number one sticking out from the door.
The office was quiet, no one else around. No one to see the fear Charlie felt, both over Henry and the woman before him, a woman he had once thought he would recognize anywhere, and yet there she stood, a stranger.
“Baxter, you’re just going to have to get over yourself, I’m doing this,” she said, and Charlie craned his neck in search of the old vet. But beyond the parrot calling away in his cage by the front desk, there was no one else in the place. No one besides him and Lila.
“Are you talking to ghosts or something? ’Cause I don’t think old Baxter is here.”
Lila flashed him a grin that hadn’t left her face since she saw him. Her cheeks reddened. “No, sorry. I talk to myself a little.” She shrugged. “Okay, a lot. Nervous habit, and you know what they say about old habits?”
Charlie set Henry on the exam table and took a step back, before running his hands through his hair. “No, can’t say that I do.”
Her eyes hit his, and then flipped down, holding on his bare chest. “Some old habits die hard.” She cleared her throat. “So what’s going on with . . . ?”
“Henry VIII, but I just call him Henry.”
Pausing mid-motion, her hand still hovering over Henry, she glanced back at him. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously,” Charlie said, pulling back with mock offense. “What’s wrong with his name?”
A genuine smile crept across her face as she went back to work inspecting Henry, and Charlie tried in vain to keep from questioning everything she was doing. All he could think was that if he were puking sick, he sure wouldn’t want the doctor poking him in the stomach.
“Didn’t you once have a lab named Alexander the Great?” She continued her inspection, and when Henry groaned, Charlie placed his hands on his head, his stomach muscles tightening.
“Yes. When did you say Baxter was getting here?”
“A history of choosing bad pet names. Interesting.” She peeked at him again, waiting for him to defend his choice of names, but what could he say? Who the hell wanted a dog around named Fido or Sam? No one with imagination, that was for sure. “I didn’t say when Baxter would be here, mainly because I don’t have the faintest clue. He’s at Carlisle Farms.”
Damn Carlisles.
“Right. But you’re trained and stuff? Lucas said you finished vet school, so you’re good to do this, right?” Charlie cringed as she pulled out several metal things that looked a lot like torture instruments and went to work checking Henry’s eyes and ears and generally making the poor dog all the more miserable.
She smiled. “So let me get this straight, only a man can be a veterinarian in your eyes? Not a woman? Or if a woman is, she couldn’t possibly be as trained as the man.”
“Wait, wait, wait. I didn’t say—”
“Sure you didn’t. You just thought it.” She set down one of her torture devices with a slight bang, but when she turned on him, she was still grinning. “As chauvinistic as ever. Just like that name you used to call me. Tiny. Again, what kind of name is that?”
Charlie bit back a grin at the memory of the name and the first time he’d used it. They were outside on the old tire swing and were talking about climbing the big oak it hung from. She had wanted to join Charlie and Lucas, but Charlie had told her she was too tiny to climb the tree. She punched him in the stomach and asked how tiny she looked now, causing her brother to break out in fits of laughter. The name stuck. “Hey, I’m not—”
She tossed up a hand. “Save it. But your sweet dog here is going to be fine. I’m guessing he ate something he shouldn’t have. Maybe in the yard? He should be all better in twenty-four hours, but if not, bring him back in to see me.”
“You mean to see me.”
Their eyes fell on Baxter, as grumpy as ever, and standing in the doorway with a glare at Lila that made Charlie step between them on instinct to protect her. Sighing loudly, she huffed and walked around him.
“I can take care of myself,” she murmured.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” Baxter screamed. “Trying to get me sued!”
Lila flinched, and Charlie’s face split with a grin. “Sure you can.” Then he went over and scooped Henry back up, and started for the door. “Seeing as how Henry here will be fine, I’ll just let you two get back to . . . whatever this is. Baxter,” he said, nodding to the vet. Then his eyes shifted over to Lila. “Tiny.”
She crossed her arms, her eyes narrowing, and he couldn’t keep the laugh from escaping him or the smile from lingering on his lips long after he’d pulled away.