CHAPTER 10
Axel’s chest was tight from the brief eye contact he’d just shared with Brynn. It was a sensation he’d been getting used to over the past week. She had the ability to render him speechless with a single smile and to take his breath away with a single look.
He needed to keep his distance.
And he had. Right up until he’d seen her crying. Then he’d had to reach out. It was silly. He knew that her tears were due to the performances she’d just seen, but his heart had still ached at the sight.
Both his mom and his sister tended to get hysterical when they cried. There was yelling and sobbing. As much as he hated seeing them like that what he really couldn’t handle was when they were trying to hold it together and still the tears would fall.
The worst part was that seeing the smile that had spread across her face when she’d seen his text made him feel better and lighter than he had since…well, since their dinner together.
Being the one to put a smile on her face gave him a high that he was afraid he could easily get addicted to. It made him feel like Superman. Making her happy inspired a false sense of invincibility in Axel. If the opportunity presented itself he was sure he could leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Brynn called the next student up and he did another scan of the crowded theater. He was keeping a low profile and staying out of the way for the kids’ auditions. More importantly, he was trying to stay away from Brynn and her hero-inspiring smiles.
He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Other than the fact that there were close to twenty women lining the walls. He recognized a handful of the women because they’d stopped by the theater to welcome him, often bringing muffins and other baked goods. They’d all pretended to be interested in the renovations, but all the conversations had quickly turned personal.
Was he married?
Single?
Gay?
Straight?
Divorced?
Did he have kids?
Once the conversation got off woodworking, he politely excused himself and got back to work.
Other than that, things had been fairly quiet for the week he’d been in Whisper Lake. Luckily, since it was off-season there weren’t many tourists, which gave him a huge advantage.
It wasn’t difficult to decipher who was and who wasn’t a resident of the small, close-knit community. This place was like the town version of Cheers where everyone knew your name. He’d been in town a short time and word had spread like wildfire about him. The women visiting him at the theater weren’t the only ones interested in asking about his personal life. He couldn’t go anywhere without someone, usually several someones, striking up a conversation about how he was “settling in” and asking him about his life and family before he’d arrived there.
At first, he didn’t understand what these strangers’ angles were. Why did they all keep “welcoming” him? Izzy liked to joke that suspicion was part of his DNA. His sister would always tease him by saying that he thought trust was a four-letter word.
She exaggerated but there was truth behind her ribbing. Growing up the way he had, with men coming in and out of his mom’s life, taught him how to spot a hustler, a user, a scammer, and an abuser. He’d developed a fairly fine-tuned bullshit detector by the time he’d reached puberty, and it had only sharpened with time.
His phone vibrated in his pocket and he ducked out of the theater to take the daily call from his sister, still begging him to pick her up. He’d naively assumed once he’d struck the deal with Izzy that the discussion of whether or not she was staying was over.
It wasn’t. At least, not on her end.
“Hey, Squirt. How was school today?”
“Don’t call me that.” He could hear her seething through the phone.
“Sorry,” he automatically apologized.
He honestly hadn’t meant to use the nickname that she’d banned several years ago. Pita, Izzy, and Sis were acceptable. Squirt, Peanut, and Kiddo had been nixed. Sometimes she let his slip-ups slide, but not when she was upset.
And she sounded very upset.
“School sucks! I hate it here!”
“It’s only been a week,” he reasoned.
“I know how long it’s been! Why are you always updating me on the amount of time that has passed since I’ve been here?!” She deepened her voice in what he assumed was an impression of him. “You’ve only been there a couple of days. It’s only been four days. You haven’t even been there a full week. It’s only been a week.” Her voice returned to normal. “Believe me, I’m aware of every day, every hour, every minute, every second that I’m here because it’s excruciating torture!”
Lifting his arm, he squeezed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger as he closed his eyes and reminded himself of what Brynn had said about emotional maturity. His baby sister might be brilliant, but she was still thirteen.
Each day he’d tried a different tactic. Sympathy. Reason. Bargaining. Joking. Dismissing. Relating.
Today he was going to go the tough love route.
“Look, Iz, life is hard. The real world isn’t easy. Things aren’t always exactly how you want them to be. And how you deal with things when they aren’t rainbows and unicorns is what defines who you are. If you bail every time you’re in a situation that you don’t like, what does that say about you?” He took a breath and continued on his roll. “Do you think every person in the world likes their job and everyone is nice to everyone all the time? No. But they still show up for work. Do you think I wanted to be at boot camp? Do you think I liked having drill sergeants call me names and scream so close to my face that spit flew at it? Do you think it was fun to be kicked out of bed at the asscrack of dawn while a horn was blown in my face every morning? No. It wasn’t. But I made it. And I was stronger after. It built character. So suck it up and stop acting like a spoiled princess.”
It was silent for several beats before his sister spoke in a deadly calm tone. “Are you finished?”
Hearing the icy, detached quality had him feeling something he hadn’t even felt on his most dangerous black ops mission. Abject terror. He was scared shitless because he knew he’d fucked up.
“Yes.”
“First of all,” she began, “I am not a spoiled princess.”
“I know,” he lamely conceded. “That’s why I said don’t act like one.”
“Do you remember when Ryan Lassen asked me to go to the dance last year and I turned him down and he told me to ‘stop acting like a bitch’?”
Shit. He knew where she was going with this.
“When I got home, I called you because I was upset and I told you what he said. You said that you wanted to kick his ass because that was the same thing as calling me a bitch.”
“I’m sorry—” he tried to apologize.
“I’m not done. I didn’t interrupt you when you were speaking and I would appreciate the same consideration.”
Even though he knew that she was only this composed because she was in a state of controlled anger, it was nice to hear her sounding more like herself.
“Furthermore, boot camp has nothing to do with the situation that I’m in. When you joined the Marines you legally signed your life away and were gone for four years. You didn’t have a choice to leave. This is high school, not the military. And the reason I wanted to go to this school was because I wanted the best education possible so I wouldn’t get stuck in a job that I hated. But that was before I got here and realized that there was no possible way I could learn in this environment. The girls here are cruel and unrelenting. The no-bullying policy is a joke when the parents of the perpetrators are the largest financial contributors to the privately funded school.
“And I am painfully aware that life isn’t always unicorns and rainbows. If that’s what you think my life has been like, then you haven’t been paying attention. I’ve had three stepdads and was dragged across the country without any notice when I was ten to live with a man my mother hadn’t even met in person. That same mother just left the country so she could go live with a different man she barely knows. And this time she didn’t take me. She signed over her rights so she wouldn’t have to and she was relieved.
“And I admit, I was relieved, too, because I would get to live with you.” She let out a forced laugh. “You’re the only real family I’ve ever had. Mom barely acknowledged me and when she did she always dismissed me! Telling me things like ‘I might be book smart but she was street smart.’ But not you. You’ve always been there for me, loved me, and listened to me. You were the one person that I could always rely on. Until now.”
Hearing her sound so cold and unemotional felt like a punch in the gut, but hearing what she actually had to say was a kick in the balls. He felt like he wanted to throw up.
When she was quiet for a few minutes, he asked, “Can I talk now?”
There was no answer.
“Izzy? Can I say something?”
Nothing.
“Izzy?” He lowered his phone and saw that the call had been disconnected.
He cursed under his breath as he tried to call his sister back. It went to her voicemail after two rings. So he tried again. This time it only rang once before his call was forwarded to her voicemail.
Axel ran his hand through his hair as he left a message. “Iz, call me back. I love you.”
The sick feeling in his stomach had worsened as he put his phone back in his pocket with the knowledge that his sister wasn’t going to call him back anytime soon.
Part of him wanted to leave Whisper Lake and drive to the city and make her talk to him, but he wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do. The truth was, he had no idea what the right thing to do was.
All of his life, he’d handled everything alone. He’d never asked anyone for anything. Duke had offered him unsolicited advice, but he sure as hell had never talked to anyone about a problem he was having. Right now though, he wanted to talk to someone. He wanted to ask for advice from the only person that had ever made the emptiness inside of him go away.
Brynn Daniels was more than just a job to him. In the short time he’d known her he’d developed real feelings for her. He felt like he needed her.
And that was another reason why he needed to stay away.