CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I sent Angel inside with orders to take a hot shower, and told her I’d be in in a minute. Then I opened the front passenger door and got in. Neither of us spoke, we just sat in the dark breathing the same air.
I reached for his hand and he took mine, resting them on the console.
“Three hours ago, this wasn’t how I thought this night would end,” he said finally.
“Three hours ago, we were about to howl at the moon.” I thought I saw a small smile in the dark, but I couldn’t be sure. “Bash, you were right earlier,” I said. He looked at me then. “I was bailing before you could.” I snorted. “Story of my life.”
“I wasn’t going to bail,” he said.
I closed my eyes tight and willed the tears not to come.
“You are the best—” Damn it, this feeling shit was going to kill me. I stopped to pull it together. “The best thing that ever happened to us. To me,” I added.
“So, why do I hear a but in that sentence?”
“There’s no but,” I said. “Just a fact. You’re too important to lose, Bash.”
“Why do you think you’re gonna lose me, Allie?” he asked.
“Because that’s what we do,” I said, the words rushing out with round 584 of new tears. “We don’t stick. We don’t keep people. We don’t do relationships. We have no damn idea how, so we float on surfaces and keep things easy.”
I was breathing faster and harder at the end of that. And it was about to get worse.
“You and I—we can’t float,” I said, emotion catching my words. “We’re too important for that. You are. I—can’t lose you, Bash. Angel can’t lose you. It’s always been she and I against the world, and I don’t know how to do—this. I can’t afford to screw this up.”
“You’re screwing it up right now,” he said. “I would never not be there for either of you. You should know better than to even think that.”
I rubbed my eyes, and wiped at my face.
“I don’t know anything right now,” I said. “I’m delirious.”
“There’s nothing to be delirious about,” he said. “What I did tonight is nothing new. It’s what I’ve always done. Taken care of my girls. What the town did tonight?” he said with a look. “That was epic.”
“It was,” I said.
“They made a statement,” he said. “Allie and Angel Greene are our people. We have their backs. But you go on in. Go be Allie and Angel against the world some more, and shut everyone else out. It’s what you do.”
I stared at him in the dark. “Why do you have to be a jerk?”
He ran both hands over his face and then back through his damp hair.
“Because maybe I’m tired of having to knock that chip off your shoulder and convince you that you aren’t alone,” he said. “I don’t know what else I can say or do to prove it. I spilled my guts to you tonight, the whole damn town just shunned Vonda Sharp for you, and yet here you are, still on the defensive.”
“Because defensive is all I’ve ever known, Bash.” I didn’t know how to be any other way.
He looked at me in the dark. I couldn’t see the expression in his eyes, but I felt it to my core.
“It’s safe, Allie, I get that. Believe me,” he said. “But does it keep you warm at night?”
He let go of my hand and rested his on the steering wheel. I instantly missed the connection.
“It’s late,” he said. “Go get some sleep.”
I looked at his profile. “Why do I feel like once I step out of this truck, I’m losing something?”
He shook his head. “I told you, you’ll never lose me. But you’re the one defining the boundaries,” he said. “That’s on you.”
Slowly, I got out of the truck, and waited before I shut the door. “Good night.”
He turned his head.
“Night, Allie.”
* * *
Today was a week.
A week from last Saturday, when everything turned on its ear. I hadn’t seen Bash. Not once. Not even from a distance, or in passing. I almost caved to go get a donut at the bakery next to his shop, but I talked myself out of it.
I felt so empty without our conversations, without his laugh and his smile, and lately, without his touch. Carmen and Lanie were doing their best to keep me occupied with dinners and silly get-togethers. Lanie even gave Angel a makeover one night, and it was worth enduring the girliness of it just to watch Angel soak in the female bonding. She needed that. I did too, I just never realized it.
But I missed my friend. I missed my Bash. He said I’d never lose him, but I had. He’d be there in a second if we needed him, I knew that, but I lost what made us—us. I wanted more than just the emergency responder. I wanted him. I wanted all of him.
This was safer, though. It was smarter, right? No one had to step outside into the unknown and fall into holes and traps and heartbreak. Everyone would be happier, and no one got hurt.
Yeah, how’s that working for you, smart girl?
It was working my imagination into a frenzy, that’s what. Every night, I’d close my eyes and wish he was wrapped around me, his warmth at my back and his kisses on my neck. I missed him so much, that late at night when things got really quiet, I literally ached inside. I’d never tell a living soul that, but there it was. I begged the universe for dreams, but they were gone. Replaced by my dad, of all things.
Every night, at some point, my dad would be there. Sitting at a table, cooking eggs at our old stove, watching TV, loading things into an old truck (that we never had), but always saying the same thing.
“Say yes, Allie.”
Say yes to what? It was driving me crazy.
The money? I already had. Once Bailey told me it was legit, I opened a separate savings account at the bank and deposited it, holding a little out for a blow-and-go fund. Because we were going to do that, I decided. Since Lange wouldn’t let me use it to get the diner back free and clear, I was going to start taking my daughter places. Seeing some things, having fun with her, letting her see me do something besides just work all the time.
And possibly, maybe, once I didn’t have a heart attack over the idea, buy her a used car. I could buy me a new car and give her mine, but I loved my Jeep too much to do that to it.
“Hi, Queen Greene,” said Mr. Wilson from his seat, giggling at his rhyme for only the thirty-ninth time.
Yeah, that was going to be fun.
“I didn’t see that big fat check of yours in the ledger file,” Lange said as I walked back to my office to get some headache medicine from my desk.
“Really?” I said. “Imagine that.”
“Pretty sure you won that for the business, last I checked,” he said, leaning back in his chair.
“Pretty sure I told you to stay out of my files, too,” I said, not giving him the satisfaction of a look his way. “But life’s just unfair like that.”
“Thought you were going to put your crown out on the counter somewhere,” he said.
“I am.”
And I would. When I got it back from Bash’s shop, with my shoes, and my clothes, and my heart. None of those things were knocking on my door, and I hadn’t drummed up the nerve to do any knocking, either.
Yes, heart had joined the list of what I’d left over there, and I wasn’t too thrilled with that so far. At least I had the advantage of not looking at my desk every day and reliving it again and again. Then, who was I kidding? I was totally reliving it every spare second of the day.
“I’m running to the bank, we’re short on small bills,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few.”
I walked out, keys in hand, ready to open the register when I rounded the corner and a pair of sexy blue eyes nearly took me down.
He was sitting at the bar, waiting for me, arms resting on the counter casually, a small smile saying he was trying to pull that off. The eyes, though. There was nothing casual there. They looked like they just got slammed with the same wall I did.
I pulled in a breath, grabbed the counter, dropped the keys, and tried to speak through the mad flush of blood that all went to my head at the same time.
“Bash,” I said, my voice cracking like a pubescent boy.
“Hey,” he said. “How’s it going?”
I raised my eyebrows. How’s it going? “Uh, okay. You?”
He nodded, and I wanted to cry. To break something and yell and throw a fit and say This is what I was talking about! But it wasn’t quite like that. There was a dark intensity there that stole my breath and made me dizzy.
“You look good,” he said.
I looked like I’d just worked two rushes, and probably smelled like it too.
He, however, looked—I couldn’t even think it.
“Thanks.”
He wouldn’t blink, wouldn’t look away, and it was hypnotizing. Made me feel like if I looked long enough, I could just get lost in there. Dear God, if I hadn’t had a restaurant full of people, I would have hopped that countertop and climbed him like a tree.
He cleared his throat and finally averted his eyes, and I took a breath like I’d been underwater for an hour.
“I brought your stuff,” he said, unlooping a plastic grocery bag from a knob on the counter and holding it up.
My gaze fell to the bag, and I realized I hadn’t wanted to get that stuff back. As long as he had it, I’d still have to see him again. Now—now there was no reason.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, taking it from him. “I’ve been meaning to—”
Our fingers brushed, and heat swooshed through me as if someone lit my blood on fire. Good grief, we were dancing, holding hands, and bumping sex parts the other day, and now finger touching was the big moment.
“Well, I’ve had it in the truck,” he said. “I’ve just been busy, and—you know.”
“Mr. Anderson?”
Bash turned as a middle-aged lady blushed and laid a hand on his arm. No one was immune.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I just wanted to tell you two how much you moved me last week,” she said. “The way you are together. The way you talked about each other and—” She laid a hand on her heart. “The thing about always being a team. People can spot the real thing, you know? It reminded me so much of my late husband and me, and I just wanted to tell you thank you and congratulations.”
“Thank you,” I managed to push out over the lump in my throat.
“Very sweet of you,” Bash said, patting her hand.
He turned back to me as she walked away, but he kept his eyes on the counter, resting both hands there. He looked exhausted, troubled, tormented when he finally met my gaze, like a man who hadn’t slept, and all I wanted to do was go around the counter and wrap myself up in him.
We were a team. The real thing.
The real thing.
We weren’t being shit, now. He opened his mouth to say something, when there was some hushed talking by the front window that caught both of our attention. When Sully appeared in the doorway, I wondered what the big deal was. When he held the door open for Albert Bailey—
“Holy shit.”
Bailey didn’t come out in public. Very, very seldom did he venture into town, he paid people to do that for him. He was always just rumored to be eccentric that way, a bit of a hermit, but after meeting him myself and what I experienced there… it seemed to be a much simpler, basic reason.
It’s hard to interact in public without touching people.
He leaned heavily on his cane, and walked in slowly, nodding curt greetings at people and doing a double take on Mr. Wilson.
“Leroy,” he said.
“Albert,” Mr. Wilson responded.
And that was that. I was on the other side of the counter before I realized I’d even made the trip.
“Mr. Bailey,” I said.
“Miss Greene,” he said, his expression changing into a pleasant smile. “Good to see you again.”
“You as well,” I said. “I think.”
He chuckled, and I glanced at Sully, who raised an eyebrow.
“That brutal honesty of yours,” Bailey said. “Never lose that. Pardon the intrusion today, but I asked Sully to give me a ride into town to visit Oliver, and I wanted to meet your—partner.”
“My partn—Lange?”
“Yes, please,” he said. “Is he in?”
“Unfortunately,” I said, turning to Kerri, who was behind the counter. “Kerri, can you ask Mr. Lange to come out here for a minute?”
She disappeared around the corner and Bailey looked over his glasses up at Bash.
“Mr. Anderson, I presume.”
Bash smiled and held a hand out. “Mr. Bailey. Have we met?”
I took his hand gently down, and didn’t let go quite yet. “You don’t want to do that,” I whispered.
Bailey chuckled again. “Not in person, but I’ve seen your name and face, and I’m a big fan of your honey. I get a case delivered every quarter.”
“Yes you do, I’ve seen the order,” Bash said. “Thank you very much.”
“Well, I believe in supporting the local industry,” Bailey said. His eyes narrowed keenly as he peered up at Bash. “And local royalty, I hear,” he added, sliding his gaze to me.
“Oh Lord,” I mumbled.
“Can I help you?” Lange said, walking around the counter.
“Landon Lange,” Bailey said heartily. Too heartily.
Lange slowed his steps for a half-second, then kept approaching. “Yes?”
“I hear that you and I have a mutual friend in common,” Bailey continued, holding out a hand to Lange. I had only a split second to process that before he took his hand. “Oliver Greene.”