TIED: A Steamy Small Town Romance (Reckless Falls Book 3) Page 19

  A shiver of insecurity, of the kind I hadn’t experienced since middle school, rippled through me. With a start, I realized I missed everyone. But would any of them actually be happy to see me again?

  Would Autumn be happy to see me again?

  When she invited me, I was feeling pretty confident. But out here in the cold lot with the door shut in my face, I wasn’t feeling nearly as cocky. She was in there with the people she’d grown up with, celebrating Christmas in the place where she belonged.

  Where did I belong?

  I stepped forward, determined to shake these maudlin thoughts. Go inside, have a drink and shake some hands. I was here on business, not pleasure, and I could always cut my losses and leave. This night didn’t mean anything, just another day on the calendar. I spent every other night of the year getting drinks with clients, sealing deals. Why should Christmas Eve... in my hometown... with the girl who broke my heart... be any different?

  Yeah. There was nothing special about this at all.

  My feet and my brain were not in agreement, though, so it took a Herculean level of effort to take that next step and the next. Sometimes when I was interested in a property, I would go visit dressed as a civilian and take in the scene. Chat up the security guards and receptionists, and try to get the real story on why the owner was selling. Tonight could follow the same script. I would just open the door and peek in, enter as unobtrusively as possible. That way I could feel out the temperature of the room before making myself known.

  But a sudden stiff gale that seemed to come directly from the North Pole propelled me forward the last few feet. I threw open the heavy wood door and the wind caught it and sent it slamming into the wall with a resounding thwack.

  The whole bar went silent.

  “Holy shit,” a drunken female voice slurred from the back. “Is that Cole Granger?”

  “Hey everybody,” I called, taking off the gloves that Derek had gotten me. I’d grown up here. How had I forgotten to pack gloves for myself? “Um, Merry Christmas.”

  The first person to break free of the pack was Harper McCabe. She was a few years older than me and I knew she was visiting from out of town herself since she was a big children’s book author now. As she came up to me, I couldn’t help but notice that everyone was watching, ready to take her lead.

  “Cole!” she called, going in for a hug and a cheek kiss. “It’s so good to see you again! I heard you were in New York and I kept meaning to look you up...”

  “I know, it’s a big city,” I finished, smoothing over her guilt. “And I hear you’re not even there too often. Congratulations on the book tour!”

  “Oh you know about that?” she grinned, pride shining in her eyes. “I didn’t know you followed the children’s book scene.”

  “Well, Mrs. Collis probably believes your writing is at my reading level,” I grinned. Reckless Falls’ High School’s English Department was presided over by Mrs. Molly Collis — more dragon than woman — who was famous for holding a grudge. Of course, being the idiot I was back then, I took her gruff hatred of teenaged boys on as a personal challenge and led Gil Aldridge’s cow up to the stairs to the third floor of the school. See, cows can go up stairs, but they can’t go back down again. They had to get a crane to lower the cow out a window. This only sealed my fate as an imbecile in her eyes — though I maintained it was pretty smart of me to woo a cow into a building like that — for the rest of my four-year career. Even my 4.0 GPA wasn’t enough to convince her I wasn’t illiterate.

  “Oh Mrs. Collis believes I’m a literary failure as well,” Harper pointed out. “Don’t listen to her. I think she thought I was going to write the next great American novel.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Gilly’s Garden had a 150-word vocabulary. So, um... no.” She cast her eyelids down for a second. “What brings you home for the holidays? Let me buy you a drink.”

  “Oh please, you don’t need to do that.”

  “Call it reparations for ratting you out all those years ago. I was more worried you’d fall than anything else.”

  “I was an idiot. I shouldn’t have been drinking on the water tower that night.” I was trying to get over Autumn, I didn’t say. Instead, I smiled widely. “I was just a mass of poor life choices back then.”

  But instead of laughing, she cocked her head to the side. “Have you changed now?”

  Reflexively I licked my lips. “I like to think so.”

  She smiled and nodded, and then grabbed my arm, dragging me up to the bar. “Hey guys, make room for Cole!” she called to the assembled crowd.

  “Granger!” Sam Fitch was decked out in holiday-colored camo, which was something I didn’t even know existed but wasn’t surprised that he owned. He slid off his barstool and gave me a slap on the back, so big and broad that he took up my entire field of vision. “Careful New York, you’ve got mud on your shoes.”

  “Eat me, Fitch,” I shot back, giving him a slap that I was proud to see made his eyes water. “Have you ever even crossed county lines?”

  I grinned as the rest of the crowd laughed. Fitch looked like the hamster wheel in his brain was starting to smoke. “I went to Elmira once,” he retorted.

  “Yeah?” I smiled, shrugging off my jacket. It was pleasantly over-warm in here and I’d thawed to the point where I could close my fingers around a bottle of beer. “What did you think of Elmira?”

  Fitch wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Didn’t like it. I’m not a city guy. You like the city better than here, Granger?”

  A week ago I would not have hesitated. Of course I liked the city better, I would have said immediately. The city had culture, the city had restaurants, the city had clubs.

  But now that I was back here, I couldn’t answer so quickly.

  “Yeah?” I drawled out. “I don’t know. They both have their good points.”

  “Yeah?” Fitch actually looked interested. He hovered close to me and seemed to expand so that I couldn’t see anyone else, a big, camo-covered universe.

  I moved my hands, trying to grasp the words from out of thin air. “It’s really, um, noisy there,” I began. He was watching me so intently I felt oddly self-conscious. “And you’re never alone. Even when I’m alone in my apartment I can hear the guy who lives next door to me. He's really into salsa music. I forgot how nice it is just to have silence. Like you’re the only person in the world.

  “Yeah but the chicks man, big city chicks...” Fitch looked like he was ready to swoon.

  I licked my lower lip. There had been a sea of women in New York, all polished and perfect and career-driven. I’d had my fun, but the thought of actually sticking around never crossed my mind. Not like it had with Autumn. “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I think the girls here are pretty great too.”

  “Hear hear!” Fitch roared, lifting his bottle. “Country girls!”

  There was an answering ‘woo’ from the back of the bar and all at once the Christmas music stopped and the bass started thumping. A cry of delight went up from the assembled girls and all at once everyone around me started heading to the small makeshift dance floor. “Country girls!” Fitch yelled even louder and made a beeline for the dance floor. I grinned and looked around, suddenly able to see the whole place and all the assembled town without Fitch standing in my way.

  And, as if on cue, I saw Autumn.

  Her back was to me, but there was no way I could mistake that hair. Or the way she held her head slightly forward like she was eager not to miss anything. Or the way her hands had such long, elegant fingers that cut these swirling shapes in the air as she spoke. I used to tell her she had bird hands and she thought I was making fun of her, but I was trying to give her a compliment. Her hands soared and swooped like the gulls over the lake and before we even dated I used to try to talk with her just so I could watch her hands.

  Across the table was a girl with a familiar face, but then every face in this bar was slightly, vaguely familiar. I squinted a little, tryin
g to place her.

  And that’s when she caught me. Her wide blue eyes narrowed and she bent to say something to Autumn who stiffened noticeably. “Brynn Reese!” I realized, a second too late.

  Autumn’s hands fluttered back down to her sides when Brynn told her I was here. Because what else could she have said while staring me down?

  I waited for a beat, but Autumn did not turn around to say hello.

  I sipped my beer, smiled at Fitch spastically dancing in the middle of the floor, and then chugged half my beer in one gulp.

  Autumn still didn’t turn around.

  I moved a little closer.

  Brynn glared at me like I was something she'd found on the bottom of her shoe, but I barely noticed because I was too busy willing Autumn to turn around. I finished my beer, called for another and downed half of that one in one gulp too.

  Fuck it, why was I here? I was here because Autumn told me I should come. I thought... I didn’t know what I thought would happen, but I didn’t expect this. Shut out, frozen out, whatever the fuck she was pulling. This wasn’t like her. She didn’t hold grudges. Not against me.

  She was the one who told me I should go in the first place.

  Suddenly angry, I downed my second beer and ignored the flush of heat in my cheeks. I needed to talk to this girl. She was why I was here, and even though my brain was suddenly buzzing from drinking so quickly, I still figured it was better to talk to her then turn tail and go home to my brother’s freezing house. Alone in my hometown on Christmas Eve. No that wasn’t going to happen. Not to me. Not to Cole Granger.

  I grabbed one more beer for courage and I moved closer to Autumn.

  Chapter Six

  Autumn

  Brynn’s eyes were the size of saucers as she stared over my shoulder. “Is that Cole Granger?” she asked, then answered her own question with a sputtered, “Holy shit it is!”

  I looked down at my hands and back up again. “Yeah?” I said.

  I tried as best I could to sound surprised, I swear I did. But I had two strikes against me. One, that I was an open book about everything. Basically the worst poker player in existence. Every emotion that flits through my head also shows directly on my face.

  And the second strike was that Brynn was one of those people who could smell bullshit a mile away. One syllable was all she needed to know I was keeping a secret.

  She snapped back from staring open-mouthed at Cole and eyed me suspiciously. “You knew he was coming!” she accused me.

  I raised my eyebrows. “What?” I squeaked.

  “Are you trying to play coy with me?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  She sat back and folded her arms over her chest. “I’m talking about you seeing Cole Granger behind my back.”

  “Seeing him?” My voice crawled an octave higher. I sounded like Minnie Mouse. “Yeah, that only counts if you mean the word ‘see’ literally. As in, I saw him. Today. At the convenience store my mom sent me to so I could get more eggs for her disgusting nog.”

  “You’re a freak. Eggnog is delicious.”

  I sighed. “Every year I try it, thinking I must be crazy, I mean it looks like something I’d like, all creamy and frothy like that. “ I ignore Brynn’s smirk. “But every year I take a sip and gag. It’s disgusting and I don’t know why I keep trying to pretend otherwise.”

  “You’re trying to change the subject.”

  “Maybe.”

  “The answer to that should be, ‘change what subject?’ God you’re the worst liar in the world.”

  I took a sip of my drink and sighed. “I know,” I lamented. “It’s a fucking curse.”

  “So getting back on track here,” Brynn said impatiently. Her eyes were glued behind me, and I didn’t need to turn around to know she was staring at Cole. I could feel him behind me. My skin was magnetically alive and aware of his presence.

  It was very distracting.

  Distracting enough that it wasn’t until Brynn fell silent that I realized she was waiting for an answer.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Oh Jesus, I asked you how you were doing but I think I have my answer.”

  “How I’m doing? I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be fine?” Goddamn the hysteria in my voice making a liar out of me.

  “Because Cole Granger is five feet away from you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you haven’t even looked at him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he broke your heart into a million pieces and then left without saying goodbye.”

  I swallowed. “He said goodbye.”

  “In an email. A fucking Dear John letter.”

  It was true. “Dear Red,” it had started. “There are no words to describe how much I loved you...”

  I had deleted it before I could read any further. What was the use? He had left. He had already made his choice.

  “You loved him,” Brynn reminded me, her eyes still boring into Cole like she was trying to turn him to stone like Medusa.

  ”But it was puppy love,” I protested, shredding the label on my beer bottle into teeny tiny pieces. These were words I had said so many times. A script I’d memorized and internalized until I believed myself. And believing it was true made it true, right? “We were just kids, it wasn’t a real relationship or anything. High school lovers in a small town high school? Please. It wasn’t love. It was convenience.”

  Brynn fixed me with those big wide eyes of her that most people made the mistake of thinking were innocent. Once you got to know her, you learned very quickly that there was nothing innocent about Brynn. I could tell by the way her eyes narrowed a little that she was fixing to slam me with one of her trademark punch-to-the-gut questions and squared my shoulders a little. I waited for her to gut me like my mother had, to tell me I was lying to myself, that Cole and I had something real, that I should have pushed harder instead of giving up. That we could have made long distance work, that Philadelphia wasn’t that far away from Reckless Falls, hell if anyone was stubborn enough to do it, it was me. I had my responses ready to all of these accusations. Since I’d already slung them at myself.

  But I still wasn’t prepared for what came out of her mouth. “So then why have you barely dated since he left?”

  “I have too!” I sputtered. “Everett?”

  “Oh please. You two had the chemistry of a dead fish. He’s a good, decent guy, but you two were a terrible couple and you know it.”

  It was true. The thing I loved most about Everett was that he put no pressure on me. At all. He’d go exactly as far as I wanted and never push for more, which was exactly what I needed as I was recovering from heartbreak. He was repressed in a way that made me wonder if there was something else underneath his skin that he kept hidden. But if he did, I wasn’t the girl to find it.

  “Yeah, poor Rett. I told him I didn’t like sex, did I tell you?”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “And he bought it?”

  “He’s so straight-laced that I don’t think he understands lying.”

  “That boy is a closet sex maniac just waiting to be unleashed, mark my words.”

  “Yeah, well....”

  “Well he’s not the reason you’re flushed bright red and breathing heavy right now, is he?”

  “What? I am not.”

  “You are. Your Cole-radar is going off.”

  “He’s that close?”

  “I think he’s coming over.”

  “Oh god.”

  “No, I’m just messing with you.”

  “You’re a pain in my ass.”

  “Why won’t you talk to him, Autumn?”

  I twisted the bits of label in my hands and dropped them onto the table top that looked like it was undergoing a very localized snow squall. As I did, I tried to find an answer. I searched my brain for a response that made any sense whatsoever, but there were no words for what I was feeling. How could I explain why I
was on high alert, like a zebra wandering past a pride of lions? I squirmed in my chair, frozen to the spot and burning with the desire to run away, get away from him and run shrieking out into the snowstorm and let the snowflakes sizzle on my overheated cheeks. Why did I want to grab him, and then fling him away, kiss him and then slap him across the face? Why was I still feeling this way after so many years? “Because...” I started lamely and then trailed off, still searching for how to tell Brynn that in spite of everything I had ever said about Cole Granger being an asshole, I didn’t actually believe it.

  I didn’t break things off with him out of anger. I did it because I loved him. He needed to go. The first member of his family to get into college and he gets into Penn with a full ride? That’s incredible. I needed him to concentrate. To do well. To make me proud. Then maybe, someday in the future, our paths would cross again and we could pick up where we left off. Maybe. I wasn’t counting on it, though.

  When he walked out that door without saying goodbye, I honestly hoped I’d never see him again.

  I never counted on him coming back.

  “He shouldn’t have left,” I finally stammered.

  Brynn’s eyes darted upward and I wondered how close Cole was to us now. Did he hear me? Oh god, he must have. Could the ground open up and swallow me now? I shifted in my chair and started backtracking immediately. “Yeah I thought that back then, but really, how could I make that demand? He got that scholarship, he’s so damn smart, it was right for him to leave. I was being selfish as hell.”

  Brynn’s eyes softened. “You were a teenage girl in love, of course you were selfish.”

  “Still, it’s no excuse.”

  “Sure it is,” a deep voice said over my shoulder.

  Chapter Seven

  Cole

  She whirled around with her mouth open, those perfectly pink lips making such a kiss-ably shocked round ‘o’ that it was all I could do not to kiss her with everything I had.

  Instead, I stood there with my hands shoved in my pockets to keep myself from reaching out to grab her.

  “How long have you been here?” she demanded.