Me After You (23 page)

I take his moment of weakness and flip him on his back. “I did what had to be done.” I kneel on his lean biceps, pinning him to the grass and ruffle his hair as he thrashes his head from side to side. I stick my finger in his ear again. Dry this time.

“You fight dirty!”

“Surrender!” I shout and pause to wait for his reply, calculating my next move.

“No way!” he retorts with a chuckle. “That’s my line!”

I raise my eyebrows and bite my bottom lip. “It’s mine now.”

He shakes his head, but I see him giving in. I see the desire in his eyes to kiss me, but I hold back. I won’t give him what he wants yet. I have the upper hand here. Finally.

“Do you surrender?”

He pauses and lets his eyes soften. “Always.”

It’s there in his green eyes, everything I know that is reflected back from mine. I love him. I don’t say it, and neither does he, but we know. It’s as if we want to savor the moment, the moment we first realize we’re falling… and falling hard.

I shift down his body, hovering over him, and lean in to kiss his mouth. He breathes my name before our lips meet.

All I say is, “I know.” Because I do.

Anyone can say it, but knowing that it’s true is what makes it real.

A
IDEN
HAS
ME
cornered in my office. I can’t wipe the stupid grin off my face. He knows something is up. There are customers out there that need help, and he’s ordered everyone else to handle it.

“Funny,” I say, leaning against the wall. “I thought I was the boss.”

Aiden closes the door and whirls on me. “Something happened. I know it did.” He points at my chest. “Spill it.”

“Sawyer and I hung out.” I shrug to keep it light.

Aiden throws a fist pump and jumps in the air. So much for trying to remain cool. “Finally!”

“She let me take her to get burgers at Rita’s,” I say coolly to calm him down. I don’t need him adding any false hope. “It’s not a freaking commitment, Aiden.”

“No, but its progress, man. She would hardly look in your direction before. Granted, it took her like seven months to get this far, but it happened, and that’s what matters. Did you tell her about Lily?”

I exhale. I was hoping to avoid this part. After I tell him, I won’t hear the end of it. But he has to know so he doesn’t slip if he talks to her. “I’ve decided against it.”

“Are you a freaking moron? She’ll never let you in. Why would you want to keep something like this from her? What if she hears it from someone else?”

“Then she hears it from someone else, but it’s not as if Lily and I are the talk of the town.”

“It doesn’t matter. You should be the one to tell her. She shouldn’t hear it third-party.”

“You don’t know Sawyer the way I do. I need to ease her back into this. She just needs a friend right now, and if she knows it’s over between Lily and me, she’ll think too much about it. She won’t let me get within a mile of her. I can be a friend. Even if that’s all I get to be, I’ll take it. I’ll be good with that.” For now.

“You’ll never be good if friends is all you get. Don’t kid yourself.”

“I refuse to push it, Aide,” I retort. “I will accept whatever she is willing to give me for now. We will have to see where it goes from here.”

Aiden closes his eyes and shakes his head in disapproval, but he says, “You’re right. Take it slow. But don’t let the charade of you and Lily staying a couple jeopardize all that you’re working toward here. She could completely lose it if she knew you were lying to her the entire time. Honesty is the best policy.”

I want to punch him, but I hold back. “I know, but I have to take that chance. She can’t know yet. It’s not the right time to bring it up.”

“Just be smart about it.”

“Am I seriously taking advice from a guy that thinks the best way to lure a woman in is through snarky comments and making her jealous?”

“I know women. I’ve got three sisters.” He holds up three fingers and wiggles them.

I toss the rag in my pocket at him. “Get back to work.”

He laughs and opens the door. “It’s on. May the best man win.”

“Are you seriously making a competition out of who will get the girl first?”

“At the rate you’re going, I have a much better chance at winning over Alix before you do Sawyer.”

I scoff and wish I had another rag to throw at him. “Now who needs a little more faith?”

He flashes a goofy grin and darts out of my office. “Good luck, man. You’re going to need it,” he hollers, and I shake my head, though I know he’s right.

I
WAIT
FOR
my hot chocolate at the counter of Moment In Thyme. I couldn’t stand my mom’s judgmental eyes this morning. After the other night, I went to bed without saying anything else to her. We haven’t spoken since. She watches me. Her words latched on to my heart, but I can’t let them sink in yet. I needed to get out, be on my own for a few hours, and get some fresh air.

“You know, if I didn’t know any better, I would think you might be stalking me.” His voice flows softly over my shoulder. The nearness of his gruff voice sends shivers down my spine.

I turn toward him. Dean’s face is only inches from mine, and I flinch, backing into the counter, startled by his nearness.

He laughs. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Yes, you did.” I smirk. My lips want to smile, but I’m suppressing it. Between every class period, he used to hover behind me at my locker, waiting for me to notice him. When the moment was right all he had to do was whisper my name and I’d flail. It would give him enough amusement until the next break between class periods.

“You caught me.” He licks his bottom lip and drags his teeth across it. My eyes instantly zone in on the gesture and butterflies explode into a frantic frenzy. Don’t think about it. Think about the color orange or rain. I actually kind of miss the rain in Seattle.
Seattle
… Grayson. No. Think about chickens or dying puppies. Ugh. So morbid.

“Sawyer,” he prompts.

“I’m sorry. What?” I blink.
Freak
.

He snorts a short laugh. “You wanna sit? Do you have some place to be?”

“I …” I hesitate, but go against my better judgment. Today is my day off, so I don’t have anywhere I need to be. I just had to get out of the house. “Okay.” I nod.

He gets Haley’s attention and points to a table we’re about to sit at so she’ll bring my hot chocolate there.

“It’s Tuesday,” I say, sitting down on one side of the table. “Don’t you have to be at work or something?”

“I own my garage. I’ll go in when I need to go in.”

“Must be nice to make your own hours.”

He scoffs. “It’s not as luxurious as it sounds. I like the freedom of running the garage the way I want to run it, but it’s a lot harder than it looks and definitely not stress free. But it’s something I can call my own.”

Haley appears and sets down two cups. “Dean, here’s your coffee. Black. Just how you like it. And Sawyer, your hot chocolate.”

I look down at the two drinks. Did Dean tell Haley what he wanted? Was it while I zoned out? “Did you even order?” I ask.

“Haley knows I never change it up.”

“A regular, huh?”

He stretches back against the booth. “Every morning. Sometimes I come in on Sunday when the garage is closed. She can brew it better than I can.”

“That’s either really pathetic or true dedication.”

“I like to think it’s a little combination of both.” His green eyes smile above the coffee cup as he takes a sip.

He’s a thief and a liar. I shouldn’t want to sit here with him. He stole everything when he left—my heart, my soul, my life. But sitting across from him now makes me think he’s willing to surrender it all back to me, if I’m willing to let him.
Am I willing to let him?

“So, how’s your dad?” I realize then that I haven’t heard much about him since I moved back.

“Well, it’s just me now.” He bites his full lips.

“What happened to your dad?”

“Died. Just before I came back. Rumor has it he had a heart attack. He was alone in our old house, and no one knew to check on him.” He shrugs, and I can’t tell if it’s because he really doesn’t care, or if it’s because there’s nothing he can do about it now so he’s feigning indifference. Probably the latter.

“I’m really sorry, Dean.” I don’t know why I say it. It’s one of the phrases I hate being told. It’s merely a filler when you have nothing else to say because there’s nothing else you can say. But I realize I am sorry. I know things were never easy where his dad was concerned, but he was still his father. It can’t be easy to lose, not just one, but both of your parents.

“Don’t be. He was a dirtbag. I hated him, and he hated me, but life happens. I’ve moved past it.” He shrugs, but I see the underlying sadness. “It took a little bit of time, but I’ve come to terms with it.”

I can’t say anything back because as harsh as those words sound, they might be partially true, and there’s nothing I can say that will make him feel better.

“Lily’s probably worried about you,” I comment.

He takes a sip of his coffee and shrugs. “Meh. Doubt it.”

I lift my eyebrows. “Oh, I see. You have one of those trusting relationships where you don’t have to know each other’s whereabouts at all times.”

He chuckles dryly and bites his lips nervously. “Yeah. Something like that.”

Hours pass by on fast forward. Haley brings over food when she realizes we have no intention of leaving soon. We talk more about Grayson and Seattle. We talk about his garage and Aiden. He asks more about the bakery and where I want to end up.

“The bakery makes me happy. It’s the one bright spot in my day. I’ve spent the last five years trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, and I think I’ve found it at Sprinkles. It’s just fallen into place.”

“So why don’t you buy it? Take it over?”

Hope fills my heart. “Someday. Polly’s not ready to give it up yet and,” I clear my throat, “I don’t really have the money for it. I’m kind of drowning in debt.” He raises a questioning brow. “Grayson’s school loans. But it’s fine. Someday it’ll all work out.”

He nods with empathy in his eyes.

We continue to talk about the subtle changes of Willowhaven, and how, though it hasn’t changed much, it’s a completely different town than the one we grew up in. Every time I bring up Lily, he brushes over the subject. And somehow we manage not to talk about us once. Not where he went. Not what happened. Not what happened to me. It’s the elephant in the room, but when six years pass by, I suppose there’s more to talk about than the one event that tore you apart.

I’m not ready to talk about it anyway. Though he pretends like he is, I know he’s not either. If he were he would have taken this opportunity, but today is about pretending. Pretending everything is okay, pretending we can be friends, pretending our lives haven’t gone in completely different directions—two different directions that may never intersect again.

I look at my watch and see it’s almost one. We’ve been here for over four hours. “I need to get home to my mom before she starts to worry. I told her I’d only be gone an hour or two. And that was this morning. I didn’t bring my cell phone with me.” It was merely one more way for her to get a hold of me.

The corners of his mouth turn up, and I hear myself years ago, repeating the exact same thing to him after we’d been kissing in the bed of his dad’s truck for hours. It was definitely a regular occurrence. If it wasn’t me worrying about my mom, it was his dad hollering from their front door. We always made sure to stop before
that
happened. Neither one of us wanted to be on the other end of his father’s anger.

“Wouldn’t want to worry her now, would we?”

My eyes shy away from his. “No, we wouldn’t.”

“Well, friend,” he says as he gets up and stretches. “It was good talking to you. We should do it again sometime.”

I bite my lips to conceal my smile as he walks me to the door of the café. My lips betray me. “Maybe we’ll bump into each other again around town or something.”

“It’s been known to happen.”

What am I doing here?
Flirting? This can’t happen. “Tell Lily I said hi.” I can’t restrain the punch that my words pack. I tried. I really did.

He nods once with a fallen smile. “Will do.”

After I wave, I head toward my car. My mind replays the last several hours. My smile can’t be stopped until I notice it there. I bite my lips as punishment to make them stop.
What just happened?
With one look over my shoulder, I see he’s watching me from the café entrance. He lifts a crooked smile and tosses a small wave. I return the wave and spin back around. Opening up to him is a stupid move. This can’t end well.

I
DON
’
T
KNOW
what’s worse. When I knew that I lost her to someone else or knowing that I can’t have her because of the turmoil I created, a mess that I can’t seem to fix no matter how hard I try. We were making progress today; at least I thought we were. She feels so close and yet so far out of reach. Though she started to open up to me, she was still on guard. She’s fighting it.

I used to fight it, too—my need for Sawyer. I used bury myself in whatever job I could find at the time or distract myself with a girl I knew I would forget the name of by the next day. I found stupid outlets for it all. But then, when nothing worked, I would cave to the one temptation I hated more than anything in this world because nothing could satisfy my craving for Sawyer but Sawyer herself. And only one thing could bring her back to me.

I lean over the bar with one hand over my eyes and a drink in the other. I’ve lost track of time. Who knows how long I’ve been sitting here. But I’ll wait as long as it takes. My head feels foggy and disoriented, the way it should. The music is booming. The TVs are competing. I hate this place, but I can’t stay away.

“What are you doing here, Dean?”

Finally
. I lift my head and see Sawyer sitting on the barstool next to me. “Hey,” I say, sitting up a little straighter. “I’ve missed you, Jack.”