The door opened with a faint creak as I stepped inside Dockside Bar & Grill. My wrist ached with the motion—just another reminder of last night’s shitshow.
“I’ll be damned. Holt Hartley? Is that you?”
Jeanie’s voice carried enough that half a dozen patrons turned in their seats. An older couple I remembered as parents of a classmate bent their heads to whisper. A woman I thought had been a couple of years older than me blatantly stared.
I had to fight the grimace that pulled at my mouth, turning it into another of those damned forced smiles. “Good to see you, Jeanie.”
She pulled me into a back-slapping hug. “It’s good to see you. It’s been way too long.”
“Chris and Jude here?”
“The three musketeers back together again. Pleased as punch to see it. They’re at that booth in the corner.” She pointed her notepad toward a table by the windows.
“Thanks.”
“You want something to drink? I’ll grab it for you while I’m getting the boys theirs.”
I guessed we’d always be boys in her eyes. The same ones who stopped after school for french fries and root beer floats. My smile came a little more genuinely this time. “Still got root beer on tap?”
“Is the sky blue?”
I chuckled. “I’ll take one of those.”
“Coming right up.”
I maneuvered through tables, trying to avoid any questioning stares. I didn’t have the answers they were looking for.
“Always were Jeanie’s favorite. She gave you extra french fries every single time,” Chris grumbled.
“She gave you extra ice cream in your root beer float.”
Jude’s lips twitched. “So much for keeping a low profile, huh?”
“Guess so,” I said, sliding into one end of the semi-circular booth. “It wasn’t like that was going to last anyway.”
Chris took a sip of his water. “Not in Cedar Ridge.”
Gossip spread like a wildfire in the dead of summer. And since things had been relatively calm over the last several years, I qualified as news.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “I hate feeling watched.”
“People are just bored,” Jude said. “Before long, someone’ll have an affair, or a kid will shoplift, and you’ll be old news.”
The tightness in my chest eased a fraction. I’d known that. It had just been so long since I’d experienced small-town rhythms that I’d forgotten. In Portland, I could disappear into the crowd. I didn’t know the neighbors in my high rise beyond a polite hello in the elevator. I didn’t have friends beyond the guys on my team. My social life consisted of knocking back a few beers at the bar around the corner from our office. Suddenly, that all seemed a little empty.
Jeanie sidled up to the table with a tray. “Two Cokes and a root beer. You boys know what you’d like to order?”
“Usual, Miss J,” Chris said.
Jude handed her his menu. “I’ll do the fish and chips.”
“You need a minute, honey?” she asked me.
That honey hit somewhere deep—the familiarity of it. An honorary mother in a town full of them, always looking out for their chicks.
“I’ll take the turkey melt. Haven’t had one worth a damn since I left.”
She tapped her notepad on my shoulder. “We’ll get you squared away. Don’t you fear.”
“Thanks.”
Jude leaned back in his seat and took me in, searching. “So, how’s it feel being back?”
“Weird.” It was the only thing I could give him at the moment. I wasn’t about to open my mess of a head to friends I hadn’t seen in a decade. They didn’t need to know how I’d lost it last night or that I hadn’t slept a wink because every time I started to drop off, my dreams were filled with blood.
“I bet.” Jude’s eyes flashed with a mischievous glint. “How’s the B&B?”
He accentuated each letter as he spoke, and I scowled in his direction. “How do you think?”
Jude burst into laughter, and Chris let out a begrudging chuckle.
Jude shot me a devilish grin. “We’ve already heard that you requested no maid service on your room and that you had oatmeal and fruit for breakfast. Janice is worried that you’re not getting enough to eat, tortured soul that you are.”
I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose. “What is wrong with that woman?”
“Too many years of watching the daytime soaps. Now, everything’s a saga to her,” Jude shot back.
I let my hand drop. “Either of you know of a vacation rental that would take a tenant for a couple of months?”
Chris’s brows rose. “You’re staying that long?”
“That’s the plan right now. But if my dad’s welcome was any indication, I’m not sure it’s the best idea.”
Jude studied me for a minute. “He missed you.”
My throat burned. “I talked to him every week.” There’d been increased tension in the conversations over the past year, but I’d had no idea my dad was that upset with me.
“It’s not the same as being here. He’s struggling to get back on his feet, and he’s taking that out on you because he’s hurt, not because he doesn’t care.”
I grabbed my root beer and took a healthy drink. “Well, I’m here now. I’m trying to make things right.”
Chris sent Jude a sidelong glance. “It’ll take time for people to see that. You can’t just expect them to fall in line because you said you’re staying.”
“I know that,” I clipped.
Chris held up both hands. “I’m just trying to explain where folks might be coming from.”
Air hissed from between my teeth. “I know. I didn’t handle things well.” I met the gazes of the two men at the table. “I’m sorry I bailed on our friendship. Neither of you deserved that.”
Jude stared in my direction. “You were going through a lot. It couldn’t have been easy.”
“I was just trying to keep my head above water. A clean slate seemed like the best thing for everyone at the time. But I know I hurt a lot of people in the process. Handled things in a messed-up way.”
Chris studied me. “Wren know how you feel?”
Her name was like fire in my veins, washing through me and leaving a trail of ash in its wake. “I don’t think Wren cares much how I feel. And I get it.”
Jude scoffed. “I really thought a decade away would make you less of a moron.”
My head snapped in his direction. “Excuse me?”
“The girl’s still in love with you. Never stopped for a damn second. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her go on more than a handful of dates with someone. Won’t let anyone in her life even utter your name.”
There weren’t words for the riot of emotions going to war in my chest. Half of the sensations couldn’t be defined, but the few that could were dangerous. Hope. Grief. Want. Anguish.
“Just because she hasn’t met the right person yet doesn’t mean she won’t.” Each word shredded my throat on the way out. But it was a pain I deserved. And one I would experience time and again if it meant that Cricket was happy. Safe.
A straw pelted me in the face. “What the hell, man?”
Chris shook his head. “Jude’s right. You are more of a moron than when you left. Woman like that? She’s once-in-a-lifetime.”
“I know that,” I growled. I’d already concluded a long time ago that I would never love someone the way I’d loved Wren—the way I still loved her. Because it didn’t matter if it had been ten days or ten years. A love like that ruined you for all others.
Jude’s eyes narrowed on me. “A woman like that who still loves you after you walked out of her life at the worst possible time? That’s a damn miracle. You don’t appreciate it, and I’m pretty sure God is going to strike you down.”
He was welcome to do it. There was a reason I always took the riskiest jobs. The worst assignments on those jobs. I’d made a habit of tempting fate, giving it plenty of chances to take me out. To pay the price for all the ways I’d let down the person who mattered the most.
“You should talk to her,” Jude said quietly.
“Don’t think that would go over too well. What we had… It’s gone.”
Jude’s eyes flashed. “You don’t know that. And if you’ve got a second chance, don’t waste it.” His cell buzzed on the table, and he picked it up. A second later, his fingers were flying across the screen. “I gotta bail. Missing hikers.”
“You on the team?” I asked as I stood to let him out of the booth.
Jude and Chris had both volunteered for search and rescue in high school, but for some reason, I thought they would’ve moved on to other things by now, and that maybe I’d been the one tethering them to that endeavor.
He nodded. “We’ve got a good crew. You should requalify. Come out with us sometime.”
A flicker of something lit inside me. Excitement, I realized. Not the false kind that came from an adrenaline dump on a job but the kind that came from purpose and helping others. I’d never let my certification lapse, but I hadn’t been on a team either. “I’ll talk to my dad about it.”
Jude clapped me on the shoulder. “Good. Glad you’re back.”
“Thanks.” It was all I could say, but his words meant more than he would ever know.
I slid back into the booth, glancing at Chris. His gaze was fixed on Jude.
“You okay?”
“Huh? Yeah.” He zeroed back in on me. He was quiet for a moment and then sighed as if giving in. “So, tell me about your coolest client. Please tell me you had some hot-as-hell affair with a Hollywood starlet.”
I choked on a laugh. “Sorry to disappoint.” But I told him my best stories from the job, and Chris caught me up on all the happenings in Cedar Ridge, studiously leaving Wren out of it. It didn’t exactly feel like old times—the conversation was stilted and awkward in a few places—but it was progress.
I snatched the bill, pulling some cash from my wallet. “Buying lunch is the least I can do as a thank you for giving me the time of day.”
“You don’t have to do that, man.”
“I want to.”
Chris slid out of the booth. “Then I won’t argue with you because that lunch was damned good.”
“I missed that turkey melt.”
He chuckled as we started for the door. “Nothing like the food you were raised on.”
“You’re so right.”
I collided with someone in the entryway. “Sorry—”
“Watch where you’re fuckin’ going,” the guy hissed as he wobbled a little.
I froze. It was like being hurtled back in time. The face was one of the few that haunted my nightmares.
“Keep moving, Joe,” Chris clipped.
“How ‘bout you assholes watch where you’re going?”
“Joseph Sullivan, you will watch your language in this establishment, or you’ll get your food elsewhere,” Jeanie said as she strode over.
“Whatever,” the teen muttered and headed for the door.
I still hadn’t moved. He looked just like him—the spitting image if it weren’t for the dyed black hair and a million facial piercings. And he certainly had Randy’s rage.
Jeanie made a tsking noise. “What that boy needs is some good parents in his life.”
“He’s not going to find them at home,” Chris murmured.
Much had been said in court about Randy’s alcoholic father and his missing-in-action mother, but in the end, it hadn’t helped with the sentencing. He and Paul were currently serving consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole.
“He’s angry, and I don’t blame him. This whole town looks at him like they’re waiting for him to turn into his brother,” Jeanie said.
My gut twisted with a combination of sympathy and unease. That kid was staying alive on rage and fear. I’d seen that kind of combination before.
And it was deadly.
