Young Buck: A Slow Burn Small Town Romance (Green Valley Heroes Book 5)

Chapter 3

“Am I in the right place?”

An uncertain voice in the doorway halted my unfolding of the chairs. I wasn’t expecting anyone new. Six or seven regulars showed up at my weekly Cheated On-Onymous meetings on an average night, but women from my online group sometimes dropped in.

Not that there was a season for cheating, but summer wasn’t it. At Christmas time, I doubled the number of chairs. After Valentine’s Day, I added even more. Summer being slower gave me less reason to assume that the woman standing in the door was in the right place.

“I’m here for the book club?”

She stepped into the room and I eyed the book in her hand, set on making a positive ID.

“There’s quite a few that meet in this library on Tuesday nights. Is there a specific club you’re looking for?”

She untucked her book from its clutch, turning the cover toward me.

“A Brief History of Circulated American Postal Stamps.” I smiled warmly. “I believe this is the club you’re looking for.”

Cheated On-Onymous meetings took place in the deepest bowels of the Green Valley Library basement, past the employee kitchen and the secondary archives space. Years ago, it had been used for movie screenings. A sign above the door still read “Media Room.”

My online members knew the score: if they ever wanted to come to a meeting, the password came in the form of the right book. Bethany Winston had been my accomplice in cooking up the whole scheme. Not only had she offered me the use of the library’s most forgotten space—she’d researched topics that could serve as decoy themes. Books about stamp-collecting—a.k.a. philately—were the least popular category in circulation.

Bethany had been a sympathizer, having endured her own trouble with men—specifically, Darrell Winston. Darrell had been an abuser. My Floyd had supported a gambling addiction and a girlfriend, neither of which I knew a thing about until after he fell over and died. Bethany and her kids had it worse, but both of us knew what it meant to start over. It wasn’t a thing that one could do easily or alone.

“It’s my first time,” the woman said shyly.

She wouldn’t know I’d figured that out—that I was the founder and leader of COO. I’d never shown my face online. Though, in the five years since I’d started the group, I hadn’t missed a single meeting. It was one reason why I’d been grooming Clarine—my uncomfortable realization that eating, breathing, and sleeping lying men who cheated was the reason why I went to bed alone.

The woman’s auburn hair fell to her chin in a flattering cut. She wore white pedal pushers, yellow clogs, and a print blouse. Maybe it was the package she came in—all bright and put together—that had distracted me initially. A closer look revealed the sadness in her eyes.

I waved her in with the arm that wasn’t holding a folding chair. I’d already placed down enough to make up half of my circle. As the start time drew close, the others filtered in. One by one, I introduced them to our new recruit, Emmie. Jolene was the last to arrive.

If I was the leader, Jolene was the grande dame, a septuagenarian grandma who was full of beans. She had been one of my earliest COOs. Long since over her philandering ex of forty years, she was remarried to a retired MLB player ten years her junior. Most women graduated when they felt independent, but Jolene still attended. She came for the conversation, and the cake.

“Who gets chocolate?” Jolene called as the meeting came to order.

The hands that held the candy bowl in her lap were heavily bejeweled. Red cat-eye glasses sat on her nose, affixed to a gold chain.

“Chocolate?” Emmie asked from next to me.

“We start with celebration,” I supplied. “It can be anything, big or small, as long as it’s some positive thing you did for yourself.”

“I’ll go first.” Peggy always wore a smile. She was an ESL teacher and a mother of three. Her fine black hair was up in a messy bun save for her curtain bangs. She wore blue glasses with thick plastic frames.

“My ex called three times yesterday, and I did not take a single one.”

No sooner did Peggy share her news than a flash of silver flew across the room. Jolene had accurate aim and a good memory for everyone’s favorite candy. Peggy was partial to peppermint patties.

“I’ve got one,” Clarine spoke up.

She looked different from last night. Investigator Clarine had worn a baseball cap, a hoodie, and dark jeans. COO Clarine wore flirty dresses that showed off her amazing shoe collection.

“I asked out my crush and she said yes.”

This earned hoots and hollers from around the room and a mini Three Musketeers.

“I have one.” Cora was softspoken. No one deserved what she’d been through. After she’d caught her husband with another woman, he’d had the audacity to disappear and leave her stranded with their two kids and no way to pay the mortgage.

In addition to the emotions, she’d had to deal with the logistics. Legally ending their marriage. Securing sole custody. Having his wages garnished to collect alimony and child support. All of us except for Emmie leaned forward, hopeful about the news. Cora blinked rapidly and inhaled sharply.

“The divorce is final. He signed the papers last night.”

The entire room broke into laughter and applause. Peggy, who sat next to Cora, gave her a hug. Clarine fist-bumped her from the other side. Darlene and Shenita, who sat across the circle, continued to clap. Jolene rose to cross the circle, handing Cora the biggest prize: a King-Sized Snickers bar.

“Wear your party clothes next week, girls!” Clarine gave a conspiratorial smile. “We’ve been planning this one for months.”

I nodded enthusiastically, sniffling even as I grinned.

“Are all of y’all divorced?” Emmie wondered aloud.

“I’m widowed,” I explained, then motioned to the woman next to Peggy. “Darlene stayed with her husband. Cora there opted for divorce. Cheated On-Onymous has only three rules. Number one is, no judging women for their choices. Whether a woman should or shouldn’t reconcile with an unfaithful partner isn’t for anyone else to say.”

“Rule number two...” Shenita continued. “Maintain a space of self-determination. We all know Southern women like to give advice. Here, we don’t engage in nudging, fixing, or prescribing. We keep quiet with unsolicited opinions, to let a woman hear her own voice.”

“Rule number three is the most important rule,” Jolene cut in, sitting back down in her chair and throwing Emmie a pointed look. “We’ve got standards when it comes to food and we all take turns. Now, come on and tell us. Do you bake?”

Between my shiftat the station, my COO meeting, and my burglary intervention the night before, what I should’ve been doing now was fixing a quick dinner and going to sleep. I hadn’t gotten much the night before. Instead of going for a walk after Boone left—and giving my body something to do with the adrenaline—I’d retreated to the solitude of my bedroom, washing down guilt and indignation with chocolate and red wine.

Said guilt was why, instead of preheating my oven to 350 for my standard dinner of frozen hors d’oeuvres, I was preheating it to 375, the correct temperature for the best thing I knew how to bake. My neighbor’s apology would come in the form of butterscotch bars.

As I got to mixing my ingredients, I mentally composed what I would write on his card. The ability to sling platitudes was not in my DNA. Most people who had tased an innocent person would just apologize and say they were wrong. Only, I didn’t think I was.

On one hand, he hadn’t been committing a crime. On the other hand, he’d been prowling around at two-thirty in the morning in a house that was vacant by all accounts. I was sorry he’d gotten hurt but I wasn’t sorry I’d defended myself. All that sentiment would have to come through in a greeting card.

“I’m sorry you got tased” would come off as a nonapology. The problem was the use of the passive voice. Why use phrasing that he “got tased” when both of us knew I was the one who had done the tasing? “I’m sorry I tased you” still felt too disingenuous. “I’m sorry you thought it would be a good idea to move into an empty house using a flashlight in the middle of the night” was most accurate to my true sentiment but would come off even worse. I needed to say something that could help us move forward.

An hour later, my butterscotch bars were on a cooling rack, I’d taken a shower, and gone into my desk for a note card. I wrote in my most elegant penmanship.

Now that I know you’re not a criminal, I hope we can be friendly neighbors. Please accept these butterscotch bars as a gesture of good faith.

I wasted no time plating them as soon as they were cool and making my way across his lawn. The suspicion that he wasn’t home filled me with relief. There were no lights on inside and I didn’t see his truck parked out front. It occurred to me suddenly that perhaps he wasn’t the sort of man to let bygones be bygones—the kind who might want to tase someone back—out of revenge.

With that thought in mind, I hastened to reach the door. The Jenkinses had a small table next to their front porch chair. When I reached it, I set the bars on the table and stuck a corner of the card under the platter. I thought to leave it there, and made to walk away when another thought occurred: what if an animal got to it before him?

Visual imaginations of what his front stoop would look like if the bars were ransacked by a raccoon—not to mention what might become of my platter—found me rethinking the whole thing. Now, I stood stock-still.

I should drop these off at the fire station. Maybe he could share them with the other guys.

It seemed like a better plan. Firehouses were open twenty-four hours a day. And my neighbor was less likely to chew me out in front of witnesses. With my decision made, I lifted the platter and card, turned on my heel, and made to walk back home. I didn’t even make it three steps before I bumped into someone. And not just any someone. It was him.

He looked different than he had last night. Better, somehow. The moon was bright and he seemed taller—his hair softer and shinier—from up-close. Shadows darkened his baby blues.

“Oh, there you are,” I said as nonchalantly as I could. “I made you butterscotch bars. Think of them as a ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ kind of gift.”

Despite bumping into him, my platter remained firmly in my hands. We stood so close, I had to take a step backward in order to thrust my arms forward and hold it out to him.

“You baked butterscotch bars,” he repeated. “For me.”

When he crossed his forearms over his broad chest, it took effort to peel my eyes away. They were thick, but not too thick—they looked hard and corded with muscles. Forearms on a man were my sweet kryptonite.

“Yes. Mm-hmm, I did.”

It was getting a bit awkward, me standing with my arms jutted out and him not taking the plate.

“If you made them for me, then why were you leaving with the goods?”

Sparing him my lengthy thought process, I answered concisely, “I thought a raccoon might get them.”

“But you didn’t ring the doorbell. How’d you know I wasn’t home?”

Of course, I hadn’t known whether he was. All I knew was, I hadn’t rung the doorbell because I hadn’t wanted to run into him at all. Since I couldn’t very well come out and say that, I gave an answer that wasn’t technically a lie.

“I thought I’d just bring them by the firehouse, tomorrow.”

The look of amusement that had begun to bloom on his face turned right into a frown. He nearly snatched the platter from my hands.

“Don’t come to the firehouse.” His voice held a twinge of panic and a double twinge of command. “Don’t ever come to the firehouse,” he repeated.

It was such an odd thing to say.

“What if I have to report a fire?”

He broke eye contact long enough to scan the card I handed him, then flicked his gaze back up to meet mine. “Tell a friend.”

I guess I couldn’t blame him. But his words sparked irritation. For someone who wanted nothing to do with me, he sure had been quick to avail himself of my treats. Maybe it was my lack of sleep, but something in his words set me off.

“Look. I understand that you did not enjoy being tased, seeing as how it turned out you were innocent...” I put my hands on my hips. “But can you not at least say that you had it coming? You were prowling around a dark, abandoned house with a flashlight in the middle of the night. I brought over these butterscotch bars as a gesture of good faith, even though it was you who scared the hell out of me. Would it kill you to take just a little bit of responsibility?”

His eyes widened, then narrowed. His nostrils flared. He brushed past me to set the plate down on the table.

“I can take responsibility for some of it.” He rounded on me from the other side and I turned to face him. “I can see how it looked. Firefighter hours are normal to me, but maybe a three a.m. move-in wasn’t the best decision. Especially when I had to do it with a flashlight, before they’d turned the electricity back on. But what’s not my responsibility is the fact that you gave law enforcement the right to access your home surveillance feed. And your little moment of vigilante justice didn’t stay in the case file, where it belonged. It got leaked to the firehouse and was waiting to greet me on my first day.”

Oh no.

Civilians with home security systems could grant feed access to law enforcement. It wasn’t something they constantly monitored—more like something they accessed if there was criminal activity. And I had opted in.

“I’m sorry.” The words I’d held back before spilled out in a rush. I’d worked in law enforcement long enough to believe that some douchebag rookie cop from the Sheriff’s office had shared the video with one of his douchebag friends down at the FD. Whatever hazing they already had in store for my poor neighbor, this would make it worse.

“What can I do?” I wanted—no, needed—to help.

His expression became resigned. “That horse already left the barn.”

“Well if you think of anything—” I cut myself off, not knowing what else to say.

He turned away from me and picked up the plate of butterscotch bars. “Let’s just say you owe me one.”