Chapter 14
The library is quiet when seven o’clock rolls around, not a patron in sight.
Which means I don’t have an excuse to keep Tai waiting.
Although inconveniencing him with my delayed arrival is the least I want to do.
I’m irrationally upset. I know he hasn’t really done anything to deserve my ire, but that’s what the word irrational means—not logical or reasonable.
I just wish he’d stop being there every time I turn a corner. Six months of coexistence in the same town without laying eyes on the man and now he seems to be everywhere. Showing up with his ready smile and easy manner and silver tongue. Asking me out and flaunting the chance of a future that I’m—
Well, let’s just say it out loud, shall we? A future of love and acceptance and companionship that I so desperately want but am too paralyzed with fear of the past repeating itself that I . . . that I . . .
Argh! He should be a gentleman and stop harassing me!
He’s not harassing you. He said he needed to talk to you. That’s all.
We have nothing to talk about.
You don’t know that until you hear what he has to say.
I guess there’s at least one part of my brain that’s being rational tonight, and it seems like it’s finally winning its argument.
I turn the key to lock the library and deposit it in my pocket.
The sun has wholly disappeared behind the hills, casting the ridges in a dark blue silhouette, the sky behind them a vibrant sea of cascading colors.
Already the chill of the approaching twilight has chased away what warmth the sun had left behind, causing me to pull my jacket closed around me and zipping the fleece material up to my throat.
There’s a footpath from the library to the small community park next door.
The town uses the grassy space for Fourth of July picnics, and parents rent out the area for their children’s birthday parties.
Now, however, the park is quiet and serene.
I’d enjoy the setting, the picturesque gazebo standing innocently in the middle of the lawn, were it not the backdrop for a conversation I don’t want to have.
The warm-lighted, old-fashioned streetlamps lining the path turn on as the sky’s pallet mutes.
A man leans against the support post to the gazebo’s entrance, ankles casually crossed and hands shoved in pockets as his shoulder rests against the wood.
He appears as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. The blackguard.
He pops himself off the post and stands straight as I approach, watching me in an unsettling way.
“Angel.” He grins at me.
“You wanted to talk about something?” I walk past him and take a seat on one of the six benches lining each side of the hexagon.
“I’ve discovered your little secret.”
My heart plummets to my feet before shooting straight into my throat, my pulse so loud I can feel the beat between my ears.
I seal my eyes shut. Behind my lids, my future here in Little Creek plays out, an encore to how it was in Chattanooga before I moved.
The stares and speculations. The pitying glances or you poor dear consolations from those who think I have cancer.
The inner battle of simultaneously remaining polite while explaining myself to strangers to whom I owe nothing while also wanting to scream.
I’ll no longer just be Evangeline Kelly, the local librarian.
I’ll be the bald woman. My lack of hair becoming my sole identity in everyone else’s eyes.
I open my eyes to find Tai’s gaze roaming my face.
Starting at my chin and moving slowly up my jawline toward my brow, his look feels like a physical touch, igniting a path of shame that slices through the thin veneer I’ve managed to encapsulate my heart with.
Is he picturing me barefaced, stripped of makeup, no fake eyelashes or temporary eyebrow tattoos?
Is he mentally removing my wig, dethroning my crowning glory of womanhood and leaving me in an unnatural state of nakedness?
“There’s a pop-up restaurant near Athens this weekend. Go with me.”
I blink against his unexpected change in conversation.
The formation of his words makes his sentence declarative instead of interrogative, but I hear the question in the cadence of his tone.
I blink again. Is he . . . mocking me? He now knows I lack some of the fundamental physical attributes that make a person attractive and he’s still asking me out.
Why? I shake my head to clear the cobwebs and try to align the new information being thrown at me.
“I see,” Tai says softly. Regretfully. He’s taken the shake of my head as a response of no to his invitation. Which, I mean, he isn’t wrong. I won’t go, but that’s not what I was saying no to.
He leans against the back of the bench and extends an arm over the top until his hand lands near my shoulder.
His thumb and forefinger gather a strand of my hair between the pads of his fingers.
He stares at the tresses, entranced, as he pulls out an envelope from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. “I think this belongs to you.”
I reflexively take the envelope, staring at it uncomprehendingly. What?
Oh!
This is the love letter I snuck into Dalton’s workshop. Does that mean the secret Tai knows . . . isn’t my alopecia? He doesn’t realize the hair he’s running his fingers through isn’t my own but a wig?
A twisting sort of sensation happens beneath my ribs.
Relief. The feeling is relief. Not disappointment.
Not even a little. Because why would I be even a little bit disappointed that my most-hidden secret is still safe?
That I’m still invisible—I mean, anonymous—in this town?
That the obvious attraction in Tai’s eyes would still be there even after he’d discovered the truth about me.
Which, it turns out, he hasn’t. Or at least not that truth.
“At first, at the baseball game, I wasn’t sure why you had their library book checkout histories with you.
You have to admit, it’s an odd thing to take to a sporting event.
But I thought maybe you were killing two birds with one stone.
Getting some work done while supporting your favorite local team.
But then Stacey showed me a love letter she’d received from a mysterious sender.
And lo and behold, Dalton had a similar letter written by the same person.
Which, not so coincidentally, were the same two people’s information you’d been studying so intently at the game. ”
I swallow past the lump in my throat that’s been lodged there since hearing the words “I’ve discovered your little secret.”
“How do you know the letters were written by the same person?” I ask.
He gives me a crooked smile. “You write your capital Ss and lower case Bs in print while every other letter is written in cursive. In both notes.”
It’s probably pointless to try and refute his claims at this point, but that irrational side of my brain is starting to speak again.
He only has conjecture. Don’t unwittingly give him more evidence against you and seal your own fate.
I seal my lips together instead.
He continues to play with the ends of my hair, watching the way the length falls through his fingers.
Can he feel the synthetic fibers of the strands?
Realize by the texture alone that the weave is machine made?
I want to snatch the hair away from him but force myself to be still.
An overreaction will draw more attention.
Out of the corner of my eye, I glance down to where he’s touching me.
The tendons along the back of his hand flex and bunch with the movement of his fingers, his veins pulsing with life and vitality.
Dark black and various shades of gray color on the skin at his wrist disappear under the cuff of his jacket.
My finger twitches on my lap. I want to run the tip over the lines, trace the stroke marks and become intimately acquainted with the artwork. If our bodies are a temple, then Tai Davis’s is like the Sistine Chapel, every inch covered in a tapestry of art.
Is every inch covered? What masterpieces are being hidden by his clothing?
Embarrassment heats my body and chases the chill of the evening air away.
“I know you’re the author of the letters for another reason as well.”
Tai’s words snap me out of my trance, and I flick my gaze back to his face, hoping he can’t read the thoughts that had been skipping through my mind.
“Everyone in Little Creek—that is to say, anyone who’s lived here longer than six months—knows that Dalton is engaged to Rachel Belvedere.”
“Dalton is . . .” The blood drains from my face. Did I really try to matchmake an already engaged man?
Tai nods. “Taken. Spoken for. Affianced.”
My spine sinks into the support of the bench.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t tell either of them that their secret admirer was the town’s new romantically inclined meddling librarian.”
“Thank you,” I sigh. There isn’t a point anymore denying I penned those letters.
Tai laughs at my visible relief.
“I’m glad one of us thinks this is funny,” I grumble.
“Oh, Angel, I can almost promise you that one day you’ll find the humor in this situation as well.”
“Not likely.”
He shrugs, unperturbed. “The way I see it, you need my help.”
I jerk, my shoulder bumping the back of the gazebo’s bench. “Excuse me? Why would I need your help?”
He gives me a look as if to say Isn’t it obvious?
“You did just try to set up a man about to be married with a woman not his fiancé. That’s pretty disastrous, don’t you think?
And who’s to say the next time you attempt to matchmake that the people in question aren’t also in a relationship you don’t know about?
Or related? I mean, I know Appalachia has a reputation in other parts of the country, but we really aren’t keen on dating our relatives. ”
My mind immediately goes to Tai and Hayley and the fact that I never knew they were cousins.
I blanch. Tai’s right. I stand by my belief that book preferences are a great way to see if two people are compatible, but I made a huge mistake not factoring in more personal information.
Like if they were engaged. Or related. Or had been in a previous relationship with each other that ended badly for one reason or another.
Good gravy there are a lot of scenarios I didn’t take the time to consider before bulldozing ahead in my excitement to have a part in the act of falling in love again.
I eye Tai warily. “And you’re willing to do that? Help me with the personal information so I don’t make the same mistake again?”
He nods. “I am.”
My shoulders sag with relief once again. “Thank you.”
“But I want something in return.”
My spine snaps back to its rigid position.
“In exchange for helping you with this matchmaking scheme of yours, which I feel I need to go on the record as saying is a bad idea—” He pauses as if giving me time to respond. Which I don’t because I never asked nor wanted his opinion on the matter.
When I don’t say anything, he continues. “In exchange for my help, you agree to accompany me to different outings and events of my choosing at prearranged times.”
I blink at him. He can’t be serious. “Let me get this straight. You’re blackmailing me to go on dates with you?”
He winces, looking away from me. “Not blackmail. We’re . . . striking a bargain.” He pulls his gaze back to mine. “You need something from me and I need . . .”
You.
He doesn’t finish the sentence, but that’s how it would’ve ended.
I need you. Because he’s not asking me for something.
Like house-sitting when he goes out of town or helping him with a DIY project or looking up books at the library to help him trace his genealogy.
He’s asking for me. My side of the bargain would be me.
My breath is punched out of my lungs.
“It’s a gray area,” he mumbles under his breath.
Who is he trying to convince, me or himself?
I stare at him. A bargain like this doesn’t help me figure out his protagonist/villain role at all. His morals might be as gray as this bargain of his.
“So,” he asks uncertainly, “do we have a deal?”
I chew on my bottom lip, thinking. I had a little hiccup with Dalton and Stacey, but I can do better.
I know I can make a successful love match.
Spending more time with Tai goes against every grain of self-preservation I have within me, but if I don’t agree to his proposed arrangement, then I risk doing more harm than good with the hearts of the people of Little Creek, and I can’t have that on my conscience.
The only other person I could question about fellow townspeople would be Hayley, but she’d get suspicious real quick if I asked if a specific man was single, especially since I’ve made a stink about not dating anyone.
My friend would hound me until I cracked, and I’m just not ready to unpack my baggage in Little Creek yet.
I hold out my hand for Tai to shake. “Deal.”