Chapter 7
Hannah
I took the dainty straw out of my drink and took a large slug of my cocktail.
Surely he wasn’t serious.
I took a second long gulp of my drink before I met his gaze.
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked after I’d swallowed.
His eyes never wavered from mine. “I’m deadly serious. We need to be seen together for a while so we can convince people that we’re friends. We might as well enjoy that time together. Do you want another drink? It looks like you killed that one off in a hurry.”
God, he wasn’t joking.
“You can’t just become friends with your ex-fiancée,” I said as I dropped the straw back into my drink.
He shrugged and polished off his beer. “Why not? Our relationship started off as a friendship.”
“And we slept together after dating for only a month or two. We moved in together six months later. That’s not exactly a convincing argument.”
Yes, Tanner and I had planned on being friends in the very beginning, but we’d been so attracted to each other that we’d given up on that plan in a hurry.
He lifted a brow. “Are you worried the same thing will happen again?”
I shook my head adamantly. “No!”
Getting involved with Tanner Remington in any way would be completely insane.
Like it or not, I was still physically attracted to him. So much so that I wanted to tear my clothes off and beg him to fuck me on this tiny little table right now.
Messing with that kind of attraction was dangerous.
Tanner was dangerous.
I couldn’t and wouldn’t dive into that kind of insanity again.
“There’s no reason that we can’t be friends,” he said stubbornly.
There were a lot of reasons we couldn’t be friends, but I wasn’t about to tell him about them since every one of them involved my rampant attraction to him.
“Not happening,” I said before I swilled the last of my drink through the tiny little useless straw.
“Are you done?” he asked as he nodded at my drink.
“Yes.”
“Let’s get out of here,” he suggested as he rose to his feet and dropped some money on the table. “It’s getting a little noisy in here.”
As I rose, I realized that The Mug And Jug was packed, and some people were hooting and hollering from too much alcohol.
Since it was a typical Saturday night at The Mug And Jug, I hadn’t really noticed that the place was filling up and getting rowdier.
People came here to blow off steam after a long week.
He motioned for me to lead the way, and I dodged the crowd until we got outside of the bar.
“Did you drive?” he asked as we stood on the sidewalk.
“No,” I told him as I donned my fleece jacket and started walking toward my place. “My apartment is a ten minute walk from here, and I needed the exercise. Thanks for doing this tonight.”
I desperately needed some space from Tanner, and we absolutely were not going to be spending time together in the future.
I just…couldn’t.
Being this close to him again elicited so many emotions from me that it was…confusing.
“Then I’ll walk you home,” he offered as he fell into step next to me.
He didn’t have a jacket on, but he was wearing what looked like a very warm, navy sweater that looked amazing on him because it contrasted those gorgeous blue eyes of his.
Dammit! I’d thought that my attraction to Tanner would be gone by now.
Not only was my physical attraction still alive and well when it came to him, but there was also something different about Tanner that intrigued me.
I do not need to explore why Tanner seems…different.
The man was trouble for me, wrapped in one gorgeous, gigantic package.
“That’s not necessary, Tanner,” I protested.
Crystal Fork wasn’t exactly a high crime area, and I’d gotten around in Seattle by myself just fine for a long time.
“It is necessary,” he said huskily. “It will give me time to convince you that we really do need to be friends for a while. You know how slow this town is to come around.”
“I don’t want to be friends,” I said bluntly. “Look, I appreciate what you did tonight. If the town still wants to snub me, I can’t change that.”
Once we’d left the light of the bar, the streets were dark except for an occasional streetlight.
I sped up my pace, but Tanner had long legs, and he didn’t really need to make any big adjustments to keep up with me.
“Of course you can change it,” Tanner protested. “Hang out with me for a while.”
“I can’t,” I said stubbornly. “I don’t want to spend time with you.”
Be strong, Hannah. You can do this.
“Do you hate me that much?” Tanner asked solemnly.
“Yes. No. Dammit! I don’t hate you, Tanner. I just don’t want to spend time with you,” I said breathlessly.
“We had some really good times together, Hannah,” he reminded me as he took my arm gently and pulled me to a stop. “At one time, we were best friends.”
Tears welled up in my eyes, and I finally snapped. “You hurt me, Tanner,” I said as I punched him in the chest. “Yes, it’s been over seven years, but you hurt me so badly I wasn’t sure that I would ever be able to pick up the pieces of myself and put myself together again. I can’t just forget that. I was a mess when I first got to Seattle. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I could barely get out of bed in the morning because I was so damn broken. I will never, ever, go through that again, and being with you brings all of those bad memories back every damn time I see you.”
I punched him again before he gently took my wrist to stop me, and wrapped his arms around me so tightly that I could barely breathe.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Hannah,” he rasped against my hair. “I know I was a total dick. I was hurting, too. Maybe I had no right to feel that way since I drove you away, but it killed me to think of you being with anyone else but me back then.”
All of the pain that was still locked inside me suddenly burst free, and I instinctively wrapped my arms around his neck and sobbed against his shoulder like my entire life was ending.
It was all of the old baggage I’d probably carried for years that I didn’t realize was still there.
The anger.
The sorrow.
The longing.
The broken dreams.
I wasn’t sure how long we stayed that way in the middle of the sidewalk in the dark, but when I was done, the panic I’d felt about being close to Tanner had subsided a little.
I reminded myself that it was old pain, probably some things I had unintentionally buried years ago.
“I’m sorry,” I said, a little embarrassed as I pulled away from him and swiped the tears from my face. “I thought I was over it, but I went to a pretty dark place for a while after I left. I’m afraid of ever going back to that place again.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he said roughly. “Tell me about what happened in Seattle. Talk to me, Hannah. Tell me anything you want to tell me.”
He took my hand as I resumed walking at a slower pace.
I didn’t have the energy or the will to pull away from him.
I’d obviously needed to get those feelings out, and I’d already completely melted down in front of him.
I wasn’t going to save my dignity at this point.
In some ways, it had helped to learn that he’d cared enough about me back then to feel hurt about the breakup, too.
“It was brutal at first,” I confessed. “We were together for a long time, Tanner, and I’m not sure I knew how to be alone.”
I’d just turned twenty when we’d gotten together, so I’d spent most of my adult life with Tanner.
I hadn’t been a virgin when we’d met, but I’d only been with one other man in my life, and that relationship had ended fairly quickly.
I continued, “I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, I guess. I survived, but I never wanted to hurt that way again. It helped when our business took off, and I was constantly busy. I made a lot of friends in Seattle, and I built a life there that I really loved.”
“And now you’re here in Crystal Fork again,” he commented.
“It wasn’t a difficult choice,” I told him. “Mom is here, and she’s at that age when she needs me to be here. She’d never admit that to me, but I knew it was time for me to come home. I need to be here to make sure she’s okay. After her heart attack, I’d be worried about her all the time if I stayed in Seattle.”
“But you miss your life in Seattle,” he guessed.
“I do,” I said softly. “I’m getting some occasional jobs here, but it’s nothing like the success I had in Seattle. I don’t think I miss the location as much as I miss having my business and my friends there.”
“It will take time, Hannah,” he said soothingly. “You can’t just rebuild a business that quickly.”
“I realized that,” I agreed. “I knew it was going to take time, and I was okay with that. I guess I just feel so isolated here, which is weird because I grew up here. I guess I don’t feel like I belong here anymore.”
“Then let me be your friend, Hannah. Not a pretend friend. A real friend.”
“I’m not sure I can do that, Tanner. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but our relationship was over a long time ago. We can’t start over, and we can’t go back.”
“We can start over as friends. You’ve changed. I’ve changed. We’re different people than we were years ago, Hannah. I know what’s important in my life now.”
“It wasn’t completely your fault,” I confessed. “I was insecure. I should have made you listen to me somehow. But the more you brushed me off, the more insecure I became. I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do with my life in Crystal Fork, and that was my fault. I wasn’t making myself happy, and your circumstances had changed so much. You were becoming incredibly successful, and I was an unhappy hairdresser in a small town. I let my self-esteem revolve around you for a long time. At some point, I think I let myself believe that I wasn’t good enough for you anymore.”
“I hope to hell that you eventually realized that wasn’t true,” he said gruffly.
“I did. Maybe I needed to step outside the situation and realize who I was as an individual. We’d been a couple for most of my adult life. If we were together now, I’d probably knock some sense into your head because I know I’m worth listening to. I’ve grown up a lot in the last seven years, and I’ve made my mental health a priority. That’s probably why my common sense is screaming at me to stay away from you.”
“But you want to come riding tomorrow on my trail system, don’t you?” he teased.
“More than anything,” I said with a sigh. “I’ve missed being on my bike, and I’m bored to tears without enough work to keep me busy.”
“Then do it, Hannah. I bought a bike for Lauren to use, but mountain biking isn’t really her thing. She’d rather be on a horse.”
“How is she?” I asked curiously.
Lauren Collier was like an adopted sister to Tanner. She was the little sister of his best friend, who had died when Lauren had just finished with high school.
Tanner had been watching out for Lauren ever since her brother had died, and they were close.
“She’s good,” he said in a more upbeat voice. “She moved back to Montana, and she just moved into a house in Crystal Fork. She’s working remotely on her own business now.”
“She finished her doctorate degree?” I asked.
“And worked for a great company in Boston to get her experience,” he informed me.
“That’s fantastic,” I replied as I stopped near the door of my small apartment building. “This is me.”
I hadn’t known Lauren well, but I’d seen her occasionally when she visited Tanner. I’d always liked her, and I was so happy that she’d reached her life goals.
“So what time are you coming to the house tomorrow?” he asked like the visit was a done deal. “If you come early, we can ride while it’s warm enough, and I’ll throw some food on the grill afterward. I still suck at cooking, but I can grill.”
I knew that meeting with Tanner again could be disastrous.
We had too much history to start over again as friends.
But I also dreaded spending the day alone after a morning visit with my mom.
My mother had a more active social life than I did, and she had an event to attend at noon.
“I’ll never hurt you again, Hannah, and you’re perfectly capable of smacking me in the head if I do something stupid.”
I laughed. “Okay. I’ll be at Mom’s for breakfast. I’ll head over to your place about eleven.”
I might end up regretting it, but I was a much wiser woman than I’d been seven years ago.
If being around him started to screw with my head, I’d leave and not look back.
But as of now, it did seem like he’d changed, and I didn’t want to dwell on our past forever.
I wasn’t sure if Tanner Remington and I could really be friends, but it would be kind of nice to have something to do on a Sunday in Crystal Fork.
I was still physically attracted to him, but I was a thirty-four year old woman. I could learn to control my hormones, right?
I finally let go of his hand as I dug out my keys for my ground floor apartment.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Tanner said in a satisfied voice.
“Tanner?” I said as he started to leave.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for listening and letting me cry on your shoulder. I think I needed that.”
“My shoulder should have always been there for you whenever you needed it,” he answered regretfully. “But it will always be there if you need it in the future.”
I smiled as I stood at the open door of my apartment. “I think I’m done crying over that time in my life now. I think we’ve both moved on.”
“That’s good,” he rumbled as he turned to walk back to the bar to get his vehicle. “I’d much rather make you smile in the future.”
I smiled wider.
Tanner had always hated to see me cry.
I closed the door and leaned my forehead against it, feeling a lot lighter and more optimistic than I had since I’d returned to Crystal Fork.