Chapter 33
Chapter thirty-three
Lou
The door closes as Benji and Gina head home after a late dinner, and I slump on the couch, finally alone.
Half of Havenwood, along with every single one of my regulars, has stopped by. I’m grateful, but every single person had a story about Gallo’s, or about Rita or Loretta, or some scrap of myth about Marcella, and I’m heart-weary.
My fridge is full of casseroles and lasagnas, my bedroom dresser is overflowing with clothes, and the bathroom vanity is covered with necessities.
Dawn and Deirdre left a stack of old photos of Rita and the bar, promising to look for more.
Anabelle is tracking down a few pictures of Gallo’s early days.
She also brought a box of pastries from the grocery store bakery and a cherry pie for Clay.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her, or anyone else who asked about him—which was everyone—that he’s gone.
I miss him.
The air in the cabin is too suffocating, so I push myself to my feet and grab my keys on my way out the door. My car is sitting in the short driveway thanks to Gina and Benji. They brought it over from Gallo’s earlier.
The sun is on its way down. It hasn’t been much more than twelve hours, but it feels like days have passed since the fire, since the Irish coffees with Milo. Since Clay left.
He hasn’t left the camp yet. Benji let that slip while heating lasagna.
I’m not going to read anything into it. Briar could’ve found her cat, only for Milo to let the air out of Clay’s tires. There are a million reasons why he might still be here, and I’m the least likely one.
I glance around for any sign of Gina as I slip into the driver’s seat.
I feel like a teenager sneaking out, but I don’t want her to worry about me or ask me where I’m going.
Thankfully, it’s a quiet Sunday night, and of the few people out and about as I slowly drive through the camp, I don’t recognize a one.
There’s only one place I want to be. I turn off the county road and onto the highway. The summer air is warm and still, shimmery and golden as the sun sinks low on the horizon. I breathe it deep into my lungs, windows down, to prepare myself.
I’m remarkably calm as I pull off the highway and park near the lake. I’ve run out of tears for now, but at seeing my bar burnt beyond repair, I suck in a ragged breath. My heart cracks all over again.
Even though I’d seen the fire, I’d convinced myself that it wasn’t all that bad. That something could’ve survived inside.
The bar is still standing, but a strong wind could easily take down a wall or what’s left of the roof. If it looks this bad on the outside, the inside must have been gutted. If anything of Gallo’s remains, it’s likely charred beyond recognition.
Someone erected a flimsy-looking temporary fence with no trespassing and other warning signs around the front of the bar and around the open back door—probably to discourage teenagers from going inside for cheap thrills or the possibility that some booze survived the fire.
I have no interest in going inside, but I want to sit with the shell of my home for a while, so I plant my ass on the top of the picnic table around the back, close to the lake—the one where Rita would take her smoke breaks.
The acrid smell of the burnt building isn’t as strong here, and the last rays of the day’s sun kiss my skin.
From time to time, the gentle splash of a fish surfacing joins the evening chorus of birds and frogs, but not a single car has passed on the highway since I sat down.
On an evening like this, I can almost imagine things being okay again one day.
Something inside the building, likely damaged by the fire, gives way and falls with a clatter.
Sitting here feels like a funeral.
No, more intimate than that. Like sitting at the bedside of a recently deceased loved one who led a good, long life, knowing that soon nothing physical will remain.
This bar was my home, my purpose. It was my connection to three generations of Gallo women —the roots that planted me in this tiny corner of the world. It shaped me and I shaped it, and it’s gone.
There’s another sound from inside the bar. A shuffling. Another clatter, followed by the sound of something being dragged.
Looters?
There’s no other vehicle here, and I doubt they’d find anything inside worth taking. All the bottles of booze likely shattered in the heat.
Ugh, it’s probably Travis, looking for the will. The man was stupid enough to commit a larger crime to cover up a smaller one—it’s not surprising he’d be reckless enough to enter a structurally unsound building to make sure he got the job done.
Well, I’m not going inside. I’ll wait for him right here so I can yell at him when he comes out.
The sunlight warming my skin disappears as the sun sinks beyond the trees. It’s still warm, but a chill runs up my spine at the loss of the heat.
God, I have lost so much today.
There’s movement by the back door. A man wearing dark blue coveralls and heavy work boots steps out, a flat rectangular piece of wood in his gloved hands. Most of his face is obscured by protective eyewear and an N95 mask, and what appears to be a shower cap covers his hair.
It doesn’t matter. I’d know Clay anywhere by the way he moves.
He slides the piece of wood through a gap between the fence and the building, setting it on the ground before squeezing himself through after it.
I have so many questions—why is he here, for one—but seeing him unexpectedly like this makes all of them fade into the background.
He’s here, and as much as it hurts, I want to soak up every detail about him, because like my bar, he won’t be here for long.
Clay finally notices me sitting on the picnic table by the lake. He goes completely still.
I give him the smallest wave, expecting him to walk away again. He’s already left me. The pain isn’t going anywhere, but I doubt it can get worse, so I stay where I am.
He sets his gloves down next to the wood he carried out. I recognize it as the old Gallo’s sign that hung above the bar. It must have survived, although I can’t tell from here what shape it’s in.
Clay pulls off the shower cap, the eyewear, and the mask, leaving them in a neat pile next to the sign. He starts toward me, dragging the zipper down the front of what has to be Milo’s coveralls before shrugging out of the sleeves. The white T-shirt underneath is damp with sweat.
And then he’s standing in front of me. The expression on his face couldn’t be further from the cold indifference he affected the last time I saw him. He looks at me with such raw, unbridled vulnerability as he searches my face with those beautiful, honey-colored eyes. All I can do is stare back.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, his voice rough. “I shouldn’t have hidden the will from you. And I was wrong. I know you didn’t take the money for yourself.”
Warmth rushes to my face, along with a fresh batch of tears—guess I didn’t cry them all out earlier. I drop my gaze to hide them, but Clay reaches out with a trembling hand and gently tips my face up.
“You took it for me because you couldn’t trust how I’d handle you finding it.
” His hand drops back to his side. “I am so sorry. I didn’t trust you, and that was a mistake I won’t ever make again.
” There’s a flash of panic in his eyes as the first tear rolls down my cheek, but he wrestles his discomfort down.
“I know I’ve shattered your trust in me.
I also know it will take time and work to rebuild it—if I haven’t blown it.
Tell me to leave, and I will, but you are worth staying for. I love you, Louisa Gallo.”
My hand moves before my head, fisting his T-shirt and pulling him in. He stumbles forward, catching himself on the picnic table as his lips meet mine, and I kiss him with a surge of unexpected anger.
“You’re still mad,” he says when I finally push him back. Not that my push does much other than stop the kiss. He’s still got a hand on either side of me, leaning into my space and smelling like my burnt-out dreams.
“I’m not mad—”
“You bit me,” he points out.
“I’m furious.”
“Okay,” he says with a nod. “We can work with that. Tell me why you’re furious.”
“Seriously?” I wave my arm wildly at the bar, at the night falling around us to encompass everything. There’s too much to put into words.
“Let’s start with the will,” he suggests. “I lied to you.”
“And I would’ve forgiven you for that if you hadn’t gotten so pissed off at me. You don’t get to get away with lying and then leave when I do it.”
“No. I don’t. So no more lies, no more hiding. I will give you all my secrets to hold, and you can trust me with yours. I won’t keep anything from you.”
“Prove it. Tell me a secret.”
He sets his jaw, his gaze locked on mine, but it only takes him a few seconds. “Before I legally changed my name to Clay Bastien,”—he closes his eyes for a second, takes a deep breath, and opens them again—“my name was Charles Clayton Hollier”—another pause—“the 3rd.”
The noise that comes out of me sounds a lot like a tiny stream of air being let out of a balloon. “Are you fucking kidding me?” The grim look on his face tells me he is not. “Charles? I’ve been fucking a Charles?”
“I am trusting you with this,” he says in a tight voice.
“Oh, I will never tell anyone that I let Charles Clayton Hollier the 3rd fuck me raw. I will take that to the grave. Why Bastien?”
“My mother’s maiden name.”
“You kept Clayton?”
“My father was Charles. I was always Clayton. And Clayton Bastien sounds like—”
“A pretentious douche?”
His eyes narrow, but he takes my jab with a sigh and a nod. “It fit the person I was trying to be.”
“And now?”
“I’m still figuring it out,” he admits with a soft smile.
For a moment, his smile appears hopeful, but after a few beats of silence, that hope fades.
“It hurt how quickly you discarded me,” I say, hating the tremble in my quiet voice.
“I know. I let my fear get the better of me. I convinced myself that walking away was the only option because I didn’t want to look too closely in the mirror.
I hurt you because I was hurting, because it was easier to blame you for what you did than to accept that I put you in a position where you couldn’t trust me.
And you were justified. I kept your bar from you.
I lied to you, and that was for my own selfish gains.
You moved that cash without asking, but you did that for me. ”
“You left.”
“I’m still here. I want to work for us, even when it’s hard, even when I have to face the fact that I’m wrong—”
“And an asshole.”
“And an asshole,” he agrees. “We can rebuild us, just like we’ll rebuild Gallo’s.”
I sniffle. “You really want to run a dive bar with me in the middle of nowhere?”
“More than anything.”
He sounds so sure, and I want to believe in us, but how many times can I fool myself? I drop my gaze to my hands, clasped together in my lap. “Do you believe there’s a happy ending for us?”
“I do,” he says firmly.
“Why?”
He tips my face up, and the conviction in his honey brown eyes is staggering.
“Because you have my whole heart. Everything I am. I won’t hold anything back.
Not from you, not ever again. I will never give you a reason to hold back from me.
And we’re bigger than your family curse and my lack of relationship experience. ”
I reach up to cup his cheek, the golden stubble rough under my palm. “Clay.”
“I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. If you need time—”
“I don’t need time. I need you.” I pull him close, wrapping my arms around him and burying my face in his neck. And because I haven’t done it enough today, apparently, I cry. He holds me tightly, gently rubbing my back.
“I love you, too,” I say once I can speak again. The scent of smoke on his skin makes my nose itch, but I don’t want to let him go. So I don’t. “You smell awful. What were you doing in there anyway?”
“I didn’t want to come to you empty-handed.” He releases me and rummages in the pocket of the coveralls, pulling something out.
I gasp at the gold cornicello dangling from a chain between his fingers. “It survived?”
He places the good luck charm in my open hand. “The sign over the bar is a little charred. The bull horns survived, too. I managed to get those off the wall. I still need to bring them out. There’s not much else, though.”
I close my fingers over the good luck charm. “Thank you.”
He takes my other hand and helps me off the picnic table. “Come see what I’ve found.”
I don’t follow, my hand slipping from his. Clay stops and turns, a puzzled frown on his face.
“I need to apologize, too,” I say quietly. “I should’ve talked to you about moving the money. I’m sorry I didn’t.”
The frown fades away, and he nods once in acknowledgment. But then he’s smiling at me, holding out his hand.
My palm presses against his and he laces our fingers together.