Chapter Six
Enemies to Lovers—a popular romance cliché where two characters destined to become lovers start out disliking one another.
Just enemies.
Over the next couple of weeks, the smoke that hung so thick in the air dissipates, but the aftereffects of the fire remain.
Many of my residents have lingering coughs, and a sense of fear and agitation underlies the community.
Elise’s cousin Solis and her husband, Juan, plus their two children, Sofia and Angel, have moved into one of the family suites at the very end of the motel, and I’ve promised that they can stay until they have new housing.
There are motor homes being brought in by the government, filling empty fields on the outskirts of town. Temporary housing solutions for those who aren’t simply moving to a different location in the aftermath of the destruction.
I drove through the burned end of town and I nearly choked on my grief. The hollow, black skeletons that were once houses and businesses are too awful to bear. I don’t know how anyone who lost their possessions, their home, their safety, is managing it.
The resilience of children is one of the most amazing things to watch. Emma and her cousins fill the courtyard with laughter, and Elise worries about how awful they’ll feel when they are supposed to go back to school in September, only to realize that school doesn’t exist.
There is talk about temporary schooling happening in an old Walmart building on the edge of town.
That’s the dominant conversation around the motel. The changes. The plans. The initial crisis is over. No lives were lost, no one was injured. The evacuation notice did its job. All that’s left is grappling with the massive loss of property.
Which is no small feat at all. It’s still too hot, and now the heat feels like an enemy. Not just a discomfort.
I’ve seen Nathan more since the fire than all the time he’s stayed here in the previous summers combined.
He’s helped manage donations and make deliveries. He’s even helped manage barbecues. I’ve decided to continue feeding the community. My guests have donated money for us to make extra food so anyone displaced by the fire can come and have a good meal and a movie and swim in the pool.
Sometimes it’s so crowded the place is overflowing, but it’s healing something. Or at least it’s trying to. I’ve done grief and isolation. Sadness by myself.
This feeling of wanting to rebuild the community is so much more powerful when we all come together.
I’m always surprised no one else seems to realize that Nathan Hart is Jacob Coulter. But then, they would have to be fans intense enough to stare at the author photo in the back of his book and watch all the extras for his show, the five-minute interviews he gave.
Also, they would have to stare at him as intently in person as I have.
I realize I recognized him because his looks captivated me even when they were just an author photo. Those green eyes. They’re unmistakable to me.
They keep showing up in my books.
Despite my best efforts.
But the antipathy I felt toward him has faded. How can I have negative feelings about a man who has done so many wonderful things?
Yes, it’s easy for me to get wounded by the almost kiss, and to be mortified by the ways my meddling residents have tried to push us together. But he ... he’s a good man. He just is.
The sky is blue again, and it feels like a miracle, even as the heat continues to be a menace.
Alice and Ruth are singing again, this time by the pool, for the benefit of all our guests and those who have come by for dinner tonight.
There is something beautiful about it. Having the same music that was going on when the fire started. It’s defiant.
We won’t be burned to the ground.
Nathan is on the edge of the festivities. He helped cook, and he helped serve food, but I can see he’s considering leaving immediately.
Wilma seems to notice this too, and she stops him. “May I have this dance, darlin’?”
“I’m not much of a dancer,” Nathan says.
“It’s my dying wish,” says Wilma.
“You’re not dying, Wilma,” I say.
“All of us are dying. Some of us are just closer to it than others. And I would like to dance.”
Nathan looks like he can’t find a suitable argument against that, and therefore takes her outstretched hand and begins to sway with her near the pool. There are other couples dancing. Juan and Solis are moving in time with the music, Jonathan and Joseph holding each other tight as they look into each other’s eyes.
Wilma, for her part, looks delighted. I cross my arms and lean against the fence that surrounds the courtyard. Wilma twirls herself partly away from Nathan, while still holding his hand, then reaches out toward me. She extends her hand and pulls me close.
I find myself being brought toward Nathan. “Your turn, darlin’,” she says.
And with that I find myself held against his hard body.
I don’t know what I expected him to do. Push me away, maybe. Instead, he holds me, his palm on my lower back, the other hand clasping mine.
“Oh,” I say.
“What did I tell you?” He says this quietly.
“You think she did that on purpose,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Well. There’s no harm in giving her a show, then.”
That’s what I tell myself as I look into his eyes. As I let him hold me like this. I tell myself I’m doing it to make Wilma think her machinations are working. I tell myself it’s not because I want him to hold me.
My own name is on the tip of my tongue, and I want to tell him.
Because despite everything we’ve been through, unless he’s heard it shouted in the chaos, through the smoke, I’ve never told him my name.
It’s so tempting. To close that gap. Yet it feels so risky, and I can’t explain why.
We lived through a fire.
God knows I’ve lived through worse.
But there’s something about him—from the moment I first saw him, the moment he walked into the motel—that feels so significant. And the idea of doing anything to disrupt it, to bring him closer, to push him farther away, seems like a very bad idea.
I can still smell smoke on all my clothes, so maybe it’s just the wrong time to be risky at all.
The song ends, and he releases his hold on me. I still feel where he was touching me. I still feel him .
“There,” I say. “That will give her something to talk about for days.”
“Glad I could help.”
“Always the hero,” I say.
Something goes grave in his eyes. “No. Don’t make that mistake.”
I feel a tug on my skirt and look down to see Angel looking up at me with large dark eyes. “Miss Pink Flamingo,” he says. “Can I have some more cake?”
“Of course, sweetheart.” I move to the table to get him another slice of chocolate, and after I hand it to him, I turn and look for Nathan.
He’s gone.
Once the courtyard clears out for the evening, I sit and take mental inventory of everything. Every moment of the day. Every beautiful thing that’s still here. Everything that didn’t burn. Every moment Nathan looked at me.
Every second he touched me.
Before I can second-guess myself, I stand up and make my way to his motel room.
Maybe I’m just going to tell him my name. Maybe that’s all. Maybe I’m going to laugh and say it’s funny how we’ve never actually been introduced.
Or maybe I want something more.
I don’t interrogate myself. I just knock. And wait for him.
He opens the door, shirtless, and my heart freezes, my lungs going tight.
“Nathan,” I say.
“Don’t.”
But he doesn’t move away. Instead he takes one step out of the motel room, so close I feel him. The heat. The intense attraction.
He’s vibrating with energy. I want to reach out and feel him under my hands like I did when we were dancing.
He moves his hand, like he’s about to touch me. Instead, he lets it fall.
“I really don’t need this,” he says, his voice rough.
It’s like I was in a trance, and his words snap me right back to reality.
“I didn’t do anything,” I say.
“You know exactly what you’re doing,” he says.
I’m at a loss for words. I have nothing to say. We just went through a fire. We’re still going through it—the aftermath is going to linger for months. The trauma for years. He was so wonderful, helping organize things with military precision. He was a hero. Now he’s acting like an outraged miss whose virtue has been compromised because I’m near him.
“What the hell kind of statement is that?”
The worst thing is, I know exactly what he’s talking about. I feel it too. I won’t let him blame it all on me. Or I’ll deny anything happened at all. To my grave. One or the other.
“You run the motel I’m staying at. That’s it. That’s all it’s going to be.”
“You’re full of shit,” I say.
He says nothing to that.
I let him turn and walk away from me. I let him close the door on me. The really funny thing is it’s a more definitive, angry thing than ever got said between me and Christopher in the end.
The fact that I’m still thinking about Christopher is a reminder that, yet again, as much as I hate it, Nathan is right.
I need to stay away from him. I’m closer and closer every day to being fully restored. But he’s too broken for me to manage.
I don’t have to know the details to know that.
Elise wanted an enemies-to-lovers scenario for me, and that’s nice for her.
She might have to accept that sometimes you’re enemies with someone for your own good.