Haunted Ever After (Boneyard Key #1)

Chapter Twenty-One

Twenty-One

Cassie should have said no.

Yes, she wanted to help Sarah Hawkins. And sure, going through Nick to talk to (text to?) Elmer may have been the only way to accomplish that, short of putting the Oxford English Dictionary on her fridge, one word at a time. But on the face of it, going out with Nick again was a bridge too far. She’d written the guy off in her head a while back, and there was no point in letting him back in.

But there was something about the way his face had lit up when she’d walked through the door of Hallowed Grounds that morning. Like she was a miracle, and all he wanted was the chance to bask in her miracle-ness. He’d missed her.

And fine, she’d missed him too.

Besides, the man made damn good coffee. Whenever Cassie started to reconsider her date that night, she remembered the atrocity that was Spooky Brew’s dark roast and did a full-body shudder.

She wasn’t going to dress up, though, she told herself as she changed her earrings for the third time. She’d been in Boneyard Key long enough to know that there wasn’t much around here worth dressing up for. No five-star restaurants, no jacket or tie required. Cute shorts and sneakers would get her in anywhere in town.

Nick was waiting for her right at eight, leaning against the wall near the darkened entrance of Hallowed Grounds. He looked so much like he had the night they’d gone on the ghost tour together that she thought she’d gone back in time. He wore jeans and work boots but he’d changed his shirt to a gray button-down. The sleeves were rolled up, and he had a large bag slung over one shoulder.

“We going on a road trip?” She indicated the bag.

He huffed out a laugh, pushing off the wall and glancing down at the bag as though he just noticed it was there. “No. No, this is dinner.” Now that he was close, she could see it was an insulated bag, sagging with the weight of its contents. “Don’t worry. I didn’t cook.”

“What is it?” She reached for the bag as though he’d hand it over. She knew better, and he shook his head.

“It’s a surprise.” His hand moved as though he wanted to hold it out for her to take, but then he dropped it. They weren’t there yet. Not by a long shot. But Cassie fell into step next to him on the sidewalk as he led them in the opposite direction from her house, past The Haunt and down the street. The lights to Poltergeist Pizza flickered; the delivery guy must have felt like working tonight.

She knew where they were going right away, once they hit the sidewalk that snaked between the buildings and toward the water. Eventually the concrete of the sidewalk gave way to sand, until her Keds began to sink gently into the earth with each step. It didn’t take long for them to reach the clutch of picnic tables, where they’d watched the sunset together before.

Nick set the bag down and Cassie took a seat on the opposite side from him. After unzipping it, he pulled out a six-pack of beer in green glass bottles. “I couldn’t remember if you were a beer person or not,” he said apologetically. “I’ve got some sweet tea in here too, and some waters.” He popped the top off one of the beers, setting it to the side. For the Beach Bum. Of course. Cassie liked that she knew that. It made her feel like a local.

“I like that you thought ahead. I’ll take a tea.” He passed her one, a plastic bottle with a blue label. Cassie blinked at it; this was a Publix label.

When she looked up, Nick was holding his own bottle of tea toward her in a mock toast. She tapped the mouth of her plastic bottle to his, and they each took a sip.

As Nick turned his attention back to his bag, Cassie stretched up on her toes, leaning across the table in an attempt to see what else he’d brought. But Nick caught her, narrowing his eyes and tugging the bag a few inches closer to his side of the table.

“No peeking,” he chided, but he didn’t keep the secret long as he kept unpacking. Food now: potato salad and pasta salad in little plastic containers. More Publix labels: the packaging was as familiar as the back of her hand. But her heart absolutely soared when he drew out two oblong, paper-wrapped packages.

“Are those Publix subs ?” She couldn’t keep the squeal out of her voice or the excitement out of her body as she practically scrambled on top of the table to get to them.

“Wait, wait!” But Nick was laughing as he held the sandwiches over his head, out of reach. “This one’s yours.” He handed her one of the paper sleeves. “I hope I got the order right.”

Cassie plopped to the picnic bench with her prize, sliding the sandwich from its sleeve and unwrapping the familiar logo-ed deli paper. She groaned in ecstasy as the sandwich was unwrapped. “Look at you, beautiful.” The chicken tenders had been tossed in the perfect amount of buffalo sauce, the veggies were crisp, the bread was fresh and soft…this was a perfect Publix sub. She picked up one of the halves and took a bite. It was sensory overload: the spicy-tangy taste of the buffalo sauce exploding across her tongue, the pillowy bread giving way to the crunch of the fried chicken and veggies.

“Oh my god.” She held a hand to her mouth while she chewed. “This is amazing.” A Publix sub was something she used to grab once a week or so, usually when she was grocery shopping anyway because the last thing you wanted to do after unloading groceries was cook. But she hadn’t had one in a while now, so the nostalgia of it made her eyes mist over.

“Should I leave you two alone?”

Oh, right. For a moment there she’d forgotten that Nick was across the table from her, one eyebrow raised while she shoved a sandwich into her mouth.

“Where did you get this?” She took a swig of iced tea, sweet and cold, the perfect complement to the sandwich. “There isn’t a Publix anywhere nearby.”

“In town? No, there isn’t.” He nodded in confirmation. “But there’s one on the other side of the causeway, down the highway a ways.”

Cassie stopped chewing as his words sank in. She knew where he meant; she’d driven past that shopping center more than once, on her move out here and more recently when she’d had to hit a big-box hardware store. But Nick was downplaying his effort; he’d driven at least an hour to get there. Each way. To pick up her favorite sandwich. He’d gotten her order exactly right and she’d told him about it once, some several weeks ago.

This wasn’t just a sandwich. It was an apology. A declaration. Somehow that made it—and Nick—even more delicious.

While she’d been pigging out on her sub, Nick had sat down across from her, his back to the water, unwrapping his own sub and cracking open the potato salad—the yellow kind, with the egg. He’d gotten that right too. Cassie’s heart swelled as Nick glanced up at her with an apprehensive smile.

“Thank you.” She tried to imbue as much meaning as she could into the words. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to show her how much he meant his apology. She needed him to know that the effort wasn’t wasted.

Nick ducked his head, pink flushing the tops of his cheeks. “Of course.”

He suddenly seemed very far away, all the way across the table like that. “You know, this sunset’s shaping up to be a great one. But you’ve got your back to it.” She patted the seat next to her in invitation, and he raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah?” The flash of hope in his eyes was humbling, and Cassie smiled.

“Yeah.”

It took less than a minute for Nick to switch sides, tugging his sandwich across the table by one corner of the waxed paper. Cassie took the opportunity to check out his sandwich—knowing someone’s Publix sub order was important. It was a key insight into their character.

But she frowned at what she saw. “You don’t like chicken tenders?” His sub looked like a classic Italian combo, made up of cold cuts and veggies, loaded down with an herbal dressing. Which was fine, but…it wasn’t a chicken tender sub.

“I do.” He shrugged. “But we’re the opposite here. The fried chicken at The Haunt has spoiled me for all other chicken, while Publix did the same for you. I almost went with the Cuban, but—”

Cassie made a noise of acknowledgment while she chewed and swallowed. “No, you gotta have the right kind of bread for a Cuban.”

“Exactly. I didn’t want to chance it. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with an Italian sub.”

Cassie gave a hum of assent around another bite of her sandwich. “I still have to try The Haunt’s chicken. Tuesdays, you said, right?” Nick nodded while chewing, his eyes carefully on the sunset in progress over the water and not on her. She understood. He’d made this apology, but he wasn’t going to push further. It was her turn. “Maybe we can do that sometime soon?”

He looked at her then, and she held her breath as he swallowed his bite and took a long drink of tea. “Just be prepared to have your life changed.”

“I can’t think of a way that my life hasn’t changed recently. What’s one more?”

Nick gave a bark of laughter, the sound so unexpected that she grinned to hear it. “Good point,” he said. He handed her a plastic fork from the bag and offered her the carton of potato salad. They passed it back and forth, eating in silence, letting the crash and hiss of the waves against the shore fill the quiet between them, while the sun setting over the water provided a show of its own.

Nick cracked open a beer and cleared his throat. When he finally spoke his voice was soft, hard to hear over the sounds of the ocean. “Growing up, there was this girl. Madison.”

Cassie gave a start of recognition. Libby and Sophie had told her this story already. But she should let him tell it too. It was his story, after all.

He didn’t look at Cassie while he talked; he sipped at his beer and kept his eyes on the sunset. “We knew each other all our lives—most kids do when you grow up here—but I don’t think we really noticed each other till we were in high school. Then she became everything. You know how it is.”

Cassie made a murmur of agreement. “First love is powerful.” She got that. They imprinted on you, shaped your DNA, made you part of the adult you are today.

“We stayed together through college, at least I thought we did.” Bitterness crept into his voice then, and Cassie glanced over, trying to read his face in the growing dark.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It wasn’t.” Nick sighed. “I thought the plan was college, then back here to Boneyard Key. My family’s lived here as long as I can remember. So has hers.”

“Founding Fifteen, both of you?”

Nick nodded. “There’s a responsibility that comes with that. This whole ghost thing…before it was a way to sell T-shirts, it was…it’s always been something real. And kind of sacred. My roots, you know? This town is special, and that means a lot to me.” He paused for so long that Cassie wondered if she was supposed to say something. He studied his hands, ignoring the blazing sunset in front of them.

“Madison didn’t think the same way,” he finally said. “She felt trapped here. She went off to college and for her it was a way out. She couldn’t wait to get out of this town and start her life. Leaving Boneyard Key was when her life began—those were her exact words.”

“A life without you,” Cassie said quietly. She didn’t feel jealous.

“Yep. That’s what she wanted. A life without this town. Which meant a life without me. But she didn’t want to tell me. She was putting it off. Putting me off. First it was both of us going to college. Then she wanted her master’s degree. Then a doctorate…” A muscle jumped in his cheek as his face clouded over with memory. Suddenly his rant about women and careers, as misogynistic as it was, made a little bit of sense. It was no excuse, but she could see now that his words were coming from a place of deep hurt.

Nick continued. “That was fine, you know. I get wanting an education, and ambition is good. But all this time I thought we were moving forward together. I waited for her, while she was off getting these advanced degrees. But it turned out she’d left me years ago. Left me behind. She just never bothered to actually tell me. It was…” His voice trailed off as he stared unseeing at the sunset, his eyes unfocused, lost for the moment in memory. Then he blinked and met Cassie’s eyes with a small, sad smile. “Well, it sucked, obviously.”

Cassie was startled into a snort. “Obviously.”

“So I was back home, living with my parents, still trying to figure out what I was going to do. And then they dropped the bomb—they were moving. Dad’s a tax accountant, and they were getting more and more clients in The Villages, so it just made sense for them to move there. They were about that age anyway.”

“Sure.” But she got where that was going. Nick, as a young man in his twenties, would have no desire to move to a retirement community. To spend his days driving around the place in a golf cart and playing bingo.

“Right before they moved, Elmer’s place shut down again…It had gone through a bunch of owners since he died, and the place just couldn’t stay open. The last guy was some entrepreneur from out of town, selling the business for a song. I thought, making coffee’s pretty easy…” This time his smile reached his eyes, in response to Cassie’s laugh. “Elmer texted me the first day I got the keys, and then it all made sense. Why all these out-of-towners couldn’t make the business work. They didn’t know how to deal with Elmer. Or the Beach Bum. Or any of it. But I did. It was like…confirmation that I belong here. That Boneyard Key is my home, and I did the right thing by staying here.”

He gave a long sigh, and all trace of a smile was wiped from his face. “That’s the only reason I can think of for why I acted the way I did at your house. Why I lost my shit. It was like you couldn’t wait to leave here too. But the things I said, that’s not me.”

“I know.” She laid a hand on his arm. The cotton of his shirt was crisp and his skin was warm underneath. His biceps tensed under her hand, then relaxed.

“I appreciate that.” He turned his head to look at her, and even in the almost-dark, his eyes were so easy to get lost in. She didn’t know what it was about this guy, but being with him felt like coming home after a long day. How could this Madison chick want to give this up? Give him up?

So she let herself thread her arm through his, hugging him to her side. She let herself lay her head on his shoulder, looking out toward the water and the last remnants of sunset. She let herself forgive him. Because it really seemed like he could use a break.

Nick tilted his head, laying his cheek on top of her head. She felt more than heard his sigh. “The sunsets look so much better with you.” The words were little more than breath, stirring her hair.

“I couldn’t agree more.” Her voice was an answering murmur. She could live the rest of her life in this one moment and be perfectly content.

But Nick’s mind was still on that one terrible afternoon. “The worst part,” he said, “was your face. I can close my eyes and still see how you looked at me. I never want to put that look on your face again.”

Cassie remembered that moment too; it was like all the blood had drained from her face, her chest. She’d been frozen, unable to move but so cold at the same time. He’d been talking about a woman giving her husband children as though it were the only thing they were good for.

As long as they were sharing their core wounds…“I can’t have kids.” The words fell out of her mouth and seemed to hang in the air between them. “It’s a whole medical thing that I usually don’t bring up on dates.”

His brow furrowed and he turned his head away from the sunset and toward her, his expression darkening with concern. “Are you okay? Like…healthy?”

“Oh. Yeah, I’m totally fine,” she rushed to reassure him. “There’s just…certain parts that don’t work properly.” She gestured around her abdomen in a wide arc. “Not accommodating to growing babies.” Now she knew why she didn’t bring this up on dates. Ovarian cysts and endometriosis weren’t sexy under the best of circumstances. But Nick had just told her some hard truths of his own, she may as well share hers.

Cassie took a deep breath. “It was fine in my twenties,” she said. “I was working on my career, getting established and all that. The last thing on my mind was starting a family. But the thing about being a woman in your thirties is that being a mom becomes the default to the rest of the world. All your friends are doing it, and before you know it, babies are the main topic of conversation, and you can’t relate. More and more you get these targeted ads geared toward ‘busy moms’—like you can’t be busy if you aren’t one.” Her sinuses started to tingle, and she blinked fast against threatening tears. “It’s one thing to not want kids. But it’s another when you don’t even get to decide. When everyone around you is starting a family, you’re just left there. Feeling defective.”

“Hey.” Nick’s hand covered hers. Squeezing lightly, sending reassurance her way. “There’s nothing defective about you. Not a damn thing.”

Cassie sniffed once and knuckled the emerging tears from her eyes. Enough. She was not the self-pitying type. She tried for a laugh, but it came out choked. “That’s not what you said that day. That’s what hit me so hard, and hurt so much.”

His hand tensed on her arm. “I swear to God that wasn’t me. That day, at your house, I wondered who was saying those things, and why they had my voice.” He shook his head as he stared out at the water. “I don’t think those things. I’m not the family-and-babies type, either.”

“I buy that,” she said. “Libby and Sophie…they said you don’t do relationships. Ever since the thing with Madison. Is that…? Do you…?” She hated to bring it up, but if he was going to bring her Publix subs and say nice things about her and watching sunsets together, they should probably figure out where they wanted to take this once and for all.

Nick got where she was going with her question. He straightened up, and while he didn’t exactly pull away from her, she dropped her arm and sat up straight too. “They’re right,” he said. “It’s hard, dating in a town where you’ve grown up with damn near everyone and they know your entire life story.” He studied his hands, picking at his cuticles. “Apparently I’m more of a situationship kind of guy.”

“Situationship,” Cassie repeated. She could feel her eyebrows crawling up her forehead.

“That’s what I’ve been told. You know. A little more than a one-night stand, a little less than going home to meet the parents. If someone’s in town for a week or two, I show her a good time, and…”

“And then she goes home. No mess, no commitment.”

“It’s just easier to not get involved,” Nick said. Then his eyes went wide as he turned to her. “I mean, it’s nothing personal. Nothing against you. You’re great. You’re more than great. I just…”

“I get it,” she said even as her heart fell. But she couldn’t expect any promises of a real future with this guy when she couldn’t promise the same. She didn’t know if she was sticking around herself.

“Here’s the thing,” she continued, steeling her courage. “I like you, Nick.”

His eyes softened, and his quick intake of breath at her words lifted her soul. “I like you too.” He dropped a hand to hers, tangling their fingers together. “More than I’ve liked anyone in a long time.”

“Then how about this: we take it day by day. No strings. No pressure.” She wanted to cringe at how pragmatic she sounded. She could be running a meeting instead of proposing a relationship. “What do you think?”

“Yeah?” Nick studied her face, and Cassie met his eyes with her own.

“Yeah. Let’s see where this goes.” Maybe this was the right move for both of them. Neither of them was in the position, physically or emotionally, to promise anything.

Darkness had fallen around them while they talked, and now the sole light blinked on behind them, breaking whatever spell had fallen over them both. Cassie threw away the trash of their picnic while Nick packed away the leftovers.

“Wait.” She held out a hand as he started to zip his insulated bag closed. “Did you say you had some waters in there?”

“Oh. Yeah.” He reached in, handing her a bottle. “Here you go. This one’s still cold.”

“It’s not for me.” She opened it, tossing the cap into the trash. Then she set it on the edge of the table, next to the beer Nick had left out for the Beach Bum when they’d first arrived.

“What…” Nick’s brow furrowed. “What the hell is that?” he asked, as though he hadn’t just handed the bottle to her.

“Water,” she said primly.

“For the Beach Bum?” Nick shook his head. “He likes beer. You’re doing it wrong.”

But Cassie waved him off as they started up the beach. “Nah. He likes it. Trust me.”