Chapter 16
sixteen
JACK
It was another weekend at Bonnie’s house. During the week, we spent the night at my place because it was easier. But we’d started staying at her house when we had more time together.
I’d closed the last three nights in a row at Magnolia. Kayla had practically shoved me out the door at nine, saying she and Sasha and Sebastian were perfectly capable of handling things on a Saturday night.
I knew they could. I really did. Yes, it was December and the tourists were in town for the Holiday Jamboree and other town festivities, but we had a good staff. I trusted them.
Honestly, I was grateful for the time off.
I’d even been throwing around the idea of hiring a manager in the new year.
Business was steady, and I could afford to bring in someone to take on more responsibility.
But it was hard to contemplate loosening the reins on the only thing I’d ever accomplished in my life.
Rationally, I knew Magnolia wouldn’t fall apart without me.
And if I did manage to hire someone to oversee the place in the evenings, that would free me up and make my schedule a little more convenient.
Throughout the week, Bonnie and I didn’t get a lot of time together.
Everything felt rushed and abbreviated. I was always in a hurry to close out, to lock up, to just .
. . get to her. Worried she’d wear herself out waiting up for me most nights.
I was just as desperate to get her clothes off as I was to get twenty minutes to talk to her about her day.
I wanted to take her out and share a meal.
I looked forward to her stealing my samosas over dinner.
Funny what a few months could change.
I’d given her a key to my place so that on the weeknights she came over—most of them—she could let herself in and relax. My schedule wasn’t exactly set, and depending on how busy the bar got, I couldn’t expect to leave at the same time every night.
Sometimes I woke her up on my couch, where she’d fallen asleep waiting for me. But it wasn’t always about getting her naked. There were nights I just carried her to bed and wrapped myself around her, relieved to have her in my arms, knowing she was safe and sleeping soundly.
I should have been worried. Should have been scared shitless that in the last three months, this woman had somehow become the single most important part of my life.
It wasn’t just Magnolia anymore, or Lia.
I didn’t know if I was excelling at the work-life-balance thing yet, but there had definitely been progress.
It was Bonnie who occupied my thoughts. Soft skin and a sweet smile. Her body behind me on the back of my bike, arms tight around my middle. The way she breathed my name while I moved inside her, indulgent and demanding at the same time. The scent of honeysuckle finding me in my dreams.
My life wasn’t just the bar anymore. I had something besides payroll and vendor shipments, employees and tourists filling seats at Magnolia.
There was Bonnie, but there were also emails from Eloise Carter in my inbox.
Not to mention the little girls breathing down my neck about coaching soccer in the spring.
I had a place in this town, with these people, in a way I’d never anticipated.
And part of me knew that it had all changed because I’d let one person in.
“Are you really going to just stand there and ignore her?” Bonnie poked her head around the doorframe and stared pointedly at my feet, making sad puppy eyes. Well, actually, sad bunny eyes.
From my place on the couch, I glanced down at Oreo.
Truthfully, I’d gotten distracted while Bonnie had been in the bathroom, washing her face and brushing her teeth.
I hadn’t really noticed the rabbit sitting by my feet, desperate for my attention.
But now that I wasn’t thinking about all the ways my life had changed this fall, I could see more damage inflicted by the persistent little furball.
“This rabbit is obsessed with me,” I called to Bonnie, who’d retreated down the hallway. “I have holes in my socks, Clyde. All of them.”
I heard her laugh from the other room, the sound ricocheting through my chest and warming me through.
For whatever reason, the bunny was weirdly obsessed with me. She followed me around and nibbled on my socks when I wasn’t giving her attention. I liked to tease Bonnie, but I’d honestly gotten used to the rabbit. I was more of a dog person, but Oreo wasn’t so bad.
I picked her up and set her next to me on the couch, stroking her long, floppy ears.
A moment later, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw a text from my grandmother.
Lia: Breakfast is on in the morning. Eggs and grits. Bacon, if you’re lucky.
Her typically brusque and abbreviated method of communicating was familiar, if not warm, and it made me smile. I usually saw Lia on weekday mornings, after Bonnie left for school. It had been a while since she invited me over for breakfast on a weekend.
My fingers continued to pet the rabbit’s soft fur as my gaze strayed toward the hallway. Bonnie emerged in pajamas—another one of my tee shirts and some fuzzy pants that had snowflakes all over them—and gave me a sweet smile as she spied me with Oreo.
“Want some popcorn to go with the movie?” she asked, already standing on tiptoes to reach the stovetop popper she kept in the cabinet over the fridge.
“Sure,” I agreed, a formality at this point.
My phone had gone dark, but I stared down at it for a long moment. Before I let myself think too hard, I pressed my thumbs to the screen and started typing.
Me: Could I bring someone? Would that be okay?
I watched the screen for nearly a minute as the smell of hot oil and the sound of popping corn drifted in from the kitchen. Then a surprisingly few letters appeared, considering how hard those dots had been working.
Lia: Yes
“Hey, Clyde,” I called over my shoulder.
“Yeah,” she replied over the rapid pop, pop, pop and the squeak of the hand crank.
“Would you want to come with me in the morning? Lia just texted and invited us over for breakfast.”
The squeaking halted suddenly before resuming after a beat. “Sure,” Bonnie said. “That sounds great.”
I hadn’t exactly told my grandmother I was seeing someone, but I’d noticed she’d laid off her spiel recently.
Her typical, less-than-subtle nudges at me to get a life or a hobby or a girlfriend had been markedly absent.
And her questions about Magnolia Bar hadn’t contained the distinctive undertones of “you’re going to die alone with a bar towel slung over your shoulder.
” I figured gossip about me and Bonnie had spread by now to her trivia team or knitting group or whoever the hell she spent her time with. In a town this size, it was inevitable.
I wasn’t ready to examine too closely why I’d invited Bonnie along tomorrow.
Things were feeling a little less casual now than when they’d started, but our relationship was still working.
I wasn’t looking for an arbitrary reason to end what we had going on.
Maybe it was foolish, but I liked it, whatever it was—casual or not.
And maybe I wanted the two most important people in my life to meet. I could picture Bonnie’s single-minded determination to charm my surly grandmother and, at the same time, Lia softening her own sharp edges because she knew that’s what Bonnie needed.
The next morning, I awoke to a half-empty bed and the sound of a pan clanging somewhere in the house. The door to the bedroom was shut, but when I emerged into the hallway, I was greeted by the warm smell of cinnamon and vanilla.
A glance at my watch confirmed that it was way too early—not even six.
I blinked blearily as I walked into the kitchen. Bonnie was in my tee shirt and a purple floral apron. Fuzzy socks slouched around her narrow ankles. She was surrounded by mixing bowls and measuring cups as she transferred what looked like perfectly golden mini muffins from a pan to a cooling rack.
She caught sight of me and did a double take. “Shoot. Sorry. Did I wake you?”
“What are you doing?” I asked, my tone more confused than anything else. “I thought you wanted to come to Lia’s with me.”
“I do,” she replied, then moved to set the muffin tin on a braided pot holder.
“I don’t . . . understand.”
Bonnie finally turned to face me, giving me her full attention. But I was tired and she was wearing an oven mitt and no pants, so my gaze drifted to where her thighs peeked out from beneath her apron.
“I wanted to make something to bring,” she said, and my eyes reluctantly returned to her face.
I saw it then. The nervousness. The worry she’d hidden from me last night as we’d watched a movie before bed.
“And I wasn’t sure what Lia would like or if she had any food allergies, so I made a few different things.”
I took in the rest of the room and what I’d missed earlier—likely due to the no-pants thing.
There wasn’t just a single batch of muffins cooling.
The kitchen table held a tray of what looked like sausage balls and a loaf of something with a shiny white glaze on top.
There were more muffins—in two different varieties—occupying the island.
I frowned as my gaze drifted from one delicious-looking baked good to the next. “What time did you get up to do all this?”
“Oh, just a bit ago.”
My brows went up, calling her on the fib. “It’s just the three of us, Bonnie. You didn’t need to go to so much trouble. Or any trouble. Lia is the one feeding us.”
Her nose wrinkled in obvious confusion. “But I’m meeting someone new. And she’s hosting. It’s polite to bring something.”
An alarm sounded quietly from Bonnie’s phone, and she winced before silencing it and reaching for the door to the oven. “This is the last thing, I swear.”