Chapter 30 Taryn
Taryn
Now that I’ve remembered what Hawke’s Wood is like, I come back into town knowing exactly where I want to go. We save the market for last, so the food doesn’t spoil while we’re doing other things, and start with the small bookstore.
“You need books?” Gabe asks, frustrated. “Why?”
I tug him to the very small romance section and look approvingly at the selection.
I was expecting this place to have all closed-door, very tame romance, but whoever buys for the shelves seems to like the darker stuff.
I see several of the books I know and love, and several that have been on my Tbr list for years.
Kidnapping, check. Stalking, check. My favorite mafia series, check.
Peter Pan retelling, check. I pick up ten books, then pause, considering, and grab one more.
After all, there’s no telling when we might get snowed in again.
I also make a mental note to find the owner of this store and make friends with her. I want to know the mind that decides the women of Hawke’s Wood need access to this level of reading material.
“I need books because there’s nothing to do at your house,” I say quickly.
Gabe sputters. “I live there!”
I turn to him, positive that my expression is saying exactly what I’m thinking. “And yet I can’t do you all day. I need other entertainment.”
He sputters even harder at that, and I head for the counter, sliding Gabe’s wallet out of his pocket as I go. He and Gunner might have a library but it’s full of dusty old classics, and as far as I’m concerned, they can foot the bill for me bringing something more interesting into the house.
Next we go to buy more film—I’ve figured out that there’s actually a camera shop in town, and they have better deals on film. They also have some really nice cameras, and I spend too much time drooling over them, wondering whether I can afford to get something new.
I mean, of course I can. Or at least... Well, I’ll be able to afford whatever I want in two weeks.
As long as I can stay free that long.
In the end, I decide I don’t need anything more than my Nikon for the moment, but promise myself that if Gunner and Gabe go for the plan I’m building in my head for their business, I’ll come here and get something bigger.
I chat with the owner, a guy who majored in photography at a big school out west and then decided to move home instead of going out on the road to shoot, for a while, and find out that he does regular nature photo shoots.
“Every weekend, almost,” he says, immediately falling into the glee of discussing his hobby with someone who understands. “I hike out, find a spot, and shoot everything I see. Then come back and develop it by hand.”
My mouth drops open. “You have a darkroom here?”
He leans closer, a smile growing on his face. “Two of them. You’re welcome to come around whenever you want to develop by hand.”
I’m so excited I can hardly get the words out, but Gabe yanks me away.
“She doesn’t need to develop by hand,” he says roughly.
I jerk my arm away from him. “How do you know? I can do so much more with the photographs if I’m developing them myself. Increase the exposure. Let them cook longer. Create effects.”
He takes my arm and pulls me toward the store. “And you can do all of that. But I’m coming with you. I don’t want you in a dark room with Braedon Dash.”
I look up at him, surprised. “Who the fuck is Braedon Dash?”
His face darkens. “That guy you were just talking to.”
I laugh, both surprised and weirdly delighted at this insight into Gabe’s character. “And what do you have against Braedon Dash? You don’t like him? Is he secretly a serial killer? Cannibal?”
He turns on me, and if I thought his face was dark before, I didn’t know what I was talking about. He looks like he’s about to murder someone.
“I don’t like the way he was looking at you. And if you think I’m going to let you go into some dark room with a guy who already looked like he wanted to devour you whole, you have another thing coming, little girl.”
This shocks me right into silence, for a number of reasons, and I’m staring at him, dumbfounded, when his face changes and he starts to look both charming and excited.
The mask, I realize. I look around, wondering who he’s wearing it for, and see Jon, Miller, and Simon striding toward us with Sammy and a boy I’ve never met.
They’re all talking loudly and laughing like someone has just told a joke, and when I look back at Gabe, he’s already laughing with them, his body leaning away from me and toward his friends.
Right. One glimpse of them and the Gabe I was talking to is long gone, replaced by Charming, Flirty Gabe.
The guy who tells people I don’t matter.
“I’m going to hang out with my friends for a little,” he says without bothering to look at me. “You can do the rest of your shopping by yourself, right?”
I jerk like I’ve been shot and then grow very still.
I knew this was coming, because this is how he is around his friends now, but the pain of it still catches me by surprise.
When we were in high school, he and I were practically attached at the hip.
We did everything together, always chose the other first.
Except when it came to Sally Hennings. Whenever she was around, I was a second-class citizen.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that he still flips that switch so easily.
He tosses a look over his shoulder as he walks away and his steps stutter for a moment, like he’s just registered the hurt and betrayal on my face.
After everything he told me the other night, and the long absence, I guess I expected him to value me more than this.
And my face must be saying that loud and clear because I see the shadow of a frown cross his brow.
Then one of his friends calls him.
He shakes his head as if to clear it of the thoughts he’s been having, lets his expression relax into an easy grin, and turns back around, heading for his friends and a life that must be so devoid of expectation it’s practically all sunshine and rainbows.
I watch him for a moment, then turn and take my complications and storm clouds in the other direction.
I don’t like that version of Gabe. It’s not who he really is.
And as long as he’s wearing that mask, he’s not my Gabe.
Hell, as long as he’s wearing that mask, he doesn’t seem to want much to do with me at all.
Which means I’ll be better off finishing my shopping on my own. And then finding another way back to the house.
* * *
I get approximately three steps before someone takes my hand, and against all my better judgement—against all the experience I have—I think for a moment that it’s Gabe, that he’s come back for me, and my heart lifts and expands so quickly I think it might explode.
When I look over, though, I don’t see the big, burly lumberjack who was once my best friend.
I see a tiny girl with curly black hair, gray eyes, and a grin that means nothing but trouble.
Something inside me dies a little bit, because it’s not Gabe coming back for me at all, but then I catch the glint in her eye and feel myself grinning in response.
Hey, I can’t help it. You see a girl looking at you like she’s already planning the trouble you can get into together and you have an instant reaction.
At least I do. That’s how I took up with Stella Fontenot, after all.
She showed up one day saying that she’d been looking for a sidekick and would I watch her back while she pulled off some sort of heist that I’ve long since forgotten. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Sammy Lennon is looking at me the same way, and in the face of Gabe’s betrayal I find that a friend is the exact thing I want right now.
“Sammy,” I say, trying to curb my grin. “Got something on your mind?”
She huffs and rolls her eyes. “Several things, actually. Starting with the way my fucking cousin just blew you off.”
I jerk in surprise, violently reminded that this girl is Gabe cousin, and one he never bothered to introduce me to before I thought I knew all the people he was actually related to, but evidently that’s not true.
“I’m surprise he never introduced us before, actually. Seeing as how you’re his cousin.”
She scoffs at that. “Well he’s not actually my cousin. More like my mom got married to the asshole Gunner calls brother. So I’m sort of a step-cousin, I guess. Doesn’t make me like him any more, to be honest. Come on, let’s go in here. I saw you in here before and I want some advice on books.”
She doesn’t wait for an answer, but shoves me into the door we’re passing, and within moments I find myself in the dark romance section again, giving advice to the tiny, very feisty step-cousin of my ex-stepbrother.
She’s got enough fire to light the whole place up and a laugh that I can’t ignore.
When I recommend a series with a particularly toxic hero, she howls like it’s the best thing she’s ever heard, and I find myself laughing back at her, both pleased and surprised.
She’s exactly like Stella. Except that she’s here and begging me for advice on books.
And I feel like the universe heard I was lonely and sent me this tiny, sassy girl to ease the pain of Gabe and Gunner both rejecting me, in one way or another.
By the time we’re done at the bookstore Sammy—or Samantha, as she tells me sorrowfully—has an armful of books and is already talking about ordering more online.
“I’ve always wanted to get into dark romance, but I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it,” she says.
“There’s a lack of girls our age in this town, and the boys are barely literate. ”
I have to laugh at that. “I’ve noticed. Why aren’t there any girls our age here?”
She shrugs. “Something in the water, I’m guessing. Maybe the land knows it needs men to do big, manly things like chopping down those fucking trees, so it only allows males to be born here.”
Sammy Lennon is completely ridiculous.
And I adore her.