12. Bran
Chapter 12
Bran
“ F uuuuuck.”
“What’s the problem now? Did you fill up Mrs. Falcone’s tires? She mentioned them needing air yesterday,” Larry booms from underneath the car he’s working on.
“Yeah. Did it first thing after I got here. Did you see the Nosy Pecker this morning?”
He chuckles and that says all I need to know. “Yep. Pecks in the City, huh? Is that what the ladies are calling you now? As if Winston’s hot dad isn’t bad enough? Poor goat,” he mutters with another snicker.
“She’s going to think I planned this whole thing.”
“Hand me that torque wrench, will ya? And how do you figure? You weren’t the one with the camera obviously.”
I grab the wrench Larry needs and hand it to him. “No but I live here. Paige isn’t from here. She could think I walked her across the square knowing full well we would be photographed.”
“Well…did ya?”
“Did I know we would be photographed? No. But I assumed one of the damn tit peepers would spot us at some point. They’re always into other people’s business.”
“If I had to guess,” Larry says, making noise under the car, “she’s probably equally as upset as you are. And if you don’t make a big deal about it, she’ll take the cue from you and won’t worry about it either. Now tell me how last night went. Did you get her home safely?”
“Of course. And then I almost kissed her.”
Larry slides out from underneath the car but not before whacking his head on his way out. “Ouch! Fuck! You what?”
I hold my hands up in defense. “I didn’t do it. I just…she was…and then she…I wanted to. I thought about it. But I didn’t.”
Thought about it?
I’m still thinking about it.
Haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since it almost happened.
“So, what did you do instead?”
“Stood up and took our dinner bowls to the sink.”
“You cooked for her?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “Just mac and cheese. No big deal.”
Larry smirks at me, his rosy cheeks lifting. “Uh huh. No big deal.”
“What?”
He shakes his head with a chuckle. “Nothin’.”
“Come on, old man. Out with it.”
He wipes his greasy hands on his towel and turns toward me. “Tell me, when was the last time you had anyone in your truck other than Winston?”
I open my mouth to answer him but he continues.
“When was the last time you made someone dinner other than Judy Woodcock?”
“Well—”
“And when was the last time you almost kissed anyone in this town?”
I close my mouth and stare back at Larry as his left brow peaks.
“Let me answer that for you,” he says. “That’s most likely a never, never, and something close to over ten years ago.”
He’s not wrong.
“Okay…so what? What’s your point?”
“My point is you like this girl.”
My shoulders drop and I let out a frustrated sigh. “I…yeah, maybe I do. Is that bad?”
Larry’s demeanor changes. Instead of the in-your-face older brother kind of attitude from a moment ago, he’s softer now. “Not at all, Son. In fact, I think it’s great. You could use a little feminine touch in your life. Nobody should have to go through life alone. You planning to see her again?”
I shake my head as a smile spreads across my face. “Yeah. I told her to meet me in the square after work. I’m going to teach her how to play cornhole.”
Larry coughs over the sip of water he just took. “Wait a minute. You mean to tell me she doesn’t know how to play cornhole?”
I shake my head, laughing. “Nope. She told me she’s never heard of it. So, I did my civic duty and explained to her how hard Swallowers get for cornhole around here. Figured someone better show her the ropes really quick before Kody Gander finds out and sinks her teeth into her.”
Larry’s laugh fills the garage. “Oh man, I’d like to see her face when someone tells her there’s a new kid in town who doesn’t know about cornhole.”
“Yeah.” I nod. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
At five minutes till five, I’m seated in the park in the middle of the town square with a clear line of vision to The Cuckoo’s Nest. I see when Paige steps out of the shop and turns around to lock the door. And then I get the pleasure of watching her walk toward me. She looks adorable in her gray shorts and pink top. Her soft brown hair billowing in the breeze behind her. She’s pretty in that doesn’t-have-to-work-too-hard-at-it kind of way.
She approaches with a friendly smile. “Hey!”
“Hi.” I rise from where I was seated, a small green bag in hand.
“What do you have there?” she asks.
Slipping my hand down inside the bag, I pull out a small yellow bean bag and toss it to her. Her brows scrunch as she looks at me inquisitively. “What’s this?”
“It’s a bean bag.”
She turns it over in her hand. “Okay.”
“For cornhole.”
Her head snaps up and she laughs. “Oh my gosh! Is that what I’m doing here? Learning about cornhole?”
I nod with a smile. “Yep. You can’t live in Tuft Swallow and not know about cornhole so today’s your first lesson.”
“Sweet! I’m ready. Let’s do this. What do I need to know?” Her enthusiasm is attractive and now I feel a little guilty for all the town cornhole games I’ve been to and didn’t show the kind of support the team deserved.
“The rules are pretty easy,” I start, leading her over to the two wooden cornhole boards set up a few feet away. “You’ll stand at one end and I’ll stand on the other. You’ll aim for my board and I’ll aim towards yours.”
“Okay. And we’re tossing these little bean bags?”
“Yep. You toss it and try to get it in the hole.”
She giggles. “That’s what she said.”
I smile and shake my head. “Ah and she’s a comedian too, ladies and gentlemen.”
“Sorry,” she laughs with a shrug. “Please continue. No wait! Um, is there a right or wrong way to toss this sucker?”
“Not really, though you don’t want to throw it like a baseball with a lot of force behind it. That's a one-way ticket to flying right off the board. Some people twist it a little like a frisbee toss. Some people just give it a little arc so it lands flat. You really just do what feels best for you.”
“Alright.”
“Scoring. It’s one point if your bag lands on the board. It’s three points if your bag lands in the hole.”
“Bag in the hole. Got it. And what do we play to?”
“First one to twenty-one wins.”
“Okay. I think I’ve got it.”
“Alright. Usually you would play Rock-Paper-Scissors to determine who goes first but since you’re new to the game, I’ll go first so you can see how it’s done.”
She bows and gestures to the boards with a killer smile, her brown eyes sparkling with amusement. “Please. Allow me to watch how you toss your sack.” She winks at me and I very nearly pop a boner standing right here.
Fucking hell, she’s going to be the death of me .
I step up to the edge of my board and toss my blue bean bag to her board, landing a few inches shy of the hole. Paige cringes and moans. “Oooh, almost. Nice try.”
“Alright Pidge, let’s see how you handle a sack.”
And yep. Just like that I have visions of her soft hands fondling my sack as she studies the distance between boards and prepares to take her shot. She tosses the bean bag forward and my jaw drops when it comes down with a thud right into the hole of my board.
Holy shit.
“Oh, my gosh! It went in!” She claps her hands, jumping up and down. “Did you see that?”
“Sure did, Pidge. Not bad for a beginner.”
“For a beginner?” She scoffs out a laugh. “I mean, I’m basically a pro now so…”
“Alright, alright, score is three to one so far. Time for our second toss.”
I lift my sack in my hand and toss it her way. This time it lands just above the hole and slides in.
Phew.
“Nicely done, Mister Winston’s Dad.” Paige claps.
“I believe that’s Winston’s Hot Dad, thank you very much.”
She laughs. “Oh, so you know that’s what they call you, huh?”
“I’ve known for a while.”
“Why don’t the townsfolk know your real name? Or do they and they just choose to call you something else?” She takes her next shot, landing her bag just south of the hole. Score is now tied at four.
“If it’s what they chose to call me, I don’t have any control over it. I certainly didn’t tell anyone to call me Winston’s Hot Dad.” I shrug. “But when I moved here, I didn’t really want to bring attention to myself. I just wanted a quiet place to live my life in peace. I didn’t talk to many people over the years. Some will call me Mr. Finch others will just say hi and not use a name at all.”
Her nose wrinkles. “That’s weird, don’t you think?”
I take my third shot which lands on the ground just left of the board. “I guess so, but if nobody asks my name, I’m not going to walk around with it written across my forehead. And besides, Brannon isn’t even my actual first name.”
Paige’s throw goes wonky at my admission and lands a good eight to ten feet away, but she hasn’t even noticed because she’s busy starting at me in shock. “Wait, it’s not?”
I shake my head. “Nope.”
She cocks her head, her eyes narrowed. “So, did you just make up the name Bran the night I asked or…” The look of disappointment and sadness on her face is damn near gutting. Like she really thinks I would lie to her.
I could never lie to you, Pidge.
“No. Brannon is my middle name. I chose to go by my middle name years ago. I liked it better than my first.”
“What’s your first name? Can I ask?”
“It’s Christopher.”
“Christopher Brannon Finch,” she mulls my name over, the soft sound of her voice comforting. “You don’t like Christopher?”
“Meh, when I was about fourteen I was bored with Christopher. I knew several guys named Chris and wanted to be different so I started going by Brannon and it just sort of stuck. It was more unique.”
“That it is. I don’t believe I know any other Brannons.”
I toss my last bag and sink it in the hole. Paige does the same and after the first round, our score is now tied at ten.
We start the second round with Paige going first this time, but neither one of us is as focused on the game now as we make simple conversation. She’s so damn easy to talk to. I feel like I could tell her anything, good, bad, or otherwise. “So how long are Rosie and Javan traveling?”
“Until the end of August.”
Fucking seriously?
She’s only here a little over two months?
“And what do you plan to do when they come back?”
Say you’re staying.
For the love of Christ, say you want to stay.
“Umm, I guess I don’t really know,” she answers with a quiet shrug before she launches her next bean bag. It lands just to the right of the hole giving her one point. “I mean, I don’t exactly want to have to go back home, you know?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. There’s nothing and nobody tying me there for one. I mean, except my parents, but I’m not sure they’re ever going to give me a shop to run on my own.”
“Is that what the plan is? Or was? That you would have an antique shop of your own?”
“Mhmm. I’ve been growing up in antique shops for as long as I can remember. My family owns several different shops throughout New England. Tourists love them and so do homeowners looking for a more rustic décor along the coast. Anyway…” She throws her next bean bag and it plops down by the hole so it’s half in and half out, so of course I nudge it with my foot enough that it slides in. That earns me a sweet smile.
“I thought my parents would’ve given me one of the shops at least within a few hours’ radius of Indigo Bay, but I’m almost thirty and that has yet to happen. To be honest, I’m ready to just walk away from it all and start my own store.”
I toss my second bag, which doesn’t quite make it to the board, though I’m not trying extremely hard. “Why do you think your parents haven’t moved forward with the plan?”
“I wish I knew. Sometimes I wonder if they were waiting for me to fall in love and get married and settle down somewhere before deciding what kind of moves to make. But anymore it feels like my dad still sees me as his little girl. Like, as in his little sixteen-year-old girl who only cares about her clothes and her makeup and…boys.”
Her comment makes me chuckle. “Wait, you used to be like that?” My eyes rake over her body one more time. “You don’t come across as the prima donna type.”
“I’m not now.” She smirks. “But I was the big fish in a little pond in Indigo Bay when I was younger. I was popular and my parents are well known so, you know, I kept up appearances. But now? Yeah I don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that. I could live with never having to wear eye liner ever again.”
“You don’t need it anyway. You’re beautiful just the way you are.” The words come out of my mouth before I even realize what I’ve said. She’s about ready to toss her third bag when she freezes. Her eyes slowly rise to meet mine and her cheeks pinken right in front of me.
“Thank you, Bran. That’s sweet of you to say.”
I meant every word.
I wouldn’t mind staring at you for hours.
When I don’t say anything she takes her shot and sinks her bag into the hole, rewarding herself with a smile.
“You’re getting good at this.”
“Guess I have a good teacher. So, what made you choose Tuft Swallow of all places?
“I just needed to get away.”
“From what? Overbearing parents like mine? A clingy ex-lover, perhaps?”
“Nope none of that,” I tell her, tossing my third bag and not giving a shit where it lands. Any other person in the world could ask me why I came to Tuft Swallow and I would tell them it’s just where I landed, but when the question comes from Paige, I can’t hold back. She’s the kind of person worthy of the truth. “Grief brought me here.”
Her soft brown eyes flicker back and forth with compassion and concern coupled with confusion. She makes me want to smooth my thumb against her lips until they turn up into a smile. I don’t like it when she’s not happy. “Grief?”
I nod silently, my foot haphazardly kicking at the grass beneath my feet. “My sister.”
I hear her gasp quietly and then she tosses her last bean bag without even looking at where it’s going before she steps in front of me, her eyes are locked on mine. “Bran I’m so sorry. I-I didn’t know you had a sister.”
I huff out a soft chuckle as I try to smile at her memory. “Yeah. Not many people know around here. We used to tell people we were twins. Our birthdays are on the same day and we were the same age so everyone believed it growing up.”
“Wait…” Paige’s brows pinch as she tries to put everything together. “But you’re not, I mean…you weren’t…actually twins?”
I shake my head. “Heather’s dad married my mom after she and I were about a year old. And we were inseparable from the start.”
“That’s so sweet.” She pauses for a moment before asking, “And…so, how did she…uh…”
“Car accident.” I swallow the lump in my throat that is growing thicker by the second. “Blown tire. I was driving.”
It was all my fault.
“Oh Bran.” She reaches out and touches my arm and her touch ignites every single one of my nerve endings. If I could bottle up and save this very moment between us, I would in a heartbeat. That feeling when the one person you can’t stop thinking about makes physical contact and it feels so damn good…so damn right, nothing else in the world matters. How the hell does she calm my every fear but set my body on fire at the same time?
When she pulls her hand away I immediately ache for the physical contact again. “I’m so sorry. And…I mean, we don’t have to talk about it if you’re not comfortable. I?—”
“I don’t mind,” I murmur, keenly aware of my weakening ability to control my feelings around her. “You’re surprisingly easy to talk to, Pidge.”
Her lips part and she takes in a nervous stuttering breath, her eyes full of innocence. “I am?”
I take a step closer to her, our bodies mere inches from each other now. Inhaling a silent deep breath, I take in the scent of her perfume. Something fruity mixed with something floral. “You are.”
She swallows.
I swallow too, realizing how dry my mouth is. I’m aching to close the distance between us even more if for no other reason than to feel that connection to her I felt before that made me want to be so honest and transparent with her.
“I’ve only ever talked about Heather with two other people in this town in all the years I’ve been here.” I give her a half smile. “But then you knock on my door one rainy night and suddenly I want to tell you all my deep dark secrets. What is that about?”
A soft huff of a laugh escapes her as she bows her head. “I’m sorry, Bran.”
I don’t know what makes me do it, but I reach out my finger, using it to lift her chin until her cinnamon-colored eyes meet mine. “I’m not sorry.” I smooth my thumb across her cheek pleasantly surprised when she leans into it even just a little. “You awakened something in me that night, standing there soaked to the bone but still friendly and worried about Winston. If you could’ve been in my head at that moment you would understand how conflicted I was feeling.”
“Conflicted?”
“You were gorgeous, Pidge. And I noticed. For the first time in years a woman was standing in front of me and I noticed her. I felt this immediate pull towards you...this connection. And I had no idea why. I still don’t,” I confess. “But I like it. Something about it feels good to me. Feels right.”
“It does?”
“Mhmm. Like being alone all this time was for a greater purpose. Like I was meant to wait for you.”
Her breathing picks up and she softly drags her teeth over part of her lower lip, the movement catching my eye as I watch her. Christ, she’s so fucking pretty.
“I…” She shakes her head and whispers, “I don’t know what to say.”
My heartbeat pounds loudly in my chest as my eyes fall to her sweet pink lips. “You don’t have to say anything, Pidge.”
Do I do it?
I really want to do it.
She’s right here.
So close.
My thumb caressing her cheek, I slide my hand up and into her hair, wrapping her soft auburn strands around a few of my fingers. “But if you don’t mind, I…” My chest rises and falls as I begin to pull her even closer to me. One tiny centimeter at a time. My heart rate picks up and I worry that she can hear it thumping as if it’s on the outside of my chest. “I want to...”
Her lips separate.
Our mouths are nearly touching now.
I’m aching to taste her.
I can feel her warm breath.
Christ, we’re in the middle of the goddamn town square.
There’s a guaranteed Tit Peeper watching us from somewhere.
“Bran.” Her breath is heavy now too and her cheeks pinken. She’s nervous. Like me. “What are you?—”
“Don’t move, Pidge. Just…just one second.”
I’ve thought about this moment so many times. How kissing her might make me feel. The overwhelming desire to connect to her physically. The need to satisfy this urge that is becoming too strong to ignore.
Fuck it.
Let the tits peep all they want.
Because I want this.
I need this.
Just one taste.
Ever so softly, reining in all my goddamn control, I connect my lips to hers and the moment I do, she sighs against me. A tiny mewl escapes her throat and I’m a fucking goner.
Her lips fall open and capture mine in the most intensely satisfying kiss I think I’ve ever had. It’s sweet and sensual. It’s catch and release, and it takes everything in me not to go overboard in response.
Holy shit, I’m kissing the pigeon.
My pigeon.
My hand still on the back of her head, I position her to the right as I rotate left, deepening our kiss with the light glide of my tongue through her mouth. She responds kindly, her tongue caressing mine as her hand comes up and around the back of my arm, gripping my triceps.
Jesus Christ, her touch is every fucking thing.
I moan against her when her hand squeezes my arm and then I tug her tighter against me, afraid if I let go, she’ll be nothing but a figment of my imagination. The energy she’s supplying me is going straight to my cock, my jeans becoming uncomfortably tight as an aching pleasure floods my body. I have to force myself to remember where we are. Regretting what I know I have to do, I slow my lips and lazily pull away, my forehead resting on hers.
“Pidge…” I whisper, but I can’t get myself to think of what I want to say next.
Her eyes open and the corner of her mouth turns up in a satisfied smile. “Was that everything you hoped it would be?” she whispers.
Fuck yes. And so much more.
I huff in amusement. “No.”
She pulls away, her brows pinched, and I bite my lip not to laugh. Running my hand through her hair one more time I place a tender kiss on her forehead and whisper back, “It was so much more than I hoped it would be.”