Chapter 13 Dane
DANE
I was still fuming when I drove away from the house the morning after I found Beck making out with Avery in the foyer. I’d spent the night avoiding everyone in the house, stewing over the image, now seared into my memory, and trying to figure out why I was so fucking pissed.
Beck and I weren’t even friends. More like business associates, if Evelyn’s house and bakery were both businesses.
And I barely knew Avery.
Not only that, but what I did know, I didn’t like. She could make all the excuses she wanted, but she’d abandoned Evelyn in her old age, had left her with a bunch of hired strangers instead of family.
And yeah, I liked to think Evelyn came to think of Noah, Beck, and me as a kind of family, but it wasn’t the same.
So why did I keep picturing Avery with her arms around Beck’s neck? Why did I keep seeing her luscious body pressed against that fucker’s nakedness?
And why the fuck did Beck insist on cleaning in his underwear?
I huffed a deep sigh as I navigated my black Lexus down Main Street and onto one of the side streets that ran to the outskirts of town.
I needed to stop thinking about Avery Hart. I had bigger problems.
We all did.
Because Avery had been right when we’d talked about the investigation the night she’d found Pembroke’s body in the gazebo: we were all suspects.
Just the thought made me twitchy.
That was the thing about having a background like mine: you didn’t feel part of civilized society, even when you were able to fake it on the outside. I’d worked hard — had fought hard — to drive the black Lexus, to have a respectable job with a respectable employer like Evelyn.
But it hadn’t always been that way, and I knew it was only a matter of time before Sheriff Crowe homed in on me and my background as a foster kid. I’d never been in any trouble, but I wasn’t part of the cute little world that was Blackwell Hollow.
Not really.
Noah’s family had been in the area for ages, working the land before his mom died and his dad lost the farm, and Beck was tight with his family, close with his siblings, all of whom had grown up as part of the town.
Blackwell Hollow didn’t have a bad neighborhood per se, but I was the black sheep, the kid who’d lived on the periphery of the cute shops on Main Street, the pancake breakfasts at the firehouse, the summer concerts in the pavilion in the town square.
Now I felt a rare moment of low-key panic, like everything I’d built might be taken away at any second.
And it wasn’t mindless fear. Everything could be taken away in a heartbeat.
I knew that better than anyone.
I thought about Harold Pembroke’s body. I mean, I hardly knew the guy, other than occasional mentions in The Hollow Herald and the few times I’d run into him at the Common Ground.
So what the actual fuck had Pembroke been doing on Evelyn’s property?
My mind pivoted to Beck and Noah as I turned onto Hickory Lane. Where had they been in the hours before Pembroke’s body was discovered? And what about Avery herself? After all, she’d been the one to find the body, and none of us had seen her on the property before that moment.
I shook my head and slowed down as I approached the end of the road.
I was losing it. There was no way Avery Hart — with her long hair the color of maple syrup and her big brown eyes, someone who wouldn’t even swear out loud for fuck’s sake — had somehow plotted to kill a man on her first day in Blackwell Hollow.
Not to mention the fact that she didn’t have a motive. Pembroke had been trying to stop the Hearthstone gated community, something we all wanted.
I pulled next to the curb, turned off the car, and tapped my fingers on the steering wheel. What about Beck and Noah? I didn’t really know them, not well enough to say for sure they didn’t have it in them to murder someone.
The why was still a mystery, but if one of us had murdered Harold, I’d put more money on Beck and Noah than on Avery Hart.
But maybe that was just my jealousy talking. And I was jealous, something I could admit only to myself: jealous of the fact that Beck had gotten to kiss Avery like he wanted to eat her face, that he’d gotten to feel her plush body in his hands.
Fuck.
I shifted in the driver’s seat of the Lexus, trying to tame my dick, which had decided to stand at attention just when I needed to get out of the car.
I looked out the window, trying to distract myself, and took in the old farmhouse sitting at the end of a paved walkway.
Last year’s paint job was holding up well, the cheerful yellow paint still clean and intact.
I’d painted the porch a crisp white, and the wicker chairs and side tables beckoned, inviting a midday respite and a glass of iced tea.
Not for me though. I didn’t come here to rest. But I was glad it looked nice for the house’s occupants.
I let my gaze travel along the roofline, making notes: the gutters needed cleaning and tightening after winter, and one of the fascia’s wood panels was drooping, an invitation to squirrels I didn’t want to extend.
I added it to the never-ending list of projects in my mind and reached for the door handle.
Thinking about who might have killed Harold Pembroke was a black hole of speculation I didn’t have time for. And thinking about Avery Hart was a pointless exercise in lustful futility.
But here… well, here I could do work that mattered. It didn’t keep me warm at night, didn’t give me someone to come home to at the end of the day, but it was something.