Chapter 1
Chapter One
Summer
The barbershop is only a block from the bus station. But when I arrive, there’s a sign in the window.
Closed, Back Soon.
I stay in the shade of the brightly colored awning covering the front door and glance up and down Main Street.
This is my new home for the next four years.
I’m attending Ridge College on a full scholarship, and in eight weeks, I’ll move onto campus.
So why am I here almost two months early?
It’s a great question. One I asked my mother repeatedly when she bought me a one-way bus ticket to my future college town and bundled me out of California with a hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket.
She promises she’ll send more money soon. But until then, I have the name of her friend I can stay with. A barber. Her ex-boyfriend, sort of. From once upon a time, before she had me.
Henry Wilde.
The only man my mama ever trusted, apparently.
I squint, trying to determine if I can see the college in the distance. I’d like to put my bags in the barbershop before exploring, but I am so excited to see the campus. This is my first time in Conception Ridge.
Where, ironically, I was conceived nineteen years ago.
Not a fact most people know about themselves, but Mama and I have a weird relationship.
I know way too much about some things and not nearly enough about other things.
She homeschooled me so I wouldn’t get into the same kind of trouble she did, but now that I’m eighteen, it’s time for me to go to college.
And for my mom to have her freedom, too.
She has the most beautiful singing voice, and right now, she’s getting on a cruise ship to work as a lounge singer. I’m proud of her.
“Are you looking for a haircut, miss?”
I spin, my attention changing from the college in the distance to a man who came out of nowhere. Or maybe, if the takeout coffee cup in his hand is any clue, from the coffee shop next to the bus station.
He’s tall and burly, all chest and close-cropped beard. Dark eyes and thick arms. Thick thighs, too, when I drop my gaze because looking at him is a lot to take in.
This hulking guy is the only man my mother ever trusted? No. I scurry down the steps and into the blazing sun.
He gives me a look like I’m the strange one—obviously. I’m used to that. He’s not wrong. Then he moves around me and unlocks the barbershop.
Once the door is open and he’s changed the sign around to a cheery Open, he holds it for me like he knows I need to follow him inside.
Even though I don’t.
“Are you Henry?”
“Sure am.”
“I’m Jennifer Figaro’s daughter.”
He rocks back on his heels. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”
“Didn’t she tell you I was coming?” Panic rises in my throat.
His thick brows pull together. “Come on in.”
I have a terrible feeling I’m not going to like what he says next. My heart sinks as I follow him inside.
It’s a retro-looking place. In L.A., I’d say it was a deliberate aesthetic. But in this town, it might just be original. Two brown, leather barber chairs dominate the space in front of a long mirror. There’s a beaded curtain over a door in the back and a counter with a cash register.
A very small waiting area completes the space.
It’s too small for him.
Definitely too small for both of us. I can’t breathe.
“Whoa,” he says quietly, moving fast for a big man. “No fainting, little girl.” He reaches for me, and I stumble back.
“I’m fine.” I’m not. I feel lightheaded, but I’m not going to faint in a strange place with this very strange man who has the biggest hands I’ve ever seen.
I drop my bags on the floor and stumble to the creaky, plastic chairs in the waiting area.
“What’s your name, daughter of Jennifer Figaro?”
“Summer.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him approach again, his big body folding into the furthest plastic chair. It creaks as he spreads his legs wide and leans forward, forearms braced against his thighs. It’s like he’s trying to make himself small enough to sit next to me and not be. . . too big.
Like he’s being extra careful because he has to give me bad news.
“You didn’t know I was coming.” It’s a statement because I don’t need him to confirm it as true.
He shakes his head anyway. “Sorry, miss. This is a surprise to me.”
“Mama said she would email you. It was on her to-do list all week.”
“Where’s your mom now?”
“On a cruise ship.”
“She went on vacation and dropped you in Oregon?”
“I took a bus. And it’s not a vacation. She’s working on the ship.”
“Who’s taking care of you?”
I sit up straighter, affronted. “Excuse me, I’m eighteen. I can take care of myself.” Except for the pesky minor detail of not having a job or money because Mama said I could stay with Henry until school started. “I’m going to get a job here, and then I start at the college in September.”
He nods slowly. “Uh-huh.”
“Would you mind if I leave my bags here for the day? I’m going to. . .” I glance outside. Probably go cry in a park or something. “I’m going to look for a job and a place to stay today, and it would be easier if I didn’t have to carry my stuff with me.”
“Of course.” He wipes his hand over his face. “Jennifer’s little girl is ready for college? Time flies.”
“Mama said she emailed you.”
“She does, from time to time. But this detail seems to have slipped through the cracks. What kind of job are you looking for? Conception Ridge isn’t that big. The college is the biggest employer, and it’s quiet over the summer.”
“I don’t know.” I ignore the swell of panic in my chest. “I can do anything. I’m a hard worker.”
“Hey. It’s okay. I bet you are.” His hand shoves into his hair now, and I wonder if there’s something wrong with him. Like my presence is giving him a headache.
I move toward the door.
“Wait.” He gives me a pained look. Definitely a headache. “You can stay here. You don’t need to look for a place to live. Looking for a job will be hard enough. Can you wait here for five minutes? I need to go and get the apartment ready for you. It won’t take long—I’m not a slob.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“If anyone comes in, tell them I’ll be right back.”
I nod mutely as he disappears through the beaded curtain. I can see the shape of him turn a corner and disappear.
Up a flight of stairs. I guess he must live up there.
Above the shop.
Sure enough, I hear his footsteps. To the front of the building, then back and forth a bit, before returning.
“Nobody came in,” I report when he’s in front of me again.
He nods and picks up my suitcase.
I follow him through the curtain, where there’s a staircase to the left and a short hallway to the right leading to a back door.
Upstairs, there’s a small kitchen, a decent-sized living room with two couches, a wall of bookcases, and a TV hanging next to a window overlooking the alley behind the shop.
A small hallway toward the front of the building goes to a bedroom and a bathroom behind the kitchen.
Both have frosted windows that, I guess, look onto the street I was standing on less than half an hour ago.
The whole space is big and bright, with tall ceilings, and it’s the nicest apartment I’ve ever been in.
I didn’t expect that.
I also didn’t expect it to only have one bed.
“You’ll sleep in here,” Henry says, putting my suitcase on a bench under the window in the bedroom. “I’ll sleep on the couch out there.”
“No,” I gasp. “I can’t kick you out of your room.”
“It’s fine.” His mouth quirks up at the corner. “I fall asleep on the couch half the time anyway. And I’ll wake up earlier than you, I expect.”
“I can wake up early.” I feel a little lost. And grateful, but also, embarrassed. “Henry, I don’t want to put you out. I really don’t. This was terrible of my mother to suggest. I should have stayed in L.A. and gotten a job there for the summer.”
“Your mama was always a dreamer. That’s okay. I bet she had a good reason for wanting you to come here early.”
Yeah, because she’s worried about me making the same mistake she did—getting knocked up before I even get to college. But that’s not going to happen. I’ve never dated anyone. Never kissed a boy.
I don’t even want to. I just want to curl up in a ball and wake up on the first day of college, when I can move into my dorm room and begin the next stage of my life.
“You won’t even notice that I’m here,” I promise him. “I’ll make myself useful and invisible.”
He gives me a funny smile. “Hard to be both of those at the same time.”
“I might surprise you.” But even as I say it, I’m not so sure. There’s something about the way his gaze bores into me, searching my face, that makes me worry there’s no way I’ll be invisible around Henry.
Can I survive two months of having a man like him be this aware of me? When that intense assessment sears my skin and makes me tremble on the inside. . .
Oh.
Well, hello, inconvenient hormones. I cut my attention away from him. “I might lie down—”
“I need to get back downstairs,” he says brusquely.
“Thanks,” I whisper as I scurry into his bedroom—his bedroom—and quietly flop on top of the blankets.
His footsteps are slow down the stars. Careful.
My heart rate is the opposite—wild and reckless and fast—and doesn’t start to settle until I imagine he’s well through the beaded curtain.
My mom’s high school boyfriend—a big, burly man twice my age—should not be the first man to stir feelings inside me. I know that. But now, all I can see as I close my eyes is his hot, scrutinizing gaze. The rest of him is seared on my retinas, too but in a fuzzier way.
He’s big.
Thick through the chest and then solid all the way down. Nothing like men in my mother’s music circles. Nothing like the men at the pool I used to swim at.
I’m downright little compared to Henry, and that difference makes my thighs ache.
I want him on top of me.
It’s a shocking thought. And then followed by an even worse idea.
I want him inside me.
No.
Mama would kill me. I cannot touch Henry. I cannot have sex—with anyone, but especially not the guardian she’s sent me to stay with.
I cannot repeat her mistakes, even if I am that mistake, and I don’t feel like a mistake at all.