Chapter 31 Hot Tub Time Machine #2
“Can I pay for another dress?” he asks, shoving a trembling hand through his hair.
“This was a custom design from one of my best friends!” I cry, my blood pressure skyrocketing as that reality settles in over
me. “And I’m getting married in three days.”
“What do you want from me, Dakota? It was an accident.” Calder’s tone is harsh, and I feel the rage bubbling in my veins.
“I want to go back in time and never have hired you,” I sob, shaking my head in disbelief.
It’s been such a nightmare working with Calder these past few months, and we were in the home stretch.
I was finally going to be rid of him for good.
My tone is bitter and harsh when I add, “There’s a reason you work with your dad and your brothers.
You are so careless. Reckless! You need supervision.
You’re not responsible enough to do a solo job. Just look at this damage.”
I gesture to the warped trim and walls all around me.
His eyes flare as he grinds his jaw back and forth. “Maybe if you didn’t micromanage every goddamn thing I did, I could have
done my job with a bit more confidence. And if you’re going to melt down over every little setback, maybe you shouldn’t be
renovating a house on your own to begin with.”
“This isn’t a little setback !” I scream and chuck my dress away to stand up and face him. My finger jabs into his chest as the blood rushes to my cheeks.
“I swear you did this on purpose. You’re so antiwoman, anti-wedding, anti-relationships... you can’t stand anyone to actually
be happy.”
“There you go, Dakota. You got me all figured out!” he roars, flinging his hands out wide.
“Damn straight I do, Killer Calder,” I roar, my tone lethal. “You’ve killed my house and my wedding, and I regret the day
I ever agreed to hire you.”
The silence is deafening as he stares back at me. “If your wedding can be so easily killed, then maybe you shouldn’t be marrying
this guy in the first place.”
My jaw drops as I bark out a noise of indignation. “Like I’m going to take relationship advice from you. You’ve never even
had a real girlfriend. You’re too much of a joke for anyone to ever fall in love with you.”
Calder’s eyes darken, and his nostrils flare as he takes a step back. “I’d be shocked if the guy you’re marrying actually
loves you. You’re too much of a nightmare to love.”
My chest contracts at his cutting words as tears burn my eyes. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
Calder
Shame blankets me as I look over at Dakota sitting in my hot tub looking completely at ease.
Throughout the years, our hatred for each other has turned lighter and more playful, as time has healed some of those wounds.
But if I actually replay the awful things we said to each other, there’s nothing funny about it.
“Not that this is any excuse, but things between Wyatt, Luke, and me were kind of rough back then,” I offer, scrubbing steam
off my face as I shoot an apologetic look toward Dakota. “It was in the post-Robyn phase, and I wasn’t even nursing a broken
heart from her. That would have been easy. I was repairing what was broken between us three brothers. It was hard. We all
broke each other’s trust, and our dad was angry at us for bringing such a mess to the workplace. Max was pissed at us for
being so careless. It was brutal.”
I sigh as I think back to how ashamed our father and Max were for all of that. Max wouldn’t let us see Everly until we all
got along again. It weighed on me so much, I could hardly get my ass to work most days. It’s why we created our Dark Night–bonding
tradition. It’s weird, but it’s important. It helps us remember why family is so important.
I shrug my shoulders in the water. “I’m a player and didn’t even know I was getting played. And it was reinforcing some hard
truths that I wasn’t ready to admit about myself. I really shouldn’t have taken that job to work for you. I was in no position
to be responsible for myself, let alone your renovation. The broken pipe was an accident, but what came afterward, well, that
was just me being an asshole.”
Dakota’s brows knit together, and I see a brief flash of nerves flit across her face. “She must have really done a number
on you.”
“Honestly, Robyn doesn’t bother me. It’s the family stuff that nearly killed me.” I pause as I think about the dynamic in
my family. I love them. Fiercely. I genuinely appreciate living next door to Luke and Wyatt, even when I bitch about it. Being
a package deal with them is a part of my identity, but we’re not without problems.
“When the Robyn thing blew up in all our faces, we were all in pretty rough shape and not talking to each other for obvious reasons. My mom was all over Wyatt because he’s so closed-off she can’t help but smother him.
And she was there for Luke because he’s the baby and has always been a little smothered.
My dad was pissed at all of us for being nightmares to work with.
And I just kind of... existed. My family has a tendency to assume I’m always okay.
Oh, it’s just goofy Calder. Nothing gets him down.
That’s kind of the story of my life. It’s assumed I’m always okay to pick up the lumber or stay late to finish drywall or
share the room on a family trip with a woman who hates me.”
Dakota makes a noise of understanding, her hand reaching out to touch my leg in a small sign of empathy.
“I hate saying middle child syndrome because I’m obviously a grown-ass man, but since we’re all still so close, that birth order stuff is still really present.
I just get sick of the expectation that I’ll be fine with whatever the others don’t want to do. Or can’t do. There’s just
never a choice for me.”
She nods, her eyes sweeping over my face filled with sympathy. “That would be extremely frustrating.”
I hold her ankle, feeling lighter already after unleashing a decade’s worth of family bullshit on her, and then another thought
hits me. “Hey, now that we’re hashing all this out, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.” Dakota smiles sweetly at me, and my chest tightens as I steel myself to get this question asked because it’s
always bugged me.
“When my dad died, you left food at my house.”
Her smiles falters as her brows twitch. “Yeah, so?”
“You drove all the way up here to leave it and didn’t make any for my brothers. Just me. Why did you do that when you hated
me?”
“I still cared,” she replies with an indignant huff. “I can have issues with someone and still want to show that I care.”
I frown, my eyes searching her face for more because it feels like there must be more to it than that.
She was married at the time. We weren’t speaking.
It had been years since her home reno disaster.
I could see her showing up for Max and her best friend.
.. but not me. Not after everything we’d been through.
“Seeing you at your dad’s funeral killed me,” she adds, her voice catching in her throat. “You were just sitting in the back
of the funeral home by yourself, and I wanted to walk over and hug you so bad, but I knew you wouldn’t want that from me.”
Dakota’s eyes are red-rimmed and shining in a way that I feel in my gut. Warmth spreads through my chest. Even with all our
bullshit, all our bickering, our huge blowout... she still cared about the shit that mattered. It makes me feel seen in
a way I haven’t ever felt seen.
“I’ll take that hug now, if you’re still offering.”
Her brows pop up, and a grateful smile lifts her cheeks as she moves across the water and wraps her arms around my neck, shifting
so she’s sitting on my lap with her legs around my waist.
I squeeze her waist, burying my face in her neck and breathing in the scent of her, the feel of her, the essence of her. I
spent so many years hating Dakota Schaefer and her hating me, and it all feels so fucking petty now. We had real life shit
happen the past seven years—the death of a parent, a divorce, heartbreak on both sides. Why did we waste so much of our energy
being assholes when we could have been friends?
She pulls away and holds my face in her hands, her fingers raking over my beard before she leans in and kisses me. It’s a
gentle kiss, different than any other we’ve had before. It’s not lustful or dirty or exploratory or angry.
It’s comforting.
It feels like the sweetest, most sincere form of connection I’ve ever experienced with a woman, and my throat stings with
the importance of it. Our tongues caress each other, my hands mapping her back before gripping her neck to deepen the kiss,
siphoning every bit of goodness out of her that I can get. We’ve kissed hundreds of times by now in all our hooking up, but
somehow this one feels like our first.
When we finally pull apart, we press our foreheads together, our breaths heavy, chests rising and falling as steam billows up between us.
She runs her fingers through my hair, her lips quivering as she says, “I don’t think I ever really hated you, Calder.
I think I just hated that you pieced something together about my marriage before I did, and that was humiliating.
How did I not see how wrong Randal was? How did I not know it was a mistake? ”
My muscles tighten as I squeeze her to me, trying hard to take that pain away from her. “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.”
“But you knew it.” She pulls away so she can look directly into my eyes. “And I knew you knew it. So I just kept being awful
to you because you felt like a constant reminder of a bad life decision I was stuck in. I was married, and it felt like every
time you saw me, you knew I was unhappy and lying to myself. I was waiting for you to scream I told you so .”
“I wasn’t judging you, Ace.” I slide my hands up her back, massaging her shoulders to calm her down. “Never.”
“It was easier to label you as the asshole who ruined my perfect wedding and my perfect house, but you were just a scapegoat
to my bad life choice.” She licks her lips and tugs the lower one between her teeth. “I’m sorry I iced you out so hard. Truly.
If I could go back in time, it wouldn’t be to not work with you. It would be to just have the guts to call off that wedding.
Deep down, I knew I shouldn’t have married him.”
I move my hands up to cradle her face, my thumbs drawing a line along her jaw. “If it’s any consolation... I’ve never seen
a more beautiful bride.”
Her head jerks back. “What are you talking about? You weren’t at my wedding.”
“But I saw you in your dress... before it was ruined.”
Her lips part as she lets out an audible gasp. “When?”
“At your house. It was the week before the pipe broke, and you were with Cozy and your mom. Cozy had Ethan with her. He was just a baby then. I came over to do some plumbing, and your mom let me in. I had just got in the door, and you were walking down the stairs in your dress.”
She inhales. “I remember this now.”
I lick my lips and shake my head in awe as I recall every little detail about her on that day. The dress hugged her in all
the right places, and her skin glowed like an angel. The dress was simple but stunning, and her blue eyes sparkled under that
veil she had on. She was a fairy tale.
“I couldn’t speak,” I confess, looking down and then back up at her awestruck expression. “I forgot what I was even there
for. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
She frowns, her eyes flicking back and forth between mine like she’s trying to work out a puzzle. “I thought you hate weddings.”
“I do. But I liked you in that dress.” My shoulders shake with silent laughter.
She licks her lips and sighs. “It was a great dress.”
“I’m sorry I ruined it.” I tip her chin up to look at me.
She frowns and shrugs. “I’m not. In the end, Randal didn’t deserve that dress. Maybe no man did. That dress is a fantasy...
and this... this is reality. Sex. No strings. No feelings. This is all I’m worth.”
My heart sinks at the words that have just spilled out of her. I open my mouth to tell her something that makes this not sound
so cheap, but she cuts me off.
“Calder, it’s fine. It’s easier to just accept it. It makes life more tolerable to just call it what it is. Who knows if I’ll
ever find my happily-ever-after again? But at least I can have some good sex along the way. Right, Killer?”
Using my nickname stings in this moment, and I feel my body tensing with irritation, my mouth opening to pick a fight. But
I stop myself because maybe I need to hear it. Maybe I need to be reminded of what this is before both of us get in too deep.