Chapter Seven
Saturday nights at Crazy Shades were a crazy good time. The place was crowded, a lot like old times.
The live band, Country Gig, played as a few couples kicked up their boots in a line dance while others occupied the bar and tables. Bryar handed the bucket of beer to Crystal. “Table ten.”
“Looks like a house full tonight.”
“Looks that way. Country Gig draws in a crowd.” And Bryar had paid dearly for the band to come. It had nearly cost her an arm and a leg.
“I’m a little rusty,” Crystal said, pushing loose strands of her hair back into her ponytail.
Bryar offered a hopeful smile. “You’ll get back in the groove again.”
“I better go. We don’t want anyone to get thirsty.” Crystal hurried off frantically.
Bryar wondered if Crystal’s mother had been laying on the pressure again?
Finally finding a break in orders, Bryar settled at the bar's end where her friends Shelby and Denise were enjoying their Crown Apple Martinis. “How was the vacation in Florida?” she asked, noting how tanned they both were.
“Glad to be back,” Shelby said with a rueful smile.
“That’s because she hates my parents,” Dennise droned.
“That’s not true.” Shelby laughed. “They’re just…different.”
“Like your parents?” Denise challenged.
“So, remind me again,” Bryar got their attention. “You two are searching for a sperm donor?”
The couple had been married for five years, and not once had they discussed starting a family. Then they dropped a tidbit of information about finding a donor.
“I know it must be a shock,” Shelby said, laying her hand on her wife’s. “But we’ve put a lot of thought into having a family of our own.” The two looked at each other, their love shining brightly. There were moments when Bryar envied the relationship that her friends had.
“I've always wanted children, to carry a child, I just wasn't sure it was in the cards for Shelby and me.” Denise shrugged.
Shelby’s phone buzzed and she groaned. “You two can continue this chat, but my break is over. Duty calls.” She slipped off the stool and adjusted her police uniform. She’d become a deputy right after she moved to Shades Cove. “I’ll see you later tonight, babe.” She gave Denise a kiss on the cheek.
She watched until Shelby stepped outside and then said to Bryar, “I’m still grateful for what she gave up. I know sometimes she is so bored here in Shades Cove after working as a detective in Chicago.”
“Honey, she chose to move here to be with you. One of you would have had to give up something to be together. Shelby knows it would have been harder for you to give up your law practice here and start another somewhere else. What I see in her is complete joy.” Bryar considered both women her good friends, but she and Denise had grown up together.
“True, but it doesn’t make it any easier. She’s used to solving serious crimes, and the last crime she cracked here was Janice Miller’s missing yard gnomes.”
“Hey, that’s big news around here.” Bryar felt almost guilty for laughing, but the event of Janice’s three missing gnomes had been on the front page of the newspaper. The thief had ended up being an elderly man who had a fascination for gnomes.
“Enough about me. How are you?” Denise asked.
“Same as always.” Bryar busied herself washing glasses.
“Really?” Denise said in a doubtful tone.
“Why would you ask?”
“A little birdie told me that Puma Steel has returned. You can’t tell me that didn’t shock your socks off.” Denise had been Bryar’s confidant many times when she was having a meltdown. There had been a few over the years. Thankfully, her friends had picked her up and dusted her off.
“We knew it could happen,” she said softly.
“Has he said why he’s here?”
“To run Storm Pass and scatter Blake’s ashes,” Bryar hated saying the words aloud. She hated that in ten years, she had only managed to ease some of her pain.
“You two did agree,” Denise said lightly.
“Thanks for the support.” Realizing her tone was harsh, Bryar gave her friend an apologetic look. “I guess I’m still a bit sensitive.”
“Sweetie, you have every right to feel that way. Unless someone has gone through what you experienced, no one can truly understand. No one should ever have to bury a child. As I think of becoming a mother, I just can’t imagine…”
“ Don’t even allow that thought to get into your head.”
In the past, Bryar would have cried uncontrollably, but she’d learned to manage her emotions without breaking down each time her loss was brought up. For a long time, she felt guilty about laughing since her son, if alive, would have been doing the same. Whenever she went on a date, it always ended with no plans for a second date. How could she move on when Blake couldn’t? “Puma…seeing him…” She inhaled sharply.
“I get it. After all, you two are still married.”
“Yeah, and there’s that.”
“Maybe it’s time you two resolved the marriage?” Denise said with gentleness.
“Can I get a short draft, Bryar?” someone called out from the other end of the bar.
“Sorry, we’re slammed and understaffed,” Bryar said, grateful to be dragged away from a conversation she didn’t want to discuss right now.
“I need to get home anyway. I have painting to finish. If you need anything, even just to talk, you know where I am.”
“Thank you, Denise, but I’m okay.”
Bidding her friend goodbye, Bryar took care of the orders. She’d been so busy it took her some time before she realized Puma was sitting at the bar.
What was he doing there again?
She slipped over. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“If you want me to leave, I will, but there aren’t many options for a beer and a burger on the weekend besides this place.” When she continued to look at him in silence, he shrugged. “I guess that answers my question.” He slid off the stool.
“Wait!” she called after him. “Sit back down.”
“Thank you,” he replied after adjusting himself on the stool that seemed almost too small for him.
“Don’t thank me. I’d be a fool to turn away good business,” she said casually. It wasn’t entirely untrue, but the real reason she let him stay was that eventually, she would need to stop letting him affect her. Still, she couldn’t help but notice how good he looked—broader shoulders, chiseled features, bigger. His blue eyes, slightly slanted and warrior-like, seemed to pierce right through her, eyes that could cut glass. Since their last meeting, he’d allowed his scruff to grow on his jaw, making him appear even more formidable. He had laugh lines, which didn’t surprise her since he had always been friendly, smiling, and showing off his nearly perfect teeth. Something about him suggested he wasn’t the carefree man he once was, which made her feel sad. They had both once been innocently happy.
She was no longer happy either. Scarred from loss.
“I’ll take—”
“I know what you want.” She shook out water from one of the glasses stacked on the shelf and poured beer from the tap. “Pepper Jack. Extra pickle. No onion. And a smear of barbecue sauce. Correct?”
“Perfect,” he said in an easy drawl.
She didn’t trust him anymore. They were too different from who they both were ten years ago. Grief and loss had changed them. “Coming right up,” she looked down her nose at him. She wondered if she’d ever be great again. The worst part, the very worst part, was that he’d betrayed her. The only man she’d ever loved had abandoned her when she needed him most. He’d turned her cold, making her a deserted island that no one could reach. Finding love had become a deserted island. Over the years, she’d accepted being alone. Accepted that her heart had been too damaged to find a way to heal.
Now she hated Puma. “Liar,” her inner voice reminded her. She wanted to despise him. She placed the order with the cook and returned to the bar, where Puma’s curious glare was fixed on her. “What?”
“You think you’re right about everything, don’t you?” he said.
She shrugged. “I’d say the odds are heavily in my favor.”
He chuckled. “There’s a lot you don’t know.” He downed half his beer.
“Something tells me you want to school me.” She knew it would be best to walk away, but there was a magnetism between them that had always been there.
“You think I walked away from you,” he said in a low voice.
Every bell whistled inside her head to avoid this conversation. Yet, she wasn’t the best listener. “That’s exactly what you did. You can slice those facts anyway you like, but they’re still facts.”
“I’d hoped…” he bit off the last of his sentence.
“What did you hope?”
“That you would have chosen me. Chosen what we had together. Instead, you chose your family,” he said softly, which seemed foreign for a tough man like Puma.
As if a force came along and knocked her back, she steadied her feet on the planked floor, drawing stability from within herself. “That’s not what I saw. You left, no goodbye. Nothing.”
He blinked. “I wrote you a letter. In it I asked you to come with me, to leave everything behind and trust in our love.”
She searched his face, remembering that she couldn’t trust him, but nowhere in his features did she see anything but truth. “A letter? I didn’t receive a letter.”
He exhaled slowly. “I had been cut off from seeing you, so I handed the letter to Crystal. I asked her to give it to you.”
“That can’t be possible.” She refused to fall victim to all those emotions again.
“Why would I lie? What do I have to gain when all you need to do is ask her?”
There was a challenge in his pensive stare. She clutched the edge of the bar, absorbing his words. If what he was saying was true, would that have changed the outcome? Would she have run off with him? It was unclear, but confusion filled her.
There was a flash of sadness in his eyes, but it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. “Why would you believe that I would leave you? After everything we shared and went through?”
She swallowed hard and wished she could separate logic from her emotions. She wished the past didn’t come with so much pain. For years, she had believed he’d been selfish, leaving her and leaving town when she needed him most. “I thought I meant nothing; our son meant nothing to you.”
The band started playing again, and she wasn’t sure he’d heard her.
Everything seemed to drown out around them except for the two of them.
“So all these years you thought I was a jerk who ditched you, and I thought you chose your family over us.” It wasn’t a question but more of a statement.
“You should have come to speak to me,” she said quietly.
“How was I supposed to do that? Your father and brother created a wall around you, convincing you that you were only married because you were pregnant. They had no idea what we shared.”
“You should have figured it out. Found a way.”
“Looking back, I should have barged into your house and insisted on talking to you. Unfortunately, I can't change past mistakes. Yet, I didn’t see you standing your ground for me. The road goes both ways.”
His words were undeniably true. “It was… too much. I had no fight left in me. The loss of Blake…I found myself facing depression. I didn’t know what was up or down.”
“And in the end, everyone got their way except for us.”
The groaning in his throat sent chills down her spine.
Her cell buzzed in her pocket. “I have to take this. I’ll go check on your food.” She stepped into the kitchen and answered the phone. “Derry, you better be calling to tell me the van is ready”
She stopped mid-stride.
“Derry, I’ll have to call you back.” She hung up.
“Marcy took a smoke break,” Reno said causally.
He was flipping the hamburger patty.
“What are you doing here?” She didn’t bother sounding civil.
“You know, I worked in a kitchen. Way back when I was a poor kid just making my way. There’s something wholesome about this work.” He scraped up the patty and placed it on the waiting bun, then he laid down the spatula and took a step away from the grill.
“You still didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here?” Her knees shook.
“I’ve come to remind you about the money.” He licked his fingers.
“Reminding and bullying are two different things,” she said stiffly. “I don’t want you here.”
“For such a strong woman you can act so innocent. This is business and I don’t like to leave loose threads,” he sneered.
There was so much she wanted to say, but what good would it do?
A man like Reno was void of logic.
When he realized she was remaining silent, he laughed. “I never would have thought of you as the silent type.”