Chapter 19
Lana
Natalia and Isabelle storm into the bookstore, demanding attention by calling out my name. Repeatedly. Even as I’m taking Sheriff Jeffords’s coffee order—even though I know it by heart.
“Ladies,” Raymond tips his sheriffs hat toward my friends. “Thank you, Lana.”
“Have a good day, Raymond.” I wave him off before I glare at my friends. “What?”
“Be nicer to us,” Natalia pouts. “We saw something interesting.”
I roll my eyes. “Wow,” I deadpan.
“Hey!” Isabelle snaps. “Christian is in your driveway.”
“Yes,” I sigh and leave the register, taking off the apron. I tell Joey that he’s in charge back here now before I leave toward the bookshop side of the place, my friends following suit. “Nothing new.”
“He’s living with you now,” Natalia squeaks. “Isn’t it fun?” She wiggles her brows.
I shrug as if I hate it, my eyes perusing the spines of the books. I stop in the middle of the aisle and cross my arms, even as my cheeks heat. “It’s…fun.”
“Well I guess it’s fine since he’s buying you groceries, flowers, and furniture,” Isabelle says with an arch brow.
“Furniture?” My eyebrows shoot up. “My house is fully furnished, Isa.”
They both shrug. They would have been twins in another life, I think. “Is this the town gossip lately?”
Isabelle gives me a look and Natalia’s lip curls. “No, not really. This new girl did move to town this week though.”
“Wow,” I deadpan again.
“You’re such a hater,” Natalia scoffs.
I sigh, wanting to go home and see what Christian has been doing to my house. “Fine, I’m sorry. Tell me more.”
“And…Elena texted me…”
“She did?”
Isabelle nods. “Don’t tell Luca though. He’s still pretending he’s over her.”
I’m still blinking and reeling on the news that one of our best friends—the missing fourth member of our group—has come back from the dead. “What did she say?”
“Later.”
“But—”
“Christian is at your house building something!”
I shake my head. “He isn’t.”
They both frown and take my hands, pulling me toward a table by the window. I sit across from my two best friends and slump in the chair.
“I passed by your house on the way in and saw him unloading his car,” Isa tells me, and pauses “Are you okay?”
I feel the heavy frown on my lips.
Natalia tilts her head as she regards me. “You look…”
I sit back, cross my legs and arms, and feel my eyelids grow heavy. “Exhausted?”
“Sad. Lonely. Heartbroken.”
I exhale. “I’m not sad…maybe frustrated.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Isa asks.
I shrug. “Not much to talk about. You both already know.”
“Just because we might know what’s wrong doesn’t mean anything,” Natalia says. “You’re our friend and we’ll listen to you cry about the same thing a thousand times if we have to. We love you to death. But we don’t want to see this kill you inside.”
“Because it was killing you for years, Lana,” Isa adds quietly. “And we don’t want it to keep doing that.”
I sigh.
Was it killing me inside? Yes. It felt like a knife to the chest, stabbing over and over again. I don’t entirely blame Christian for putting the knife there. I blame his abusive father, his mother, his addictions. None of it was really him—he wasn’t himself anymore.
But now, he’s the one taking out the knife and stitching my heart closed.
“It isn’t…killing me,” I whisper. “I just still feel like maybe…there might be something missing?”
“Like what?”
I shrug. It’s been a week since his birthday and we made progress, I know we did. Or maybe I did. He isn’t buying me things—he’s doing things.
He has offered to run my errands. He made me a garden to which he now tends to everyday.
He bought me shoes but his intentions were important to me.
And he was sleeping in his car. In my driveway, for two weeks with zero complaints.
It probably wasn’t fair to make him sleep in that two seater, but I’d promised myself I wouldn’t let him off easy.
But now what?
He’s living in the guest room, gives me space he thinks I need, but still hasn’t told me anything. I don't know why, how, or where. I only know he’s here, and he’s better.
If he wasn’t, I’d smell it on him. I’d see it on him. His eyes don’t have those heavy bags anymore, his shoulders aren’t slumped with the weight of his sadness, and his smile isn’t pained.
I know Christian. This is Christian.
“There’s something he isn’t saying,” I whisper.
“About after he left?” Natalia asks.
“Yeah,” I croak. “Or New York, I don’t know…”
“Ask him,” Isabelle says. “He’ll tell you.”
“I have, Isa.”
“Then he isn’t ready,” Natalie ponders. “Knowing him, he’ll talk when he’s ready.”
I nod because she’s right. That’s exactly how he is. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, Lana,” Isabelle says softly. “Now go home and let us know what it was he brought home.”
I roll my eyes. “Groceries.”
“Didn’t look like it.” Natalia stands with a shrug.
Isa waves her hands at me. “Now off you go, boss lady.”
Groaning, I stand. “Fine.”
My two friends smack my butt and I yelp as I walk to the back to grab my stuff.
I tell my assistant manager of the café, Michelle, that I’m leaving for the rest of the day and she’s more than happy for the extra three hours she’s getting.
I leave her to close with the assistant manager of the bookshop, Ryan, and the rest of my amazing staff.
I’ve got my bag on my shoulder and my car keys in hand by the time I emerge from the back and see the girls still there waiting for me.
“Oh good.” Isa perks up. “We were worried you would hide, wait for us to leave, and never go home.”
“I’m going,” I say through a chuckle. I am going home reluctantly because I love this job and not making money scares me. Not working scares me. I push open the door and they follow suit, walking with me to my old Jeep. I unlock and open my door, and freeze.
I turn to find my friends, my hands tightening around the keys. “Was it alcohol?”
They both blink at me like I’m nuts. “What?”
“Was it alcohol? Are you guys sending me home to find him…” Drunk.
“We would never set you up like that, you know that,” Natalia says softly.
I nod, rolling my lips. “You didn’t answer the question.”
“It’s not alcohol,” Isabelle assures me, holding my arm and squeezing gently. “Have some more faith in him, Lana.”
Natalia nods and agrees by saying, “That man would pull down the moon and hand it to you. You wouldn’t even have to ask him to.”
“Yeah,” I breathe. I know he would. “Yeah okay.”
“Go.” Isa releases my arm. “I think you’ll really like what he got you.”
“Okay,” I breathe and hop into the Wrangler. I close the door, start the engine, and lower the window to say, “I love you guys.”
“Text us about it later!”
“Please!”
I wave one last time and drive off, my hands fisting tightly around the leather wheel. Christian is well. He’s better. He deserves my faith in him. I trust him.
I trust he hasn’t had a drink in the months that he’s been here. If he did, I would know. It’s a small town and apparently, from what I’ve been told, Team Lana is a thing. So everyone on Team Lana would have told me by now if they caught him buying something or stopping for a drink.
Town full of snitches, really. Snitches I would be thankful for if he had.
I would have known because I know him. I know Drunk Christian well. Too familiar with him for my liking.
Pulling into my driveway, I take a deep breath and my focus narrows to where the joints and muscles of my hands are stiff from my grip. His dramatic McLaren is parked, shiny and pristine like he’s just driven it out of the factory or something.
The front door is unlocked when I push it open. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s silent. “Christian?”
“Kitchen!”
I toe off the new sneakers I bought myself and take deep breaths as I go toward the kitchen. He’s scrubbing the floors with my wet-jet, and he looks…
“You shaved,” I blurt. I hate it.
Christian blinks, a smile growing on his perfect lips, and his eyes find mine. “I did.”
“Why?”
He rubs at his bare jaw and shrugs. “I thought you said you liked the clean face this morning.”
“I like your face in general,” I say. “I just mean…keep the… the stubble. I like your stubble.”
He looks down at the spot on the floor he was just cleaning and the corner of his mouth lifts. “Okay.”
“What—” I stammer and take in my bright living room. “What have you been doing?”
“Well, I cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed your rugs, did our laundry, and cleaned the floors. Then I cooked us dinner.”
I gesture to the mess in the corner. “And the boxes?”
With a knowing smirk, he leans the wet-jet against the wall. He stands before me, casting a shadow with his height, and says, “Upstairs.”
“What did you—”
Christian takes my hand and kisses my knuckles before he intertwines our fingers. “Can I show you?”
I nod. “Okay, but Christian—”
Christian kisses my cheek softly and I forget what I was thinking, what I was worried about in the first place.
“Trust me,” he says, then he leads me up the stairs and toward my bedroom.
I trust him with my life.
“Christian, what did you do?”
“Just…” Christian pauses outside the door of the empty, spare room and puts his hands tightly around my hips. “I hope you don’t mind—”
“You already did it.” I chortle, amused. “It’s a little late if I do mind.”
He chuckles softly, a smile on his perfect lips. “Alright then…I just hope you like it.”
“I probably will,” I say quietly.
Christian gives me a wink and smile combo, and he pushes open the door, and it’s…
The first thing I see are the open windows with new white curtains, the sun pouring in. Then a cream colored loveseat—big enough for me to lie back while reading— against the wall between the two wide windows.
The once, plain empty room is now filled with sunlight and…
Tall white bookcases decorating what used to be empty walls in the way I had planned to do eventually. And Christian somehow knew exactly how I had imagined—the love seat, the floor to ceiling shelves, the bright space.
His hand is firm on the small of my back and he kisses my bare shoulder. “Lana?”