Chapter 5 Wesley
Wesley
I didn’t quite know what to make of Hunter’s exit, but I’d seen the pain in his expression and the exasperation in his jerky movements. I was too much.
I’m always too much.
Molly came to the table and offered quietly, “I can pack the pie.”
Inspiration hit me. “Yes, please.” With the pie tucked into a take-out box, I bundled up and hurried outside.
I’d catch him and give him the pie and not ask a single question or say a single thing.
Assuming he’d probably gone straight home, I headed that way—only to spot him sooner, standing under the Wishing Tree, staring at its bare branches.
The wishes wouldn’t appear until a few days before Thanksgiving, though I’d seen a few fluttering there in the summer, metallic ribbons catching the sunlight.
He looked lonely and sad, and I didn’t know what to do.
Part of me wanted to step closer, to offer something—comfort, warmth, anything—but another part of me screamed to retreat, to save him from having to listen to my rambling.
I hovered, torn between reaching out and walking away.
He sighed, muttered something under his breath, and I crossed over before he could notice me wavering, shoved the box at him.
“Your pie”
He took it from me, his expression unreadable—surprise flickering in his eyes. “Wes?”
“I’m sorry for sitting with you and talking at you. I know I’m too much,” I said, and before he could answer, I spun on my heel.
“Wait, Wes,” he called after me. “It’s on me. Shit. I walked out on you.”
Sadness pricked at me, but I forced a smile.
“Of course you did, I know I can be too much. My nanny used to tell me this story when I was little, about how I ate too many snacks, she said it would attract the ghosts that lived in the pantry, and the ghosts would make me talk too much.” I shrugged, letting the words trail off into the cold night air.
“I just wanted to sit with her, but she didn’t know that, and hey, I like ghosts.
” There I went, talking too much again. “She was right, see?”
He huffed. “You really believe that?”
I smiled. “Of course not. I’m creative and I love talking and telling stories, but y’know, my family wasn’t big on creative sons. Nor gay ones, to be exact. Gay and creative meant I was the black sheep of the family.”
“Isn’t the black sheep the one who causes trouble?”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “My father had built his career on being the perfect conservative family man. Me getting caught kissing a boy in school meant I was the black sheep for real.”
“Shit. That sucks.”
“It is what it is.”
“I’m sorry they weren’t supportive.”
“Meh, I’m queer, I’m creative, I’m a bookworm who lives in his own world.
I own all of those things equally.” The words snapped out of me sharper than I intended, fierce enough to make him flinch and fall silent.
Fuck, where had that fierceness come from?
He pressed his fingers to his temple. “You have a headache.”
“Migraines,” he said. “I’ve taken my meds, and I think I’ve headed it off, but… yeah, it hurts.”
I shifted awkwardly, then whispered the first thing that came to mind, because I was a master of changing the subject.
“Did you know the Wishing Tree wasn’t always called that?
When the town was first founded, it was known as Harper’s Crossing.
They renamed it after kids started hanging ribbons and notes on this tree over a hundred years ago, believing their wishes might come true.
” Gently, I touched his elbow, guiding him toward the nearest bench.
“I love that from Thanksgiving and up to Christmas, the branches get covered, a forest of colors in the wind. It’s…
kind of magical.” I sat beside him, still speaking low, hoping the story eased some of the lines carved into his brow.
I opened the box with the pie and took out the two forks, passing one to Hunter. “It’s so quiet here.”
He took the fork, examined it. “Did you steal these?”
“Borrowed. Molly said I could.” Maybe he didn’t like to share, maybe he was all about possible cooties issues, so I cut it into two portions, one larger than the other, and nudged the larger piece over. “That’s yours.”
He studied the pie for a moment, then deliberately cut away a corner and slid it back onto my portion.
“That’s better,” he murmured. He took a mouthful of the crumbling sweetness of Kai Pie, chewing slowly before flicking his fork in a silent gesture for me to try mine too.
Was it wrong that I was staring at his lips as the tip of his tongue darted out to collect a stray crumb?
I forced my gaze downward and took my own bite, savoring the apple and cinnamon and the pastry and the crumble topping.
“So good,” I murmured and glanced up to see him staring at me.
At my mouth.
“So good,” he echoed.
After an awkward moment when I didn’t know how to deal with all the big emotions in my chest, we dug back in, and in a few mouthfuls, it was gone.
“Why are you staring at the box, looking so sad? he asked after a pause, and I glanced up from where I’d been checking out the empty box.
“It’s all gone,” I deadpanned, and then smiled at him. “Good though, right?”
He nodded. “I’ve had a bad day.”
“Might help to talk about it? I can be a good listener if I try.”
He chuckled. “The oven broke, my coffee machine needs a part, the bean delivery never arrived, an old colleague of mine called to bitch about someone who isn’t even in my life anymore, and then I got offered a job interview.” He winced, as if he hadn’t meant to reveal that much.
A job interview? Why did he need a job? He already had one—he owned The Real McCoy outright, or so I thought.
No mortgage, his to do with as he pleased since Harry McCoy had passed and Hunter had inherited it.
“What job?” I asked quickly, panic tightening in my chest. Was Hunter leaving Wishing Tree? Was he leaving… me?
“Adjunct at a college.”
“What about the coffee shop? How will you run that and teach? Will you commute?”
“Time for me to move on.” He shrugged as if he hadn’t turned my world upside down.
“But this college isn’t the one I wanted.
I’m waiting on two applications I submitted to LA and another in Seattle.
LA is what I really want, back on tenure path, but Seattle would be a good second, anything to be back doing what I love. ”
“You don’t love running the coffee shop?”
He paused as if he was giving it great thought. “It’s okay, and it suited me at a time when my life had imploded, but it’s not what I love.”
“We love you,” I blurted. “I mean, the town loves you. Loves you running the shop, making the pastries out back, the coffee is the best, and…” I ran out of words, or rather, I didn’t want to tell him what was in my heart, that I’d miss his face, and talking to him—or at him—and be all around miserable if he left.
“And?”
“Nothing,” I said, a bit uselessly.
He stood, wiped off the seat of his jeans, because yes, the bench was a little sleet-damp, and I copied him. “Time to get back and catch up on all the sleep I lost last night.”
Guilt flooded me. “I’m sorry, I just needed…”
To see you, to talk to you, I’m freaking obsessed with you.
“It’s all good.”
We walked back to our respective stores in silence, and it wasn’t far, so it was over too soon.
“That’s pretty,” I said, and pointed at The Gift Emporium.
Bailey Haynes was gifted at creating jewelry and exquisite Christmas decorations, some of which hung in the window, ready for the season, with colored fairy lights framing the display.
They skipped the whole turkey season part, but not me—I was on to cutting out turkeys and turkey, fall leaves, and pumpkin pies, and that reminded me I needed to figure out this year’s display, given I’d focused so much on the Nordic Christmas and—
“Are you okay?” Hunter pressed a hand to my arm.
“Thinking about Thanksgiving decorations,” I said, then gave him a bright smile before we headed around to the back entrances to our shops.
There was a box hidden on my side of the dumpster, and I picked it up.
The logo featured a coffee bean, and the box was heavy. “Think these are yours?” I asked.
He rolled his eyes. “One day, the delivery drivers will get our doors right,” he said, took them from me, and smiled. “See you in the morning.”
Then he waited for me to go inside. “Night,” I offered, and closed my door, standing with my back to it for a while.
Where his back door opened to a kitchen, mine opened to books in piles, and a hotchpotch of decorations.
Where his was pristine steel surfaces, sinks, and ovens, mine was as messy as my mind on any given day when I dumped things in there.
It comforted me in ways I couldn’t explain to anyone, but I couldn’t focus because all I could think about was that he was leaving.
I didn’t like that one little bit.
The next morning, I still couldn’t shake the hollow feeling in my stomach.
Hunter’s news had been tossed out so casually it hadn’t meant anything to him, even though it had carved me open.
I woke with the ache still gnawing, carried it with me down into my higgledy-piggledy storeroom, determined to focus on what I could control.
Starting with digging out the Thanksgiving and fall decorations before I opened at nine.
I’d spent nearly two years bugging Hunter, watching him, wanting him in ways I’d never felt before.
I’d never told him—I didn’t know how, and he wasn’t the easiest person to talk to—but I thought I had more time.
Now that time felt like it was slipping through my fingers, leaving me raw and restless as I stacked boxes and tried to lose myself in the cluttered storeroom.
It was only when I checked in the final box, because I didn’t label anything, that my good intentions not to think about Hunter began to slide.
Hunter was leaving. The thought kept circling in my brain, refusing to let me go.
I came up with half a dozen elaborate plans to make him stay—somehow convincing the mayor to offer him free rent or petitioning the whole town to sign a letter begging him not to leave, or maybe tricking him into agreeing to run a joint summer festival with me so he couldn’t escape for another six months.
None of it made any sense, and as each idea fizzled out, so did my hope.
In the end, I just deflated, left standing in my storeroom, hugging a box of decorations as if it could anchor me against the fear of losing him.
Honestly, I could really use a coffee to dull the ache.
Get coffee. See Hunter.
I grabbed the pile of Nordic folklore books I’d been collecting, and with Brooke covering the store for ten minutes, I pushed into The Real McCoy like a man on a mission. Hunter gave me that long-suffering look that meant he was seconds away from slipping out the back.
“Morning! How’s your head?”
He blinked at me, slow and wary, then gave a small nod. “I’m good.”
“You sure?” I stepped closer and lowered my voice, “You look tired.”
“Aftereffects of the headache,” he murmured. I’m okay.”
I leaned in, softer this time. “You’re still here, though, and seeing my favorite sleepy bear makes my morning better.”
“‘Sleepy bear’?”
“Like a bear who hasn’t had his honey yet.”
He huffed a small laugh. “Bears don’t actually eat much honey, you know. It’s mostly bugs and berries. Honey’s more of a cartoon thing.”
I beamed at him. “Fine. Then you’re a sleepy bear who hasn’t woken up with his berries yet.”
That earned me the faintest quirk of his lips, almost a smile, and I grinned at him. “Can I have a coffee before I waste away right here on your floor?”
He rolled his eyes but turned to the counter, the ghost of amusement still tugging at his mouth. “One coffee. Coming up.”
I spread the books I’d brought with me across the nearest table to the counter and flipped one open to a page about yule goats and trolls. He brought over my coffee, and before he could even think of leaving, I tapped the picture. “Trolls.”
“What about them?”
“Very Nordic, and we could make signs that your glogg will be one hundred percent troll-approved.”
He groaned. “I said I’m not doing this with you.”
I lowered my tone. “But it could be your last Christmas.”
He winced and glanced around him, but the parent and baby group was over on the other side of the café, and there was no one else in right now. “Wesley—”
“See this?” I asked, and nudged an old, battered-looking mug toward him.
Handmade with love, it was one of my little brother’s first-ever throws and about the only thing I’d taken from the family home.
Kinder memories of better days when I was still in the closet and they still wanted me around.
God knows why I took it when I left—hell, I barely had room for my books in my two suitcases, but yep, the misshapen mug came with me.
“My youngest brother made this, way back when he was maybe six?”
“Okay?” he asked, waiting for me to expand.
“It’s a troll.” I almost added ta-da, but he was blinking at me, confused, and I realized I’d probably left out a couple of steps. ”Y’know, Nordic trolls, traditions, and old stories.”
“I’m not dressing up as a troll,” he said.
I smacked his arm. “No one is dressing up as trolls. That would be stupid. I already have our costumes thought out, I said that. You’ll be dashing with a cloak.”
“Wesley…”
I glanced up at him, at the pained expression on his face.
I needed him to do this. I wanted to be so entwined in his life before Christmas that maybe he’d change his mind and stay right here.
I had my faults; I talked too much, I went off on tangents, my conspiracy theories were intense, but I could make him smile. I just wanted to make him smile.
“It’s only one night at the parade,” I said, with emotion, and pouted my best and cutest pout, then smiled to weaponize my dimples.
His eyes widened, and then he sighed loudly, glancing from me to the book and back. “Fucks sake.”
“Is that a yes?” I asked.
“It’s not a no,” he said on another sigh.
I did a little happy dance right there, then gathered up the books and the coffee.
I let out a whoop of excitement that had the parent-and-baby class turning to stare, but I didn’t care.
I side-hugged Hunter, grinning ear to ear.
“This is going to be so cool,” I added, then hurried out before he could change his mind.