9. Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
Thea
I wipe my clammy hands on the front of my pants. Carrington should be here any moment now, and I can’t get my nerves under control. Thankfully, I’m at least well-rested after last night’s game of ‘Redneck Wrecked’ wrecked me. That was Ripley’s goal all along. He knew a night out was the only thing that would work with how in my head I’ve been.
I slept a full eight hours. Ripley made sure to give me ibuprofen last night, in hopes it would keep the inevitable hangover at bay. All I woke up with was a minor headache, and thank God for that, considering tomorrow we are hosting a big charity event, A Night of Hope—a gala supporting domestic violence prevention. I need to be on my A-game. This event is one of the biggest ones that RED has on the books for this year. The entire space has been rented out along with the patio area. We’re hoping the event will bring us more like it since the company hosting has a huge client list.
Now that it’s just me and Brooks handling it, I’m nervous. Ripley was always going to be out of town for it, but Hazel and Owen would have been here. And once again, Carrington being in town isn’t helping. If anything, it’s a distraction.
I finalized the menu for the event with our head chef, Travis, earlier, and Ripley made sure we had enough liquor on hand before he left this morning. I still have to print the menus for the table settings. The to-do list is long and seems to be growing. I don’t have time to deal with Carrington wanting a tour and to be shown how things work around here.
I look over at the clock by the entrance to the kitchen and see that it’s ten-fifty-nine. Carrington told me he’d be here at eleven. If he’s late, maybe I’ll just lock the door and pretend like I forgot. He doesn’t have a key yet, so it seems like a decent plan.
I roll my eyes at myself knowing I don’t have it in me to be that petty. And it wouldn’t matter anyway because he walks in at eleven on the dot.
“Hey,” he says as he hands me a to-go cup and steps around me, farther into the restaurant. He pushes his sunglasses up onto his head, pulling my focus to his long chestnut hair tied back at the nape of his neck. I haven’t gotten used to the new style just yet, but I can’t deny that it looks good. Not that being handsome was ever an issue for him. The man never even had an awkward teenage phase.
“Hi,” I reply before I take a tentative sip of the drink he brought me. It’s my regular coffee order, exactly how I like it. He even remembered the chocolate powder. Damn him.
Carrington is looking around, seemingly taking it all in. It hits me then he hasn’t actually been inside RED—the new restaurant or the distillery next door. It must have been odd to be handed the ownership having never seen the place.
I take a deep breath, only meaning to clear my head, but his gaze snaps back to me like it was aimed at him to get his attention.
“Sorry, I just… didn’t realize how different everything would look.” His voice is somber. I guess he expected the decor to be reminiscent of what he left behind and not up-scale.
I give him a small smile before saying, “We did… a lot of remodeling. We kept the patio but otherwise, almost everything changed. It had to.” Carrington knows how outdated the diner was. It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that the place was gutted to make all of this happen. This used to be a one-story building with checkered floors all throughout—the kind that were popular in the 1950s. Now the floor is lined with wood in the dining areas and decorative tiles in the kitchen and bathrooms. We wanted it to have personality without being too loud. The second floor only goes halfway across the building, overlooking the front lobby with a vaulted ceiling and light wooden beams stretching across it.
Like I’d told him before, the patio stayed, but now there’s a two-story floor-to-ceiling wall of windows that leads to it. The goal was to make sure you could see the lake even from inside and give the whole space tons of natural light. I love to sit by those windows when it rains. The raindrops rush down the window like tears cascading down a cheek. It’s always calmed me for some reason.
We leaned into the natural, earth-loving look with a sage green and linen palette for the decor. There are gold accents and light fixtures throughout. The lake is our biggest draw, so we didn’t want to take away from its beauty or the nature surrounding it.
He nods like he’s trying to wrap his head around everything. I give him another second, knowing it’ll take more than that to truly come to terms with it all. His eyes land on the two photos on the wall behind the hostess stand. One of them he’s familiar with, the other is new to him and possibly the most recent photo he’s seen of his parents in the thirteen years they didn’t speak. His feet seem to move toward it of their own accord. I’m spellbound as I watch him stare at the photo, wondering what he could be thinking. Is he regretful they went so long without speaking? Is he wishing he’d been here to see all of this happen?
Without meaning to, I say, “That was the day before we reopened under the new name.” He looks over his shoulder at me for a moment before turning back, and some of the tension in his body disappears. “Brooks took the photo for us, insisting he didn’t need to be in it. I don’t think I’d ever seen your parents so happy.” I pause to get up the nerve for what I want to say next. “That night,” I walk toward him, stopping just a few steps behind him, “all they could talk about was how much they wished you were here with us.”
Carrington’s head shoots around to look at me, not realizing I’m much closer now. He closes the space between us so we’re standing just inches apart. I have to tilt my head up to look him in the eyes. “Why… why would they say that?” Confusion and regret lace his words.
I shrug my shoulders, knowing it feels too nonchalant for this conversation. “Because it was true. They loved you, Carrington.”
His ocean eyes scan my face, possibly looking for a tell that I’m lying to him. He’s so close I can clearly see each of the striations in his eyes that I loved so much. They’re more prominent in this moment; they remind me of the surf crashing into the shore then pulling back into the tide, leaving only seafoam in its wake. I’m so entranced by them, I don’t realize his hand is reaching for my face until his fingers push my hair behind my ear.
“Why do you keep calling me that?” His voice is so low that even if someone were in the room with us, they wouldn’t be able to catch what he said. I give him a puzzled look, and he clarifies, “Carrington. You keep calling me Carrington instead of Cary.”
At that, whatever spell held me breaks, and I try to step away, but he grabs my hand. The moment I look down at our interlaced fingers, he lifts my chin up with his other hand.
“Answer me, Thea.” His voice is strained. He’s holding on by a thread. My heart gallops in my chest as I stare up at him through my lashes. I can’t tell if my body’s reaction is from the dominance in his voice or if I’m annoyed that he’s demanding an answer from me.
“I—” I start to answer but someone walks into the room and clears their throat behind us. I pull back and break away from Carrington, spinning around to see Travis standing in the door to the kitchen.
“I was just about to head out to grab the few things we still need for Saturday…” he trails off, looking between the two of us suspiciously. “Unless… you need me to stay?”
“No. No, go ahead. We’re fine here.” I don’t sound fine. I hear the panic in my own voice, but he nods his head then grabs his hat off of the coat rack in the corner. With a dip of his head in goodbye, he leaves us alone again.
I don’t wait for Carrington to pull me back into whatever just happened, instead I walk toward the bar area of the restaurant. “Let’s give you the tour you came in for. You still have to see the distillery and tasting room next door.”
After showing Carrington everything RED has to offer and watching his impressed smile out of the corner of my eye, I grab the menu I’d left on the bartop. “This is the menu we have planned for tomorrow. I’m only showing you in case you were curious. It’s already finalized and can’t be changed.” That’s technically a lie, but I don’t want to hear which parts he doesn’t like.
He’s silent as he looks it over, nodding his head in what I hope is approval. Without looking up, he says, “And your chef…” he looks at me expectantly.
“Travis.”
“Right, Travis. He can handle all of this?” There’s not an ounce of humor in his voice. He’s really asking if the chef I hired and the menu I created are a good match.
I scoff. “Yes, Carrington.” His eye twitches when I call him by his full name. “He can handle it. We can handle it. Everything is covered.”
He nods his head in response, but it’s obvious he wanted a different answer. I let the moment settle as he continues to stare at the menu.
“‘Cary’ feels too… personal. Too close,” I say as I fidget with the rings on my fingers. His gaze slowly leaves the menu and finds me again. I swear he’s lighting me on fire from the inside out with the way his eyes bore into mine.
“Very well,” is all he says in response. He doesn’t fight me. Doesn’t tell me I’m ridiculous to feel that way. He just says two words that mean almost nothing.
I nod and turn away from him, speaking to him is hard enough but having to look at his handsome face while I do is even harder. Once my back is to him, I breathe a little easier. “I don’t know what your plans are. And I don’t understand why selling your shares to me is something you need to think about, but…” I pause and take a deep breath. “This place means everything to me. I know you hate me or, at least, resent me for what happened between us, but please…” Tears well behind my eyes. “Please don’t take this from me.”
He’s so silent that I wonder if he’s looking for a way to break my heart all over again and tell me that no pleading can save me or RED from what he plans to do.
“You… you think I hate you?” His voice sounds genuine but confused. I spin around out of sheer shock at his question.
“Of course I do. I left you. I broke your heart. Over the phone, no less. I hate myself for that. Why wouldn’t you hate me?” I broke my own heart too. Not that I voice that to him, it doesn’t feel appropriate to say, much less think. I learned that knowing something needs to happen doesn’t always mean it won’t kill you in the process.
“I could never hate you, Thea. You could stab me in the heart, and I’d still never be able to hate you. I don’t have it in me. I never have, and I never will. I… miss you. I miss us.”
The tears that had welled up behind my eyes are free-falling now, there is no stopping them. This is too much. I can’t be here with him, I can’t have this conversation right now. It’s still too raw even eight years later. I never even told him why I broke up with him, and for some reason, he hasn’t asked. He should hate me. Just as he lifts his hand to reach for my face, I step back and look toward the floor.
“You should go. I have a lot to do, and the tour is over.” And with that said, I turn and walk away, wiping the tears from my face. I don’t give him a chance to stop me. The past can’t come back to haunt me, I won’t allow it.