Chapter 9
Tanner
Present day
I scrub the towel over my face before tossing it over the shower frame, grabbing my shirt and the take-out bag, and making my way out of the cabin.
The morning sunlight reflects off the face of the lake and I naturally chance a look toward the other side of the water, hoping for a glimpse of Aisling.
It’s only been a week but the lake house already looks different to when we first arrived. The porch may still be in a state of disrepair but everything else is glowing a rustic caramel brown. She’s had contractors coming by all week, checking on the plumbing and electric, and from what Fallon’s been saying Aisling’s finally got the all-clear.
From here on out she’s going to be soloing this house-flip.
After a moment of silently staring I realise that Aisling’s truck isn’t where it’s usually parked, beside their porch. Plus, Hunter’s kicking back with Austin around the fire-pit, meaning that wherever Aisling’s gone to, Fallon must have gone too.
A frown settles on my brow as I glance over to the dirt road, thinking about where the hell they could have gone.
I heave myself down onto the last unoccupied log and I pull my shirt over my head as I speak to Hunter.
“Thought we were all going hiking this morning,” I rumble, inconspicuous as hell – my subtle way of asking where did Aisling go?
I keep my eyes on the dirt as I pretend to be very fucking busy tying my laces.
Hunter hurls a small rock off my boot and gives me a knowing grin when I glance over at him.
“They’ll be back any minute. Aisling had something she wanted to do in town.”
My frown deepens. “Like what?”
He shrugs a shoulder, then checks his phone to see if Fallon’s sent him anything. “I think they were getting coffees.”
I scrub roughly at my forehead, well aware that Aisling already saw me leave this morning to grab breakfast for everyone.
I clear my throat and stare down at the brown paper bag resting next to me on the log. “She coulda just asked me.”
Aisling has been working tirelessly for the past week on the lake house. I was kind of hoping that with today being Friday – with the whole weekend ahead of us – we could get back to where we were last Saturday, before she started giving me the silent treatment.
Ideally, we’d get straight back to the part where she’s standing in my cabin and I’m on my knees in front of her, but if she needs me to take it slow this time then I’ll be down as hell for that.
I’ll be down as hell for anything that Aisling wants of me.
I wrap my fist around the top of the takeout bag and glance back toward the dirt track, knee bouncing up and down as I wait for her to get back here.
A cabin door creaks gently open behind us and we twist around to watch Caden hold the door open for his girlfriend, quickly locking up after them and then sliding two big tattooed forearms around the small waist of her flower-dotted sundress.
Winter gives us a smiley “hey y’all” while her boyfriend, who has lived with us for the past two freaking years, doesn’t even seem to notice that we’re here. Even when he joins us on the logs and sits right goddamn next to me.
I stare at his face in bemused disbelief, but he’s one-hundred percent preoccupied with rubbing his palms down Winter’s thighs.
I roll my eyes and give his boot a kick.
“Earth to fucking Caden.”
He glances at me in confusion and I can’t help but huff out a laugh.
Honestly, I don’t even blame him – I wish that I was in a loved-up little daydream right now instead of pining from fifty feet away.
I inhale a deep breath and decide to stop being an asshole.
“If y’all want coffees there’s some in the back of my car,” I begin, and Winter is off like a little pocket rocket, hauling open the backdoor and then exclaiming a literal verse of prayer.
I breathe out a laugh and slide my eyes over to Caden, who’s watching her without blinking, hearts in his eyes.
I surprise both of us when I say, “You’re a lucky guy.”
Caden’s eyes meet mine and he watches me carefully before nodding.
“I know,” he says quietly, before turning his attention back to his girlfriend, widening his sitting position so that she can perch on one of his tattooed thighs. I can’t help but notice that she only took one coffee, which she hands to Caden, before wrapping her arms around his neck.
“Thanks for the coffee,” she says to me in her twangy Kentucky accent, all giggles and smiles like this is the best day of her life.
I have never in my life met anyone as happy as Caden’s girlfriend.
I glance at him again, wondering what the hell he did to secure a chick like Winter.
He takes a sip of the coffee and then places it firmly back into Winter’s hands.
“Y’all coming hiking?” Hunter asks, jerking his chin at Caden, just as we hear Aisling’s truck crunching its way over the track that leads to the head of the lake.
My eyes flash over to her car and I can see that she’s talking animatedly to Fallon. Her hair’s in a curly bun and she’s wearing those cute denim overalls.
Caden looks down at his girlfriend and she twists her lips as if contemplating Hunter’s question.
“Wanna hike?” Caden asks her quietly, bouncing her on his quad to make her giggle.
Then Caden brushes the soft pink hair away from her ear and murmurs something against her cheek in a low reverberating rumble. Winter’s eyes go wide for a second and then she turns to blink at him with blushing cheeks.
She clears her throat and whispers a tiny, “Okay.”
Caden smirks, squeezes her waist, and then slides his eyes over to mine. “Yeah, we’re coming.”
I give him a grimace that reads way too much information, man , before shoving his shoulder with mine and hauling myself up off the bench.
I glance across the lake, one hand quickly shoving my hair back as I clutch the breakfast muffin bag in a death grip. “I’m gonna, uh, head over there for a minute,” I mumble. “Meet y’all in a few.”
Hunter gets to his feet too, eyes on Fallon as she dismounts from the truck across the water. “I’ll join.”
We begin trudging around the head of the lake in silence, both entranced by the squeals and laughter coming from the girls as they make their way up the porch steps.
I glance down at the fallen wooden railing that still hasn’t been remade, not much caring for the fact that their fenceless porch is an accident waiting to happen. I scratch roughly at my stubble, wondering if Aisling has made any calls about getting that fixed up yet.
“What’s in the bag?” Hunter asks, eyes sliding down to the brown paper in my fist.
“Breakfast muffin,” I grunt. “And my pride.”
He half-smiles and looks back up at his girlfriend, jerking his chin at her when she turns her full-watt smile down on him.
He jumps the steps two at a time and tugs her roughly against his chest, pressing a hard smug kiss against her happy dimpled cheek.
“Hey baby,” he murmurs, hauling her up as she melts against him.
I turn my attention to Aisling’s perky little butt as she struts purposefully into the lake house.
She doesn’t slam the door in my face so I decide to follow in after her.
While she’s busy acting like I don’t exist I give myself a couple of seconds to check her out, raking my eyes up the backs of her bare legs until I reach the shorts of her denim overalls. I tug at the neckline of my shirt, roll my shoulders back, and bite the bullet.
“Aisling,” I say gruffly, widening my stance as I wait for her to turn around.
I glance briefly down at the take-out bag in my hand and my forearms flex in nervous anticipation.
I got her a breakfast muffin – strawberry, her favourite.
I hope that the butter-cream icing hasn’t smudged too bad.
When I return my stare to the back of her curly bun she’s still completely preoccupied, placing things out on the kitchen counter.
I frown, a muscle rolling in my jaw, suddenly realising that a breakfast muffin is nowhere near a good enough peace offering. Not when I want her to walk with me on our hike today. Not when I want to fully put my past behind us.
The back of my neck starts to get hot as I realise how stupid this was – me thinking that I could win her back when I haven’t done anything to prove my intentions yet.
I rub roughly at my forehead.
Who buys their crush a breakfast muffin? I should have bought her roses.
When she turns around she actually jumps as if she didn’t know that I was here, the three take-out coffees that she’s holding over-spilling a little beneath their caps.
“Oh my God,” she breathes, shaking her head and squeezing her eyes shut. “Sorry, I didn’t realise that you were there. I was totally busy trying to–”
She suddenly stops herself when she finally notices my taken aback expression. I mean, besides the fact that she didn’t hear me say her name out loud like a normal human being, she’s talking to me right now like I’m a guy who she doesn’t hate.
She swallows the rest of her sentence and looks up at me with a slightly embarrassed blush.
It’s fucking beautiful.
“How are your knees?” I ask, briefly checking that they aren’t still bleeding. There’s still one Band-Aid in place, which makes me suspicious that she reopened one of her cuts with more floor-scrubbing, but other than that they seem to be back to their perfect selves.
I get a flashback of sliding my hands beneath those knees and I quickly avert my eyes, shuffling my feet and grunting.
“They’re fine,” she says breathlessly, bouncing agitatedly in her sandals. As if maybe she’s just had the exact same flashback as I have.
I swipe my tongue over my bottom lip, psyching myself up to ask her to hike with me, when the coffees in her hands finally register in my brain. As in, there are three coffees in her hands.
Aisling and Fallon make two. So who the hell is the third one for?
I shove my tongue in my cheek and jerk my chin towards the cup-holder.
“Who’s the coffee for?” I ask, my chest tense and expanding. Because even though I’m a positive guy, I can’t help but wonder if it’s for Tristan.
My cheeks go damn near crimson as I think about the strawberry muffin in my fist, while Aisling’s out here moving onto other men. I mean, as she fucking should. It’s not as though we were ever even together.
Goddamn it. I have to avert my eyes for a couple of seconds, staring blankly over toward her fireplace as I try to alleviate the acidic sensation currently burning up my sternum.
But she puts me out of my misery when she looks up at me and quietly says, “The coffee’s for Connell. Connell and his guys are coming for the summer.”
I almost sigh with relief. It’s not for Tristan. It’s for her brother.
I nod my head, exhaling deeply, and I hold out the breakfast bag containing her muffin.
She frowns up at me, clutching her coffees tighter against her chest.
“What is it?” she asks, dropping her gaze to the bag suspiciously.
“Nothing. Just breakfast.” For the sake of her pride I say, “I grabbed some stuff in town for everyone. This one’s for you.”
She purses her lips, unaware of how distracting that is.
When she doesn’t take it I decide to take matters into my own hands. Her little rucksack is on the counter behind her so I close the gap between us, flick the zip, and shove the muffin inside.
“Look, just take it. You don’t even have to eat it. Or if you want, you can eat it and then get back to pretending that you don’t like me after.”
Something like a smile tugs at her lips. “Who’s pretending?” she teases.
My eyes flash down to hers and I can’t help but smirk, my chest swelling to twice its size at her fiery little quip.
And in the next second she’s smiling up at me, as if she can’t hold it in any longer. She bites shyly into her bottom lip and tries to suppress the raspy laughter in her throat.
I duck my head, grinning just as hard as she is, well aware that this is the first real smile that she’s given me in four years.
Chest heaving in erratic pumps, I grip at the back of my neck with one hand and carefully lift the other just in front of her collarbone, capturing her eyes with mine as I tuck two fingers into her dungaree strap. Slowly I tug it back into place, careful not to brush her bare skin with mine but knowing that she can feel my heat regardless.
She stands totally still and silent, watching me with sparkly wide eyes, her hands gripped tight around the coffee holder.
I give her a little smirk. “Clothes just do not want to stay on you.”
She wheezes out a tiny laugh. “Tell that to the pyjamas I left behind in Carter Ridge. Some clothes don’t even want to be in the same county as me.”
I breathe fast and deep, thinking about Aisling secretly wearing the shirt that I gave her for bed. About Aisling standing on her balcony each morning, watching me in wide-eyed silence as I work out across the lake while she wears my clothes .
Now’s your chance, man. Ask her to hike with you. Tell her that you want to carry her bags and take her to the top of that mountain.
I swallow hard, reluctantly prizing my fingers from her denim strap.
“Aisling, I–”
In the next second I’m cut off by the sound of wheels crunching over the dirt outside, a door slamming open and the deep bellow of, “Yo, Ash! You in there?”
I curse and glance over my shoulder, pressing slightly closer up to Aisling as we both watch her brother stepping around the hood of a giant Ford, sunlight streaming endlessly through the large lake house windows.
“Fuck,” I grunt, pissed off at having this moment interrupted. I turn back to look down at Aisling, all but pinned to the counter, and I grudgingly force myself to pull away from her, already knowing that today can no longer go as I’d planned it.
With her brother, his best friend Logan, and half of his football team arriving there’s no way that I’ll be able to spend the hike with Aisling because without a doubt he’s going to be joining. He’s going to be the one guiding her over the steep patches, carrying her bag and keeping her steady.
There’s not a chance in hell that he’ll be okay with me – the biggest player on campus, let alone out of the Carter Ridge Rangers – swooping in on the little sister duties.
I curse again, heart clenching taut when I see how Ash has neatly stacked my logs beside her fireplace.
My eyes flick back to hers and she glances desperately back and forth, looking between me and the guys outside of the open front door.
“I have to… I’ve gotta go,” she rasps and I nod my head, grateful at least that we’re on some non-argumentative talking terms.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “Have a great day with your brother.”
I don’t mention his football team. I may be trying to be a gentleman here but Connell’s football team can fuck right off.
“Thanks,” she breathes, slowly making her way to the front door. Just before she steps outside she smiles and adds on, “Big shot.”
She’s out of the door before I can say anything but I traipse slowly to the jamb, smirking anyway.
Her brother – Carter U’s freshly graduated star quarterback – instantly takes the coffees out of her hands and throws her over his shoulder, talking in a loud happy bellow about how amazing his sister is to his teammates.
I lean a shoulder against the doorframe, watching Aisling giggle with a smile crease in my cheek.
Then my eyes flash down to the broken railing and a different idea comes to my mind.
I take my phone out of my pocket and shoot a quick text to Hunter, telling him that I’m ditching our first hike of the trip. Doesn’t matter, I’ll join the next one – one where Aisling’s brother isn’t watching her every move and maybe we can progress on rebuilding our relationship.
Just as Connell and the guys start making their way around to the other side of the lake, Aisling looks up at me from over her brother’s shoulder. She’s smiling, a little shy and curious, and there’s something wild and hopeful burning behind her eyes.
I jerk my chin at her, smirking when she bites her teeth into her lower lip.
Then I give her a wink and watch her breath catch in her throat.
Being hated by this girl feels better than being liked by any other.