Chapter 14
Fourteen
L auren stood at the window in her small living room overlooking the street of Raspberry Ridge.
The sun had gone down, and she was ready to go take a shower and read for a bit before bed, but she didn’t want to go back to her bedroom until her husband’s truck left.
He was sitting in it, just sitting in front of her store.
Cannon wasn’t going to stay there all night, was he?
But she’d been waiting for more than forty-five minutes for him to leave, and he hadn’t.
As far as she knew, his truck hadn’t moved all day. That meant that the bread that she’d given him that morning was the only thing that he had eaten all day.
She paced from the window to the kitchen counter and back. Her hands holding her stomach, her head lifted toward the ceiling, like there were answers there. She did not want to feel responsible for him, and she did not want to feel guilty that he was probably down there hungry and uncomfortable.
Was he expecting her to invite him in?
She supposed she could. She had a couch, and he could sleep there, but that was pushing the boundaries of what she wanted to establish. After all, she didn’t want him to think that he could just move in. Even if he was her husband.
Why not?
Like she had just thought, he was her husband. He had every right to live here if he wanted to. That’s the way marriages worked. People lived together. They didn’t drive off to a different state and start a business and just leave without saying anything. The way she had done.
She was not going to invite him in, but she’d go down and find out what he was planning, and maybe make a suggestion as to where he could stay tonight. There was a nice inn in Blueberry Beach and another one in Strawberry Sands. Neither one of those were more than half an hour away.
With that determined, she grabbed a sweatshirt from the chair, knowing that it probably had grown cool since the sun went down, despite the fact that it was summer, and hurried out of her apartment and down the steps, through the bakery, and carefully unlocked the front door.
She made sure it was unlocked before she stepped out and closed it behind her.
She did not want to get locked out, even though now she was slightly less afraid because her husband was here.
She knew if she accidentally locked herself out, he could get her back in.
And he wouldn’t abandon her until she was taken care of.
Did that show that he loved her? She was looking for comfort and attention, and he was giving her protection and little acts of service.
Had they really just miscommunicated that badly?
She knocked on his window, and he startled, although from what she could tell, he was just sitting in his seat with his hands over his stomach, his seat stretched out as far back as it would go from the pedals.
He tried to open the window, but he needed to turn the truck on first.
“Sorry. Didn’t see you there. What do you need?”
“What are you doing?”
He paused, looked around, his face confused. She didn’t think he was putting on a show. Theater really wasn’t his thing. He wasn’t very good at acting .
“I’m going to sleep in my truck in front of your apartment. You don’t have a security system on that thing, and it’s my job to make sure that nothing happens to you.”
That’s really how he saw it? It was his job to make sure that nothing happened to her?
That actually made her feel safe and protected. She liked that feeling. And she would have missed it if she hadn’t talked to Skyler earlier that day and had Skyler point out to her that maybe he was saying “I love you” in a way that she didn’t understand or appreciate.
“Did you eat anything?”
“I had that bread you gave me earlier.”
“You’re hungry.” She didn’t have to ask. She knew it. He ate like clockwork during the day. Not that he wouldn’t skip a meal for a job or in order to not have to quit early, but she knew he was hungry.
“Yeah. But in case you haven’t noticed, there are no fast-food restaurants here, and…no restaurants of any kind.”
“I’ve got leftover spaghetti. I don’t have anything fancy, I just made spaghetti to go with my cheese bread and added some garlic and butter to it.”
“That sounds good, actually.”
Spaghetti wasn’t his favorite. And if she did serve spaghetti, she always served meatballs or something with it, because he wanted some kind of protein with his meal.
She didn’t have that today, but he didn’t complain.
Instead, he put his window back up, turned the truck off, and got out.
“I just feel bad that you haven’t eaten. That’s all,” she said, wanting to say that he wasn’t welcome to stay overnight but…not quite being able to bring herself to say that, because he was her husband after all.
He didn’t say anything but just followed her to the door, where he opened it and held it for her while she walked in.
He closed it and locked it behind him.
She noticed but didn’t say anything.
“I need to heat it up,” she said, walking behind the counter to where she had stored the bread. She got a skillet and some butter out and then went to the refrigerator and got the spaghetti. She’d already done the dishes from earlier when she had eaten.
He sat down at the counter and didn’t comment while she moved around, eventually going to the refrigerator and coming back with the spaghetti.
“It’s awfully nice of you to do this. I wasn’t sitting out there so you would see me. I truly was sitting out there to make sure that no one got in.”
“You know there’s a back door, right?” she asked, smiling a bit. Because he could hardly be in two places at once.
“I know. Still, I was doing what I could.”
“I appreciate it. Thank you. That was kind of you.” She wasn’t sure “kind” was the right word, but it was the word that came to her, and it seemed to fit okay.
“It’s kind of you to get some food out and warm it up for me.”
She nodded and thought about that for a moment.
He was protecting her, he was going to spend all night uncomfortable in his truck, because he wasn’t comfortable with the security system she had for her bakery.
She, on the other hand, was just going to spend ten minutes heating up food for him.
It didn’t really feel like a fair trade.
“I was thinking about what you said earlier,” she finally started, thinking that maybe she could say something to fill the silence. And she didn’t know what was going to happen, but he was here, and he obviously wanted her back, and she might as well try to put into practice what Skyler had said.
“And?” he asked, and she heard a note of eagerness in his voice. She felt bad, because she kind of thought that he was hoping that she would say that she had decided to go home.
“And I just wanted to say that the reason I left is because I felt lonely and alone. I wanted you to comfort me after my mom died. You know, sit beside me and put your arm around me and just hold me.”
“I did that.” He sounded offended.
“Once, for ten minutes.”
“You wanted more?” He sounded truly surprised and baffled.
“Yeah. Hours’ worth. I wanted you to take off work and come home and hold me. I wanted to spend time with you after her death.”
“Every time I looked at you after that, you started crying. I just thought you didn’t want me around.”
“I wanted to be able to cry. I wanted to be able to grieve, and I wanted you with me.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“I know. I’m saying it now,” she said, trying not to get angry.
He wasn’t attacking her, he was just pointing out reasons why he didn’t do what she’d wanted him to do, and of course he was going to be a little defensive, because she basically was telling him he didn’t do a good job of being a husband.
“Oh,” he said, and he was quiet.
She flipped the cheese bread in the skillet, spread some butter over the top of it, and sprinkled some garlic powder on that.
She continued to stir the spaghetti.
Then, she left it cooking on the stove while she got a plate out, and a cup and fork while she was at it.
She filled the cup up with cold tap water and set it in front of him.
“Thanks,” he said, and he picked it up and drained it.
She smiled a little, because it didn’t surprise her that he was thirsty, and he never drank anything except for water in the evening. She took his cup and filled it up again. That time, he didn’t touch it.
By then, the garlic bread and the spaghetti were done, and she scooped them out on the plate and set it in front of him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t hold you and take off work like you wanted me to.”
“I guess that’s probably my biggest thing. In your life, work is number one. Wife is…more down at the bottom.”
“That’s not true at all.”
She lifted a brow and then turned back to wipe down the stove and put the spaghetti away.
When she had returned to stand in front of him, he’d prayed silently for his food and started eating.
“It may not feel that way to you. But that’s the way it felt to me.
” She took a breath. “My feelings are valid, even if they maybe don’t take into account everything that you’re doing.
After all, if I give you a present of the biggest diamond in the world, you’re not going to be very excited about it, unless you think you can sell it and get money out of it.
Because diamonds don’t mean anything to you, am I right? ”
“Yeah,” he said with a forkful of spaghetti halfway to his mouth.
“All right. So if you give me a gift of making your business super successful so that it makes seven figures a year and wins a bunch of prestigious awards, that’s for you, not for me. Because it’s not what I want.”
“You don’t want the security of a successful business? You’re not proud of your husband for building something like that out of nothing?”