Chapter 38
38
AURORA
“This damn stable has turned into a headache,” Eliza gripes the next morning. With her reading glasses on, she glares at her computer monitor. “The costs keep adding up while the crew seems to be slowing down.”
“How much longer is it supposed to take?”
“At least another three weeks. It’ll take us right into the guts of fall now. We’ll be lucky to have it completed before the first snowfall.”
I pull up the invoice that came in this morning and scroll with my computer mouse, reading through the charges. Every sudden addition frustrates me, and it’s not even my money. “Who’s the foreman on the job?”
“Rick Thompson. He’s also the owner of the company. We’ve used them several times, though, so I don’t think it’s all on him. Whichever employees he’s swapped out in the past year have been an incredible downgrade.”
“Has Wade spoken with him?”
“Oh, sweetie, if I’d let Wade speak with him, we’d have a half-completed stable and no crew left to finish it. Johnny’s been taking care of it.”
I frown. “He hasn’t mentioned anything about this.”
She glances at me, smiling reassuringly. “Don’t take it personally. I’m sure he simply hasn’t wanted to bore you with it. He’s been given a lot more responsibility around here this year, and I think he’s trying to prove he can handle it all himself.”
“Has he?” I blurt. “Has he proved that?”
“This is an important test for him. With how this crew has been . . . behaving , I expect him to make a decision soon on what to do.”
“I’d help if he asked me to.”
“Oh, I’m sure he knows that, my dear. Men can be stubborn creatures, even ones as sweet as Johnny.”
I nod, looking away from the computer screen to the window behind it. The original stable is directly across the road from where I sit, and as I stare at it, I feel a tug deep in my chest. My initial thought is that I miss Frost, even after being with her last night, but then I see my cowboy stroll out from inside, and suddenly, it makes sense.
He’s so goddamn handsome it should be illegal. I check him out shamelessly, struggling to comprehend how I like seeing a grown man in a cropped shirt and filthy jeans so much. The hard cut of his abs showing beneath the hem of his shirt has my mouth watering, remembering exactly how they feel against my fingertips.
His boots are hidden beneath the denim, but I’d recognize that specific shade of brown anywhere. I burn from my toes to the tips of my ears when I focus on the hat on his head.
“Love looks good on you,” Eliza notes.
Unable to look away from Johnny just yet as he lifts an arm to rub at his nape, exposing even more of that chest, I gulp, the lingering soreness between my legs more noticeable than it was when I woke this morning.
Shifting his hand from his nape to his forehead, he twists his torso and squints at the window. My window. His grin is dimpled on both cheeks when he spots me staring. I wave, and he blows a kiss back .
His attention shifts when Wade comes riding up beside him on Kip. My cheeks continue to feel warm as he plants his hands on his hips and nods along with whatever Wade’s telling him.
“He’s going to be looking in the windows for you all day now.”
I turn my head, taking in Eliza’s subtle smile. “I don’t think that would be a bad thing.”
“It certainly isn’t a hardship to have a man that good-looking watching for you,” she agrees, wiggling her brows.
“He is good-looking, right? Sometimes it’s hard to think around him because of it.”
“The first time I saw Wade, my jaw dropped, and I stared at him in complete silence for two minutes straight. He thought I was mute.”
I release a startled laugh. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was. I’d also love to say it never happened again, but that man has made me speechless too many times over the years to keep track of.”
“I’m sure you keep his ego from deflating too much.”
She winks. “Amongst other things.”
The innuendo is obvious. “Okay, none of that.”
“None of what?” she asks, feigning innocence.
I roll my lips to hide a smile. “Get back to work, Eliza.”
“Yes, boss,” she sings.
It’s hard to focus on sorting through the expenses from the past two weeks when my eyes keep straining up to the window every five seconds. I’m close to pulling the blinds and locking myself away when I attempt another peek for the millionth time.
Eliza doesn’t pick on me for it, but from her little snickers every few minutes, I know she’s begun to notice. I swear to God that woman notices everything.
I’m saved from my impending doom when my phone starts to ring. I swipe it up from the desk and answer it without looking at the name, too eager for something to distract me.
“Hey. ”
“Hi, Aurora,” Wanda replies, her voice shocking me.
“Uh, hi.”
“Is now an okay time?”
Eliza pretends not to be listening in, and I nearly laugh. “As good as any.”
“Alright. Are you free this afternoon? Dad’s in town, and he wants to meet with us.”
The words make my stomach hurt and my chest feel like it’s caving in. I grip the edge of my desk and squeeze, inhaling through my nose.
“Why?” It’s a demand disguised as a question.
He shouldn’t be here. Not in this town I’ve grown to love so much. Hasn’t he taken enough?
“I don’t know. I only got his text a few minutes ago. All he said was that he wanted to talk to the both of us. He mentioned you by name.”
“I’m surprised he remembered it at all.”
She pauses before asking, “What happened in Toronto?”
“He didn’t believe I was who I claimed I was.”
“Then why is he here?”
“I don’t know.”
But as a blazing fury slithers through my veins at the thought of him tearing through this place, I plan on finding out. He has no right to come back to the place everyone’s told me he hasn’t returned to in a decade. Not now.
It’s mine.
Yet as I step inside the Rustic Ridge diner three hours later with my shaking hands hidden in the front pocket of my hoodie, I wonder if it wasn’t truly his first.
The business is busier than I’ve ever seen it, with gawking customers who ignore the plates in front of them and stare at the table where he waits. Sitting alone, he scowls at the white porcelain mug in front of him before hearing my footsteps and glancing up at me .
“Where’s Wanda?” I ask, grabbing the back of the chair opposite him. It’s the only extra at the table.
“She won’t be here for a bit.”
“I just spoke with her earlier. I thought we?—”
He waves a dismissive hand through the air. “I tweaked the time around a bit. It was you I hoped to speak with, but I didn’t have your number.”
“You don’t have people who would have found that information for you?”
He ignores my question. “Sit, people are staring.”
“They were already looking.”
He exhales heavily, not hiding his frustration at my reluctance. “Just sit.”
I pull the chair out and sit before he asks again. There are too many people watching to tell him off for demanding me like one of his employees.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“I expected you to be happier to see me. Especially after how we left things.”
“You mean when you all but told me to get lost?”
He jerks his chin. “I could have handled that better. I just wasn’t expecting to see you.”
“Because you didn’t know I was alive. And whose fault is that?” I ask, folding my arms over my chest, my muscles so damn tight they burn.
There was a time for me to be kind and considerate, and he wasted it in Toronto.
“If all Pi—your mother, did was send letters, I never saw them. My record label took over all fan mail once I signed my first deal with them.”
“Fan mail,” I repeat, forcing myself to stay seated instead of storming off.
“That’s what it would have appeared to be, Aurora. I wasn’t making a dig.”
“It doesn’t matter if you knew or didn’t know. That makes little difference to me now. I’m thirty years old; the chance to go back and make it right has long passed.”
“You’re right.”
“Wanda’s only a year younger than me. How long exactly was it from the time you broke my mother’s heart to the time you found someone else? A week? Two? Were you with her at the same time as you were my mother?”
My words hit their mark. He flinches and tugs at the collar of his fancy button-up as if that’ll help him breathe easier. It won’t, and I hope he chokes on his guilt long enough to feel half the amount of pain my mother did.
“I didn’t cheat on your mother. I loved her, and if I had known she was pregnant with you, I wouldn’t have left.”
My laugh is cold. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? A relationship out of obligation is a one-way ticket to divorce down the road, and I wouldn’t have wanted that. My mom found a good man who took us in and raised me without that obligation. He chose us because he wanted us.”
“If these are the questions you want to ask me, then what I came to Cherry Peak to offer you is even more important. These aren’t answers I want to give here.”
“In public, you mean? Where everyone can listen? Or maybe where they can take pictures of us and post them so the world knows about me. That would be terrible for you, wouldn’t it?”
I hate the way my voice cracks as I speak, decades’ worth of pain and hurt and anger that I hadn’t ever felt before now alive and burning through me. But none of those emotions come close to the raging curiosity that still lives inside of me, never calming, even as I remind myself that nothing he could tell me would matter.
It’s a lie. It would matter. Every single answer would mean something to me. Whether good or bad. I hate that I’m so desperate to learn about him. There has to be something wrong with me to still crave that knowledge. That connection and bond with a man who I don’t even know .
He leans forward in his chair, pushing his mug to the side to fold his hands on the table. “Come back to Toronto with me, Aurora. Learn everything you need to there. You can stay with me, and I’ll tell you everything about the Roses and my life from the moment I went to Toronto until now.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I ignore it.
It buzzes again, and I know then who’s trying to reach me. I was supposed to have dinner with Johnny tonight, the way we do every night. Just the two of us on my back porch beneath the stars. But I’ve stood him up, deciding not to tell him about this meeting out of fear he would tell me that I didn’t have to come.
I should have gone home and listened to him.
“I’m going to ask Wanda to come as well. I didn’t give her the proper attention when she came to see me, and, well, I’ve had a bit of a wake-up call here with you. We can all get to know each other. You want that, don’t you? Surely you don’t hate me deeply enough to turn down the chance to get to know me and your sister,” he adds, exposing every single one of my soft spots.
“You make it sound as though you’re doing me a favour, Riley. I don’t want any favours from the man who’s supposed to be my father.”
His jaw ticks, at which part of my statement, I’m not sure. “I want to know you, as well. You share my DNA.”
“I spoke to my mother after I left your place. She told me how you met and about how happy you made her. Did she make you happy too?”
“Your mother was an amazing woman.”
“I suppose if I ask why you left her despite that, you’ll say I can find out in Toronto.”
“She deserved better than me and what I could have given her at the time. That’s the answer I’ll tell you now, in this place.”
I suck in a shaky breath, sweeping my eyes over the busy diner. Dread drips slowly into my belly. “I have to think about it. I’m . . . I’m happy here right now. ”
“You can come back afterward. Cherry Peak doesn’t change regardless of how long you’re gone for.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” I disagree, looking back at him and wishing he wasn’t so hard to read. “I think you’re just too hell-bent on hating where you came from to see that it has changed. You just weren’t here to witness it.”
“Maybe that’s something we can uncover together.”
My gut tells me to tell him to go fuck himself. His twisted opinion on this place doesn’t matter to me, and his past shouldn’t either. But my head and heart say the opposite. They tell me to give it a chance, an opportunity to learn what it is I so desperately want to.
“I’ll think about it,” I repeat.
Because there’s someone I need to talk to first.