Chapter 12
[Neve]
“What is that smell?” Lumi asks, entering through the unlocked front door of my small home.
My house is one story with three main rooms: a kitchen-living room combination, a bathroom, and one bedroom.
The rectangular shape aligned perfectly with two windows that overlook a flagstone path to the front door centered between them.
A bell steeple on the top of the house makes it look like an old-fashioned schoolhouse.
However, I bought this place for the view out the back.
The one looking toward the bay in the distance.
The place was a steal when I purchased it roughly twelve years ago. It is snug and tiny and all mine.
“I’m making a pie,” I call out. Or at least, I was trying to make one.
“What the . . . since when are you a baker?”
My sister loves to bake. Cookies. Cupcakes.
Bread. She’s good at that kind of stuff, and I always thought it was because she had more mom-genes than me.
She practically raised me in my teenage years and raised the twins since middle school.
Then Danny came along, and she turned those skills to raising her son as a single mom.
But I’m going to be a mom soon, and shouldn’t that baking gene be kicking in?
Instead, I have a mess in front of me on the slim butcher-block table I use as an island to differentiate living space from kitchen.
Flour is on the floor. Something sticky is on the thick wood tabletop. A pile of apples, peeled and sliced, overflows a bowl. And a burned pie crust resembles the outer rim of a tire. Black trim, worn treads, and a slightly rubbery stench.
“I don’t know what I did wrong,” I grumble, tossing an oven mitt next to the ruined pie crust.
Lumi stands on the other side of the table. “Are you ready to talk about it?”
“I think I made the crust too thin and—”
“Not the pie,” Lumi says, trying to keep her patience with me. “What happened yesterday?”
There were almost too many things to unpack from yesterday. My emotional breakdown. That hug with Tate. The way I yelled at him. The fight I’d had with Lumi after he left.
She said she’d give me twenty-four hours to pull myself back together, knowing that her hovering wasn’t going to help.
I just needed time in Rusty’s Wrecks. And after promising not to step into the garage, with its gasoline and petroleum oil fumes, I took the time I’d originally wanted.
A moment between me and Dad.
Only, I’d been so drained from the cry and the emotional explosion toward Tate and then fighting with Lumi one more time about the potential sale, I’d been exhausted.
Instead of talking to Dad like I’d hoped, I pulled his old shirt off the hook where I’ve kept it on the back of his former office door and set it over my large lap like a blanket when I took a seat in his chair behind the metal desk.
The one with a dent in the side, rust on the drawers, and my dad’s name roughly engraved in a corner on the surface.
And I took a nap.
I didn’t feel better after the rest, but I did have some clarity.
I couldn’t prevent the sale of the garage. And I couldn’t prevent Tate from being in his daughter’s life.
I didn’t want to keep him out because of my relationship with my dad. A little girl needs her father. At least, I hope that’s how Tate feels.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, because I’m not great at apologies.
“For what exactly?” Lumi counters, a motherly tone in her voice.
“For enthusiastically voicing my opinion. Again.” I sigh.
Lumi just stares at me. “And again, we are still in the position we were previously in.” She lowers her voice. “It’s time to cut our losses and sell.”
I understand the phrase, and yet it stings. Because the thing we will be losing is our dad’s legacy. The one his grandfather started, and his father ran for years before Dad took over. Before his daughters took over.
Letting go of Rusty’s Wrecks feels like letting go of Dad. I’m losing him all over again.
I grip the edge of the butcher table, trying to maintain a grip on my emotions.
“But do we have to sell to him?” I grit.
Lumi sighs. “We aren’t selling to him. He simply represents the company making the purchase. Bucky Beaver Body Shop.”
“Sounds like a sex store.”
Lumi snorts and shakes her head. “Not a very enticing one.”
There actually is a sex shop in the local area, but we boycott it now. Plus, Saint’s sister Kaye runs an entire adult-pleasure toy company, so Lumi has a direct line to anything I need.
“Speaking of him . . .” Lumi tips up one brow. “Tate Love? You really had no idea.”
“No idea,” I parrot. “He doesn’t live around here, which explains why I never saw him around before or afterward.” And it also explains why I was eager to have sex with him in the first place.
He’d leave.
“But he has ties here. And now . . .” she waves toward my belly. “He has even more ties.”
“More like a knot,” I grunt.
“He had a right to know.”
“And I told him.” I hold my head higher, meeting her eyes. “Now I’m just waiting for him to go away.”
She stares at me, long and hard, before her eyes soften. “You know not everyone is like Danny’s dad.”
Her son’s father was more like a sperm donor. He’d been here for our mother’s funeral and gone within a week. Lumi told him about Danny, and he chose not to be involved with raising his son.
Didn’t matter. Danny turned out amazing, and now he’s some hotshot in New York.
“Why can’t Danny handle the sale of the garage?” I whine.
“Because he’s a financial analyst.”
He already analyzed the repair shop’s finances and stated the obvious—we lacked funds and had no hope of finding more anytime soon. The bank wouldn’t give us a loan because of the reverse mortgage, which ran out a year ago. Essentially, the bank owned Rusty’s Wrecks more than we did.
“And we aren’t talking about Danny or his dad. We’re talking about Tate.” Lumi tilts her head. “He appears to care about you.”
“One hug does not make him care about me.”
Her gaze drops to my belly. “Well, more than one hug happened at some point.”
“That still doesn’t mean he cares,” I argue. He didn’t need to care about me to sleep with me and vice versa. But I did care about him, at least on a surface level, or I wouldn’t have ever been in the position I was in. AKA sleeping with him.
He’d been funny and attentive. He’d been kind but not overbearing. He stood behind me when I made that stupid wish that didn’t come true, and then he did all the right things in the Bronco.
He made me forget about the flip of the calendar and the dawn of a new year and the end of an era. At least for a little while.
“Maybe you need to give him a chance to care,” Lumi says, keeping her voice level.
“Or to prove I’m right.” I lean forward on the butcher table, my belly pushing against the sack of flour and nearly knocking it over. When I reach for the container, I bump into the cinnamon jar instead and learn I didn’t have the lid properly fastened when the spice spills out as the lid pops off.
“I’m a mess,” I whisper, feeling the all-too-familiar sting of tears. I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I don’t ever cry like I did yesterday. And these additional sprinkles of tears here and there are getting downright annoying.
“You’re not a mess,” Lumi says, then glances around the mayhem in my tiny kitchen. “Okay, you’re a little bit of a mess.” She pinches her forefinger and thumb together. “But wouldn’t it be nice to have someone share that mess with you?”
“You’re only saying that because you have Saint now and you’re all in love.” I gag like love is the worst. They are a bit sickly as a couple. Always holding hands and whispering in each other’s ears. Sneaking off to another room to kiss. And taking these fabulous vacations all over the world.
I hardly recognize my sister. She smiles so much more than she used to.
It’s beautiful to witness.
Okay, yeah, maybe I want something a little bit like that, but I can’t have it with the man trying to steal my dad’s repair shop. Even if he’s not the one directly taking it from me. Just the middleman, so to speak.
“I’m saying it because I worry about you.”
“Pfft. There’s nothing to worry about here. I’m a big girl.” I run my hand over my belly. A grown woman about to raise a little girl alone. Sweet goddess, I hope I don’t fuck this up.
My mouth drops open to say something more when a knock comes to my front door.
Lumi and I meet eyes.
“Expecting someone?” she asks, knowing I don’t have a large friend group. I have sisters, and we’re tight.
“Maybe it’s Isolde.” She lives closer to the beach, where there is a stretch of cottages that have been recently renovated.
Before I can round the butcher table, Lumi crosses the short distance to my front door. She glances through the window before looking at me over her shoulder.
“He doesn’t care, huh?”
Then she pulls open the front door to reveal Tate Love.
“Hi.” He holds up a hand, looking sheepish but sexy in faded jeans and an off-white Henley. Another fashion statement. Another look that suits him.
In his other hand is a bakery box.
He might be about to ask if I’m in, but my kitchen is in direct sight of the front door.
Lumi steps back, sweeping her arm inward. “Come on in. I was just leaving.”
“Traitor,” I grumble.
Lumi swings around the door and walks out backward, pausing to hold up ten fingers behind Tate. She’s giving him a plus ten for something, but I don’t know what. The Henley is certainly in the yes column on my scorecard.
Tate glances over his shoulder, and Lumi gives him a little salute, then shuts the door, closing Tate and me both inside.
He sniffs, then scrunches his nose, but he doesn’t comment.
“How did you find out where I live?”
“Small town. And a coffee.” He holds up the bakery box.
“Who am I adding to my unfriend list?” I ask, swiping at the spilled cinnamon with the edge of my hand, smearing it around the butcher-block more than clearing it.
“I can’t reveal my source.” He gives me a lopsided grin, and I kind of hate how cute he is.