Chapter 6 Connor
SIX
CONNOR
“She hates you, Connor,” Harvey says, as we watch Scarlett walk out of the lodge.
“I wouldn’t have guessed by the way she refuses to talk to me,” I say. Something tugs inside my chest seeing Scarlett walk away. Some vicious part of me wants to kidnap her and lock her away until she forgives me.
“No, she, like, really hates you,” Harvey says. Her dark eyes look gleeful.
“Are you sure you’re my best friend, and not my worst enemy?” I raise an eyebrow at Harvey.
“No, that would be your brothers.”
Harvey turns and walks towards her office. I have other things to worry about than my brothers right now, but I also can’t let them do whatever they want because they’re either going to get themselves killed or get someone else killed.
“Tell me honestly, should I move on?”
I’m thirty-eight years old and the head of this fucked up family since my grandfather died. Scarlett was eleven years younger, and those eleven years felt like a chasm between us now like they never did before.
I sit down in the visitor’s chair across from Harvey’s desk and run a hand through my hair. I’ve regretted every day I’ve been back. Not only leaving Scarlett but also coming back here as my grandfather requested and taking over this family.
“Trying to get your brothers to act like humans?” Harvey asks. “Yes, that’s a lost cause. You’re better off focusing on yourself.”
“I meant, with Scarlett. Should I move on?”
Harvey stops and looks at me. “Do you want to move on? You’ve been trying for the last year and a half without any success.”
I want Scarlett back in my life where she belongs.
I knew the moment I looked at her that she was it for me.
You don’t meet someone like her and think you can do better because there is no one better.
Her loyalty, her integrity, the way she loves with every part of her being.
I’m never going to find that again and I don’t want to.
“I want her back.”
“Good,” Harvey says. “Then you should know that she hates you. She also hasn’t opened the letter you left her. And her family is going to the Christmas market tonight.”
I wish I could say I’m surprised or disappointed Scarlett didn’t read the letter.
I’m not.
I know my Scarlett a lot better than that.
She keeps her emotions locked in a vault and I broke her heart.
I’m not saying I’m not wrong and her anger isn’t justified.
If I was in her position, I wouldn’t forgive me.
I’m hoping that she will give me the grace to tell her that I love her even if she doesn’t forgive me.
“Why are you so excited that she hates me?”
Harvey rests her chin on her upturned hand. “Because it’s annoying being friends with Connor Hayes, hometown hero. Everybody loves Connor Hayes. Connor Hayes can do no wrong.”
She wrinkles her nose in distaste.
“It’s not like I asked for it.”
“But you do enjoy it,” Harvey says.
I used to enjoy it. I never asked to be Connor Hayes, hometown hero, and I never asked to come back.
I thought I would retire, Scarlett and I would move in together, maybe get married, and I’ll never have to see Silverpine or Cedar Creek Ranch again.
Until my grandfather got sick and demanded I come back.
If there was anyone I owed my loyalty to in this town, it was my grandfather. He wasn’t an easy person to deal with, but he raised my brothers and me after our parents died. He left Cedar Creek to me because I’m the oldest and my brothers can’t even be trusted to look after themselves.
If that wasn’t enough, he made me the executor of both my brothers trust funds. I had to stay here and make sure they were on the straight and narrow if they wanted to see even a penny.
I’m an idiot for thinking Scarlett will want any part of this. She’s twenty-seven, for fuck’s sake. When I was twenty-seven, I’d just been traded to the New York Renegades and in my mind that meant a whole new city of women to experience.
I didn’t want to settle down, definitely not in Silverpine of all places.
“Okay, new plan--”
Harvey groans. “Not another new plan, Connor. Let the woman decide what she wants. You’ve said it yourself, Scarlett is headstrong and always goes after what she wants regardless of what people think or say. What makes you think your plans are going to work, even if you know her well?”
“Stop trying to derail my plans before they even happen,” I grumble.
“Stop making up ridiculous plans and just talk to her,” Harvey fires back.
“She threatened to break glass over my head,” I remind her.
Harvey scoffs. “Don’t tell me you didn’t thoroughly enjoy that.”
“Of course, I did. She’s like a fierce warrior princess right out of a fantasy novel.”
That makes Harvey laugh. “If she takes you back, you’re going to be insufferable.”
It’s the biggest if of my life.