Chapter 3
“Imean, I knew I’d walk into a couple fires on my desk coming back from paternity leave, but I never thought I’d find this.”
Warren’s voice hits me as I sit up, sleep glazing my head like a fog I can’t swim out of.
“Huh?” I say, thinking I must still be dreaming if I’m hearing things.
“Auggy, when did you get into town? And why didn’t you call me? I thought we were past the days of me finding you on my office couch.” His exasperated sigh and the groan of an old desk chair have me rubbing my eyes.
Wait. Warren’s office? I blink once, then twice, and realize where I am. The memories flood into my head of arriving in Hope Crest, my mother’s house, and then falling asleep inside Hope Pizza.
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry, I totally overslept.” I go to grab my duffel bag but realize it’s not in the spot where I left it.
If he’s in his office, it means it’s pretty far into the morning hours. Restaurant workers keep different work schedules, and even if Warren is the accountant for the business and can work a regular nine-to-five, I know he’s been home tending to Alana and their new baby.
Instead, when I look up, Warren is holding it with one dark eyebrow raised on his forehead. He looks almost the same—tall, dark, and handsome—as the last time I saw him. “Nah, I’m onto your tactics. You’re not taking off. Why would you come here and not sleep in our guest room?”
Sighing because he knows me too well, I decide I’m too exhausted and emotionally strung out to lie. What sets Warren apart is that there is always a kindness to his face, and it makes people melt around him.
“It was late when I got in. I went to my moth … the house, and then I didn’t want to sleep there. Leona gave me a key a while back, so I thought I’d sleep on your crappy couch for old times’ sake.”
A flinch of sympathy passes over Warren’s features, and I notice the way his eyes droop a little and that he’s unshaven more than usual.
“Plus, did you really need another late-night wake-up call from someone who isn’t your newborn?” He and Alana had their second baby a mere week ago.
A hand scrubs over his face. “Not exactly, but you know I would have picked up the call if it was from you. But that’s beside the point, since you didn’t even tell me you were coming into town. What are you doing here, kid?”
The way he calls me kid doesn’t irk me like it would if it came out of some people’s mouths. When he says it, it’s almost an endearment, like I’m a part of his extended family.
“Had to come back to settle her affairs.” He knows who I’m talking about; there is no need to call her my mother.
After all, Warren hates her almost as much as I do. “Shit, I didn’t … of course, you’re the only one around. Sorry, my head is all jumbled from the baby.” Again, he looks pissed. “You didn’t have to do that. You know I would have handled it for you, or hired someone to help, or?—”
“You’ve done this. You know how it goes.” I give him a sad smile because both of us have now been through the death of a parent.
“Yeah.” He stares down at his desk. “Even if you don’t want to be here, it’s damn good to see you.”
“Damn good to see you, too.”
Seeing each other meant him coming to visit me in New York, which he and Alana had done numerous times over the course of my four years there. Warren knows I’d never come back to Hope Crest if I could help it.
“I’m sorry this all happened right after graduation. Of course, there is never a good time, but this was supposed to be such a happy time for you.”
“Well, no one was there to see me graduate, so maybe it didn’t happen.”
“I’m sorry, Auggy. You know Alana and I would have been there in a heartbeat. But there was this whole labor and delivery thing …” He smirks.
I wave him off. “Psh, I see how it is. Birth of your second child trumps my college graduation. I’m so unimportant.”
I’m joking, of course, but a little twinge of sadness reverberates through my chest. Warren is much like me, an orphan with a biological family that was more messed up than mine. He found his sense of belonging in the Ashtons by marrying their prodigal daughter, who also happened to be his best friend. I’m eternally happy for him that he now has the life kids like us always dream of.
But it doesn’t mean it sucks any less for me. Warren is, for all intents and purposes, my pseudo-family. He coached me through my tough moments growing up. He’s the one I called for advice the first time I got a flat tire or when my professor was flunking me even though I knew I wasn’t failing. Having only a few people in this world I can trust means I hold them dearly in my heart, and it would have been nice if he could have come to my graduation. Of course, I completely understand why he couldn’t, but it would have made me feel a little bigger in the grand scheme of the world if someone I love like a father figure could have seen me finally succeed at something.
“You know that’s so far from the truth. And … it might be good for you to be back here now. Closing one chapter before moving on to the next in your life. The death of a person is never a good thing. But this one? Well, it might just take some of that weight off your shoulders.”
A lot of people looking in from the outside would think Warren is being callous and harsh, extremely so. But then, they don’t know my situation. My friend and father figure is just being honest. My mother was a nightmare of a human being, and the emotional pain she inflicted on me is something Warren had to bear witness to often. There were numerous times when the Ashtons wanted to call social services on my mother, when Warren himself went over to our house to reason with her and left defensive and frustrated, or when I’d end up sleeping at the pizzeria because it was better than going home. He knows how much I’ve been through, and he’s been through a load of shit himself. He understands why my mother’s death might be a positive thing in my life.
“Plus, it means we all get to spend more time with you. You know Alana is going to gush over you, Leona will feed you to death, and Cassandra is going to load you down with kids to watch.”
Patrick, Alana’s older brother, just had twins, his second and third children, with his retired Hollywood actress wife. Between her, Alana, and Liam’s wife, Gabrielle, the Ashton clan is growing like wildfire.
“And I can crash on your couch some more,” I respond glumly, still feeling crappy about returning to this town despite Warren’s efforts to cheer me up.
“Couldn’t go into the house, huh?” He guesses correctly because, again, he knows me.
I shake my head. “Stood on the porch and just got this eerie feeling. Like if I went in there, I’d have to relive it all. I don’t need the therapy, I don’t need to talk about it, I just need to move the fuck on. And I have. You know I never planned to come back. Everything on that property just reminds me of her, and I don’t need the reminder. I lived it. Now she’s gone and that’s how I want her to stay. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to close out the life and affairs of a woman I hated. Why the hell do they even have to be closed, anyhow? Bury her wherever, do whatever with her money, give her possessions away. God, I don’t know how the hell I’ll stay in that house.”
Warren doesn’t hesitate.
“Stay at Alana’s old place. Ever since we bought the new house, we’ve been renting it out. The last tenant moved out four months ago and it’s empty right now with no one lined up. Use it for however long you’re in town.” Warren says this like it’s a matter of fact that I’ll just take up his offer of charity.
“No, no, the house is perfectly fine. No reason I can’t stay there. I don’t need your hand?—”
“If you’re about to say handout, can it. I know more than anyone that returning to a place where your trauma originated doesn’t do any good for anyone. We have a completely empty house just sitting there. You don’t want to live in a rundown shack while you try to get the heck out of this town and start your life, so you’re taking me up on my offer. No objections. This is my graduation gift to you. Now take it.”
Accepting charity from anyone has always been a tough thing for me. I grew up with a woman shouting at me constantly for being a nuisance, a life suck, a money pit. My mother never shied away from reminding me how much of an inconvenience I was in her life. So, asking anyone for anything is simply not in my nature because of her nurture.
“As long as you really don’t have a renter? And I’ll pay you whatever the going rate is.” I nod, finally getting my duffel bag back from him.
“Absolutely not. My wife would never hear of it. And you don’t want to upset a postpartum mother, do you?” He smirks, knowing that Alana is lethal even when she hasn’t just pushed a baby out of her vagina.
“Playing that card, huh?” I quirk an eyebrow at him. “Okay, fine. But you and Alana will let me babysit those cuties for free so you two can go out.”
“Sold. Now, go get some coffee and eggs. I think there was still some of the family breakfast sitting on the stove when I walked through. I’ll have Alana rustle up the keys to her old place for me, and I’ll go grab them in an hour or so.” Warren nods in the direction of the kitchen.
I don’t have the guts to ask who cooked the group-size morning meal for the staff to enjoy as they got to their daily tasks. I’m still too chickenshit to admit I had a thing for Alana’s younger brother for much of my teenage years. And if I’m being completely truthful, I’ve mooned over pictures of him on social media and the Internet one too many times while away at college.
“Yeah, okay.”
“And Auggy?” He stands and comes around the desk, offering me his hand and then wrapping me in a hug. “Even if you don’t want to be here, it is so nice having you back.”
I hug him back, more forcefully than I intend, because it’s been a long time since I’ve felt actively cared for by another human being.
Even though I hate accepting anything I didn’t work for—the product of being guilted to death and told you were never enough by a biological parent—I’m too tired and frustrated to argue with Warren. This is supposed to be one of the happiest times of my life; my efforts should be focused on building my career and a place for myself in the real world. Only, I’m stuck here until all my mother’s legal affairs are handled. I might as well not have to stay in my childhood bedroom while doing that.
For once, I’ll let someone make my life a little easier. After all, Warren is right in the sense that I’m here to close a chapter for good. More like a fucking anthology, and I’m shutting that hefty motherfucker with a bang and a good riddance. Being over and done with a ghost as big as my mother, who has haunted me even from hundreds of miles away, will be a huge step in creating my own life.
Now that she’s gone, I might be able to accept genuine love into my life. I might actually consider becoming a mother myself one day since I’ve been scared shitless of turning out just like her whenever I think about it.
But those are thoughts for another day. Right now, I need to tend to my grumbling stomach and then set up a meeting with the lawyer. The man who had contacted me about my mother’s will is someone I never heard her speak of. Then again, she never told me much about her life and was usually only yelling at me about mine.
Walking through the Hope Pizza building is like being transported back in time, but to memories that I cherish. Working here, becoming a part of the restaurant family, with everyone in town knowing that I would be on shift certain nights, was the one and only time throughout my childhood that I felt a part of something.
When I enter the kitchen, Evan Ashton stands at one of the counters, chopping away as if no one else in the world exists but him and that knife. Watching him cook is one of the most attractive things about him: the focus, the determination, the swag with which he handles it all. Observing his culinary expertise is like watching an athlete wipe the floor with an opponent; only with Evan, you get a delicious meal out of it.
Not that his prowess in the kitchen is the only attractive thing about him. Chestnut brown hair that’s a little too unruly in its waves that curl over his neck, like he can’t bother with the time it takes to get a haircut, sits atop a chiseled face that is all Ashton in its genes. Not an unattractive person in the bunch. Light aquamarine eyes that seem to see right through you when he finally glances up at something other than food, tattoos wrap around his lean biceps, a tapered waist that almost always leads into black jeans sitting on his hips, and a small diamond stud that glints in his left earlobe. Evan is the epitome of a badass city chef who just happened to be called back to his small town to take over the family establishment. He’s concentrated and careless in a completely unique manner, and I always thought it was effortlessly cool that he just took off to do his own thing while the rest of his siblings stayed put to perform their chosen duty in Hope Crest.
I haven’t seen this boy, well, he’s a man now, since I was eighteen years old. Since I had a crush on him that could fill the size of the largest cruise ship. Since he barely registered I even existed, much less worked in the restaurant his family owned. The final summer I worked here, as he began to take over the menu, was the only time we ever truly spoke, and he didn’t seem to be all that impressed with me. In fact, he was kind of flippant and rude when it came to me being in his kitchen.
I’m a different woman now, though, one with confidence and a view of the world outside of this tiny Pennsylvania town. I’ve put up with big New York attitudes, competed against snobby college kids who didn’t work their asses off just to be there, and landed roles in companies that would make anyone view me differently if they saw my résumé. Since leaving Hope Crest, I have found my worth.
And got over my stupid crush on a guy who barely cared to realize I was there. Well, sort of. The way my heart is beating double time, and the sweat that slicks my hands say differently.
Trying not to disturb him, I spot the coffee pot in the same place it’s always been, with a skillet of scrambled mushrooms, tomatoes, and eggs sitting next to it on a hot plate. It’s not like the guy ever acknowledged my presence before, so it would be strange to interrupt him now.
I’ll just grab my breakfast and?—
“Good morning, sleeping beauty.”
The voice behind me is deep, deeper than I remember, and I give a little start at the sound of it.
Turning slowly because I feel like a deer caught in headlights, I’m met with the full intensity of Evan Ashton’s blue gaze.
“Uh, hey … Evan.” My words come out stilted and awkward, and I immediately want to smack myself for being so embarrassing.
So much for being that cool, confident woman who no longer fidgeted and flubbed in front of her teenage crush.
The right side of his mouth quirks up like he’s trying not to laugh at my weirdness, and God, it makes my insides do cartwheels. This man has the bravado of a giant, but it’s encased in this “who gives a fuck” tattooed, arrogant chef’s body.
“August Percy, long time no see.” Now, he gives me a full-blown smile, and my knees threaten to go weak.
My lord, this man is beautiful. Also, I had no clue he knew my last name.
“Same.” The monosyllabic answer comes out stifled, and again, I want to fall into a hole in the floor. I try to recover, pointing to the coffee pot. “I’m just here for a short trip, thought I’d grab some breakfast, so …”
Evan quirks a dark eyebrow at me, as if I’m amusing him, and I turn so he can’t see my flaming red cheeks as I heap food onto a plate and then shakily pour myself a mug of steaming hot coffee.
“I’ll just get out of your hair.” I’d rather eat this in my car than make more of a fool of myself.
“Never said you were in it.” He smirks again. “Then again, I wouldn’t mind if you tangled yourself in there for a bit.”
I might faint. What is it about the guy who always ignored you, finally giving you the time of day that makes us women lose all the self-respect in our bodies? It’s like I was chasing after something for so long that now that it’s happened, it’s almost surreal.
“Okay, well …” I stutter one more time, then turn on my heel and push out the door before I can utter one more stupid thing.
I end up stuffing my face with the food and coffee while standing at the empty takeout counter, not yet open for the day, and then race out of Hope Pizza like my teenage nightmares are on my heels.
So much for not attracting attention on my trip back to town. I managed to agree to a rental and stick my foot in my mouth all in the span of an hour.