Chapter 56
GEMMA
Now
We spend the rest of the afternoon in bed. We don’t talk about what happened in the tub. We don’t talk about what’s going to happen tomorrow. When he’s going to leave. What will happen when he does.
Instead, we do what I want. He gives me what I asked for. We eat turkey sandwiches and homemade oatmeal cream pies in bed. We watch Fern Gully and Clue—some of Tim Curry’s finest work in my opinion—and we make each other come without actual fucking. Riggs doesn’t even try.
I tell myself I’m relieved. That I know getting pregnant right now would be an absolute disaster… but there’s a small part of me that wants it. A part that wants a piece of him that I can keep. A piece of him that will love me back.
Which is completely messed-up. I know that. I know being lonely and wanting to be loved by something that can’t leave you isn’t a reason to have a baby. That’s why, when that part of me starts whispering in my ear, I ignore it.
“What are you thinking about?” He asks quietly, fingers slowly pacing up and down the length of my arm. His tone tells me he already knows. That he’s thinking about the same things.
I don’t want to tell him what I’m thinking because what I’m thinking is that I’m in love with him. I’ve always been in love with him and I don’t think I’ll be able to survive losing him this time. I think this time, when he leaves, I’ll fall apart for good.
“Gem…” Lifting a hand, Riggs tucks a crooked finger under my chin to tilt my face up so he can see it. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
He knows.
I know he knows, but this is what I asked for. What I said I wanted. I wanted good memories. I wanted to have him, all of him. Without guilt or worry, even if it was for just a little while. Changing my mind now would be unfair.
“I need to go grocery shopping,” I tell him, pushing a half smile onto my face. “And I’m thinking I don’t want to get out of bed.”
Liar.
Even though he doesn’t say it, I can see it on his face. Instead of blowing up what has been a pretty terrific afternoon, Riggs decides to play along.
“I can go with you,” he offers with one of his toe curling smirks. “Whaddya say, Gem? Want to get banned from the Stop-N-Shop?”
Sitting up, I look at the time. It’s just after seven. Stop-N-Shop closes at ten. “You’ve had a pretty active day,” I remind him, trying to give him an easy out.
“My tongue is a little worn out but I think I can manage.” He smirks again, this time with heat.
“I’m talking about your legs,” I tell him while the memory of what he’s been doing with his tongue all afternoon sends a warm, heavy flush down the length of my spine.
“Oh…” Reaching for me, he pulls me across his lap until I’m sitting up and straddling him, bringing us face to face. “I don’t need my legs to get banned from the Stop-N-Shop.” I can feel the hard press of him between my thighs. His hands gripped around my hips.
“I’m being serious, Riggs.” Suddenly breathless, I shake my head. “Penny Montgomery paid me a lot of money to make her granddaughter’s birthday cake and delivery is this weekend. I need to get supplies for it.”
“So am I,” he says, running his hands over the swell of my hips to grip the tops of my thighs. “I’ve gotta get my cat more Churu.”
“People are going to see us together.” I say it like maybe he doesn’t understand how going out in public works.
“Well, yeah.” He gives me a no shit kind of smirk. “How else are we gonna get banned from the Stop-N-Shop, Gemma?”
“You’re impossible,” I tell him on a small scoff before leaning toward the side of the bed. I don’t even make it an inch before Riggs stops me.
“We can bring my chair,” he says, fingers squeezing my thighs. “Maybe stop by June’s for dessert on the way home.”
Instead of climbing off of his lap, I look at him. “You’re serious.”
Riggs nods his head. “I’m serious.”
“Are you sure?”
“If I want to go grocery shopping with you, and buy you dessert?” He lifts a thick, dark brow while his skims his thumbs past the hemline of my over-sized shirt to tease the sensitive skin between my thighs. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
We never talked about it when we were younger—the need to keep what was happening between us a secret, but when we kissed, it was always in private. When he touched me, it was always in the dark.
But this is Riggs, giving me what I want.
And that changes everything.
“Okay.” I lean in to press a light kiss to the corner of his mouth. “As long as you don’t order the chocolate cake.”
While we don’t get banned from the Stop-N-Shop, we do cause a stir. Getting there, the store was practically deserted, nothing more than an errant shopper or two picking up creamer for tomorrow morning’s coffee, or a frozen pizza because they’re too tired to cook and too broke for take-out.
By the time we headed to the check-out line, the Stop-N-Shop looked like the Mill on a Saturday night and it wasn’t hard to guess why.
I lost count of how many people approached Riggs to welcome him home.
To thank him for his service. To ask him if he planned on staying in Barrett permanently, given his condition.
I saw it on the news. It was horrible—your poor mother.
When my son was stationed in Afghanistan, I was an absolute wreck.
I’m sure Gemma here is taking such good care of you. She did such a good job with Dent, God rest him.
He took it all in stride. Accepting their well-wishes and gratitude while remaining vague about his plans, after his time here is over.
That part is undecided. It depends on how well rehab goes.
We both know it isn’t undecided. No matter how well his rehab goes, his decision to stay or go is up to him and Rigg decided before he even came home.
Trailing behind me in his chair while I push my shopping cart up and down the aisles, Riggs keeps me company while I gather everything I need for Scarlett’s cake before we head to the store’s only check-out lane.
Twenty minutes later, perishables packed in the cooler I had the foresight to bring, we’re strolling down the sidewalk on our way to June’s.
“I’m beyond disappointed in us,” Riggs says, aiming a flat smile in my direction. “We didn’t even get a stern lecture about propriety from Clara.”
Laughing, I shake my head. “There’s always next time,” I say, the words sticking in my throat because there won’t be a next time. This is it. This is all of Riggs I’m going to get.
Now.
Right now.
Like he can read my mind, Riggs stops his chair and looks at me. “Climb on,” he says, patting his leg with a knee-knocking grin.
“What?” Stopping next to him, I shake my head. “June’s is just a half a block away. I can?—”
“Gemma Rae Pierce—” He cuts me off, tone raised despite the laughter I can hear bubbling in his throat. “if you don’t sit your ass down, I’m gonna?—”
“Okay, okay….” Laughing, cheeks flushed because more than a few passerbys are looking at us, I lower myself gingerly onto his lap, with a frown. “Am I too heavy?”
“Nope.” Our faces less than an inch apart, he closes the distance to press a soft, lingering kiss against my mouth. “Although I’d much rather you were sitting on my face again.”
Turning beet red, I can’t help but grin. “What in the world has gotten into you, Riggs Wheeler?”
“Nothing.” The corner of his mouth turns up in a wistful smile and he aims it at me for a moment before he grips his wheels and starts to push us down the sidewalk, toward June’s.
A few doors down, he stops and wheels us around to face the empty storefront that’s been for rent for over a year now.
“What happened to Beau’s?” he asks, rolling us closer so he can try to get a better look past the grimy window.
“Same thing that always happens around here,” I tell him with a shrug.
“Mr. Beauford wanted to retire and there was no one around to take it over. Missy ran off to Nashville with some George Strait wannabe she met at the Mill, and little Eddie decided driving Uber in Dallas was preferable to worrying about his sourdough starter.” Beau’s Bakery was a Barrett staple.
I was sad to see it close but that’s how I ended up as June’s baker in the first place—until then, she got her pies and cakes from Beau’s.
“You should take it over,” he says, looking at me like he doesn’t understand why I haven’t yet.
It’s not like I didn’t think about it, but while Mr. Beauford was trying to find someone to hand the keys to his kingdom to, I was in deep with Dent.
He was in the end stages of his illness.
My future was the last thing I was thinking of—and now, I’m just fighting to keep my head above water.
“Maybe someday.” I lean in to press an impulsive kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Right now, I’ve got my hands full.”
Riggs looks at me like he wants to argue with me but in the end, he doesn’t.
Wheeling us around, we roll the last few yards between the closed up bakery and June’s.
When we get there, I move to get off his lap so I can open the door.
Before I can, the door opens on its own, the exiting patron nearly plowing into us.
“Excuse—” Jostling her to-go bag, she glares down at us, ready to launch herself into full Karen-mode because she wasn’t watching where she was going.
It’s Cheyenne.
Riggs’s ex-girlfriend and the mother of Scarlett’s bully.
“Oh.” Realizing who she’s looking at—her ex high school sweetheart, with me on his lap—her expression cools considerably. “Riggs… I heard you were back.”
“I am.” He bobs his head, again avoiding the subject of for how long? “You mind holding the door for us? Thanks.”
Standing there, slack-jawed, door held open by the press of her hips, Cheyenne watches while Riggs wheels us across the threshold and into the diner without a backward glance.
Looking at her over Riggs shoulder, I lock eyes with her for just a moment, her face the very picture of I knew it all along.
Turning away from us with a disgusted huff, I call out to her before she can let the door swing closed between us.
“Hey, Cheyenne.”
Hearing me, she turns around to give me a hostile, haughty glare.
“You were right,” I tell her with a sunny smile while Riggs wheels us to an open table. “I was a total boyfriend stealer.”