Chapter 4 #2
“So, how about you? Got a secret husband hidden in an attic in Toronto?”
“I live in an attic, actually. The top floor of a Victorian in the Annex, near campus. No husband, secret or otherwise. I was with someone for a while, but we’re just friends now.
The only thing we had to sort out custody of was plants, and it seems I landed with that responsibility.
” It was on the tip of her tongue, to admit how lonely she was sometimes—but she stopped herself from saying that.
It was like he said: She’d be fine, with a little more time.
Cort was watching her closely, though. It was a familiar sensation—one of being read by him, like a book. “You used to do that in high school,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Just…that.” Rebecca laughed weakly as her heart rate accelerated under his gaze.
“Look at you like I’m trying to read your thoughts?”
She nodded, now too discombobulated to speak.
“It did become a habit of mine, back in high school,” he said with a slow smile.
“Because of the way you’d just suddenly drift into deep thought, go to a place where no one could follow.
” He paused. “I always wanted to know, at any given moment, exactly what Rebecca McIntosh was thinking. Still do.”
She couldn’t have looked away from him now even if she wanted to. The exhilarated feeling was back, as if she were at a cliff’s ledge but had suddenly discovered she was wearing a pair of wings.
“So, what are you thinking?” he asked her, his voice a low, slow burn. “Right now? Tell me, Becca.”
“That I’m glad to be here with you,” she said simply. “You made a tough day better, just by being you.”
His smile was wider now. He looked like someone who had been given a surprise gift, and it was exactly what he wanted.
Their fingers, somehow, had tangled across the table.
She wasn’t sure who had reached for whom and was afraid to draw attention to it, so she left her hand where it was.
In the past, she would pull herself away from feeling like this; she would never have allowed her hand to stray toward his.
It was far too dangerous. Cort Adams was not hers and never would be.
But…wasn’t that an old story? Tonight, everything felt different.
She waited for those warning bells that always sounded off in her brain when she got like this about Cort to pull her back from the edge. Nothing happened.
“I never imagined this would be how I’d spend tonight. Actually having fun. With you, Cort.” His name was like Autumn Festival cotton candy on her tongue, sweet and then dissolving. She wanted to say it again and again but managed to stop before she made a fool of herself.
“I feel the same,” he said. “This has been a tough year, with the divorce, being without Pip for half the week. This is the first time in a really long while that I’ve felt like I might be able to actually be myself again. So thanks, Becca. For including me. You didn’t have to.”
“Of course I did,” Rebecca said, and she meant it. “I didn’t have a lot of friends in high school.”
Now his expression had grown serious. His voice was so low, she had to lean close to hear the words.
She could smell his subtle aftershave, the cedar sawdust from his clothes.
“I had a lot of friends,” he said, “but sometimes I thought maybe you were the only person who really knew me.” The heat of his hand in hers intensified.
He squeezed, then let go. Her hand felt cold, the sudden change in temperature flustering her.
“We should go,” she said, searching for equilibrium.
“Sure. Of course. It’s been such a long day for you. I’ll walk you home.”
Cort paid the bill while Rebecca got their coats. Then they stepped out into the quiet of the late-September night. The street was slick with rain, the air sharp with woodsmoke, all grounded by the peaty-brown scent of damp fallen leaves. Their shoulders brushed as they walked toward the diner.
“Is Pip with Melanie tonight?” Rebecca asked, wanting to fill the silence, but also just wanting to hear his voice again.
“He is, yeah.” Now Cort’s voice contained a smile. “Lost his first tooth this week. He wanted to put it under his pillow at my place and his mom’s, and how could we say no to that? Smart kid. Not sure where he gets it.”
“I seem to recall tutoring a guy who insisted he hated to read, and then finished all the books I gave him like they were his favorite snack and he needed more. And he had a lot of smart things to say about them.”
“Pip loves to read, too. Right now, I’m reading him The Night Gardener at bedtime. On the nights he’s with Mel, we FaceTime before bed so we can get a chapter in. It’s nice. I think I like it as much as he does, if not more.”
They had reached the diner, were standing at the edge of the parking lot. Rebecca looked up at Cort. “Thanks for everything,” she said.
“You’ll be all right?” he asked. “You’re sure?”
She hesitated. She would be fine tonight, she knew it.
She was too tired to feel the sharper edges of her grief, and all the comfort the townspeople and her friends had offered was doing its job, for now.
But she also wasn’t ready to say good night to Cort.
It felt as if, in the cool crisp of the autumn night, a spell had been cast. Everything was quiet except for the hum of the crickets and her pulse in her ears as she looked up at him and said, “I’m sure. But—”
“But?” He tilted his head.
You shouldn’t…It was the familiar inner voice, the one telling her to stay away from him because it never ended well.
Except tonight, for the first time, she was able to push the doubt away.
She felt like she was floating toward something so perfectly right for her as she rose onto her toes, brought her lips to his.
She felt the heat and the softness of his mouth, and how firmly, how hungrily he kissed her back.
As if he, too, had been waiting a good portion of his life to do this.
He tasted like tart apple cider, a hint of mint. The sawdusty, soapy smell of him was all around her, and she felt the firm muscles of his back beneath her fingers.
But she must have been imagining the part about his kissing her back so hungrily—because what was really happening and had become impossible to ignore was the sensation of his hands on her arms. Not pulling her closer. Pushing her away, gently but obviously.
“We shouldn’t,” he said, as if he had somehow managed to hear her inner voice and repeat it back to her. “I’m sorry. Becca, I—”
The agonized way he was saying her name told her everything she needed to know and should have seen before.
She froze but then stepped back, so fast it was sobering. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking— I’m just—sorry.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she didn’t wait to hear it, knew that any apologies or explanations would break her.
Any semblance of feeling okay was gone now.
She felt cold, alone, and embarrassed. She turned, fumbling with her keys until the door gave, then stepped inside and closed it behind her.
The air inside was still. She could smell flowers.
Roses, lilies. Cloying. Funereal. Her heart hammered against her chest, the way it had all night—but now she understood it had been a warning, not a green light.
She had ignored it. She had made a mistake.
She moved blindly in the darkness, not knowing what she would see if she looked back.
Would he still be standing on the step, visible through the window, waiting? Or had he disappeared into the night?
She found the stairs, her room, her bed, sank onto the mattress and slid under the duvet, shut her eyes and squeezed them tight, waited for the embarrassment to subside, for her heart to stop aching.
It didn’t. It just got worse, through a long, sleepless night where the absence of Lenore grew more stark and more real, where she relived every moment of the kiss with Cort.
She felt him push her away over and over, until she was writhing with shame at the memory.
What had she been thinking? Cort had never, ever felt the same for her as she did for him.
What about tonight had she been so sure was different?
Was it because of her grief, her loneliness?
Because she had just lost the one person left in the world—that she knew—who was related to her by blood?
She sat up in bed and stared at the full moon out her bedroom window, willed herself to release these feelings that now felt like a curse into the glowing dark.
But it felt like she was a bottle of apple wine with a cork that wouldn’t release.
That’s because you’re here, that inner voice of hers said—and she was forced to listen to it now, because ignoring it had gotten her to this terrible moment she was stuck in.
This is the last place you should be right now.
You’ll never get over any of this if you stay in Bramley Hollow.
So, at dawn, still in her funeral clothes, Rebecca got out of bed and packed her bags.
She texted Sabrina that she’d call her later but she had to go, offered no further explanation as she got in her car and drove south, back toward the city.
She refused to look in her rearview mirror as she spiraled like a leaf down the highway, the ache only increasing with every mile she put between herself and her hometown.
It would get easier, she told herself. It had to.
It would. She just needed to wait—because, as her grandmother had always said, time healed all things.