Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Noa
N ews of Stone Williams’s return surges through Falcon Haven like an uncontrolled STD.
I hear about him on the local radio as I drive.
He’s mentioned as I walk into the Merc, first from the elders of our community clustered around a round table, whispering in disapproval about the antics landing him back here and his choice in career, but doing it with a saucy glint in their eye, like if only they were younger, they’d really give him hell.
Then I hear it while waiting in line for my coffee, the junior clerks behind the counter discussing whether he’s hotter in person.
Worse, I dreamed about him last night.
I prefer to call it a dream and not remembrance, even though the image was freakishly close to the times I woke up to him in bed with nothing but a crumpled white sheet separating me from him.
Or how parallel the moment his eye cracked open and caught me staring was to what really happened, when he sprang from his side of the bed and landed on me, pulling the sheet over our heads and shielding us from the world as he slipped inside me.
So easily because I was always wet for him.
He smelled the same, too. Smoke and cinder with a small wave of soap. How his back felt so warm, but the skin over his heart so much hotter. How his mouth played with my lips the same way he enjoyed sucking on my nipples. Tender, with a little nip of dominance now and then.
As our lips met, as his tongue stroked mine, he stops his pumping, pulling his mouth away and saying roughly, “You take me so deep, Lavender. ”
No one’s called me that in years. It always came from him since the day he found me experimenting with a new recipe that included lavender sprigs.
His fifteen-year-old self was so boggled by the use of a flower in cooking that he never let me live it down.
Then, it became his moniker for me. A sweet, fragrant nickname, meant for only one person in his life.
My eyes shot open, and I almost fell out of bed. In a cold, dark, lonely room.
Another cold splash of reality hits me when I hear the ladies waiting behind me chime into the morning gossip, pondering which came first—his defined torso or cutthroat tactics in annihilating small businesses.
The brunette directly behind me murmurs to her neighbor, “Do you think that question could be applied to his peni?—”
“Thank you!” I practically yell when I grab my coffee from the counter and sprint away from the whirlwind that is Stone’s return.
The ruminating turns into curious wonderment as I breeze by, feeling the eyes on me like butterfly wings brushing relentlessly against my back.
“I wonder why she…”
“Do you think the poor girl’s still heartbroken?”
“Does she want him back, or…?”
“How hard it must be to see that handsome face again and not be able to mess it up for real this time.”
My head whips around at the last comment and I catch Carly sitting there at a table with her younger sister, Mae, where they have their usual early Saturday breakfast before Carly drives back into the city. She winks at me.
My lips pull up in a grateful smile, and I shoulder open the door and step outside.
September hits hard today, bringing an abnormal chill compared to how it was even yesterday.
The weather hasn’t scared off the regulars wandering Falcon Haven’s narrow sidewalk in search of breakfast, exercise in the nearby public park, or catching up with acquaintances on the wooden benches carefully placed near the decorative tree wells lining the sidewalk.
Falcon Haven is the type of town that looks good on the Fourth of July, Halloween, or Christmas—with banners hanging from the streetlights for each season, of course. At the moment, green leaves fight for survival against their inevitable submission to fall.
The nip in the air adds a pleasant cold to my cheeks as I slip into my car with the laughter of children collecting on the park’s playground and tired parents holding the Merc’s coffee cups, leaning on strollers to watch their kids.
I fall back into my seat, straightening my arms against the wheel. It would be the perfect start to Saturday if it weren’t for yesterday.
Stone’s back.
And I’m about to drive straight to him.
Feeling a lot like those errant green leaves, I turn on the engine and drive down the hill of Falcon Haven’s main strip and into the larger plots of land with perfectly landscaped houses.
Stone moved her into the richer, northern part of town soon after scoring his first big paycheck in LA.
I shouldn’t have been being attention, but I can never seem to stop looking for information about him.
Besides, the town kept tabs on Stone Williams, too.
Even during my most desperate times when I tried not to give in to Google, my neighbors were perfectly happy to do it for me.
Seen as a good thing, I guess. It helped make me impervious to the mention of his name—the real or the fake one. It was certainly necessary, since the one way I could truly escape Stone Williams was impossible—by leaving Falcon Haven.
I thought I had my feelings for him, if not completely gone, then under control. Then he had to show his face in this town again.
Mrs. Stalinski’s driveway comes into view all too soon and I creep into it as if my car’s on the fritz. I lean over the wheel, my chin practically bumping against the leather as I search the darkened windows for his presence, my thoughts about as slow as I’m driving my Civic.
As if it wasn’t enough to arrive unannounced on a literal doorstep I was sitting on, he had to get that look on him, that static, heart-rendering, shook expression where I could practically breathe in his pain as he learned the truth about his mother before he righted his features again.
Stone wasn’t pretending. Before yesterday evening, I was certain Stone was avoiding his mother because he didn’t want to deal with her diagnosis and the fate that would follow, too consumed with his job and his new life in the city to look back.
I figured his selfish ways had bled into his future, including dealing with his mother’s shortened one, which is why he never came around when Mrs. Stalinski first got the news.
I hate being wrong. But I give myself full permission to keep hating him.
When my bumper’s about an inch away from the garage door, I accept defeat and turn the engine off.
The wind bites my cheeks during my trudge to Mrs. Stalinski’s front door. I squint up at the sky. Gray, dreary, and threatening to storm.
My keys jangle as I dig them out of my pocket, but I pause with the key inches from the lock.
Normally, I’d walk right in and begin setting up while Mrs. Stalinski sleeps.
Doling out her medications, pouring her juice, tidying the kitchen if she came down late at night for a nocturnal snack, as many cancer patients do since that’s about the time the nausea from their meds wears off. That sort of thing.
Mrs. Stalinski encouraged I enter without ringing the doorbell so I don’t disturb her, but now…
There’s another occupant.
I take a sip of my coffee, contemplating the closed door and whether I should knock. It would be the polite thing to do. The nice thing.
Poor, sweet, Noa-Lynn…
Screw it. Mrs. Stalinski would tell me to come on in, regardless of who’s staying with her.
Even if that person were her hot, calculated, heartbreaker son…
Taking a deep breath, I unlock and swing the door open.
That’s the extent of my rebelliousness.
“Hello?” I ask in a quiet voice.
The foyer lights are off, no different from any other time. It isn’t even seven yet. The house is silent, no footsteps or muffled voices.
I step farther inside, setting my purse and keys on the side table.
Above it sits a mirror, and I can’t help but smooth down the fly-aways the wind kicked up and tighten my low ponytail.
My make-up is minimal, but I might’ve applied more concealer and blush than usual and glossed my lips.
I wasn’t about to be caught unawares by Stone Williams a second time.
Not that he deserves an increased beauty routine, but I also don’t want to look worse than he does.
His absence as I continue to move deeper into the house comes as a relief. Maybe Stone stayed at a bed-and-breakfast last night or found the Tipsy Falcon, had a bit too much to drink, and was sleeping in.
Either way, I could get Mrs. Stalinski’s morning routine done without having to see?—
“Good Morning.”
The soles of my sneakers squeak against the hardwood flooring as I grind to a halt.
Stone stands at the stove in low-riding gray sweatpants and nothing else.
His back muscles bunch as he uses a spatula to flip what resembles a pancake.
“Hi,” I respond with a tight voice, shifting in place which will hopefully summon the confidence to appear unaffected and casual. “I didn’t think anyone was awake.”
Stone glances over his shoulder at me. “I’ve been up since before dawn. Went for a run.”
His statement brings up an image of him running in those very sweats and nothing else, beads of sweat forming on his muscles and running a straight line down his spine.
I tread into the kitchen, eyeing the cabinet over the fridge with worry.
Stone catches my stiffened approach, asking, “Is something wrong?”
“No. It’s just, I need to get into that cupboard.”
I don’t want to tell him I’m staring at the cabinet like it’s a venomous snake because I have to scoot past him to get to it.
And possibly touch him.
Probably grazing his perfect, melon-shaped ass with my stomach while I’m doing it. Or, if I turn the other way, pressing the small of my back and part of my butt to his.
Physical contact isn’t supposed to be part of the equation. Hating him means keeping my distance, speaking only when spoken to, and redirecting any conversation back to his mother. Nothing else. No reminiscing, no wishing.