Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Emerson
When I wake up the next morning, Lane’s still at home. Dammit. I’ll have to face him. I have some work I need to do. Two queries came in overnight for free consults, and I need to schedule them and try not to get supremely excited only for one or both to go with another option.
Yet it’s nice to have a distraction. Last night, with my body still thrumming, I made myself a sandwich and retreated to my room with my laptop. He didn’t chase after me. He also didn’t laugh as I fled. I replayed the event over and over and over. I almost masturbated, but I was afraid he’d hear.
What is he thinking? Does he regret it? Does he want more?
No, I can’t keep mulling this over. I have to get to work.
I manage not to sprint across the hall to the bathroom. After I clean up, I return to my room and get dressed. Facing my door for way too long, I run through affirmations.
I can do this. No biggie.
It was just an orgasm. No big deal.
His mouth was on your tit. Nothing awkward about that.
He made you come in less than a minute. Maybe a little impressive.
Growling under my breath, I open the door and sweep into the hallway.
My heart crams itself in my throat. He’s in charcoal-gray slacks, brown loafers, and a white dress shirt.
A tie hangs around his neck waiting to be knotted because, of course he doesn’t need special tricks to tie one.
When Brooks went to prom, we had to watch an online tutorial, knot it, and then put it over his head to tighten it.
Dad was too busy ranting about how dressing up for no damn reason was a waste of money.
His hair is slicked back and it shines, but not from product. If Lane uses any, it’s expertly applied. He’s just showered. A whisper of a memory runs through my head. What he does in showers is none of my business.
Did he think of me?
“Is it Dress for the Job You Want Day?” Defaulting to sarcasm is my comfort zone. And also what gets me into trouble.
My snark backfires when he gives me the same hot look as the last time I saw him. I’m transported back to the shop, watching him taste me, his coveralls knotted over his still obvious erection. My pulse hikes up.
“I have a meeting in Omaha, and then I’ll be in Denver for a few more days.” He checks his watch, the same fancy wooden one from when I first met him. “I’ll probably be gone all week.”
The back of my throat burns. He’s leaving?
Isn’t that what I want?
What I definitely don’t want is to look forlorn after I’ve been avoiding him since riding his hand like I was waiting for the eight-second buzzer.
“Okay?” I ask flippantly, but inside, I’m spiraling.
He’s leaving me. Is it because I walked away from him? Because I didn’t finish stripping down and let him take me right in an old truck that should be nothing but a memory?
He waits like I’m supposed to say something, then nods. “All right. I’ve gotta get to the airport.”
“Huckleberry Springs has an airport?”
“For a private plane, yes.”
I sputter out a laugh. No wonder he’s taking off. I’m dressed for work in jeans and a navy-blue Ariat T-shirt. I only have socks on my feet. He’s gotta go to Omaha and then the Denver site. He’s important and he’s needed. He’s wanted.
He tips his head, his expression impassive. “Goodbye, Emerson.”
Oof, not even an Em. Tears prick the backs of my eyes. Why is this bothering me? “See ya.”
I turn and head straight for the office. I’ll get breakfast later. When he’s gone. So I don’t have to watch him walk out.
I park in front of the bakery. I need to get out of the house, and as much as I love my brother and Hillary, I can’t go there and pretend that I’m fine.
After what Lane and I did, and the way he just went on a work trip like it meant nothing?
I’m still spinning, and I’m a hypocrite.
I ghosted him—twice! Once in his own house.
Yet I’m upset? I need to be somewhere I don’t have to explain myself, not even to myself.
Unfortunately, in a town like Huckleberry Springs, at ten in the morning, that’s the café or the bakery. The other restaurants aren’t open yet.
I’m in a corner booth of Dee’s Sweets with a muffin. Blueberry cobbler this time. The girl at the counter isn’t familiar, and I haven’t seen either Palmer sister. Or a Foster sister.
What’s it like being married into the Foster family?
A soft snort escapes. I am married into that family.
I don’t like this adrift feeling. Not at all. Not when I’ve been on my own for ten years and haven’t had to rely on anyone.
I’m glowering out the window at all the people blissfully going about their day when a quiet voice bursts through my daze. “Hey, Emerson.”
Elodie stands by my booth with a small smile. She’s wearing sweats that are cuffed at the ankle, but instead of a baggy shirt this time, she’s got on a crop top that hits just above her waistband.
“Elodie, hey.” I’m not dismayed, but she’s so at home. This is her place. Her hometown. I’m the odd duck out. I just cosplay as the swan.
At least I’m clean, and I brushed out my hair until it shone. As if I could get sent to the school nurse again for my hair being in a rat’s nest.
She puts her fingertips on the table. “Mind if I sit?”
It’s her business. Her thriving, successful business. She always seemed like she had her shit together in school. “Go ahead.”
She hesitates as if she senses that I’m not in the mood for company.
The thought that she might leave, that I’ve severed my contact with one of the few people I still know in town, bothers me.
“It’s fine, really. I’m just in my head. Please.” I gesture to the other side of the booth. “Join me.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes and no.” Mostly no. I’m married, and I want my husband at home so I can ignore him. So he knows that he doesn’t have a say over my life. That this thing between us is just my dad’s idiotic trust. “It’s everything, you know. Moving home.”
“Yeah, that can be weird.”
“Was it for you?”
Her gaze skates around the bakery, but it’s not smug pride filling her eyes.
Not that I expected it. That was never Elodie’s way, but she should be brimming with confidence.
“I came home with my tail between my legs, and I made it my goal that no one knew why.” Her smile is straightforward.
“Bad relationship, bad decisions, and a history I didn’t want anyone to know about.
They still don’t really know. My parents do.
Clem.” Her lips curve up, and this time, the happiness reflects in her eyes. “Cruz, of course.”
“Of course,” I echo and take a bite of my muffin. That’s not envy heating the back of my neck. “Lane doesn’t know what it was like. Before I moved.” Ah, hell. Why’d I say that?
“Have you talked to him about it?” Elodie could’ve played obtuse. She could’ve pretended she had no idea what I meant. But she was there. She saw me, and she probably heard what others were saying. They wanted to be heard.
“Lane and I aren’t really married.” Why would I tell him his wife used to be teased for being dirty and smelly? For having a dad who didn’t think to buy his little girl deodorant or period supplies?
“I thought maybe you were friends.”
“Not that either.” Do friends lick each other?
“I’m striking out on my own, and I pitched to the distillery.
I used to love their marketing campaigns, especially around the holidays.
” It really called to me. Family and gatherings.
Celebrations. “Then I didn’t, and I figured out why.
He had me come in and give my spiel, knowing that they weren’t going to work with me.
Knowing that my dad made the trust the way he did. ”
Her gaze flickers, but I can’t tell how much of the specifics she knows. “That can’t have felt good.”
It did when I ended up kissing him.
“I think with the guys, what you see is what you get.” She chews on the inside of her cheek. “It’s just that we don’t always trust it because we know it goes so much deeper, and that’s what scares us.”
I stare at her. What the hell is she talking about? Yet nothing has resonated more since I arrived in this damn town. “We aren’t exactly in a place to be a real anything, and I’m leaving as soon as Brooks sells his house and buys mine. It’s not a relationship.”
“Mmm.” She gives me a look that digs underneath this veneer I’ve donned. The shine I put on myself isn’t protecting me in this moment. “I think the Foster brothers are like muffins.”
I tick up a brow and look at my muffin. It’s not a guy who makes my toes curl when he’s in a pair of grungy mechanic’s overalls.
This muffin doesn’t make me think of joining him in the shower and asking him to show me what he does when he thinks of me.
The muffin is crumbly, and Lane has every facet of his life put together.
“I know it sounds like I’ve been drinking the whiskey I use for my banana bread glaze,” she continues.
“But they’re muffins. People get them and think they’ll be just like cupcakes, sweet and rich and pretty on the outside, but muffins are so much more.
They can be glazed, they can have a filling, and they can be any flavor.
They’re a muffin, and no matter what box we want to put them in, they’re a goddamn muffin and they’re going to do muffin things. ”
I narrow my eyes at her. Why am I following this conversation? And what does it have to do with me?
She gives herself a shake. “Sorry, sometimes the mornings are really early, and I get stuck in my head, think wild things. Anyway, I don’t know Myles as well, but Lane and Cruz?
They know who they are and what they want, and they read the world around them really well.
” She doesn’t say why, but because of Cruz, she likely knows more about Lane’s past than what he’s shared with me.
“They won’t go around shouting to everyone that they’re muffins even when they’re iced or filled.
Bavarian cream or not, they just know, and they can be so unflinchingly unapologetic about it that it’s hard to trust that they’re not just another person trying to play us. ”
I almost get whiplash from that last statement.
Lane is playing me though. He has to be.
There is no other reason for him to enter into a marriage with some girl he doesn’t know.
He says he does, but those were just a few stories about a scrappy kid from an alcoholic strung out with guilt.
Lane saw my social media feed, not the ten pictures I took of myself in that bikini that didn’t make the cut.
I showed up all polished in his office, and he thinks he met the real me.
I’m Emerson Langley. “That poor girl,” who got left by her mother. “That dirty girl,” Hutch didn’t want. “That sister of yours” who needs to move out.
I don’t know how I play into Lane’s game, but he’s not as straightforward as Elodie seems to think he is. She’s not married to him. I am.
Lane thinks he knows me? So maybe I’ll show him the real me.