Charlotte
“Iswear, you guys. I’m fine. Will one of you drive me home? Please?” Levi finally agreed to drive me somewhere after I had a fit about going to the hospital, but he wouldn’t drive me home. He said he didn’t want me to be alone, so he brought me to my dad’s house instead.
I wanted to be in my own space, in a bathtub full of bubbles, with a huge coffee—where I would most definitely not think about Cade. Then I wanted to get into bed with my laptop to work. What I did not want was every single one of my five overprotective older brothers up in my face, grilling me about my little car wreck earlier this morning. And lord help me if they found out I was being followed when it happened. No one in Sweetbriar needed to know about that. I would never hear the end of it, and I was taking care of the problem anyway. It was about to be a moot situation.
“You’re not going home. Hunter pulled some of his chicken soup from the freezer and it’s on the stove. You can sleep in your old room tonight.” My father was insistent as he tucked a quilt around my shoulders and felt my forehead with the back of his hand.
I pulled my head back. “Dad, I’m fine, I swear. I’m not sick, I hit a tree.” I loved my family, but there was only so much hovering I could take before I snapped. I was on a deadline; my next book was due in a month, I had exactly three chapters written, and unfortunately, no matter how hard I wished for it, my books wouldn’t write themselves. Stupid science had yet to discover how I could just hook my brain to my laptop and get it done through osmosis or whatever, which meant I had some serious work to do, and I needed to be alone to do it. “I have to write.”
“You can write tomorrow. Today you will rest and let your family take care of you. Don’t argue with me, you know I’m right.”
“I baked cookies last night,” Spencer, big brother number five, announced as he set a plate of his secret recipe chocolate chip on the coffee table. “Brody went to Violet’s shop to grab you a coffee.”
I swiped a cookie and took a bite. “He did?” I reconsidered my desire to go home. Maybe a day with my family would be good for me, especially if there were treats and homemade soup involved. “Will one of you go to my place and snag my laptop?” I supposed I could work here. Cookies made writing easier; every author I knew would agree on that. Plus, if I was being honest with myself, I was still a little shaken up from the crash.
Deacon stood up with a nod.
“Oh, and grab my pajamas from under my pillow. Please?”
His lips quirked up in a grin. “That it?”
“Um . . .” I thought about it. “And grab my pillow too, the one in the pink pillowcase, not the purple one. Thank you, Deacon.”
“You got it.”
One could argue I had grown up a bit spoiled. My parents had wanted a daughter and after five boys they finally got one—me. But when I was barely a toddler, my mother was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer and within months she had passed away. My dad raised us all on his own. He had a perpetual broken heart and the desire to keep us all close.
Even though I left Sweetbriar to attend college—on a full scholarship, thank you very much—at NYU, then stayed to live in New York City, I always came back to visit. I was here for every holiday and birthday, plus a few weeks every summer. But I stayed close to home whenever I was here. Bumping into Cade or his family in town was never on my to-do list. That was a scenario that had awkward written all over it. The only exception was his mother. We spoke from time to time over the years. She used to be like a mother to me, as well as my writing mentor, and I was thankful that I was able to keep her in my life, albeit sporadically. We had an unspoken agreement to never, ever talk about Cade. Somehow it worked.
Plus, ouch—part of him remained with me, like a pokey little thorn. No matter how hard I had tried to forget about him, he was always there. I was afraid he’d always be lurking somewhere in the cockles of my heart, the comparison for any man I would ever date.
He was my first love; we’d known each other since pre-school, but the eighth grade Sadie Hawkins Day dance was when everything had changed. I took my shot and he’d said yes. We were together all through high school and got married right after graduation. We’d divorced a few years later.
But after the divorce, despite what I had intended when I left, I had never been brave enough to take another shot. Years went by, we both moved on, and then it was too late. I couldn’t bear the thought of moving back to Sweetbriar and not being with him, so I stayed in New York and hid out at my dad’s place whenever I visited my family.
“Who’s running the shop?” My father owned a mechanic-slash-auto body shop right outside of Sweetbriar, called Cassidy’s Automotive. All my brothers—Hunter, Deacon, Tucker, Brody, and Spencer—worked for him. They rebuilt, restored, and repaired cars, trucks, and motorcycles—anything with a motor and the ability to go vroom. They were similar in looks, like my parents had cut and pasted them into existence: all tall, with dark brown hair, light blue eyes just like mine, and muscular from working hard with my dad at the shop.
I, on the other hand, had never given the first crap about any of that stuff. I’d always wanted to be a writer, so I did it. I had ten New York Times best sellers and was working on my eleventh. I wrote murder mysteries featuring my heroine, Detective Adaline Paige.
Did I sometimes creep myself out? Yep.
Did I sleep with the lights on and a baseball bat by my bed? Also yep.
What can I say? I was so good at what I did, I terrified myself on a daily basis. My imagination was ridiculous. I was also addicted to true crime podcasts, Stephen King novels, and had done several ride alongs with my various NYPD research buddies. People are hella messed up and that is a fact. I had endless disturbing ideas for books filed away in my twisty brain.
“Hunter is there. Do you want to talk about what happened? After Levi dropped you off, he told me Cade was the first responder. I bet it brought up memories for you.”
“Yeah, I hadn’t expected to see him. I wasn’t prepared.”
“Oh, honey. Come here.” He held his arms out, I scooted over and leaned into him. My dad gave the best hugs, I always imagined being held by a big teddy bear would feel similar. He was six-foot-five with a broad chest and huge arms. His wavy salt and pepper hair was tied back in a ponytail, and for as long as I could remember, he’d had a full beard and mustache. He looked like a murderous biker but acted like a nineteen-fifties era housewife. Once, when I was four, he shaved his beard off and I hadn’t recognized him. I cried until he dug up his and my mother’s wedding photos to prove who he was. He’d grown it back and had kept it ever since. “How was it?” he asked.
I couldn’t describe how I had felt this morning with Cade. not when I was still trying to process it for myself. “I don’t know what to say. I thought I’d be able to handle seeing him again after I finally bit the bullet and went to Violet’s shop for coffee over Christmas to get the lay of the land. But I was wrong. It was . . .” Intense, nostalgic, heartbreaking. I bit my lip and looked away.
“It’s good to talk about these things, Charlotte,” he encouraged. “After everything you two went through in the past, a run-in had to be hard, especially since a lack of love was never the problem for you. Feelings are coming back up, right?”
“I don’t know what to feel yet.” That was a lie. I’d felt a lot of things when I was back in Cade’s arms, none of which I wanted to talk about with my dad.
And shamefully, I wanted to feel it all again. No man had ever made me respond like Cade could. One look from him set my body on fire, sent my heart into overdrive, and turned my brain into love-drunk mush.
As for being in his arms again? I hadn’t wanted to leave. I’d had to force myself away from him. He made me feel safe when I had been beyond scared. Plus, he looked as handsome as he always had.
I’d never thought I was one of those women who was attracted to a man in uniform, but I was wrong. He was sexy as hell in his Sweetbriar PD jacket, dark jeans, and that thick belt with his badge and gun clipped to it. Plus, his body was ridiculous now; it felt like I had pressed myself against a brick wall when we hugged.
Maybe I should wreck another car and see if he would show up? I mean, I was surrounded by cars in various states of repair right now. I had plenty to choose from.
He sighed. “I get it. You probably don’t want to talk to your old man about stuff like this. But make sure not to keep it all inside, okay?”
“I won’t.”