Silas
Ipulledinto a parking space in front ofFanailleand got out of my truck, just as a gust of wind sent a bunch of brown and orange leaves scattering across the sidewalk. It was fuckingchillyout here this early in the morning, with the sun barely cresting the trees down at the end of Waterford Street and glinting off the lace-curtained window of thebakery.
Cal and Ash were inside, joking and laughing as they moved in tandem, two souls with one purpose. I'd seen them like that a million times over the past half-year or more, and I'd shaken my head each and every time. I'd never understood that kind of closeness, never wanted it. Now that I'd had just a taste of it, though, I craved it more than my nextbreath.
It was ridiculous that it took a disaster to make you realize how grateful you should have been before the disaster struck. And that was what the fight with Ev had been — a complete, unmitigated clusterfuck of adisaster.
After Ev had walked off the day before, I’d spent way too many melancholy hours roaming my damn house, where every room already had an Ev-shaped memory imprinted on it, even after just three weeks. I couldn’t go to the diner or Hoff’s without being asked about Ev, I didn’t want to drive past the playground or the school because they’d make me think of him, I couldn't be in my kitchen or smell a fucking apple without replaying our fight. I was a prisoner in my damn life if he wasn’t init.
Finally, I'd fled to the damn garage to work on the car — because I fuckingcould toocommit to something — when I finally realized, a little too late, the subtext of what Ev had really been saying allalong.
Jesus Christ.If I was scared to love him when he couldn’t love me back, if I was missing him afterthree hourswithout him, what the hell would it be like to lose someone after years together? After marriage and promisingforever?
Everett wasscared. And the very fact that he was so scared meant he was in love, or was close enough to love to scare the shit out of him. But instead of holding onto him with two hands, instead of going with my first instinct and wrapping him up in my arms to comfort and reassure him, I’d let him walk out thedoor.
Alone.
Again.
But this was the last damntime.
I loved Everett Maior. I loved every minute I spent with him, even when he was teasing me relentlessly, every suspicious and superstitious thought that danced through the man’s head, even when he made me crazy. And maybe it was too soon to be thinking that way, but… the way I looked at it, I had a lifetime of commitment stored up and only one man I wanted to use iton.
I pulled open the door to the bakery, and stepped inside the cinnamon-sugarhaven.
“Officer Sloane!” Cal called, turning from Ash to greet me with a smile still bright on his face. “How’s itgoing?”
“Pretty good.You?”
“Very good. He’s just about convinced me we want a dog,” he said, hooking a thumb at his boyfriend. “But not until thespring.”
“Cal and I are planning a…” Ash began, before pausingdramatically.
I raised my eyebrows. “A date night? A party? Oh, God, afamily?”
Cal laughed out loud. “Yeah, slow down there, Sloane. No families rightnow.”
Ash folded his enormous arms across his chest. “Yeah, Caelan needs to make an honest man of mefirst.”
Cal’s lips twitched. “Okay, your heteronormative ideas of how families are madeaside… Don’t rush me, Ashley. I haveplans.”
Ash grinned at him — totally sappy, totally in love, totally content to wait for whatever Calwanted.
Ugh.I needed Everett so badly my gutclenched.
“What Ash meant to say is we’re planning avacation,” Cal said. “We’re going down to Florida to visit my grandmother sometime this spring, and we’ll wait to get a puppy afterthat.”
“Florida?” I said. “That’scool.”
“Heclaimsit’s to visit his grandmother,” Ash teased, “but it’s totally because Ethan Scott called to tell him he’d won a trip to Disney World, and Cal realized I’d never been, so he wants to takeme.”
"Ethan!" Ethan Scott had been a friend of Cal’s back in high school, more than a few years younger than me. We'd never been close, but I'd run into him when he'd come home for a visit over the summer. “How’sBoston?”
Cal shrugged. “Not so great now that Parker’s moved back to O’Leary. They moved east together, and now that Parker’s back here… I got the impression Ethan waslonely.”
I could understand that all toowell.
“So where's Everett this morning?” Cal asked, giving me a knowinggrin.
