I wanted to. Damned if I wasn’t ready to leap over this fucking desk and grab Avery by the hand and march out that damn door. But getting too deep into anything with this man was a bad idea. Especially since he seemed like sticking around wasn’t exactly in his future plan.
Why do that to myself?
Judging by the way he looked, he clearly had a life he was going to eventually want to get back to.
“Unfortunately, I won’t be able to tell you anything without at least looking at a picture,” I said.
“Why don’t I shoot you some?” He pulled out his phone. “You can give me a rough estimation.”
I hesitated before I asked, even though I already knew the answer, “For what?”
“Obviously to sell.” He laughed.
Right.
Obviously.
Clearly Avery was looking forward to getting back to his life from before his father’s passing. Ridding himself of everything that could possibly tie him back to Ellington Heights was the plan, not heading down toSack’s Barto grab a beer and catch up like old times.
This man may have shared a life with me once long ago, but he was a stranger now. One that I had absolutely no idea about.
“You can send them to my email.” Frankly, not giving out my phone number was more for my sake than his. Having the ability to text him whenever was setting myself up for failure.
“Oh.” He looked surprised, though he recovered quickly. “Yeah, of course. Just type it in here and I’ll send them your way.”
When he slid the phone over to me, a contact entry for me was already pulled up. Right below my name was my old landline that had been out of use for well over a decade. I hesitated upon seeing it, my fingers twitching over the phone’s screen.
Why keep that?
What was the point?
Nostalgia?
Rationalizing any of this was stupid. Yet I knew for a fact that the second my head hit the pillow and sleep refused to claim me tonight, this goddamn contact was going to haunt me.
My fingers felt clunky as I typed in the shop’s email. After a few long seconds, I finally returned the phone to him. “Take as many pictures as you can. I’ll let you know what I think and then we can go from there. If they’re in good shape, I do have a few buyers that I know who are always looking to add to their collections.”
Avery smiled. “Of course. Thanks again, Brandon. It was really good seeing you.”
Yeah, I wished I could say the same.
Thankfully, another customer parking in front of my shop and coming in through the front door saved me for the second time today. As the door alarm chimed, Avery backed away from the counter; his promise to contact me was soon lost in the complaints of my new customer filling the small space.
I watched him through the window as he climbed into his sports car—an Audi series, of course—and pulled away from my shop, disappearing into the slow moving traffic.
Avery McAllister being back in town was an omen I’d never been expecting. Spelling the downfall of my entire life if I wasn’t careful enough.
CHAPTER 3
Avery
Snappingthe last photo to attach to the long-running email I had pulled up on my phone, I felt a sense of peace wash over me.
For the first time since starting this entire process of disentangling my father’s laundry list of fuck-up’s, running into Brandon Anders—now Carmichael—was by far the best accident I never thought would happen.
We’d grown up together in this town, spending practically all of our waking moments together and being so ingrained with each other’s lives that it was impossible to tell where he began and I ended.
There had been plenty of times that people had accused us of being together that we’d laughed off, even after he’d come out to me. I never cared. None of that ever changed what we had between us—a rock solid friendship that was unshakable until I was forced away and slowly cut off from everything that I knew.
