“You okay?” Max’s voice was gentle.
Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I gave him a firm nod. “Just, uh... a little nervous.”
He laughed. “Why don’t we stick to something low key? Since I haven’t had much time to spend in Edgewood, you should show me some of the local hangouts you like to go to.”
That had me raising a brow. “You sure? They’re a little... quaint.”
“I want to get to knowyou, Brandon. Where you come from. What life is like in Edgewood. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up settling down here once my contract is up in a few months.”
My stomach tightened at the thought, but not in the good way. Not in the way I’d fantasized about Avery doing the same thing.
Don’t get me wrong, Edgewood was a nice place, as was Ellington Heights right across the bridge and even Palmerston, where our high school had been, right down the road. They all had their charms and quirks, as did the people who lived there.
It wouldn’t be right of me to discourage anyone from setting down roots here, even Max, who probably had much betterprospects to look forward to on the horizon than chasing me around when I clearly had nothing to give outside of little white lies and the ever-dwindling hope that something would come between us.
This thing with Avery could all come crashing down at any moment, sending us both into a fiery blaze that neither of us would probably ever recover from. I wouldn’t be the same afterward, and yet, that still wasn’t a deterrent at all.
In fact, it only made me want to do it more.
I felt Max watching me closely, his patience practically slapping me in the face with guilt. “Yeah, we can go to Crossroads. It’s a bar down on the strip. Pretty popular with the locals.”
“Great.” He shifted the car into drive. “I think I passed that on the way over here.”
“If you saw the big bull out front with its left horn missing, then that was the one.”
Max laughed. “Quite the hometown landmark.”
“The owner won it at a state farm about twenty years back. That thing hasn’t moved from the front sidewalk since. The paint’s so worn on it because it’s like a family tradition to take your kids over there and get a photo with them riding it.”
“What an interesting piece of history. You know, I kind of miss that about small towns.”
I glanced over at him. “You ever have anything like that back in East City?”
He shrugged, flicking on his turn signal and pulling out onto the main drag. “Not really. It’s not as huge as the city up north, but it’s pretty decent sized. It’s mostly a commuter city, so not many opportunities to make solid connections with anyone. I was out of there by the time I turned twenty.”
“You like traveling around?”
He grinned. “Yeah. It gives you a sense of freedom, don’t you think?”
I wished I could relate.
The farthest I’d ever been was Palmerston when I went to school. While Edgewood was a small town, it had at least one of everything you could ever imagine, making it rather hard to want to leave for some place unfamiliar and farther away from where you grew up.
I’d never thought about traveling before, figuring I’d live and die in Edgewood and that was fine by me.
“Guess I never really thought about it,” I said.
“Do you ever...” His words were slow. “Think about leaving Edgewood?”
I could lie and say that I had—that it was my big dream to get out of this town and forge my own path on the road ahead.
What would really stop me other than the lengthy process of selling my business?
Other than it being a total pain in the ass?
Even then, I had a feeling one of the guys would end up taking it off my hands, wanting to keep it ‘in the family’ as they’d call it.
I wouldn’t mind if the place was passed that way. At least then I knew it’d be in good hands.
