Maybe this move didn’t ruin her life after all.
Chapter 13
Flint
I suck at apologizing.
It’s been mostly intentional through my adult life, mainly because I try to live my life in a way that doesn’t lend itself to regrets or the necessity of an apology.
Or to getting attached enough to anyone to have to apologize to them.
When I do screw up, I’ll apologize to Opal. I’ll apologize to my colleagues.
But I’ve made a point to not apologize to a woman. Especially a woman who might think we have a future.
The one time I did—don’t want to talk about it.
Much as I’m certain Maisey Spencer doesn’t think we have a future—even a very short-lived quickie kind of future—it’s still hard to make myself knock on her door early Sunday morning. I know June’s at a sleepover with half the soccer team, which means this is my only chance to catch Maisey alone.
I knock three times before she answers, and when she finally swings the door open, I have instant regrets.
She’s wearing bright-pink pajama pants decorated with squirrels, a Half-Cocked Heroes concert T-shirt, and there’s an eye mask shoved up onto her forehead, making her bedhead stick out even worse.
Her feet are bare. The dark smudges under her eyes are pronounced against her pale cheeks, and there’s no question in my mind that she’s braless.
I don’t want to apologize to Maisey Spencer.
I want to lift her off her feet, shove her against a wall, and devour her.
“Tony has a secret root cellar that should be cleaned out soon,” I blurt, and it sounds pretty much exactly like my brain at 3:00 a.m., when I bolted awake suddenly remembering that I’d willfully forgotten about it and that June shouldnotbe the person who finds it.
Or even Maisey.
Maisey should definitely not find it until I clean it out.
Also?
Never mind my practicedI’m sorry I was an ass, here’s a coffee. Let me tell you about some of the quirks of the property, beyond the aging well.
Nope.
The sight of those sleepy baby blues and that short blonde bedhead has rendered me stupid, and it’s all I can do to hang on to the one ounce of reason remaining in my brain to spit out my purpose in being here.
She rubs one eye and stares at me like it’s too early in the morning for my words to compute.
Probably is.
Shit.
It’s not even seven o’clock.
On a Sunday.
“What about the—” She pauses, her jaw stretching wide as she yawns so big, I can see her tonsils. When she’s done yawning, she smacks her lips three times, swipes away the tears glistening in hereyes—Jesus, that was a yawn—and slouches in the doorway. “What about the root cellar?”
I wince. “I’m gonna take care of it. I just wanted you to know there’s a root cellar, and I’ll be down in it today, taking care of cleaning it out. So you don’t have to. And so June doesn’t ... know.”
Apparently,I’m gonna clean out your root cellaris code forYou need to wake up immediately because there is way more to this story than I’m telling you, because Maisey visibly jolts awake like her brain has been snapped with a rubber band.
