I matched his stance. “Not so wrong that my arm hurt fordays, Nathan.”
The ringing doorbell interrupted our conversation. I headed to the front of the house, wondering if it was one of the cat owners. “It’s Derek,” I said, pausing in the formal dining room connected to the kitchen.
“Fucking hell,” Nathan groaned, tossing his head back. “How many fucking times is this guy going to show up at our house?”
Our house. It didn’t mean anything—this was our house. We owned it. And yet, my mind raced with unsaid implications in those words.
“What do you have against Derek?”
“You didn’tseriouslyjust ask me that question as if you don’t know?”
“I know it was awkward in high school when we dated, but that was a lifetime ago. You can’t still be holding a grudge. So what is it?”
“He got all the moments I was supposed to get with you, Brenna. You can’t blame me for disliking the guy.”
Everything else in the world fell away—the sound of the doorbell ringing again, the cats meowing in the other room, the hum of the fridge, even my rapidly beating heart pulsating in my ears.
He got all the moments I was supposed to get with you.
His pained tone played over and over in my mind. Nathan broke up with me in high school. He left Middlebury with his mom after finding out his dad and my mom had an affair. He transferred to another high school. He told me he couldn’t forgive me for hiding what I’d seen while he was at baseball camp—his dad sharing a romantic moment with my mom. He blamed me. He shut me out of his life.
Only once since then did I think Nathan regretted doing so. Until now.
The doorbell rang a third time.
“You should get it,” he said, his voice gruff. “Before he burns your name in candles in the backyard.”
I watched Nathan retreat upstairs. At the landing midway up, he looked at me, hitting me with the full weight of his emotions. The feeling of his regret and sadness weighed on my chest. I wanted to go to him, to soothe the ache, to fix our past. But I didn’t trust that I could manage my own emotions if I did. I couldn’t guarantee Nathan wouldn’t push me away again if I tried.
We’d made significant progress on the café and the house this week, but we were nowhere close to finished. I refusedto jeopardize our working relationship. Successfully flipping the house and relaunching the business were too important to derail.
So I turned my back on Nathan and walked to the front door to let Derek inside.
17
NATHAN
Now
The morning we reopenedthe café, two weeks later, I was in the back office trying to get a passable accounting system in place.
We were selling coffee to bring in needed revenue while we got our ducks in a row. Despite working diligently every day, I’d only managed to go through two years of the receipts my father “filed” in a shoebox. At least he had one shoebox for each year, or I might have torched this business on the off chance insurance would pay for the damages.
Shit.I needed to ask Allison about insurance coverage. I pulled out my phone and added it to my ever-growing list.
“Brenna Quinn!” A familiar booming voice pulled me back to reality. “I haven’t seen you in these parts since high school. How the hell have you been?”
“Hey, Ax,” Brenna greeted him cheerfully in the practiced customer service tone I’d heard all morning.
That’s right. I spent the morning sorting receipts and listening to the former love of my life chat with every customer who stepped through the door. Asking each person more questions than she’d bothered to ask me since we reunited.Not that I had made it easy on her.
I left the back office, moving toward the counter. My body tensed, seeing the way Ax looked at Brenna with the sky-blue eyes that had made him popular with girls at school. With her beauty, I couldn’t blame him.
Ax’s shirtsleeves were torn at the shoulder, and his faded blue jeans were covered in grass stains. I’d heard he took over his father’s landscaping business after playing college ball. He had designs on making it to the major leagues—all of us did—but it was like hitting the lotto.
“And Nathan fucking Sharpe!” Ax said when I stepped behind Brenna. He shifted the baseball cap on his head, pushing his blond hair over his ears. “Never thought I’d see you here.”
I shrugged. “Circumstances change.”
