“Thanks for everything, Pete.”
“Yeah, man, it was perfect,” I add.
“You bet. See you guys. Have a good night.”
Ever returns her gaze to me and says, “It was perfect, wasn’t it?” She’s pushing her fingernails through the hair on my forehead and dragging them up along my scalp deliciously, making it hard to concentrate.
I nod as my eyes roll back, my lids drifting closed. “Mmm, it was. I’ll give you ten years to stop doing that.” I groan again at the lulling strokes of her nails.
A giggle bubbles in her throat as her lips find my neck again just before her whispery voice, raspy from all the talking, fills my ear. “Ready to go home?”
I nod, enthralled, her husky voice alone affecting me. This young woman owns me and I’m not sure she even realizes it.
“Okay, I’m going to get the leftovers from the kitchen. Two minutes . . .”
I nod again as she lifts herself off my lap and pushes through the swinging doors of the kitchen. I take the empty beer bottles from the table, stand and swivel to place them in the recycle canister just as the bell over the front door chimes. Expecting Pete, I turn and open my mouth as the wordheydies on my lips and the bottles in my hands slip and shatterto the floor.
“Hi, Jay.” My jaw feels weighted, being pulled toward the floor. My eyes are tracking the blonde hair, a little darker and shorter than I remember, the face a little leaner. The eyes are the same. The lips. My ears prick. Her voice is the same.
How?“Taya?” My head is already shaking back and forth in disbelief. Every nerve ending tingles like a near-miss collision. My mind screams it’s not possible. “How . . .”
“Sorry to just show up like this.” Her smile is timid, but it’s the same. It’s hers.
What the fuck?How the fuck is she here right now?
As if in a trance, I step to her and reach out. Once my hands touch her arms and she’s real, my fingers clench around her biceps. I squeeze and pull her to me with a slight shake. “How are you here right now?” My eyes are blurring and welling, the pressure behind them making my head pound.
“Jayce, you’re hurting me.” Her words snap me out of my trance.
I blink once, twice.
Thenhervoice hits me like a slap back to reality. My head pivots to the sound.
“Julian?” Ever steps into the dining room from the kitchen, arms full of containers. For home.Home.“Jayce? Who’s Jayce? Who is this?” Her expression morphs from uncertainty to suspicion, then betrayal at the next words spoken.
“She doesn’t know?” Taya’s voice swings my head back to her, then back to Ever.
My head feels like it’s stuck in a vice. Each heartbeat like a hammer to my temple. “Ever . . . I . . .” I track her deer-in-headlights look. I haven’t seen it in a long time. It breaks me.
She slowly, deliberately sets the containers on the nearest table and begins backing toward the swinging doors—like she backed away from me that first day at Fit. She’s spiraling. I can see it in every fiber of her being.
So am I, like I’m about to implode.
“What’s going on, Julian? Who the fuck is this?” She braces her hands on the swinging doors behind her, still pinning me with saucer-wide eyes—eyes that start to swim with unshed tears.
“Taya.” I release one of Taya’s arms and hold my hand up to stop Ever’s backwards steps. “But . . .”
“Taya, who died? So, what? You fucking lied?” She’s pushing the doors open with her back as the first tear spills down her cheek, then another. She tilts her head and swivels it from side to side as she asks, “And why did she call you Jayce?”
“No. Ever. Don’t.” I hold my hand up to stop her as my foot takes a step toward her. “I didn’t lie.” I turn back to Taya. “I thought . . . He said you died.” The swoosh of the kitchen doors whips my head back to where Everly stood, but she’s gone.
“Stay,” I command, releasing Taya’s other arm, holding my hand up like a stop sign, and dash through the swinging doors. But I’m too late. The back door is wide open, and Everly is gone. Then I hear the Jeep motor start out front. I mentally curse this small town and that we leave our keys in our vehicles.
Coming back into the dining area, Taya hasn’t moved. She’s still here. Standing inside Brew. Very. Much. Alive. I stop just inside the swinging doors, just as Ever did moments ago, and watch her watch me. I must look like a dog that hears a weird sound. I even tweak my head sideways as I study her face.
Then she speaks again, snapping me out of the trance. “You thought I was dead?” It’s her voice. It’s really her. And she’s moving toward me. “This whole time?” Her welled-up sea-glass eyes spill. Another step toward me. “That’s why you never called, never came.”
Like the streaks on her face, my legs turn to liquid. My knees sink to the polished concrete floor with a thud that sounds painful. I feel nothing. I reach for her. My fingers dig into denim-clad legs and pull them to me. Two shuffling steps and the denim brushes against my cheek. The smell of horses and hay and coconut,her smell, drops my mind back into the Bennick barn, transports me back in time, almost four years ago. The day Rusty Bennick discovered us half-naked in one of the horse stalls and threatened to kill me. The last time I saw Taya.
