“Yuck, I did not like Paxton.” Just the thought of liking him made my insides twist and to be accused of anything but loathing him, made my throat burn.
“Did you break his heart?”
“Trust me, he did not like me when he was a boy, and he likes me less as a man.”
“Now we’re talking.” It sounded as if Nick slapped his hands together. I could see him in my mind rubbing them like he was plotting a world takeover. “Sounds like you’re having a fun reunion back home. Is he hot? I want details.”
I closed my eyes and pictured Paxton shirtless in my mom’s yard. Hot didn’t begin to describe him. He was drop-dead gorgeous. “Why does it matter?”
“It always matters. Did you say his name was Paxton?”
“Yes, Paxton Cooper,” I finished, then immediately regretted it. “Nick, don’t you dare—”
“Too late. I’ve found him. Damn, this guy is beyond attractive. What was going through your head when you picked on him?”
“He obviously didn’t look like that when we were in school together.” I reached for my computer and pulled up Paxton’s social media profile. My fingertips traced his handsome face. “Typical ugly duckling story. He got hot after high school.”
“Uh-huh.” Nick didn’t sound convinced. “Someone this hot is never not attractive, even when they’re going through their awkward years. Maybe you didn’t notice. Maybe you were blind.”
It was an interesting point of view. In high school, Paxton had Eli beside him—a handsome human being who demanded attention. Surely it wasn’t all that surprising that nobody thought Paxton was attractive by comparison?
In truth, even though he hadn’t filled out his tall frame, there was nothing that made him unattractive. Rather, it had been the way he carried himself. He had been awkward, reserved, and introverted. His shoulders were always hunched. His head was kept down. His eyes were permanently glued to the floor.
Those eyes. Big beautiful lakes of blue.
“Fine, Nick, he wasn’t unattractive even then,” I admitted, which felt close to having my teeth pulled out. “Awkward and lanky but not … ugly.” Why was it so hard to admit the truth? He had always been handsome.
Nick burst out laughing. “You’re so transparent. How did you get to your thirties lying to yourself about all this stuff?”
“Very easily, thank you. I excel at self-deceit. And whether the guy was always hot or not doesn’t change anything about the rest of him.”
“I guess I’ll never be able to confirm with my own eyes and ears.”
“Oh, but you could, actually …” My voice trailed off when I suddenly remembered I had an open plus-one to Carla’s wedding. “Want to be my date for my friend’s wedding?”
“That’s like asking me if I want alcohol. Obviously, it’s a yes. Will I get to meet this guy?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Ooh,” he cooed. “The day keeps getting better and better.”
“The new issue of Flair comes out a week before the wedding. You can probably wrangle a few extra days off to join me here if you want. I mean, it’s still Frazier Falls.”
“I’ll take any break I can get,” Nick chuckled. “I’ll get the days approved. I don’t suppose this guy has any equally attractive, not-quite-so-straight brothers who’ll be at the wedding?”
“Well, it’s actually his eldest brother who’s getting married, so that rules him out, and Eli also has a girlfriend and is as straight as a ruler.”
“Are they all beautiful?” Nick asked, sounding disappointed.
“It’s the Cooper curse. Beauty wasted on a man or three. Oh, but—”
“Yes?” His tone pitched up.
“No … never mind,” I murmured, thinking of what my mom had said about Rich Stevenson. That had been groundless conjecture that I should ask Carla about. “I’ll get back to you about the potential dating material at the wedding.”
“Don’t get my hopes up for nothing,” he joked.
“I would never.”
“Speaking of disappointing men, I actually called you for a reason.”
“What, you didn’t want to talk to me for the sheer thrill of it?”
“Well, that was a given. But trust me, you’ll want to hear this.”
I shoved my computer aside, giving Paxton’s picture one more glance and moved off my bed to the seat underneath my open window. “Fire away, then.”
“You’ll never guess who’s come into the office the last three days asking for you.”
“I don’t like where this is going.”
“Guess.”
I massaged my temples with my fingers, already feeling a headache coming on at the mere thought of it. “Please tell me it wasn’t James scum-bag Rivers.”
“One and the same.”
“Why did he come three days in a row? Didn’t you tell him to piss off?”
“It was Sadie who dealt with him on the first day,” Nick explained, “and of course, she had no clue what happened between the two of you. She didn’t even know you’d gone on vacation. The second day I dealt with him, but I didn’t want to say where you were in case he tried to contact you.”
“I blocked his number, his ability to contact me on social media and email. He won’t be able to get in touch.”
“That explains why he came back on the third day. Obviously, he knows you have Carla’s wedding coming up, so he asked me if you’d gone home. I told him it didn’t matter where you were because you made it clear you didn’t want to see him.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said he made a mistake and that he’s sorry. Can you believe it? Says he was too drunk and what happened the night at the bar would never happen again. Asked me to pass along the message in the hopes you’d forgive him.”
“The son of a bitch,” I exclaimed. “Who does he think he is? I spent all year fawning over him and he—”
“Honey, I know,” Nick cut in, his tone placating. “I told him if he wanted to pass on a message like that, he could do it himself. Then I had him escorted out of the building.”
I went from angry to ecstatic in a flash. “Oh my—oh my God, did you do that? You had him kicked out?”
“You bet your ass I did. No one gets to mess with my mean girl but me.”
“Nick, you’re the best, you know that?” I said between bouts of laughter. “Thanks for calling me. I needed to hear that.”
“I thought you might. It’s easier to get over someone when you know how worthless they are. You made a lucky escape. And hey, now you can make up with this Paxton guy.”
I hung up the phone on reflex. Nick called me back immediately.
“Rude,” he muttered.
“You deserved it. Stop talking nonsense.”
“He can’t be worse than James, and at least he’s cuter.”
“Hardly a benchmark I’d use.” I stared out at the last of the orange creamsicle sun sinking into the horizon.
“True. Anyway. I have a bottle of wine and a crappy nineties film with my name on it. I love you, and I’ll see you in a few days.”
“Love you too, Nick.”
“Night.”
After I hung up the phone, I collapsed back onto my bed. Nick had given me a lot to think about—most of which I didn’t want floating around in my head in the first place.
It was all about Paxton. Why had my long-awaited return home become about him?
I thought of him slamming me against the car earlier that afternoon. I gathered that the action was supposed to have scared me, and it had, but not in the way he had probably wanted.
It had scared me because it made me realize how passionate the guy was, and I had missed that facet of him until now. That made the whole pinning me against a car thing …
I suppressed a shudder.
Kind of hot.
Chapter Nine
Paxton
For me, the quiet guy, to come back to my high school campus meant I had drastically regressed
as a person.
Sitting behind the bleachers, resting my head against the wire fencing, and smoking a cigarette wasn’t my normal go-to. Last time I’d smoked had been my junior year of high school. It was the only year of my life I’d picked up the nasty habit. To this day, I had no clue why I’d done it and had no reason why I wanted to smoke now.
Thinking about how ridiculous it was, I looked at the cigarette in disgust before throwing it to the ground and crushing it with my heel as I sighed out a final puff of acrid smoke.
With Carla and Owen’s wedding only two weeks away, Frazier Falls was coming to life, and all the former residents were crawling out of the woodwork. It felt unnerving running into people I hadn’t seen in years and not knowing what to say, or if I wanted to engage at all. Despite that, I forced myself through the motions of polite conversation with everyone who had recognized me. As one of Owen’s brothers and groomsmen, it was part of the gig.
Why couldn’t they show up on the day of and leave town the next? I liked the way Frazier Falls was normally. I didn’t need ghosts of my past, haunting the streets and bothering my every waking moment.
The sound of crunching gravel to my left caught my attention. I turned to see who had found me, then immediately grumbled.
“Why are you here?” I shifted my body away from Rose. I was half inclined to leave altogether, but I didn’t see why I should be the one to go. I had been here first.
Rose stopped a few feet away from me.
“I wasn’t aware I was forbidden to take a walk down memory lane.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “When were you ever behind the bleachers?”
“You and I both know you’re not too stupid or innocent to realize that everyone used the back of the bleachers for something or another.”
I didn’t respond. I wanted nothing more than for her to get the message and leave of her own volition. Minutes passed, and she didn’t move an inch.
I turned to glower at her. “There’s a lot of bleacher left. Do you have to be right here?”
She seemed to hesitate for a moment then let out a resolute “Yes” as she sat herself right down next to me.
I stood up to leave, but she grabbed my wrist.
“What?” I asked, pulling away in the process.
Her expression was unreadable. I had no idea what she was thinking. “Stay for a minute, Paxton,” she said. “I need to … apologize … for a lot of things.”
I quirked a brow. “You followed me here to do that?”
She shook her head, eyes slightly wide. “No. This was an accidental meeting. I didn’t come here to apologize, but … to be honest.”
“Sounds like you’re unbelievably sorry.” I sounded angry. I couldn’t believe I was upset. Rose Rogers wasn’t important to me.
“Paxton—”
“Fine,” I interrupted as I turned to face her and settled back with the fence pressing into my skin. “You have five minutes. Which is four more than you deserve.”
She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
I looked away, staring out at the football field before us. So much had happened on that grass. Lots of memories of playing ball with my dad and brothers. Other memories not so nice. “Go on then.”
She didn’t say anything. Instead, she sniffed the air a few times then looked around before eyeing the ground below us. “Were you smoking?”
“Yep, so what?”
“I didn’t think you were the smoking type.”
“I’m not.”
“So why—”
I stared at her, silently pushing for her to stop changing the subject.
She released an exasperated breath. “I’m sorry for pushing your buttons the other day. It was immature of me.”
“And?”
She stared up at the starlit sky above us with a look on her face that suggested she’d rather yank her teeth out than continue speaking. “And it may have recently come to my attention the way I treated you when we were younger was bordering on unacceptable.”
I nearly choked. “Bordering on it?”
“Ugh, fine! It was completely out of line, and I should never have acted that way toward you when you’d done nothing wrong. There! Are you happy?”
“Marginally.”
She fisted her hands and tucked them tightly to her sides. “There’s no pleasing you, is there?”
“You think a pained ten-second apology is equivalent to the years of bullshit I had to put up with from you?”
Rose, like her name, wilted in front of me. Her shoulders fell forward, and her expression softened.
“No, but it’s better for me to start owning up to my mistakes now rather than never, right?”
I didn’t reply. Both of us knew the answer to her question. Never in all my days did I consider I’d hear any type of I’m sorry from her, so this was a banner moment.
I spared a glance in her direction. “Would you have apologized to me if I hadn’t lashed out the other day?”
“Don’t make me answer that.”
“That answered it for me, so no need.”
“Paxton—”
“You use my name a lot. Why?”
“That’s because … because I never called you by your name before.” She seemed to realize the reality of what she was saying as she was saying it, which was interesting to watch. “I guess that’s weird, huh? I only ever called you by your name if I put princess or something else in front of it.”
I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “Don’t go there.”
She laughed. “It’s not as if I called you that after middle school, though.”
“Not to my face, you didn’t.”
She moved her hand like she was slicing the air with a sword. “Touché.”
“I can’t believe it took you until high school to find something better to do than bother me,” I ended up saying. “Still can’t believe you ended up as a cheerleader.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“You only did it because you liked the way people looked at you when you wore the uniform.”
She looked surprised. “How do you—why would you say that?”
I studied her. “Because I didn’t like you doesn’t mean I didn’t know you. You’re a fairly transparent person. What other people think is what’s most important.”
“Yes, but … when did you even find the time to get to know me?”
“Funnily enough, if you stop talking long enough to actually listen to people, you can learn a lot. And if you don’t spend any time talking whatsoever—”
“Then I guess you can learn a lot about lots of people,” she finished, letting out a whoosh of air between her teeth as she rolled the sleeves of her hoodie up. “Why is it still so warm out? It’s nearly midnight, and I’m too warm in a hoodie and shorts.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a sweatshirt that was actually yours.”
She looked at me quizzically. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means exactly what it means. You would always steal your boyfriend’s. There was Liam Potts, and Reggie Wyatt, and—”
“Oh my God, why do you remember all of this?” Her face grew redder and redder under the glow of the moon as she covered her eyes with her hands. “This is mortifying.”
“Sometimes I wondered if you dated them simply to get the hoodies,” I said quietly. “Because you knew they looked good on you. All oversized and not matching the rest of your perfectly constructed outfit. It was a clever way to appear endearing to everyone while putting zero effort in and getting the attention you needed.”
“You’re not very nice,” she said, though she didn’t look upset—merely embarrassed. “It was a good thing you never spoke in school; otherwise, you’d have ripped people to shreds.”
“I had Eli as an older brother. Is it any wonder I learned how to insult?”
Another heavy sigh left her lungs. “I guess not. But, hey, if you�
�d have been talkative, you’d have been one hell of a popular guy. So why didn’t you talk?”
I looked down at my shoes for a few moments, not sure if I wanted to explain myself. Eventually, I said, “That’s the way I was. They initially told my parents I was high functioning on the autism scale.”
“Oh.” Her voice lowered. “I didn’t know.”
“It wasn’t true.”
“There was a different reason?”
“I was bored. I’m off the charts smart, and child’s play wasn’t my thing.” I looked up at the stars trying to make out the different constellations and focused on Cassiopeia. “However, emotionally, I was a child with an adult brain. By the time I realized sitting back and analyzing my world was viewed as odd, I didn’t know how to go about fixing the problem. I thought the teasing would get worse if suddenly I started talking. I kept quiet and hoped people would leave me alone until I could start fresh at college, where my intellect could speak for itself.”
I looked up abruptly. She had moved up close enough for me to feel her body heat. “Since you shared that, I’ll share this.”
I frowned. “What?” Was she going to tell me she had a Mensa score for her IQ too?
“Starting fresh in college. I was dying to get out of here and work out who I was … or who I wanted to be.”
“I think everyone wanted the same thing.”
She paused for a moment to take that in, then asked, “If you wanted to start fresh, then why did you come back to Frazier Falls once you graduated?”
“I realized how much I loved the place when I was away from it. Once everyone around me had grown up, I didn’t have to deal with any of the nonsense from school. Owen and Eli had set up Cooper Construction, which I wanted to be a part of, so I had lots of reasons for wanting to come back.”
“I’m happy for you, Paxton. I am.”
I glanced at her. Her lips were curled into a genuine smile that lit up her eyes. There was a light breeze on the air, gently twisting and turning her hair about her face. In any other circumstance, I’d be cursing myself for thinking about how beautiful she was, but not tonight.
I resisted the urge to tuck away the few strands waving about in front of her face. “What’s it like for you being back in Frazier Falls after so long of a hiatus? Your mom told me you work as a fashion editor in New York.”
Defend Me: A Frazier Falls Novel Page 6
