The Fall We Fell: A Small Town Friends-to-Lovers Romance (Ocean Pines Series Book 1)

by Victoria Denault

  Ma clutches her cross again. Ronan’s green eyes bounce around and absorb everyone’s faces. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing you have to worry about,” Logan replies, his tone hard and borderline mean.

  My phone buzzes in my hand and I actually jump. “It’s Jake.”

  Nova, Logan, and Finn gather around me as I pull up the message. I’m fine. On my way to the Shack now. I’ll explain everything.

  “Is he insane?” Finn asks.

  “Thank God he’s not injured,” Nova says.

  “Is he feeling sick? Was this too much too soon after the surgery?” Ma asks. “Is that why he missed the interview?”

  “Maverick skipped his interview?” Ronan exclaims and the douchebag is actually smiling.

  “If you’re here to eat food, then grab a booth and order some,” Logan growls. “Otherwise, door is over there.”

  Mrs. Green gasps. Ma gives Logan a withering stare. “Logan, customers are customers. And you don’t work here anymore.”

  “I’m sure he has a good reason,” I tell Ronan because that smirk on his face, like he’s going to benefit from this, is making my blood boil. Even though he probably will. “Maybe he came across an accident on the turnpike and stopped to help. Jake is that kind of guy. I’m literally living proof of that.” I smile.

  Ronan’s smirk grows darker – meaner. “Terra, honey, Jake causes accidents nowadays he doesn’t fix them. Or didn’t you hear?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Tell her what you know, mom.”

  Mrs. Green nods at Ronan but then walks a few feet over to one of our booths by the window overlooking the sea, and I find myself following her. She shrugs out of her coat, a God awful orange and green patterned thing.

  She looks at me with wide innocent eyes. Too innocent. “Oh Terra sweetheart, Ronan was just trying to be funny with a cute play on words. You know because of the accidental pregnancy Jake’s responsible for.”

  Accidental what?

  “Terra?” Ma gasps my name.

  “Holy shit did he knock you up?” Finn blurts out, his voice loud and filled with fury.

  “No! My God, of course not,” I say and blush as heat rushes my face. “Mrs. Green doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  “I don’t mean you. I mean Aspen,” Mrs. Green says calmly. “I was at the hospital visiting a neighbor. Do you all remember Mrs. Turner? Well when she died, she left her house across the street from mine to her grandson but he died, and now his widow, a cute little girl from Hawaii of all places, is in there by herself fixing it up and anyway, she’s all by herself and—”

  “Can you get to the point, Mom?” Ronan interrupts and Mrs. Green frowns.

  “She had surgery and there’s no one in town to visit her so I was visiting her, and I saw Aspen and Jake coming out of the obstetrics department together, a couple days after your surgeries actually. You were both still patients I think,” she pauses to put her purse down in the booth. “And then the other day, when I was visiting my neighbor again, Aspen was walking across the parking lot alone and there was no denying the bump. It’s the cutest thing, so I stopped to tell her and pat it. She didn’t say Jake was the father. Was actually quite rude to me, but what else is new?”

  “Aspen is not carrying Jake’s baby,” I let out a sharp, high-pitched laugh. I realize I have never made a sound like that before but no one has ever said something so completely ludicrous to me before. “There’s no way.”

  “Why do you care?” Ronan asks, annoyed for some reason, like this has anything to do with him.

  “Because he’s my boyfriend.”

  Ronan blinks. “What? Since when? Anyway Aspen’s baby has to be his.”

  “It isn’t,” I bark, fully aware I sound like River on the verge of a meltdown.

  “Logan…” Finn says his twin’s name slowly, in a low voice.

  It draws all our attentions because it’s ominous-sounding and as soon as I lock eyes with Logan, my heart starts to break. A fissure … like a windshield when a rock nails it just so. “Logan?”

  “Terra, can I talk to you in the back. Alone?”

  “Oh my God…” Ma never ever takes the lord’s name in vain. That is proof that this is as real and devastating as it feels.

  Without a word, I walk slowly toward Logan because I feel unsteady and tears are blurring my vision. He’s holding open the door to the kitchen. I walk straight through it and into my office. I shut the door and continue walking to my desk. Finn and Declan have been in here more than me lately, so it’s a disaster. Invoices and unopened mail are piled on one corner. My framed pictures that were evenly spaced on the other corner of the desk are jumbled together. One is even tipped over. I don’t care. I don’t care about anything.

  Logan slips inside, closing the door firmly behind him. I can’t look at him. I can’t. “It’s true?”

  “Not necessarily,” Logan replies. “I mean yes, she is pregnant and yes it might be Jake’s but last time I checked, he didn’t know. She wouldn’t do the paternity test.”

  The tears spill down my cheeks. Logan walks toward me. I raise a hand, palm out, and finally look at him. “Don’t. You should have told me.”

  “He should have told you,” Logan corrects. “Terra, you know this wasn’t my secret to tell, and I told him not to get involved with you without telling you.”

  “I can’t … I can’t believe this is happening,” I sob. I feel betrayed. I know he didn’t cheat. I know, without anyone explaining it to me, this baby is from that random hook up months ago, but I still feel deceived.

  “Terra, look, he should have told you, but if it isn’t his,” Logan pauses and scrubs his face with his hand and then leans against the door. “He didn’t want to blow things up with you if there wasn’t a reason, you know?”

  “How long have you known he might have … Aspen might be having his baby?" I ask. “Since that night you brought Chewie over and lectured me on the ride home?”

  He nods. “I couldn’t tell you. You know it.”

  “He lied to me,” I whisper and Logan immediately shakes his head.

  “He didn’t lie. He just excluded this information, because it would do nothing but hurt you,” Logan argues back firmly. “Terra, how Jake handled this, keeping it quiet, isn’t any different from how the family handled my problems. No different from what I did to him. What we all did.”

  “I can’t be here. I want to go home.”

  “Mom and Dad’s?”

  “My place. My kidney is fine. It’s my heart that’s sick now, and Mom and Dad can’t help heal that,” I reply and wipe at a tear that wants to fall. I’m not sad. I’m more frustrated and humiliated and just a whole bunch of emotions I need to sort out. “Can you drive me?”

  “I have the ambulance and Lester waiting in the parking lot. It’s against procedure,” Logan explains, but he must see the desperation on my face because he nods. “Okay. Just this once.”

  I walk toward the door and he opens it and follows me out. We leave through the back door and as soon as we reach the parking lot, a car is pulling into the lot. Tom’s Range Rover. Oh my God, this day can bite me. He pulls up right beside us, rolls down the passenger window, and smiles. “Hey you! So great to see you up and around. I called your mom and dad’s place a few times to check on you. Did they tell you?”

  “Hawkins! We got a call!” Logan’s partner hollers with his head out the window as he starts the ambulance.

  Logan’s eyes grow wide and fill with regret. “I’m sorry, Ter.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Go! Be safe,” I say and turn back to Tom. “Can you give me a ride home? I don’t have my car.”

  “Of course, T,” he unlocks his doors and I climb in.

  As we’re driving away from the restaurant, Jake’s Jeep passes us. I turn and look the other way, but I’m sure he sees me.

  22

  Terra

  “Hey wasn’t that your donor guy?” Tom says a
nd starts to hit the brakes.

  “Do not stop driving. Please,” I beg and wipe another tear away. Tom’s whole face twists with confusion but he nods and does what I ask, thankfully.

  Tom asks me a bunch of inane questions as we drive about my operation and my recovery, and I answer them like a robot. My eyes never leave the familiar scenery blurring by outside the passenger window. When he finally pulls into the parking lot of my building, I unbuckle my seatbelt and reach for the handle. “Thank you.”

  “Wait! That’s it?” Tom asks, baffled. “Can I at least help you up the stairs? Maybe come in and talk?”

  “Honestly, Tom, I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.” How he seems startled by this is beyond me. “You weren’t there for me when I needed you.”

  Tom's dirty blond eyebrows knit and his mouth tips downward in a frown. “Terra, I couldn’t give you a kidney but I paid your bills. Doesn’t that earn me a second chance? I still care. I always cared.”

  “Not enough,” I reply and run my hands into my hair. I close my eyes.

  “Tom, you never had to give me a kidney, you just had to make me feel like I wasn’t a burden. But you couldn’t do that and honestly, I shouldn’t have been settling for just that anyway.”

  “Lupus is a hard disease to wrap your head around if you don’t have it,” Tom argues back defensively. “You seemed so normal, and then boom. Suddenly, you weren’t.”

  “I was never normal,” I reply and sigh. “But I deserved someone who could grasp that and who never made me feel like you did. I was settling with you, and I’m not doing it again.”

  “Really? So that’s it?” Tom looks genuinely hurt, and I feel a flutter of guilt but I know it’s misplaced. “You can’t cut me any slack? Your deductible was almost eight thousand bucks, Terra. You’d rather be alone than with a guy who helps you out with that?”

  “I’m not alone,” I reply and swing open the door. “I have someone I love who I think loves me. He’s just … I just…”

  “Sure, now that you have a good kidney again, I’m sure it’s easy for a guy to date you now,” Tom snaps. “We never would have had problems if you hadn’t gotten sick.”

  “I was always sick, you fucking twat waffle,” I hiss, finally done with any crumb of civility I was holding onto. “Bye, Tom. Don’t ever contact me again.”

  I jump out and walk away, never looking back.

  23

  Jake

  I watch him walk right by me for the fourth time tonight without even acknowledging my existence. Keribo and Murphy, who had gone on a Dunkin’ run with him, both greet me as they walk by. Logan, nothing. I’m not the adult I thought I was. This hurts exactly like I thought it would when I was seventeen and scared I’d lose him if I went for their sister. The difference is now I’m angry.

  I understand why Lucy looked at me with disappointment yesterday when I walked into the Shack. I know why she wouldn’t talk to me and just shook her head. I understand why Finn told me, “Just fuck off for a minute. I’m kinda pissed at you.” I know why Declan asked me to leave and Nova didn’t stop him. Terra was publicly humiliated because I didn’t tell her the truth. But Logan knows why. He knows what a spot I was in. He understands how I was trying to respect Aspen’s privacy and wishes, how I’d planned on telling Terra as soon as I found out if it was mine. He fucking knew.

  And he didn’t stand up for me? And he’s shunning me?

  The three of them are halfway up the stairs that lead to the private quarters when I stand up and turn to face him. “You know what Hawkins? Fuck you.”

  All three of my co-workers, including Logan, freeze and slowly turn back to face me. I may not be the future captain of this place, but I am a lieutenant, and that is not how I should be talking to any of them. But that broken, little, teenage boy I’ve put on a shelf like an artifact in a museum is back in action, and I can’t seem to help it.

  “You two should talk this out,” Murphy says. She’s always been one hell of a smart woman and tells it like it is. If I’d been promoted, I would have recommended her for my lieutenant’s position. “I don’t know exactly what the issue is, but the man just gave your sister an organ, so I’m Team Jake.”

  She grabs Keribo by his arm and drags him away, leaving Logan standing alone on the stairs. “You’re really pissed at me?”

  “Yeah I am,” I say, my body tense with rage. “You knew my plan. You know the position I’ve been in. And you just let everyone throw me away like I planned this? Like I wanted her to find out this way?”

  “That’s not why I’m not talking to you, Maverick,” Logan replies calmly. “I’m pissed off at you because it’s been twenty-four hours since Terra found out and you haven’t talked to her. At all.”

  “Because she took off with Tom,” I reply and just saying his name makes acid churn in my gut. “She doesn’t want an explanation or she would have stayed to hear me out.”

  “Of course she fucking does,” Logan barks back at me as he storms down the stairs to the counter I’m stuck at for another two weeks of shifts. “She’s Terra. Stubborn as a mule. Completely able to carry the weight of the heaviest emotional baggage in the world unless it’s her own. Then she cowers and turtles and lets it crush her to smithereens.”

  He’s right. I know this. I’ve watched her do it time and time again with everything from her lupus diagnosis to the way she cut me off entirely for years after that stupid closet non-kiss. “Tom wants her back.”

  “Tom rejected her in her time of need.”

  “People make mistakes. I have, obviously. If she can’t forgive him, why should she forgive me?” I ask. “I mean seriously, she hates Aspen so much and she thinks that she’s going to be in my life forever now, bonded by a baby.”

  “I heard the baby is okay. Abbott told Declan, but is it yours?” Logan asks.

  “No. It’s not, but I still think it would be easier to forgive Tom, if she was going to forgive either of us, and she’d get more out of forgiving him,” I explain what has been rolling around in my head for the last twenty-four completely sleepless hours. I drop back into the chair behind the desk, defeated. “He’s got a good education, a stable job, and he’s from a great family.”

  “Hey asshole, you’re from a great family too. Ours.” Logan glares at me with more anger than I’ve seen on his face in a decade. And he always looks angry. “The fucking sick joke of this whole situation is you use every excuse to reject her because you don’t think you’re good enough for her, and all this time she has never felt like she was enough for you. God, you two are a fucking disaster.”

  Logan shakes his head, his brown hair rustling so he reaches up and shoves it back off his forehead. He starts for the stairs again as the door to the firehouse opens. It’s almost seven-thirty in the evening. The weather outside is horrendously dark and windy, and so chilly the rain they are predicting may actually turn out to be snow. We don’t usually get walk-ins after sunset, so it pulls both our attention.

  Charlie Hawkins is standing there in his flannel jacket and jeans and work boots. Hands shoved in his pockets and shoulders hunched. His favorite Boston Eagles baseball cap covering his salt and pepper hair. His expression is grim. More so than normal and my heart skips a beat. “Is it Terra? Is she okay?’

  “Is it Ma?” Logan panics.

  Charlie shakes his head and his expression lifts just a little. “Boy, you two sure know how to go from zero to catastrophe in record time. Everyone is fine. I’m here to chat with one of my sons.”

  He walks right over to stand at the desk and then he says. “The unofficial one. Jake.”

  Logan blinks. The words leave me feeling confused, but my heart is swelling just the same. Charlie gives me a smile. “See you later Logan. Oh and your child, the one with fur, had an accident on your ma’s hand woven rug. She is not impressed.”

  “I’ll get Finn to watch him next shift. And I’ll pay for cleaning,” Logan says with a sheepish smile. “See you later, Dad.”r />
  He disappears up the stairs. Charlie watches silently until he is out of sight and then he turns to me. His smile from earlier is gone, but he doesn’t look mad. “Look, kid. You fucked up.”

  “I know.”

  He puts both elbows on the counter and marries his hands. They’re thick, wide, rough hands made up mostly of nicks, scars and callouses. Charlie Hawkins has worked hard his whole life using those hands, and he wouldn’t want it any other way. “We all still love you. You need to know that. Even Lucy, who is letting her anger get the best of her right now. She still loves you. And not just for what you did for Terra with the whole donation thing. We loved you long before that, son, and we’ll love you long after no matter how this plays out.”

  This whole conversation will be really comforting sometime in the very near future, but right now it’s just surreal and I can’t seem to grasp it’s even happening. Charlie isn’t a talker. He’s a jokester on a good day, a grunter on a bad one, and a stoic observer on the average ones. This … I have never ever seen this. Not when Logan ended up in rehab. Not when Declan tried to kill himself. Not when Terra was diagnosed with lupus. Never. He is generally the strong, silent man who gets things done. He’s booked plane tickets to rehab, he’ll spend seventy-two hours next to a hospital bed. He’ll remortgage his life’s work to get any one of his loved ones out of trouble, but he doesn’t do this. Talk. Share feelings.

  “Do you have feelings for Aspen again? Still?”

  “No. She’s a friend and that’s it. What happened was…”

  He untangles his hand and holds one up to stop me from continuing. “I don’t need to know any details. I just know that I’ve watched Terra push you away for what feels like eons, and I’ve watched you let her. I recognized it because Lucy did the same thing to me back in the day.”

  “Really?” I almost smile. “But you two have been together forever.”

  “Married when she was twenty-five and I was twenty-four,” Charlie says and then he grins. Big, bold and sheepish. “I would have married her right after high school if she would have just dated me.”