Always & Forever: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love Collection, Books 1 - 4)

by Brenna Jacobs

  Avery dropped onto a barstool behind her. It was a basket of all of her favorite things. Nestled into the middle of the basket was an envelope, Avery’s name written across the front. She sighed and reached for it, laying it flat on the counter beside her. Before she opened it, she poured herself a mug of coffee and opened up the box of donuts. Cinnamon with a vanilla drizzle. Her favorite. Except, she’d never told David her favorite flavor. Had he guessed that part?

  Adequately fortified with caffeine and sugar, Avery finally opened the letter.

  Dear Avery,

  I wish that I could apologize to you face to face. Hopefully sometime soon, I’ll do just that. But since I’m notoriously terrible at getting my words right, I hope you’ll accept this letter as a first step. I’m not sure how I miscalculated so badly when it came to handling the situation with Tucker. The only thing I can figure is that I was blinded by jealousy that he was the one dating you, and furious that he would use you like he did. When he threatened my position at work, I lost touch with reality, an evidence of my continued insecurity in my profession. I am too young. Too logical. Too clinical to be a good doctor. These are the worries that still haunt me. Coming here, accepting this job at such a renowned hospital felt like a reach and a dream and Tucker played right into my fears that I might lose it. That I don’t deserve it after all. Those fears clouded my judgement and influenced my actions. I’m so sorry. I should have worried less about myself, and more about you. I did not think about how my interference might make you feel. I’m sorry I embarrassed you. I’m sorry I didn’t respect you enough to tell you right from the start that I knew about Tucker’s fiancée. I realize it might take a long time for me to earn your trust again, but I hope you’ll give me another chance to be your friend.

  I’ve probably done enough to scare you off as it is, I can’t write this much already without telling you how I feel about you. I’m in love with you, Avery. I almost decided not to tell you. My pride didn’t want you to know of my feelings unless I was certain you felt the same way. But I figure it can only help my case when it comes to justifying what I’ve done. It has to be better to just own it, openly, honestly, without posturing. Of course, I’m also motivated by a likely vain and ridiculous hope that you might consider the possibility of loving me back. Someday, at least? I don’t deserve you; I know that much. But I feel the feelings just the same and believe you deserve nothing but the truth from me after all I’ve put you through.

  From the first oyster you made me eat, I’ve loved you. You mesmerize me. You fill me up in ways I’ve never imagined possible. You inspire me. You make me laugh. You make me want to be better at everything I do.

  I’m so sorry I hurt you.

  I’m sorry I can’t say these words in person.

  I love you.

  Yours, David

  Avery read the letter through once, and then again.

  She finished her donut, ate a second one, and then ripped open the to-go box of hushpuppies and ate those as well. Nothing said comfort like fried cornbread, and she needed comfort. When the hushpuppies were gone, she read the letter one more time.

  It wasn’t that she was mad he’d said so much. It was maybe the most eloquent letter she’d ever read. For all of his talk of being a terrible communicator, his letter was Jane Austen novel-worthy. But what was she supposed to do with all those feelings he’d shared? How was she supposed to respond? To react? She didn’t love him back. She knew that much. She liked him. She’d thought about the possibility of dating him, but how do you date someone when you know from date one that they’re already in love with you? Talk about pressure.

  Avery reached into the basket and pulled out an orange, ripping into the peel. It was the middle of freaking July. How had David even found beautiful perfect navel oranges in the middle of the summer? And in the middle of the night? It was almost as impossible as fresh hushpuppies.

  Avery ate the orange, which tasted perfect, of course, and paced around her kitchen. A walk on the beach might help clear her head, but if she went outside, she might run into David. And she still had no idea what to say to him. So she paced around her kitchen some more, periodically glancing out her window toward his house to see if he was still at home. A few more laps and she couldn’t stand to be indoors any longer, so she headed to the back door. It wasn’t David’s beach. She had just as much right to walk on it as he did. If she happened to see him, she’d just keep on walking.

  She pushed through her back door, nearly running headlong into Tucker who stood on her screened-in porch.

  She jumped and stepped backward, a hand flying to her heart. “Geez, you scared me half to death. What are you doing here?”

  “Sorry,” Tucker said. He sounded out of breath and looked awful. He still wore the clothes he’d had on the night before, his shirt untucked and sweat stained, and his eyes were bloodshot. “I parked down at the IOP county park and walked.”

  Avery narrowed her eyes. It was close to three miles to Isle of Palms. “Why? Is Jessica tracking your car?”

  “My phone, actually,” Tucker said. “I left it in the car.”

  Avery rolled her eyes and pushed past him. “Please leave, Tucker. I don’t want to be a part of this.”

  “I know, I know. I just came to apologize.”

  She turned around. “For what? For using me? For making me think you actually wanted to get back together? For lying to me over and over again? Fine. You’ve apologized. Now get off my property. I never want to see you again.”

  “Avery, come on. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “But you did. And I was an idiot to let it happen. Lesson learned. When all of your friends say you’re dating a jerk, it’s probably best to listen.”

  Tucker’s eyes narrowed. “Did David say I was a jerk?”

  Avery turned on Tucker. “Don’t even try to bring my friends into this. You are a jerk. Your behavior more than justifies anything that any of my friends might have said about you.”

  Tucker was silent a moment, his hands propped on his hips. “He told you, didn’t he? He followed me once before. He must have done it again last night and then called you and told you I was at the movie theater.” Tucker swore. “I knew that guy would rat me out.”

  “Stop it, Tucker. David doesn’t have anything to do with this. I was at the movie theater and I saw you. That’s all there is to it.”

  Tucker shot her a look. “Alone? In Mt. Pleasant? I know you well enough to know you’d never go see a movie alone.”

  “You don’t know me at all, Tucker,” Avery said. “Not anymore.”

  Tucker turned and looked toward David’s house. “Is he at home right now? I feel like punching somebody’s nose in. His will do just fine.”

  “Tucker, stop. I mean it. This isn’t a mess David made. This is a mess you made. And if you think I’m going to stand by and let you sling mud at him or wreck his career over something you did? You’re wrong.”

  “So he did tell you,” Tucker said. “You wouldn’t know I’d threatened his job unless he did.”

  Avery’s stomach sank, realizing too late that she had implicated David by what she had said. She had to think fast.

  “Fine,” she said, her tone even. “Go ahead. Attack David. Ruin his career, get him fired from the hospital, whatever you want. Then I’ll go straight to the Charleston Chronicle. I’ll give them an exclusive on the aspiring young attorney whose political hopes were dashed when he got caught with his ex-girlfriend only weeks before his wedding. I know how much you protect your social media image, Tucker. Don’t think for a second I won’t go online and do everything I can to tear it all down. I wonder if there are other women who might come forward. You know how it often goes. One person has the courage to speak up, and then the others decide the hush money they’ve been paid maybe wasn’t worth it, after all. The truth is more important in the end, isn’t it?”

  Tucker’s jaw tightened. “You wouldn’t do that to me.”

  Avery scoffed. �
��Go home, Tucker. Please. Just go live your life and let me live mine.”

  An hour later, after a long shower and two more donuts, Avery pulled out her phone and texted David.

  Did you ever follow Tucker home from work?

  Yes, David replied, almost instantly. A few times. But I never did anything else. I realized I was being impulsive and reckless and I needed to leave things alone and try to move on.

  Avery stared at his text. He’d tried to move on. Which is why he’d asked her to set him up with Shelley. And probably why he was on a date with the other girl, as well. The poor girl who had witnessed the whole movie theater debacle.

  When Avery had asked Shelley about her date with David, Shelley’s response had been straightforward and short. “He was nice, Avery, but he’s clearly in love with you. The whole date, all he did was talk about you.”

  Avery sighed. It was too much. His feelings were too much. That he had gone to such lengths, that he felt so intensely . . . it was more than she could process. She typed out a response, reading it over and over before finally sending.

  Thank you for the basket. I understand why you did what you did, but I need some time to process and think. Don’t text me for a while, okay?

  Chapter 18

  David did his best to give Avery the space she needed. At first it was a daily battle not to give into the doubt and regret that threatened to overwhelm him whenever he thought about her. Regret that he’d behaved so poorly in the first place. Doubts over whether or not he’d told her too much. But then days turned to weeks and the ache in his chest subsided to more of a dull pain, so dull he could almost forget about it if he stayed busy enough.

  The easiest way to stay busy was to pour himself into his work. He practically lived at the hospital. He picked up extra shifts whenever he could, often opting to sleep in the on-call room rather than drive home. It was easier that way. Easier to keep working. Easier not to see Avery at all.

  “Hey,” Lucy said as she dropped into a chair across from him in the doctor’s lounge. “How are you holding up?”

  “Good. Great. Never been better.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “Sure. I buy that.”

  “Really. I’m fine,” David insisted. And he meant it. He’d started to appreciate the new routine of his days.

  “David, you’re always here, do you realize that? Have you even worn anything besides scrubs in the past month? Go home! Take a walk on the beach. Go see a movie. Do something besides work.”

  “Scrubs are really comfortable, you know,” David said, though he did wonder how long it had been since he’d worn real pants.

  “Is there seriously no hope for you?”

  David only shrugged.

  “She hasn’t reached out at all, has she?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  Lucy sighed. “I’m sorry, David.” Their phones went off at the same time with the familiar chime of the hospital’s paging system. “An accident,” Lucy said out loud, as David read the same information she did. “Multiple victims, on their way here. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 19

  Early Tuesday morning, Avery walked along the beach, pulling her sweater tighter around her. The September air wasn’t quite cold, but there was a bite to the early-morning breeze that was new. She welcomed it. It had begun to feel as though summer might never end.

  Avery paused when she saw David sitting a few paces away in the sand. He wore the scrubs she’d grown so used to seeing him in and looked as though he’d been sitting there quite a while.

  Avery paused a few steps away. “David?”

  He looked up, and Avery’s heart lurched in her chest. He looked exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot and surrounded by dark circles, and he wore several days’ worth of beard growth.

  “Are you okay?”

  He didn’t say anything, just turned his gaze back to the water. Something was wrong. She sensed it in the air around him, could see it in the set of his shoulders and the way his head hung forward.

  Even though she hadn’t talked to him in weeks, she moved to his side and sat down, leaning her shoulder lightly against his. She didn’t know what had happened, something at work, probably, but her gut told her he might benefit from a little bit of human company. She didn’t say anything—what could she possibly say?—instead hoping her presence might be comfort enough.

  In truth, she wished she could talk to David. She’d done more than her fair share of thinking about him over the past month. Not at first. At first, she’d spent a solid two weeks nursing her bruised ego and feeling nothing but anger. At Tucker, at David, at everybody. But as her anger started to fade, she’d realized how much she missed having David to talk to. More and more frequently, she thought about the times they’d spent together, and all the ways he’d made her smile and laugh. She read the letter he’d given her so many times, she could almost quote the thing word for word.

  Figuring out what to say to him was a different thing altogether. She’d picked up her phone to text him a dozen different times but could never get anything to sound right. Hey. Thanks for loving me. I think you’re cool. Want to come over for pizza? The longer she waited, the harder it felt to reach out. What if she’d waited too long? What if his feelings had started to change?

  David cleared his throat beside her, pulling Avery fully into the present.

  “I, uh . . .” David sniffed and cleared his throat again. “I lost a patient last night,” he finally managed, his gaze still trained on the horizon.

  Avery didn’t say anything, instead lifting a hand to his arm, giving it a gentle squeeze.

  He shook his head. “You try really hard to keep things clinical, to keep your emotions out of it. But sometimes, it . . .”

  “Sometimes it really sucks?” Avery said.

  “Sometimes it really sucks,” he repeated.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Avery asked. She wasn’t sure she was ready to hear it if he did. She could only imagine the kinds of things he dealt with at work every day. But she was determined to be what he needed. If that meant listening to hard stories, she’d listen all day.

  He closed his hand over hers and squeezed her fingers. “I don’t, really. I’ve been thinking about it all night and now I think I need to let it go. But thank you for being here.”

  “You’ve been out here all night?” Avery said, wishing there was something, anything she could do to make him feel better.

  “Mostly,” he said.

  Avery leaned her head against his shoulder and offered up a silent prayer of gratitude for people like David who sacrificed so much to take care of other people.

  They sat together in silence another few minutes, watching the birds as they swooped up and down over the water.

  “I don’t want to wait anymore, Avery,” David finally said, giving her hand another quick squeeze.

  She sat up and looked at David, meeting his steady gaze. There was a certainty in his eye that surprised her. “You don’t want to wait for what?” she asked.

  Before she even realized what was happening, David’s hand was on her face and he was kissing her, his lips warm and soft against hers. Surprise kept her from responding at first, but then something inside her ignited and she kissed him back, her hands sliding over the planes of his chest, then moving up and over his shoulders. Clearly encouraged by her response, David’s kisses turned from gentle and searching to hungry and intense. He wanted her and Avery realized with desperate certainty, she wanted him, too.

  Finally breaking the kiss, David leaned back just slightly, his hands still cradling her face. “Life is too short, Avery. I can’t wait anymore. You either want me or you don’t.” He kissed her one more time, this one quick and a little more hesitant, more like a question, then pushed himself off of the sand and walked toward home, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

  Avery sat for a long time, long enough to watch the sun rise into the sky, to see the tide roll slowly toward her. She couldn’t stop th
inking about David’s touch against her skin, about the feel of his lips on hers.

  The last person she’d kissed before David was Tucker. She almost felt sick at the thought.

  To think that she could have had David all along. She couldn’t believe how blind she’d been, how hard she must have worked to ignore how perfect David was for her.

  But now she knew. And she had the power to do something about it. Happiness surged in her chest. She had to find him. She had to find him and tell him that between now or never, her answer was irrefutably now.

  Melba was on Avery’s back porch when she made it back to her house. Avery hardly acknowledged her on her way in, leaving Melba to follow her inside, Jasper in tow.

  “What’s got you all worked up this morning?” Melba asked.

  Avery didn’t answer. She was too busy thinking about what to do first. She needed to talk to David, but she probably ought to take a shower before she did. Even though he’d already seen her once that morning, she was suddenly self-conscious and wanted to look her best when she told him she loved him, too.

  Her heart jumped at the thought. She did love him. How had it taken her so long to realize it?

  So, shower. That was the first thing on her list.

  She glanced at the clock. It was just past nine, which meant she was officially late for work. She’d been so caught up with her thoughts out on the beach that she’d completely lost track of time. So that was the first thing on her list. Call in and take a sick day. A twinge of guilt filled her chest, but she shook it away. She never took sick days. And knowing her boss, and the way she fawned over her own marriage and family, she’d likely consider being heart sick a perfectly justifiable reason to stay home.