Walk Me Home

by Liza Kendall

  “Sit down, Jake,” Dave said, a little too gently.

  So he did, a nameless dread rising in him.

  “It hasn’t escaped our notice that you have, uh . . . feelings . . . for Charlie.”

  Heat suffused Jake’s face, and his palms instantly became damp. Prickles of sweat started in his armpits, too.

  “Or that she has them for you.”

  Okay, this was humiliating, but not a crime. Maybe Dave or Maria had seen him and Charlie making out behind the rosebushes yesterday. They’d just—

  “That’s fine, son, just fine. But you’re both at an age where, given the circumstances, it’s just, uh, inappropriate for you both to be living under the same roof.”

  Oh God. This was beyond awful. His armpits were now full of glue. Sweat trickled from Jake’s nape down to his lower back, pooling there, soaking into his T-shirt. “I haven’t—uh, we haven’t—”

  Okay, so he’d thought about it. More than once. Even often. But, no, he’d never pressured Charlie . . .

  Dave Nash closed his eyes and flapped a hand.

  “I mean, it’s not a problem!” Jake blurted.

  Maria gazed at him in her kindly but firm way, her expression soft and at the same time steely. “It is a problem, honey. And that’s normal. But what’s not normal is . . .” She paused and looked to Dave, who took up her slack.

  “For you two to live in the same house.”

  He stared at them, these two stand-in parents whom he’d grown to love. “So—what is this?” Jake said. “You’re firing me from your family?”

  Maria made a sound of pure distress and got up as if to hug him.

  Jake jumped out of his chair and backed away. A lump had grown in his throat, one that made it impossible to swallow. “Please . . .” His voice cracked, and he hated himself for it. “Please don’t do this. When my parents died, you said your house was mine now, that I would always be welcome. You said I was family.”

  But Dave and Maria just looked at each other and then down at the floor.

  They were family. Not Jake. Jake was once and always a Braddock, not a Nash. And there wasn’t any Braddock family anymore. The familiar swell of loneliness that always seemed just a heartbeat away nearly swamped him now. There must be something he could say . . .

  “I promise—” Jake began.

  “Don’t make promises that you can’t keep, son,” said Dave.

  The hurt got the better of him then. “Don’t call me ‘son’ if you don’t mean it!” Jake spun around on his heel and ran for the door.

  “I do mean it!” Dave called after him. “Please try to understand the awkwardness of our position here . . .”

  But nothing was more awkward than being a teenager in love for the first time.

  Or being a teenager marked “Return to Sender.”

  * * *

  Jake had a sudden urge to find the creep investigator and choke the life out of him for seeing his sixteen-year-old weaknesses and for using them to build a completely fictional case against him. Employing sense to build nonsense.

  Charlie’s voice brought him back to the present. “There may have been no conclusive evidence in the investigation, but the idea was enough. A psychologist told Mom and Dad to keep Brandon and me away from you, to not see you again, so that we could recover from the trauma.”

  She stopped talking, thank God. They sat there in Progress without speaking.

  “My God,” Jake murmured, still reeling. He felt empty, crumpled, turned inside out. “I’m sorry I ever asked.”

  “Jake,” Charlie said softly. She put a hand on his knee. “I didn’t believe those jerks—the insurance guy or the shrink who agreed it was possible.”

  He drew in a couple of shaky breaths. “Yeah, I think you did.”

  “No!” She slid sideways across the old bench seat and gripped his arm. “I didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to me, then? Why, when I came to Dallas, did you shut the door in my face?” The last part came out as a bellow; he couldn’t help himself.

  Charlie’s tears had dried up, but her skin was pale in the moonlight, and her blue eyes were haunted. “Because I had to make a choice: my own family or you. And Brandon had just threatened to kill himself.”

  Kill himself? Brandon?

  Her words sucked the oxygen out of him, out of the argument, out of the truck. “Oh, man. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” Jake leaned his forehead against the steering wheel.

  “Of course not. How could you have known?”

  “Why? Why would he do that?” But Jake knew. He knew.

  “Everyone was asking him questions, same as you, about that campfire. I guess he felt responsible, somehow, for Grandma’s death. And he’d lost you, too.”

  Jake’s heart clenched with pity. “That’s awful, and it’s untrue. George wrote up the report,” he said, carefully editing his words. The Nashes had been through enough. They didn’t need to know the whole truth. Including Charlie. “He’s told me to my face that it was just an accident. An accident that stole away a really wonderful lady. I wish I could turn back time and run a little faster. I’d do anything to have saved your grandma, Charlie.”

  Jake dashed sudden tears away from his eyes.

  “You didn’t fail Grandma Babe . . . You did the best you could for her.” She put her arms around him and laid her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

  He slid his arms around her, too, and for a moment he rested his chin on top of her head. It was the best feeling in the entire world, holding Charlie in his arms like old times. “I swear to you by all that’s holy, Charlie, that I had nothing to do with the fire,” Jake whispered.

  “I know that,” Charlie told him. “I know it deep in my bones. I always have.”

  As he absorbed her words, a part of him that had been coiled tight for twelve years suddenly relaxed, leaving him weak inside.

  He savored the warm, fragrant feel of her in his arms and found her lips with his own. Hello, Goodbye Girl. God, you taste good. His whole body hummed, and he wanted more of her. He deepened the kiss, pulling her tighter, savoring the curves of her body.

  “Jake,” she whispered, her breathing quick and shallow.

  “Shh.” He slid his hands into places he knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help himself. Warm handfuls of Charlie . . .

  “Jake!”

  He groaned and pulled her bodily into his lap. He wanted her naked in the worst way.

  And of course that was when the firehouse alarm went off, at lust-destroying decibels.

  That was when the floodlights came on and the garage door went up, exposing Big Red in all its glory. That was when Old George came running out first, a priceless expression crossing his face when he saw them.

  “Well, that’s progress,” he called, in a tone as dry as dust. “But we got a night drill for a disaster-preparedness scenario, remember? Out near the Lundgren property. You coming or what?”

  Jake looked down at the beautiful woman in his arms and sighed.

  Chapter 15

  Eleven hours later, Jake and the boys stumbled into Sunny’s Side Up Diner. They were dog-tired, dirty, and sweat-encrusted. And they all wanted pie for breakfast. There was nothing better after an all-nighter than coffee and a huge slice of Sunny’s caramel-apple-cinnamon pie.

  Coach Adams was reading the paper at the counter; he raised his coffee mug to them. “Boys.”

  “Coach. How ya doin’?” said Jake.

  “Be doing better if Ace would get serious,” Coach mumbled, his mouth downturned, his eyes like raisins in his beefy face.

  “Yeah, well . . .” Jake didn’t know what to say.

  He lifted a hand in greeting to his former PT client Jorge Ramos, who had almost fully recovered from a stroke, with Jake’s help. Jorge, on his cell phone with his mouth
full, winked and waved a triangle of toast at him.

  Jake turned, then pulled up short at the sight of his brother Deck sitting alone at a table in back, his big hands wrapped around a steaming mug as if it were his only friend in the world. That hit Jake in the gut.

  Old George saw Declan, too, and gave Jake a nudge toward his brother that he didn’t need. But he nodded anyway and peeled off to go sit with him. The others got a table in the front window.

  “Hey, man,” Jake said, bumping fists with Deck. “What brings you to town so early?”

  “I ran out of toast to burn. And I can never get my eggs right. My sunny side up turns into runny side up.”

  “You can run a ranch, but you still can’t conquer a couple of eggs?”

  Deck gave him a look. “Don’t you smell nice. Long night?”

  “Yeah. It started with Lila dancing on a table at Schweitz’s and then got better with a nighttime drill out near the Lundgrens’ property. Couldn’t let the mythological nuke get their hogs. That’d be way too much bacon for one town.”

  Declan smiled and took a sip of his coffee. “So you had to put Lila to bed?”

  “You don’t sound surprised.”

  “Sunny heard at least one version of the story from her neighbor, Otto. He said you and Charlie took her home.”

  A moment of silence ensued. Deck waited him out.

  “Yeah . . . so. I’ve been patching things up with Charlie,” Jake said, almost testing out the words for himself.

  Declan’s hands seemed to tighten on the coffee mug in front of him. After another long moment he said, “Give you some peace?”

  “Yeah.” Well, there was peace, and then there was the feel of Charlie’s mouth. There was the fact that it was complicated . . . Even if they managed to forget the past, she didn’t even live in Silverlake anymore.

  “Works for me, then,” Deck said.

  “I wasn’t sure what you’d think about it.” Jake greeted Sunny as she delivered a huge plate of breakfast to Deck with a slightly lovesick smile. She was easily two decades older than Declan, but she was undeniably attractive, the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes enhancing her smile. Sunny had gotten her nickname because of her buoyant personality. Nothing, it seemed, could get her down.

  Jake looked at what she’d brought his brother. Three eggs, perfectly sunny-side up. A mountain of golden hash browns. Three slices of crispy-browned bacon. Forget about pie. “I’ll have the same, please,” he said.

  “You got it, sugar.” With a flash of her dimples, Sunny headed back to her kitchen.

  Declan dug in. “Does it matter what I think?”

  Jake fiddled with the silverware in front of him.

  His brother inhaled the mountain of hash browns soaked in egg yolk. He chewed and swallowed. “I’ve never had . . . the kind of . . . love”—Declan said the word as if it tasted funny—“for anyone that you had for her, and I don’t even know that I’d know to grab for it if I saw there was a chance. But you’re not me.” He smiled that rare smile of his. “You asking for some sort of blessing?”

  Jake laughed, almost choking up a little at Declan’s open expression. “What? Why would I be doing that?”

  “No reason,” Declan said, returning to his breakfast with a smile still playing on his lips. “No reason at all.”

  The two men ate in silence for a while. For the first time since Ace and Everett had put Silverlake in their rearview mirrors and Declan’s heart had shut down, it seemed like there was a chance the word brother could become more than just a word again.

  * * *

  Charlie, Mia, Amelie, and a sheepish Lila all stood in Kristina’s gleaming stainless-steel baker’s kitchen at Piece A Cake. The kitchen was a professional space, undecorated, in sharp contrast to the explosion of color that was the bakery/café.

  “Welcome to the cake rejects party!” Kristina announced. “By the way, this is against all health-code regulations. We should do this out in the café, but I don’t want my other customers overhearing any choice words about Bridezilla.”

  “What?” Amelie pretended to be shocked. “None of us have anything bad to say about that darling girl. She’s my favorite customer.” She coughed. “Luckily, we’re almost through with her, so I brought champagne to share while we sample her ten rejected cakes.”

  “Eleven,” Kristina said evenly. Charlie had never heard that edge in her voice before now.

  “Right. Eleven. Which one do we start with?”

  “Anything with chocolate?” Mia asked, hope on her face.

  “Anything with raspberry?” Charlie chimed in.

  “Yes and yes.” Kristina opened her cavernous industrial-sized refrigerator and slid out two trays of small cakes, beautifully frosted—most in white or pale cream ganache. Each was missing a thin slice. A tiny bride stood on one, a groom on another. Yet another cake sported a life-sized engagement ring. Next to it was one with a wedding ring. An adorable pink purse adorned the next, and so on.

  “Kristina, they’re stunning.”

  “Gorgeous!”

  “Way too pretty to eat.”

  “How can you stand to cut them?”

  “Like this!” Kristina said, and hacked through the middle of the tiny bride’s cake with a wicked-looking knife. Tiny Bride lost part of her veil and her shoulder. “Oooh. That makes me feel so much better.”

  Everyone laughed as Kristina slaughtered more cakes and put pieces on paper plates.

  “So if she rejected eleven cakes, which one did she finally decide on?” Charlie asked.

  Kristina took a deep breath. “Apricot Champagne. The first one I suggested, incidentally.” She took another deep breath, then exhaled it slowly, as if cleansing herself of evil. “So. We’ll start with Vanilla Hazelnut, Luscious Lemon, and—”

  But the girls had already dug in.

  “Ohhhh!”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Thith ith unbelievable, Kristina!”

  “Better than sex.”

  “If I die right now, I’ll die happy . . .”

  Kristina tried to resist preening but failed.

  Charlie firmly told herself to stop thinking about calories and tried another cake. It was a velvety, flavorful surprise on her tongue, but she couldn’t identify the ingredients. “Wow, what is this one?”

  “Bridezilla’s third idea: Anise Pear. Glad you like it. Not a fan of anise, myself. But as it turns out, neither is she!”

  “She’s crazy,” Charlie declared, and took another large bite.

  “I think it’s good. I have no complaints.” Amelie popped open the champagne.

  “No alcohol for me,” Mia said. “I go back on duty in an hour. But I’ll have some of the Chocolate Raspberry.”

  “Patience,” Kristina told her. “I’m getting to it. But we have six more in line before it.”

  “I’ll be visiting Granddad while you’re on shift,” Charlie told Mia, trying not to think about the council meeting on Friday morning. Her dread of it only grew. “How was he last night? I meant to call, but got . . .” She cast a sidelong glance at Lila, who still looked a bit green. “Distracted.”

  “He’s doing pretty well. He keeps saying he’s going to make the wedding on Saturday, and he’s stubborn. We won’t let him out before then, but . . . he just might.”

  “You guys do a fantastic—and patient—job of looking after him. I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” Charlie said.

  “Hair of the dog, Lila?” Mia asked, offering Lila a glass of champagne.

  Lila shook her head. “That expression alone makes me want to hurl.”

  “Does that mean you don’t want any cake?” Kristina asked.

  “How does everybody know about this already?” Lila exclaimed.

  “Seriously?” Amelie grinned. “You did dance on a table—and the ma
in bar—at Schweitz’s. There were people in there. And people walking by outside. And this is a small town.”

  “Heard Tommy proposed to you,” Mia said with a laugh. “And that Otto really does think you’re a goddess—as long as you don’t sing.”

  “Hey!” Lila protested. “I was actively recruited for choir.”

  “To play the triangle,” Charlie reminded her dryly.

  “Cake?” Kristina asked. “If we keep your mouth full, you can’t rediscover your inner Leppard.”

  There was more laughter as Lila accepted a loaded plate. “That was quite a night,” Lila said, turning to Charlie with a look on her face suggesting she was probing her memory for all the details. “I dreamed you hooked up with my brother.”

  Four additional pairs of eyes swiveled to Charlie’s face.

  “I dreamed you almost got X-rated with a saltshaker at Schweitz’s,” Charlie said. “Only it wasn’t a dream.”

  “I did not! I only used it as a microphone.”

  “Yeah, until it spilled into your mouth.”

  Giggles echoed throughout the kitchen, reverberating off all the stainless steel.

  “Isn’t it kind of weird to dream about your brother hooking up?” Mia asked.

  “Yes,” Lila said. “Yes, it is. So maybe that wasn’t a dream, either.”

  Four pairs of eyes ping-ponged back to Charlie’s face. “Ugh. I wouldn’t want to dream about my brother hooking up,” Charlie mumbled.

  “I’d like to dream about your brother hooking up,” Amelie said. “Brandon is hot.” She cleared her throat in the awkward pause. “What? I saw a picture.”

  “If you saw a picture of him, he was a lot younger then,” Charlie said, shifting uncomfortably in her chair. “He hasn’t been back in a while.”

  Another pause ensued.

  “Next up is a groom’s cake: Chocolate with Malt-Ball Frosting,” Kristina said, slamming a new cake with one slice removed down on the table. “Not my idea.”