“Don’t fucking manipulate me, Connor. I’m not going to cave just so you’ll go out with me.”
“See?” he said. “I know where your priorities lie. You want me to stay, but you won’t make a single compromise to make it happen.”
“I’m supposed to be worth staying for,” she said. “And you’re supposed to never renege on a promise.” A tear tracked silently down her cheek.
He sighed. She had him there. “Plans change,” he said. And he didn’t say it meanly, but he could see something inside her flash hot and fast. She wiped the tear furiously away.
“Bullshit,” she hissed. “This is your choice, not something that’s happening to you. But I should have known better than to believe you’d stick around. Ever since you arrived I’ve been waiting for you to leave. Stupid me for starting to think I was wrong.”
“Plans change, people change—of course they do,” Connor shot back. “But it’s like with the restaurant—you want to bottle everything up and stop it from moving, do the same thing we’ve always done. But life doesn’t work that way. I don’t know if you want to keep me here because you love me or keep me here because you’ve gotten used to having the same punching bag around.”
He paced around the boxes, his arms up, the words coming fast. “Or maybe you don’t want me here. Maybe you’d rather have everything be the way it was before I arrived so nobody pushes you, nobody makes you get out of your rut.” He turned and glared at her from across the couch. “You want everything to stay the same, but keeping up with what that means is exhausting. And I can’t do it anymore. I can’t be the person you turn to and then push away. I’d say I need to know where I stand but you’ve already given me the answer. It’s time for me to accept it and move on.”
“You think I want to stay in one place?” she sputtered. “You think I’m stuck, and you’re the hero for packing up without a second thought? Connor, you don’t know a goddamn thing about me, and fucking me a few times doesn’t change that.”
She took a step toward him, and he swore she seemed to grow right in front of his eyes.
“I grew up in foster care, you asshole. My mom died of an overdose, and I bumped around through seven houses from age six to eighteen. It sucked, but that’s not the point. The point is that you should trust me when I say I know a thing or two about moving on. And changing plans. And being let down when people tell you one thing and then act a whole other way.”
It was as though someone had come in and sucked up the air in the room. Connor’s chest was moving, everything seemed like it was working, and yet he couldn’t catch his breath. Something was leaking from inside his chest. He wanted to take it all back, every insensitive, presumptuous comment he might have made over the last three years. Every time he might have assumed, or dismissed, or been anything less than the kind of person he wanted to be.
But a voice hollered inside him, pounding on his ribs, reminding him that it wasn’t his fault—that she’d been through this, or that she was hurting. That she’d spent so long protecting her heart, she’d wound up sealing it closed.
“When I made these plans with Matthew,” he said carefully, “it wasn’t to be another person who leaves you.”
She choked on a bitter laugh. “Sure it was. You promised me you weren’t going anywhere. You didn’t even want to move. And then Abbi came and—” She waved her hand as though that covered it, as though what had happened was Abbi’s fault and not her own. “And now look at you. Can’t skip town fast enough, promises be damned.”
“You’re the one who didn’t want to be in this. You lied to our friends, made me look like a fool, and now you’re turning me into the one who’s making this unravel. I thought things had changed when you spent the night here. I thought I loved you, but I don’t know, Mack.” His hands hung helplessly by his sides, making fists to grasp at nothing. “I don’t know if I can let myself go there. I’m sorry. I really am. But you’re being honest with me, and I’m trying to be honest, too.”
“It’s okay. Don’t feel bad about it.” She shrugged like he’d told her he couldn’t pick up an extra shipment of tomatoes and could they make do without. “I guarantee whatever you’re thinking, I’ve heard it before. People say they love you. They say they’ll take care of you. But they don’t. They send you back. They get sick of you or they already have their own kids.”
She looked around the room, her eyes going soft and unfocused, taking her somewhere else.
“Or you’re too old, you’re not cute anymore, you’ve got too many problems because you don’t immediately hug them and call them Mom and Dad and gush about how grateful you are on your first terrifying night in a new house.”
She shook her head, a wry expression on her face as she gazed across at nothing.
“Or they say they’ll take care of you and then they sneak into your room at night and it doesn’t matter if you bar the door or stay up all night or run as far as you can with whatever bus fare you can scrounge. They’ll find a way.”
Her eyes slid back at him, as though remembering he was there. Or as though she’d never forgotten, and it was he who needed the reminder that this was real, this was happening right now. She swallowed hard, and Connor might have expected her to be crying—thick, choking sobs that would break down his defenses and leave him no other option but to put his arms around her.
But she wasn’t crying. Her eyes blazed with fury, and her jaw was set.
“And in the end, you’re still left. Because people always leave. That’s what they do.” She swallowed. “I should have known you’d be exactly the same.”
“Mack,” he started.
She shook her head at his helplessness. “Don’t bother. Go to Oregon, have a nice life. You think you’re the brave one for leaving? The one who’s got the balls to have an adventure?” She walked to the door, but before she left, she turned. “Fuck you, Connor. Having guts means being able to stay. Even when it’s hard. Even when it sucks. The people you want on your side are the ones you can trust not to bail when things don’t go their way.”
“Well, at least you can waste everyone’s money on Mackenzie’s now,” he said, because he couldn’t come up with anything else. But it was a low blow, and he couldn’t blame her for her last look of disgust before she walked away.
Chapter Twenty
A light rain misted over the mountains. Low clouds clung like cobwebs on the trees. Normally Mack loved gray weather like this, when the colors were deeper, richer, than they were in the sun, and the woods looked straight out of some fairy tale.
But for days she’d stayed inside, watching it through the windows and the tears in her eyes.
Her excuse was that the new bitters were still steeping. But bitters just sat there. They didn’t need to be watched.
Then she told herself the rain was keeping away the construction crew at the restaurant, as though everyone else was stuck on pause, too.
But she knew that wasn’t true, either. It was barely sprinkling, and anyway there was plenty to finish inside.
She’d finally broken down and confessed to the rest of her friends everything that had happened, and rather than freak out or tell her how crazy or awful she’d been, they smothered her with hugs that made her feel fragile and foolish and even more hurt. They brought her food she wasn’t hungry for and tried to drag her out of the house as though they couldn’t see her hands weighed ten pounds each and made it impossible to so much as tie her shoes.
Most of all, they wanted her to talk, to cry, to heal. And she knew she should appreciate the effort, but she didn’t want those things.
She wanted to hurl something large, expensive, and very breakable at Connor’s head.
She wanted to get in her car, drive to Oregon, and tell him how she couldn’t sleep with this stone in her chest bruising her heart.
She wanted the restaurant to go ahead and open already so she could throw herself into her work and forget.
She wanted the renovations to take so
long she never had to set foot in that place she used to share with him and remember.
What she didn’t want was to hear that she had every right to be sad. Because sadness meant this had been a big fucking deal and not some stupid fling that never meant anything and could be gotten over by—what was it Connor had said?—getting under someone new.
She wanted to get over him, because then she wouldn’t have to carry around this awful hurt inside. But she didn’t want to get over him, because then she’d have to face that he was gone.
She’d lost track of how many days it had been since she’d last set foot outside when she heard a knock at the door. She was curled up on the couch, sort of reading and sort of staring at the little dimples in the ceiling that formed from the texture of the paint.
No one had texted they were coming or asked if she wanted to meet up. She hadn’t showered or changed out of her favorite fox pajama pants, and her hair was sticking straight up on one side and matted flat on the other. But it wasn’t as if she had to impress Abbi or Claire, and she couldn’t imagine who else would drop by like this, unannounced.
Well, she could. But that thought was so absurd she pushed it away. Connor wasn’t going to come to his senses, drop his new life in Oregon, and rush straight to her door because he couldn’t live another second without telling her he was sorry, he loved her, he was never leaving her again. And the fact that she still held on to that fantasy—that when she heard the knocking that was where her mind immediately went—broke her heart all over again.
But it could be, a little voice insisted. So that she was teased so unfairly into hopefulness when she opened the door and found herself face-to-face with Sam.
Mack was surprised, but she shouldn’t have been. She hadn’t had the energy to return Sam’s calls, but Sam knew what had happened and where Connor had gone. Obviously she was more than a little concerned about where this mess of a business was going.
It was in that moment, when Mack opened her door not to Connor on bent knee but to Sam with furrowed brow, that Mack finally understood it was over. Connor wasn’t coming back. Not for her, the restaurant, his friends, the town. Not for anything.
So unless she wanted to die alone in her fox pj’s having formed a Mack-sized indentation in her couch, the food her friends brought growing a new strain of penicillin in the fridge, she was going to have to reintroduce herself to things like pants and hairbrushes and show Sam that she—and this restaurant—were far from over.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you,” Mack said, taking the offensive right away. “I haven’t been feeling well. But I’m better.”
She stepped aside to let Sam in, wishing she hadn’t let herself pile quite so many blankets on the couch, so that it looked as though all she’d done for days was sleep in front of the TV. Just because that was all she’d done didn’t mean other people had to know.
But Sam looked at her with such kindness, as though she didn’t even see the disaster before her. That look was precisely why Mack didn’t tell people about how she’d grown up, or the people and places she’d lost. Their eyes did that thing, getting soft and sympathetic like she was someone to be pitied. She couldn’t stand them thinking she was sad and weak.
It made her want to fold the blankets, change her clothes, show up at the restaurant in an hour ready to prove that what she’d said was true. She hadn’t been feeling well, but now she was.
“Mack, I know what happened,” Sam began, and Mack held up a hand to stop her.
“It’s okay. I wish things had worked out differently, but I want you to know I’m committed to this project. I told you at the beginning I’m not going to let you down.”
“I know,” Sam said. “I never doubted you. But I wanted to come by and tell you that if you need some time, or anything at all, we can push back the restaurant opening. You come first.”
Mack could feel Sam’s eyes on her, evaluating.
But although Mack had barely stopped crying enough to be able to inhale, exhale, and string together complete sentences, she could feel Sam’s words forming a scab over the wound Connor had ripped into her. He may have left, but there was no way he was taking everything she’d worked for.
“No,” Mack said firmly. “I’m ready to hire a new chef. The Dipper had a good reputation, and anything you bring your name to is going to attract attention. We can start interviewing, do a test run to see how they cook, and narrow down the candidates. We’re the only two owners now, so we can make the decision together.”
Sam nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
“I’ll write up a job description and send it your way.”
“Mack…” Sam started. “You’re sure about this?”
But Mack didn’t want Sam to take back the kick in the pants she’d just delivered. Adrenaline was pumping through her veins. She didn’t want it to stop.
“If Connor doesn’t want to be a part of this, that’s his problem. I always figured when he showed up here that he was waiting for the next chance to leave.”
She wanted to make it clear to Sam that she wasn’t as wrecked as she looked. As wrecked as she’d been when she let herself stop to think about it—which from here on out she wasn’t going to do.
She thought Sam would agree, but instead she wrinkled her nose. “I know this sucks, but that hardly seems fair.”
“Was I wrong?” Mack countered.
Sam pressed her lips together, but she couldn’t deny it. “No,” she said. “I guess you weren’t.”
Not like Mack was doing a victory dance for having been right about Connor all along. But within the layers of hurt, it helped to know there was something else inside—a piece of her that wasn’t going to sit around crying while the restaurant fell apart.
Once Mack got in the shower, cleaned up her pity party, and ate an actual meal that covered more of the food pyramid than Cheez-Its and beer, she knew what else she was feeling.
She was pissed.
And lucky for her, Sam, and the restaurant, there was nothing like anger as a catalyst for getting shit done.
Chapter Twenty-One
Connor had been at his brother’s farm a week, but it felt like a year. He kept expecting to hear from Mack—not that he thought of her as the “take me back” type, but surely she wouldn’t be able to resist a few choice texts telling him off.
But there was nothing.
And he knew he couldn’t text her first—he was the one who’d ended it. He was the one who’d left.
He tried to tell himself it was a relief. But Connor knew he hadn’t left because he couldn’t stand her. He’d left because he loved her. He honestly, deep down loved her, and as much as she drove him crazy, he’d been head over heels for her ever since he first arrived in Gold Mountain and tried to talk to her at the bar. She was strong, opinionated, driven, and dedicated, and he’d keep on loving her as long as he stuck around.
Which meant his heart would always be broken. He’d put himself on pause, unable to find another relationship, unable to commit to anyone else when he couldn’t have her.
He wasn’t going to do that to himself anymore. He had to move on.
And who better to welcome him into his new life than Matthew and his wife, Kristen? He was staying in their carriage house, which they’d converted into its own apartment. It had everything he needed, and although they knew Connor might want to find his own place eventually, they hoped he’d stay as long as he wanted.
When had this happened? When had his little brother become the one to settle down, while here was Connor on the move again?
“You’re making the right call,” Matthew kept saying in those first few days as he showed Connor the ropes on the farm. “This is going to be a whole new opportunity for us to move things forward around here.”
“And I’m definitely ready for something new,” Connor said.
Matthew laughed. “I guess Mack finally wore you out. You used to complain so much about her—I don’t know how you lasted as lon
g as you did.”
Connor simply shrugged. He didn’t want to talk to his brother about it. He didn’t want to hear that he should have done something differently, or see the look on Matthew’s face when he put it together and realized Connor had been interested in Mack since their first night at the bar. He didn’t want his brother’s pity, or to hear some platitude about doors opening, time passing, things working out in the end.
He just wanted to put his head down and throw himself into a completely different type of work from everything he’d been doing before.
It felt like a roller coaster to be in such a different position. But it was a welcome change, too. There was no one to argue with, no one to shoot him down, no one to give him that look.
Matthew and Kristen thought everything was great. That was their favorite word: great.
They liked Connor’s help. And even more so, they liked when he cooked for them. They never questioned him, crowded him, or made him feel like he was any place other than right where he belonged. They even talked about how Kane Enterprises could buy back Connor’s investment, and they could use the money to start their own restaurant on the farm.
So Connor should have been ecstatic. He should have at least been relieved. He could do whatever he wanted and not hear a single complaint.
And during the days, he was ecstatic. Or at least happy enough. The physical labor kept him distracted so he never had to wonder if he’d made the right choice.
But it was different at night, when he was alone. Did Mack miss him? Was she happy he was gone? Had he failed her for leaving? Or had he simply done what needed to be done?
He pored over his notebooks, unsure if he was ever going to cook again. Unsure if that was a good thing—or not. Thinking about how long he might spend at the farm, he could kind of understand what Mack had been saying. Did he want to wake up every day and work here? Was this something he believed in? Was it what he wanted to be his?
He still thought it was ridiculous for Mack to name the place Mackenzie’s. But in some small way, he had to respect it. At least now she’d be able to have her place without him standing in the way.
Make Me Beg (The Men of Gold Mountain) Page 15
