by Mary Calmes
“Why is the dog even outside?” my dad asked as we walked the streets under umbrellas.
“Mrs. Thayer doesn’t like the dog in the house, so he only gets to come in when she’s at work,” I explained before calling out Gordo’s name again.
“I don’t understand chaining an animal up outside,” he groused. “I’m going to talk to her when they get back from Seattle.”
“You do that, Dad.”
He grunted as we continued to look for Gordo. “Where would he go to look for Mitch?” he asked a couple of minutes later. “Think about it?”
It hit me, and we went to the football field at school. There he was, huddled under the bleachers. When I picked him up, he started to howl before I opened my coat and tucked the wet, smelly dog up against my chest. The crying and whimpering started then.
“He needs a bath,” my mother pronounced when we got home.
So I bathed him and fed him and put him in my bed, and when Mitch returned three days later, he came over early on a Saturday to find us both asleep.
“This is awesome,” he sighed, and I heard his boots hit the floor before he crawled under the covers with me, fully clothed and smelling like the airplane he’d been on. “My two best boys in one place.”
I smiled as he kissed my cheek before leaning over me to hug and kiss his dog.
“I think he should live with me,” I told him. “And you can visit both of us. I promise to take good care of him, and since you see me everyday, you can see him too.”
He sighed deeply.
“I promise I’ll take good care of him.”
“I would never worry about that,” he murmured, rolling me to my back. “I’d trust you with anything of mine.”
I knew he would. The dog was only the latest in a long line. His parents were rich, and he put things into my care that if I lost or broke, would take months, years, to replace. It made my folks nervous to see me drive his car, wear his watches, use his laptop or headphones, or have his letterman jacket hanging on the back of my chair in my room. They worried, his parents worried, but not Mitch. Mitch was always certain that the care I took of his heart extended to anything remotely connected to him.
And later, when the true test materialized, when all the reporters came to Benson chasing a story because Mitch was a candidate for the Heisman and asked me, point blank, if Mitch was gay and what we were to each other back in high school… even after he’d left me and I’d seen all the girls… even then, through all that, I kept his secrets as safe as everything else. The yearbooks only captured us as friends, nothing more, and even though he was Homecoming King and I had been there, Prom King and I had been there, nothing indicated I had been his date. Sure, other people knew who and what I was to him, but no one talked. Even if they hated me—like Ellie Sawyer—they adored Mitch, so it balanced out. The reporters left without a sound bite and I never heard a word from the man I’d protected.
I’d never seen him again until today.
“Hagen?”
I coughed, realizing my mind had drifted in the middle of a conversation. “Sorry, just thinking.”
He nodded. “Well, I was just saying that I have to trust whoever is with my boys, right? And that’s no one in Benson, not yet.”
I didn’t have children of my own, but I understood his concern. I was protective of Gail’s kids and had in the past offered to take them when she and Toby would have been forced to let neighbors or others they didn’t know as well watch them.
“They know me,” slipped out.
“What?”
“Your kids know me,” I repeated, more certain the second time. “I can watch them. I can take them to school and pick them up after, if you need me to. It’s not a problem.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Why don’t you just drop them off with me tomorrow morning? We’ll make a day of it.”
It took him a moment. “I’m sorry, what?”
“They can hang with me while I go to work, and after, we can get dinner, and I can take them to school on Monday. Will you be home to pick them up?”
“Not till Tuesday after—”
“Okay, then, I’ll drop them off and pick them up on Monday and take them to school Tuesday morning.”
“I—”
“You can trust me, right? You know I’m good with the CPR.”
“I’d trust you with anything of mine,” he said hoarsely. “You know that.”
And I did. He’d trusted me for years, and in the end, I wasn’t the one who’d changed. It had been him. “Well, then, problem solved.”
“Hagen, are you—”
“This way you can go and not worry. If you get stuck and you need me to pick them up from school on Tuesday too, just let me know.”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking, I’m offering,” I assured him, patting his shoulder. “It’s a bigger deal not to start on a Monday.”
“Please, Dad,” Ryder begged. “I’d rather go to school than sit in another office waiting while you talk.”
Brandon’s head was back. “C’mon, Dad, I hate going on your business trips. They suck.”
Mitch’s bright blue eyes were back on me. “I don’t want to—”
“Unless you have someone else you’d rather ask,” I offered, giving him the out.
“No,” he said sharply. “There’s only you.”
I felt a twinge of pain in my chest that I hadn’t expected after hearing those words come out of his mouth. But I’d believed all his words once upon a time and only learned in the hardest way that everything had been crap.
“Well then,” I repeated, taking a breath, shoring myself up, because the kids could come inside the fortress, but not their father.
“If you’re sure.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Are they going to Haggerty or Willow?”
“Haggerty.”
“Okay, perfect. Just pack whatever they sleep in and school clothes, bring their backpacks, and we’re good to go. Can you drop them off between eight thirty and nine tomorrow morning?”
“Hagen, I—” He took me by the arm and pulled me several steps away from the boys.
Why was he arguing? I was finding a solution for him, like I would for any friend of mine, and we could still be that, couldn’t we? Still be friends? And if we could, then why was he… “Unless you don’t want me to watch them?”
“No, that’s—”
Shit, shit, shit… I’d overstepped. I hadn’t thought it through, I just opened my mouth and offered and that was clearly the wrong thing to do and why had I done that in the first place? “Fuck,” I muttered under my breath.
“Now, wait.”
I shouldn’t have said anything, it wasn’t my place. “I didn’t even… fuck.”
“Hagen.”
“I jumped the— I wasn’t thinking about—”
“Baby,” he crooned.
It was impetuous and stupid and I should have never opened my mouth. More than anything, I just wanted to run so I didn’t have to see him look at me like I was sad and pitiful, trying to recapture the past. I wasn’t, my offer had nothing to do with Mitch and everything to do with his boys, but I could never explain that without sounding pathetic. Really, really pathetic.
“I can actually see your brain about to explode,” Mitch sighed as the boys rejoined us.
If the ground swallowed me up right there, that would have been good.
“You’re adorable.”
“You know,” I began softly, glancing at both boys quickly, “you don’t really know me anymore, so if you don’t—”
“I know you,” he said flatly. “That’s not the issue.”
I was confused. “Then?”
“Yeah, all right. That’d be great.”
It didn’t sound like it was. “Hey, guys, lemme talk to your dad real quick, okay? Just stand right here.”
Taking hold of Mitch’s left bicep, I led him just far enough away that we wouldn�
�t be overheard before rounding on him.
“Listen, I’m sorry if I overstepped, and you can just tell the boys—”
“No,” he said quickly, both hands flat on my chest so I couldn’t move. “It’s amazing that after everything I did to you that you’d even give me the time of day.”
I squinted at him. “Oh, c’mon, that was a lifetime ago, and besides, you and me have nothing to do with your kids.”
He exhaled sharply. “Okay, so I’m gonna grow a pair here and be honest and tell you that there were two reasons I moved back home. The first is that it’s a great place to raise kids, and mine have been through a meat grinder with the divorce and they need some stability. The second is you.”
“Mitch, I—”
“I’m being honest,” he continued, gaze locked with mine. “So I’ll tell you that I deeply regret how I treated you and what I did, but I can’t regret marrying Barb because she gave me my boys.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
“And there are things changing with her, and I might really need to step up and be a single parent for a while so that she can make her dreams come true too, since she back-burnered her life when I was playing football and she was the one who did the full-time parenting.”
“So you’ll need help,” I concluded, taking a step back, needing the distance, the heat flowing off the man, the scent of soap and male a little too much for me. “Lemme help if I can. We’re old friends. That’s what old friends do.”
He crowded me, in my space again. “I don’t just want my kids to see you, Hage. I want to see you too. I want us to date.”
“I—”
“That’s a lie.”
My gaze lifted to his from where it was on his beat-to-crap hiking boots.
“I want you back.”
My voice went out on me because it was the most ridiculous thing I’d never expected to hear.
“Hage?”
“You don’t even know me,” I whispered hoarsely.
He leaned in so close that if he turned his head, we’d bump noses. “I know you better than anyone ever has besides your folks.”
And he was right. He did… before I went to war.
“I’m really sorry you lost them.”
I cleared my throat. “Thank you for the flowers both times.”
“I wanted to come, but when your mother died, I was recovering from hip replacement surgery, and when you lost your dad—I was in rehab.”
“Oxy.”
“Oh, you read about that.”
I shrugged, trying to look casual, working to not let him see how pained I’d been to hear he was fighting an addiction alone. “What can I tell you? If I see your name in print, I read.”
“Well, for the record, I’ve been completely clean for over three years now. I don’t even drink anymore, and let me tell you, alcohol and drugs were the only things that I used to get out of bed for.”
“Football’s hard on the body, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
But I did. I knew about things that were bad for muscle and bone. Shrapnel, for example. Shrapnel was not great for the body. “Well, it sounds like you beat a lot of demons.”
“I did.”
“And you’re stronger for it.”
“I am, and now I have my personal life on track, professional life, I’m moving the business here, and everything is looking great.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
“There’s just one thing I need.”
“Which is?”
“You, Hage. I need you.”
It was a good line, delivered well with those gorgeous blue eyes all I could see, the resolve there, the honesty, the want. But this wasn’t high school anymore, and I didn’t believe in happily-ever-after. That dream had left when he did.
“Hagen?”
What was he expecting, me to puddle into goo at his feet? Ridiculous.
“Hage?”
I glared at him. “Things are different now.”
“How?”
“I’m different.”
“Explain that to me.”
I threw up my hands. “It’s more than a five-minute conversation.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping, so just come home with me and we’ll talk about it.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s somebody else.”
“Ash, right?”
I was surprised and he must have read it on my face.
“He introduced himself to Ry when they went inside to get the clothes the boys changed into after you saved Brandon.”
“Oh.”
“He’s that actor who made that rip-off of Fifty Shades with the vampire twist right?”
I wasn’t familiar with any vampire movie. “I don’t—”
“The Blood Tracks guy, right?”
I nodded.
“He’s hot.”
I nodded again.
“And from what Ry said, he’s a really nice guy.”
“Yes. Yes, he is.”
Quick nod before he shifted his stance, bracing. “Yeah. I don’t give a shit.”
My gaze met his head-on. “Mitch—”
“What? He doesn’t even live here.”
I crossed my arms as I looked at him. “How do you know that?”
“Derek told me.”
Of course. Derek Toomey, who owned Elixir, where I got my coffee, where everyone in town got their coffee, and who had played football with Mitch in high school, had dished the dirt.
“He said that Ash bought the Emerson place and he’s renovating it and that he’s here some weekends but sometimes not.”
“That might change.”
“Oh? Might?” He enunciated the word.
“Will,” I said with more conviction.
He grunted.
“You don’t know him.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed, clearly patronizing me. “But I know he’s an actor who lives in LA and definitely not in a small town on the Oregon coast.”
“Actors can live anywhere since they travel to work.”
“That’s true, but they have to network and they have to be seen and do the talk show circuit and always be up in some producer’s face unless roles are written for them and their name appears above the title.”
“You don’t know everything.”
“I know that your guy’s name does not in fact go above the title—at least not quite yet.”
I searched his face as he cocked an eyebrow, daring me to contradict him.
“Maybe your guy will be huge someday, I dunno. He could be, but again, I don’t give a shit. What I do know is that here,” he said, pointing at the ground, “is not where he can be for his career to do anything or go anywhere.”
“You seriously have no idea about him.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Just because you went away doesn’t mean other people don’t love this town.”
“Jesus, Hage, how long you gonna hold on to that?”
I was blurting out all kinds of shit today, first to Ash and now to Mitch. “I—”
“And he may love the town—it’s doubtful but possible—but he can’t live here because, with how high-profile he is in Hollywood, he has to be there, live there, just getting his foot in the door and doing all the right things, the smart things for any opportunity. There’s no way he blows his career and what he wants for you.”
I scoffed, backpedaling. “Thanks a fuckin’ lot. Glad to know what you really think of me.”
He rushed back close, too close, one hand on my hip, the other around the side of my neck. “You’re worth everything, Hage, but he doesn’t know that, how could he?”
I looked everywhere but into his eyes.
“Look at me.”
But I couldn’t.
“Now.”
Fuck. Commands. He knew I had always responded to those from him. When I met his gaze, and all that bl
ue settled on me, it was almost too much.
“He won’t stay,” he promised. “He can’t.”
I swallowed hard.
“But I will.”
“You—I can’t trust you.”
“Yes, you can. It took me a long time, but I know what’s important and I know what I need.”
“C’mon, Mitch,” I muttered, easing free. “You always knew what you needed. No soul searching required for that one.”
His grin was lazy and decadent, and I choked on how condescending I was trying to be in the face of what I wanted to taste again. “I can take whatever your pride requires you to dish out,” he informed me cheerfully. “As long as you let me see you.”
“Why would you want someone who doesn’t think you walk on water?”
“Oh, you think I walk on water,” he assured me. “You always have.” The man just oozed confident, raw sexual heat, and my breath caught inadvertently.
“You’re wrong, Mitch.” I was annoyed and exhilarated at the same time. The badgering, the bantering, was exactly how it had always been. He would wear me down with logic until I gave in. And sometimes, like when he argued that he should take me to prom even when I was worried about recruiters and college coaches seeing the pictures, his logic was skewed, but it had always worked for him. If he’d wanted something badly enough, I’d always given in.
I had left his house, fast, angry tears blurring my vision, and missed the turn to my house and had instead run into the forest, down a ravine and back up the other side, arms in front of my face as I broke through a net of branches, then finally catching my foot on a root and hitting the ground hard. Not that it mattered. The dirt and flowers and grass were soft, but I was winded as I stared up at the deep green canopy.
“You’re a fuckin’ idiot,” Mitch growled as he charged up beside me, flopping down at my side, hand on my chest. “And don’t you ever run away from me again.”
I took a labored breath, more tears running down the sides of my face into my ears. “I can’t go to prom with you. It’s not smart.”
