“Hey, I never said you were petty.” He brushed an errant lock of hair behind her ear, his expression all compassion and concern.
“But you thought it?” she asked.
“Maybe, for a few seconds. But I know it isn’t about that, I want to clear the air so we can move ahead because I had a terrific time today and I definitely want to keep seeing you.”
“Good. So go ahead.” She gestured to the sofa, and he folded his long frame onto it.
“I probably should have known something was off when Lexi approached me the day before. I know she was your friend, but I never liked her.”
Fay chuckled, but without mirth. “I wish I had caught on to that sooner. It would have saved me a lot of grief.”
“Well, you always were a little slow.”
She glared at him, but knew he wasn’t serious. “You can leave anytime you like.”
“Sorry, couldn’t help myself. We all know you’re brilliant, but seriously, I’d liked you for months, and I felt like I was giving myself away every time you were within fifteen feet of me.”
“Really?” Fay thought back, but nothing he’d done— until the fated kiss— had struck her as the least sign of interest. Of course, she was sure she’d forgotten most of what they’d said to each other after ten years— or she’d blocked it out. “I had no idea.”
“Okay, I take it back, obviously, you’re not as brilliant as I thought.”
She pulled back her fist to sock him in the shoulder, but he held up both hands and chuckled. “Sorry, I’ll stop teasing you. Mostly. I actually am surprised I didn’t give myself away like a dozen times per week. I’m sure Bret never clued in, but he’d always been totally blind about those kinds of things. I was sure you knew I had a crush on you, otherwise, I wouldn’t have trusted Lexi when she said you liked me and wanted to meet up there.”
“So she saw you liked me, but she didn’t tell me, instead, she used it as a chance to humiliate me. Fantastic.” The girl dropped even more in Fay’s estimation— if that was possible.
Austin took her left hand in his and she wondered when she had started waving them around. “I liked you. She said you wanted to meet and have some privacy— there was no need for her to spell out what you supposedly had in mind, considering that was a prime make-out spot. I liked you, so I met you. We kissed, it was mind-blowingly awesome. Then the lights popped on, she took some pictures and you saw me and ran off.” All humor had left his face now. “I admit, it was kind of devastating when I realized you weren’t into me, after all. The fact that you blamed me for everything hurt even more because I actually liked you.”
Fay hadn’t thought of it like that before. She had always imagined that he was one of the perpetrators, so she had only thought of herself. “Give me a minute.” She turned away, walking to the window as she tried to re-evaluate the whole scene from his point of view. If he was telling the whole truth, his version didn’t make her look so great.
On the other hand, there was her version of events.
“Lexi knew I had a thing for Eddie. She’d been talking with me about how cute he was and saying that she thought he might have a crush on me. She’d even started getting me to believe it, though I’d been sure that he barely noticed my existence. When she told me, what was it, four days before school got out, that he wanted to meet me on the stage, I could hardly believe it. Finally he’d noticed me. And he wanted to kiss me. Me, the wild, unorthodox girl who didn’t fit in anywhere.”
“That’s not true, you fit places.”
“No, I didn’t. Even when I thought Lexi was still my friend I knew I didn’t fit with her crowd. I was working on borrowed time. I was okay with that, though— most of the time. Then I saw who I was kissing, and she was taking pictures and laughing. And the other kids behind her. She posted the pictures and stories online and it went viral. Everyone was commenting and laughing— she was friends with the whole school, practically.”
“Really? I never had an account.” He came up beside her, his hands brushing hers.
“I know. I tried coming back to school the day after the kiss, but it was so bad. I was teased constantly. As if high school hadn’t been horrible enough. Even Eddie commented on it, basically saying that you didn’t have good taste in girls. It crushed me. So I skipped the last couple days, and I decided to work on my GED, I didn’t have that many credits to finish anyway. And since she posted that you were in on the whole thing, I stayed as far away from you and Bret as I could. It made things much simpler.”
Fay could remember the whole thing so well it made her throat ache. She considered the experience from a slightly different perspective, now that she had heard his side— and being further from the incident. “I supposed I could have given you a chance to explain.”
“You mean, instead of sneaking off behind everyone’s back to finish your GED so you didn’t have to stay in school for senior year?”
“Even before that, I wondered if I could survive senior year. I was chafing at home. Mom will never understand how hard it was for me to be there and feel like I was failing them all the time. Nothing I did was good enough for her.”
“She didn’t understand how important art was to you.”
“No, she thought I would go to the city and spend my days waiting tables and starving while I waited for my big break. She said I was wasting my time. She wasn’t far off.” There was bitterness in her mouth at the admission, even now that she had a successful business.
“You managed to save money, didn’t you? You bought the café.”
“Not as much as I would have liked. I tried religiously to put at least a hundred dollars in savings, but some months I was lucky not to have to pull money out of it. And a few times I actually did dip into it. It wasn’t easy.”
He turned her to face him and they studied each other for a long moment. She wondered if he was trying to decide if he could trust her story the same way she wondered about him. “Was it worth it? Don’t you wonder sometimes what would have happened if you’d stayed here?”
Her natural instinct was to hold back, but they were both being pretty open at the moment, and she wanted to share her feelings with someone— there hadn’t been anyone else she trusted enough to talk about this part of living in the city. “There were times when I was lonely in the teeny-tiny apartment I could afford in a not-so-great neighborhood. More rejections, more discouragement, a dearth of real friends. There were definitely days when I wished I had been back home snuggled in my room with the scent of Grandma’s cinnamon rolls wafting toward me. But even then I knew that if I had stayed, senior year would have devolved to a series of arguments with Mom and our already-strained relationship might have become irreparable.”
Almost a decade had given her some perspective when it came to her past. Too bad she apparently still had a way to go. “Mostly that was because I was far too prideful and willful to give in or see that she was, well, not always wrong.” It had taken her a long time to come to that conclusion.
“I admit, I was pretty shocked when I found out that you weren’t coming back. Bret said you put off registration for as long as possible before admitting to your mom that you’d finish your GED before the school year started and were leaving the second you turned eighteen. I bet things were awkward at home after that.”
She remembered those days so vividly, the pain and determination, the unbelievable self-control it had taken not to yell at her mom and walk out. The only reason she had restrained herself was because of her Grandma’s influence. “I didn’t want to argue with her about it. As it was, I nearly moved to Grandma’s for the last two weeks. Grandma convinced me to stay until my birthday, though. Lucky for me that my birthday is so early in the year. “
“Unlucky for the rest of us.” He squeezed her hand, drawing her attention back to him. “I was sure you left because of what happened between us. I look back now and can see it was probably a lot of different things, but it about killed me, thinking that you left home
to escape me.”
He didn’t actually ask if he figured into it, but the timbre of his voice made Fay think there was a question hidden in there. Was he hoping she would answer the unasked question or that she wouldn’t? “It was definitely one of the factors that convinced me to get out early, but by no means the strongest one.”
“I couldn’t help noticing that me coming back home didn’t thrill you much. I had been hoping you’d be past it by now. Though now I understand why you weren’t.”
Wincing on the inside, she saw how that must have come off. She liked to think that she was grown up enough to consider other people’s feelings most of the time, but her response had totally been knee-jerk and unkind. That was doubly worse now that they were developing... something. “I’m sorry, I was a brat. It turns out that I’m glad you came back. Bret is really excited about the shop— I think he must have hid how unhappy he was at work.”
“He didn’t want your parents to worry about him.”
“Of course he didn’t.” Having Bret there as her foil the last several years of school had been part of her problem at home. Not that Bret wasn’t cool, but he was a people pleaser, and that was difficult for her to compare herself against. “I’m glad he’s excited about your plans, especially if he was unhappy before.”
Austin seemed to sense that they were okay— she felt okay, surprisingly so. She hadn’t expected his simple explanation to calm her so much. Not that she was completely over it, but she felt like she could handle giving him the benefit of the doubt.
“How did you get involved with the Friends of the Library?” He asked after a long, comfortable moment of silence.
They talked for a while about how she had come back to town and been pulled in by a friend of her grandmother’s, Mrs. Vannakin, and their mutual adjustments to being back in town. It didn’t take too long before she was yawning, and he stood to leave.
“Thanks for finding time to get away with me,” Austin said as he took her hand and pulled her toward the door with him. “So, you think we could try a second date, now that we’ve cleared the air? I had a nice time.”
“So did I, and another date sounds good.” She considered the schedule. “Maria is off for the next couple of days.”
“Mom would love it if you joined us for Sunday dinner,” he suggested. “Wait, let me rephrase that. I would love it if you went to Sunday dinner with me this weekend, and I know my family would love to see you as well.”
Fay considered the pros and cons of that. She wasn’t sure if she wanted their families to know they were starting to date. On the other hand, it would give her an out on dinner with her own parents, which she could totally use after the way she left the previous Sunday.
“They invited your parents as well, so it won’t necessarily have to look like a date if you don’t want it to. We can go as friends.”
“Having my mom there might not be an advantage, you know? She wasn’t exactly happy about how dinner ended for me last weekend.” Her gaze flicked back to him.
His dark eyes filled with understanding and he drew her closer to his circle of warmth. “Yeah, I didn’t know that you still hated your father that much. It looks like he’s trying to reconnect with you.”
“She doesn’t get it. She thinks I should forgive and forget. But I can’t forget.” She yawned, lifting her hand to cover her mouth.
“I should let you get to sleep,” he said. “Sunday? You want to let me know tomorrow?”
She bit the inside of her cheek. “It’s the whole dating with our parents thing that’s catching me up. We don’t know if this is even something yet, and I don’t want to create expectations.”
He grinned and played with a lock of her hair. “Oh, this is something.” Then he pulled her closer, leaned in, and kissed her. Fay’s hands gripped his in surprise, but it took only a moment to get sucked into the kiss and reciprocate.
Oh yeah, this was chemistry. She joined the kiss eagerly, anxious to experience that excitement, the pure adrenaline that he invoked in her when they were close like this. Her hands slid up his abs, up around his neck, drawing him closer so they could go from a press of lips to something much more involved.
Okay, she thought as she dove into the kiss. Maybe he was right and this really was something. It couldn’t possibly be this amazing if there wasn’t something to it.
Austin slid his large hands up her back, and then glided them back down to her hips before gentling the kiss and pulling back. She was reluctant to let go, loving the thrill of excitement that burned in every nerve ending.
He prolonged it before finally pulling back enough to talk, though his voice was low and husky. “If you want to keep this to ourselves for a little longer, we can, but this isn’t nothing.”
She fought to make her breath even out. “Wow, yeah.”
A deep chuckle escaped from his throat. “I’d like to keep you here to make out for another half hour or so, but I know you need to get to sleep.”
“I really do.” Fay let out a sigh of disappointment. “Sunday dinner, then.”
“And a stolen kiss behind the gazebo.”
“I look forward to it.”
Now there’s a phrase she had never expected to say.
THOUGH IT WAS ONLY THREE DAYS between their date and Sunday dinner Austin didn’t want to wait to see Fay. Saturday he talked Bret into going to the café for their lunch break. It was good having his partner back, even if it was only for a few days. Before long, Bret would be in Echo Ridge full time and they would probably spend enough time together to need a break once in a while, though it was hard to believe it now.
Austin pushed through the glass door into the café, enjoying the scents of frying foods along with the jukebox music that filled his ears when they walked in. In many ways, this was a second home— it had been the last two years of high school.
“You want a booth, or to sit at the counter?” Bret asked as they looked around. Most of the booths were full, but there were a couple free in the corner. Only one of the stools at the counter was occupied, though.
Seeing Fay at the shake machine, Austin picked the counter— better to watch her efficient movements around the room. She had added a few purple stripes to the pink ones in her hair since their date, though he had no idea when she had found the time. He liked that she was willing to try new things and have fun with it.
She glanced up and grinned at them as they took a couple seats at the bar. “Couldn’t stay away, huh?”
“Nope, I was craving an apple pie shake.” He saw the pie sitting under the clear glass display domes and grinned. He liked all of her shakes, but the pie shakes called to him— maybe it was the cinnamon and other spices.
“Good choice. Give me a minute and I’ll be with you.” She efficiently removed the ring from the shake cup, sprayed the shake with whipped cream and added the cherry on top in perfect balance before heading to a table to deliver it.
Hank called out, “Order Up!” and waved before turning back to his work. The café wasn’t nearly as full as it had been for the game, but most of the tables were full. Maria was off for the day, leaving Fay and Hank moving.
That was okay, it wasn’t like they would be able to flirt much with Bret sitting there— not if she wanted to keep their relationship on the down-low for a little longer. Austin mostly just wanted to see her, hear her voice, and exchange a few lines of banter. It made the whole mealtime feel better.
“Hey, stop gawking at my sister,” Bret said.
“Step-sister.”
“No difference.” Bret knocked at Austin’s elbow, teasing. “You want to draw her anger down on you?”
“We have competitive spirits— it’s not like we’re really fighting.”
“So you say.” Bret could not be convinced without knowing the truth, but Austin was okay with that. They did better when it was only the two of them with no outside pressure.
He watched Fay hot-foot it around the café for ten minutes, never stopping for
a second, and her hair going frizzy at the temples from the rush. She smiled incessantly, though the circles under her eyes said she was burning the candle at both ends. He wondered why she didn’t hire another person to help out. Hank barely looked up from the grill, either. Obviously the café was busy enough to handle another paycheck.
Or two.
When she set their meals in front of them, Austin grabbed Fay’s wrist, enjoying the way his fingers encircled her narrow bone structure. “You need another employee, or two.” They had discussed it before, but obviously, it bore repeating.
“I know, but finding someone worth training isn’t as easy as you think. Are you volunteering?”
It was tempting— knowing he’d be around her so much more, even if it was just one shift per week. But... “I have my hands more than full with the new shop.”
“It won’t do any good— you can’t steal my partner,” Bret said, before biting into one of the thick steak fries she’d set in front of him.
“You can’t blame an over-worked woman for trying.” She tossed a wink at Austin, then hurried to take another food order.
Austin pulled the bun from his burger and checked for pickles. Even though he’d forgotten to request the sandwich pickle-free, she must have noted it on the order, because they weren’t there. He smiled to himself and took a bite.
“What was that all about? And your grin?” Bret eyed him, another fry half-way to his mouth.
“We’ve come to a silent understanding,” Austin said. Kissing was silent, mostly. Wasn’t it?
“Good. It’s about time you stopped fighting all the time.”
Austin heartily agreed with him, but didn’t say so as he reveled in the savory taste of his bacon cheeseburger.
The bell over the door rang and Fay looked over with a smile. Her expression quickly changed to a scowl, however and Austin had to turn to see who it was. Two men came in— and Austin understood.
Kisses Between the Lines: An Echo Ridge Anthology (Echo Ridge Romance Book 2) Page 37
