Sweet Home Louisiana

by Erin Nicholas

  They were still staring. But they looked a little impressed.

  “You know about slime?” Owen asked, with a small smile.

  She shrugged. Apparently she did. The idea to use it had just kind of come to her. Looked like desperation to avoid the old bayou cabin had brought out her creativity.

  Sawyer snorted. “Fine. No camping. I doubt you even remember how to catch catfish and cook over a campfire anyway.”

  She grimaced. She loved a good salmon fillet at her favorite seafood place at Fisherman’s Wharf, but it had been a long damned time since she’d eaten catfish. Even longer since she’d caught her own.

  “Poor Maddie,” she heard Tori say to Kennedy.

  Well, maybe she had one—sort of—ally.

  Kennedy laughed lightly. “Hope she brought something other than those heels.”

  And…crap.

  If she was going to be hanging out on the docks regularly, she was going to need to get some new shoes.

  4

  Owen found Maddie down on the dock in the dark. The moon was up and there was enough illumination from tall yard lights up by the road that she could easily find her way—and he could easily see her—but it was dark down here. It was nearly midnight and when she’d slipped away from the fire pit outside of Ellie’s and the music, drinking, and laughter that accompanied her welcome home party, he’d assumed she was headed to Cora’s to call it a night. She had to be exhausted.

  But when he’d followed her around the corner of Ellie’s, he’d been surprised to see her head across the road toward the Boys of the Bayou buildings.

  Now she was on the far dock, just watching the water.

  She was fine. He should leave her alone. She was safe here in Autre. At least from people.

  The snakes in the area were another story. Did she remember to look for those? Were there snakes in San Francisco? Probably not along the streets that ran to swanky art galleries.

  At least she was wearing decent shoes and clothes now.

  She was now in denim shorts and a tank top. Not that she looked any less devastatingly beautiful. He’d choked on his swallow of beer when she’d first stepped out of Ellie’s, carrying a plate of corn on the cob. In fact, she looked even more gorgeous in denim. Because now she looked like the Maddie he remembered. The bayou girl.

  Most importantly, she had Converse tennis shoes on her feet now. Those were far more practical than those fuck-me heels she’d shown up in.

  Still, they wouldn’t necessarily keep her from getting bitten by a snake if she didn’t see the thing coming. Or if she didn’t remember what to do if she did see one coming.

  “Hey,” he said softly, not wanting to scare her.

  He saw her shoulders rise and fall and then she glanced back to him. “Hey.”

  “You okay?”

  “Um…” She took another deep breath. “Probably not.” She focused on the dark water again.

  Her answer made his chest tighten. Fuck. He moved from the path onto the dock. “You want to be alone?” He really hoped she wouldn’t want to be alone. Leaving her alone when she was two thousand miles away was one thing, but when she was right here? It was going to be extremely hard. But if she was “probably not” okay? Yeah, forget it.

  She made a soft sound that was not really a laugh, but not really a sigh. “It’s funny. I’m alone a lot. But here…it feels weird.”

  He took a few steps forward, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’m not sure I’ve ever actually been alone here. Not unless I take a boat out on my own or something. Even then, it’s maybe thirty minutes before someone’s calling.”

  She nodded. He stopped a few feet away.

  “Tommy was out there alone, right?”

  His chest tightened further and he felt a cold arrow of regret shoot through him. He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

  God, that had been a horrible fucking day. Easily the worst of Owen’s life.

  They’d all been out on the bayou alone at one time or another. They fished. They just drove the airboats around the way someone might take a drive down a backroad. They headed out to the cabin just to get away. But never without telling someone where they were going and never without their phones. The bayou was home, but it could be a dangerous place. Cottonmouths, copperheads, and alligators were just a few of the things that they learned to live alongside growing up here.

  Bull sharks were something else. They weren’t common, not like snakes and gators, but they could get into the bayou and rivers from the gulf on occasion. There had been several in Lake Ponchartrain. They were able to live in less saline waters and had even been spotted as far up the Mississippi River as Illinois. Still, people were always surprised by the idea of sharks in rivers and lakes. And in the bayou, they were even more of a problem. They were hard to see in the muddy waters, blending in with the colors and looking a lot like logs until you were too close. They were also aggressive as hell. Even the babies.

  The one that had attacked Tommy had been a juvenile. And it probably wouldn’t have done much damage, really, if it hadn’t hit his femoral artery. He’d managed to call Sawyer, but by the time he’d gotten there, Tommy had lost a lot of blood. Too much blood. He’d been out cold by the time Sawyer got to him and he’d died en route to the hospital. Sawyer had been attacked while he was trying to rescue Tommy, too. The shark had charged and though Sawyer avoided the shark’s mouth, its tail had swiped over Sawyer’s face and the sharp scales had left a deep laceration. He still had the scar. He always would. It made him look badass, actually. But Owen knew that every time Sawyer looked in the mirror, he was reminded that he hadn’t gotten there in time to save his best friend.

  Owen scrubbed his hand over his face. He had nightmares about the whole thing. They all did. No one was more agonized over it than Sawyer, though. Tommy’s best friend. The guy who blamed himself for Tommy being out there alone. Even though that was bullshit.

  “I miss him.” Maddie’s voice was soft and sad.

  Owen felt his fists ball inside his pockets.

  “I do, too. Every damned day.”

  She nodded. “I guess I don’t. I mean, I didn’t see him every day. We didn’t talk every day.” She sighed. “We didn’t talk at all. Maybe a few times a year.” She shifted and wrapped her arms around her middle. “So how can I miss him?”

  Fuck.

  Owen knew it was probably a bad idea, but he took a big step toward her. It had to be a bad idea to not try to comfort her, too, right? It was just a matter of which was a worse idea.

  “You miss him because he was a part of Autre for you,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She took a deep breath. “My mom and dad, too. None of them are here anymore. So yeah…I’m probably not okay.”

  With a resigned sigh, Owen took the rest of the steps between them.

  “You know, I had never wanted to hug someone as much as I wanted to hug you at Tommy’s funeral,” he told her.

  She turned to face him, her eyes wide.

  “Until now.”

  He reached for her. But there was a moment where she hesitated.

  “This might be a bad idea,” she said softly.

  He kept his hand outstretched, his heart banging against his chest. “No worries,” he said. “I hid all the matches.”

  When that sunk in, her mouth curled slightly. “How about the wrenches?”

  “Crap, I forgot the wrenches.”

  “And there are a bunch lying around down here,” she said.

  “There are. Even a few hammers.”

  “So, this could be…risky.”

  Risky. Yeah, that’s what this was going to be. But not because of the hammers. He wiggled his fingers. “Come here, Maddie.”

  She pressed her lips together, but she did finally reach out.

  He felt relief wash over him as she slid her hand into his. Then he pulled her in, bringing her up against his chest, wrapping his arms around her. And heat rolled through him right on the heels of that relief.


  Maddie fit up against him perfectly. Exactly as he remembered. It took about five seconds, but when she relaxed against him and wrapped her arms around his back, they both sighed simultaneously.

  He had to work not to squeeze her too tightly, but holy shit she felt good.

  “I’m so sorry about Tommy,” he said gruffly. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

  Her arms tightened around him. “Me, too.”

  They stood like that for a long time. He could feel her heart hammering against his chest.

  There was nothing he could say. There was nothing anyone could do to make this thing about Tommy better. He suspected the hug actually was making him feel better than it was her.

  But yeah, it was definitely making him feel better.

  Finally, he blew out a breath and lifted his hand to the back of her head, dragging it down the length of her hair. “Damn, girl, you smell so good.”

  He felt her surprised laugh against his chest. “Well, thanks.” She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “You smell pretty good, too.”

  The feel of her cheek against his shoulder made his dick hard.

  Well, fuck.

  He couldn’t kiss her. He couldn’t not kiss her. So he kissed the top of her head. And then started to let go of her.

  But she tightened her grip on him. “Just another second.”

  With a little groan, he pulled her in again, tucking her under his chin. “As long as you need.”

  They were quiet for several heartbeats.

  “I think I’ve done more hugging today than I have in the past five years put together,” she said after a moment.

  “You knew that was going to happen,” he told her.

  Maddie nodded, her cheek rubbing over his chest again and making his body ache.

  She’s sad. About her dead brother. Give it a rest, he told his dick.

  It didn’t listen.

  “You people and your feelings always spilling out all over,” she said.

  “Yep, we’re real bastards that way. All loving and supportive and excited about shit all the time.”

  She squeezed him and then took a deep breath and stepped back.

  He let her go, tucking his hands back into his pockets. Because he didn’t want to let her go. At all. Ever.

  Maddie brushed her fingertips over her cheeks and gave him a smile. “Makes it hard to stay aloof.”

  He didn’t try to pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about. She was trying to hold back from them. He fucking hated that. “Good,” he said. “This isn’t really the place for aloof.”

  She gave a little laugh, as if that was a huge understatement.

  Which it was, of course.

  He’d been watching her at the “partner meeting” earlier and then at the crawfish boil. She didn’t hold herself back. She let herself lean into the hugs, gave genuine smiles, laughed and talked like she was happy to be here. But she would pull herself back. It seemed that she’d suddenly remember she was supposed to be a near-stranger, here on business, annoyed to be here even, and she’d straighten up and take a deep breath and her smile would dim.

  It had been driving him crazy all day.

  He didn’t want it to drive him crazy. It was just as dangerous to his emotional well-being to be driven crazy by her long legs in short shorts, and her long sleek hair being mussed by the sticky summer wind, and the lip print she left on the edge of the mason jar she was drinking from.

  But add in feeling crazy about how she wouldn’t just let herself go…he’d been in a knot for hours.

  He was a Landry. He didn’t back down from a confrontation. He didn’t shy away from emotions. He was respectful of other people’s feelings—at least, he tried to be—but he didn’t hesitate to push if he needed to.

  For some reason, with Maddie, he wanted to push.

  For some reason. Ha. That was funny. As if he didn’t know why.

  He wanted to push her because he wanted her to push back. He wanted her to care enough to push back.

  “Thank you for letting me hold you,” he said.

  She lifted a brow. “Shouldn’t I thank you for that?”

  He shrugged. “I’m glad you’re not totally scared of me.”

  She frowned. “Why would I be scared of you?”

  “Really?” He gave a short laugh. “The way I was when you…left.”

  “You mean banged up in the hospital, looking sexy and pathetic at the same time?”

  That made him pause. “Sexy?”

  “In retrospect.”

  “Oh?” He felt a smile teasing his lips.

  “Not at the time, though,” she said. “You both looked pathetic and idiotic.”

  “They had to put us in separate rooms because we wouldn’t stop fighting,” he said. “I threw a bedpan at him and they finally split us up.”

  “Oh my god,” she said, shaking her head. Though she didn’t seem to be having trouble believing it.

  “It was empty. For the record,” he said.

  “That’s something, I guess.”

  “It was after he told me that he’d hoped we’d end up in a cell overnight. He hadn’t been planning on the hospital. But that it was accomplishing the same thing.”

  “Keeping you away from me until I was on the airplane.”

  He nodded.

  “He was concerned about you, too,” she said. “I realize that putting you in the hospital doesn’t seem like it, but he was. He was concerned about us together.”

  “Well, we probably would have just been in a jail cell. I was the one who tackled him by the window.”

  She pulled in a breath through her nose, closing her eyes for a moment. “I wasn’t scared of you, Owen. Tommy wasn’t scared of you for me. We were scared of me.”

  Her answer didn’t shock him. Which shocked him. “What’s that mean?” He felt his chest tightening again. He’d wanted to have this conversation for twelve years. He really hadn’t intended to dump it all out there on her first night back in town, but that’s how things seemed to go around here. And with him and Maddie in particular. Emotions spilling out all over the place, as she’d said.

  “My mom talked Bobby Gravier into doing shots with her at the bar. Because it sounded fun and he would do it. Just because it sounded like fun and she felt like it. Then she got into his car so he could drive her home because she didn’t think through silly things like consequences. Like Bobby hitting the shoulder of the road because he was drunk and the car flipping and her not walking away from it. And my dad losing his mind because what the fuck was she doing with another guy anyway and what the hell was Bobby doing getting behind the wheel. And him driving his F-150 through Bobby’s living room and then going after him with a crowbar.”

  Owen took it all in. He knew the story. Everyone knew the story. “You didn’t think that I seemed an awful lot like your dad?” he asked. “Because I did.”

  She shook her head. “Only because I was an awful lot like my mom.” She took a deep breath. “You could get wound up,” she admitted. “But only after I egged you on.”

  “Come on, Mad—” he started.

  “You have two scars and a police record because of me. You didn’t have any of that before you and I got together.”

  “Juvie record,” he said. “Doesn’t count.”

  “Come on, Owen,” she said, mimicking him. “You were not that guy before I called you away from your girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, got you into a fight with Wade, and then kissed you.”

  Okay, that was true. He’d wrestled and shoved and argued with Sawyer and Josh and Tommy growing up. But he’d never punched a guy or put his hand around a guy’s throat until he did it that night to Wade. Because of Maddie.

  “That doesn’t mean you were bad for me,” he said.

  She stepped forward and ran the tip of her finger up the scar on his arm. Heat shot straight to his cock.

  “I don’t think you can really make that argument,” she said, almost sadly.

/>   He captured her hand, holding it but stopping the stroking. “We were kids. Jacked up on drama and hormones and not sure how to handle all of our intense feelings.”

  She nodded. “But back then, I didn’t know that we would grow out of it. I knew I needed to leave before one—or both—of us went too far.”

  “But we did grow up. Right? So there’s nothing to worry about now?” He was truly asking. Because he wasn’t sure. The limits of his self-control hadn’t been tested. Because Maddie hadn’t been here.

  “I…don’t know.”

  “How many California sheds have you burned down?” he asked, trying for light. But his thumb was tracing over the scar on the back of her hand. The burn scar from when she’d tried to put the shed fire out after starting it.

  “None,” she admitted.

  “There you go.”

  “But you haven’t been in California.”

  “You think it’s just me that makes you…”

  “Crazy,” she supplied with eyebrows up. “And yes.”

  He couldn’t help it. He grinned. He’d always known that Maddie was the only one that made him lose his cool, and he’d liked the idea that he was the only one that did that to her. But he hadn’t known if she believed that, too.

  She shook her head. “You like that too much.”

  “Well, let’s just say that I haven’t gone to jail for any other girls, either.”

  Before she covered it up, he saw a flash of something that could have been satisfaction. But she did cover it up.

  He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her scar. “Good thing we’ve grown up, huh?”

  She swallowed hard and then pulled her hand back. “Yeah. Good thing.”

  “And you’re happy in California?” he asked. He needed her to be happy. That was just a fact that had never not been true. In his whole life. But more so since she’d kissed him, it was true.

  Because that’s when she’d become his.

  Heat and a bit of oh, shit went through him at that thought. He couldn’t think of her as his. That was just going to make everything so much harder. She was here temporarily. She was trying to keep emotional distance from the family and the town. Wanting her to be his again was a sure setup for heartbreak. Not just when she left, but when she rejected everything that mattered to him—his hometown, his business, and most especially his family.