“I already asked her, and let’s just say, she wasn’t as receptive as I’d hoped to making a change.” He couldn’t see her uprooting her life in order to date him. Anyway, she was only one reason for wanting to move back here. There were others, but if he tried to articulate them he would sound like a sentimental fool, and he’d never been either. But instinctively Cade knew he had to try, no matter how foolish he sounded.
“Coming back … it’s not just Monroe. I miss you and Tally. I want to be part of your lives.”
“You are part of our lives,” Sawyer said gruffly. “I’ll never fully understand how much you sacrificed for us, Bro. When I imagine what would have happened if the state had taken us I want to puke, but it felt like you abandoned us as soon as you could.”
Cade swallowed down the automatic apology. It was time for more truth telling. “I didn’t abandon you. I got caught stealing by Chief Thomason. It was either leave or go to jail.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Shock lifted Sawyer’s voice.
“I was ashamed and disappointed in myself. I let you down.”
“We would have understood, supported you.” Sawyer clapped him once on the shoulder and squeezed.
“By that time you were in college and Tally had decided to pursue her personal trainer license. Neither of you needed me anymore.” Clarity born of distance cleared the fogged glasses through which he’d viewed the past. Going from having a purpose—protecting and providing for his siblings—to nothing had left him floundering. Maybe Monroe was right. He’d wanted to get caught stealing that engine.
“I didn’t stop needing you because I was in college. You were my big brother. I looked up to you, tried to be half the man you were.”
Cade blew out a long, slow breath, knowing what needed to be said but dreading it. “Seeing you go off to college, make the Dean’s List … I was crazy proud of you, but I was also a little jealous.” He winced as he said the last word but forced himself to continue. “I already felt old and stuck and I was only twenty-three. I wanted to go to college and party and have fun, but…” He shrugged.
“I’m an idiot for not realizing,” Sawyer said softly.
“What? No. I’m the idiot.”
“Does everything have to be a competition with you, Bro?” He popped Cade’s arm and flashed a smile, triggering laughter.
The ugliness Cade had carried around for too long seeped into the red clay dirt under his feet. An embarrassing sting of tears had him blinking. “Thanks for bullying me back down here. I needed you, and you were there for me. That means more than you know.”
“It’s what you do for family. You did more for me than I could ever repay,” Sawyer said. “If you decide to move operations down here, I’ll support you one hundred percent, but don’t do it and change your mind six months later. You have to stick.”
The words resonated with him. Monroe deserved a man who could stick. If he uprooted his life in Seattle, he had to grow deeper and stronger roots in Cottonbloom. He would have to accept there would always be people who looked down on him because of where he came from, because he’d done what had to be done to keep his family together. To the Tarwaters of Cottonbloom he would always be the Louisiana swamp rat or the high-school dropout.
Sawyer continued, unaware of Cade’s swirling, confused thoughts. “Anyway, what will your partner think? I can’t imagine him moving down here.”
“Richard is not a country boy, that’s for dang sure. He’ll give me pushback no doubt.” Cade ran a hand through his hair, ruffling the back. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s too complicated. Impossible.”
“Impossible was keeping the three of us together after Mom and Dad died. If you did that, you can handle Richard.”
“I appreciate your confidence.” Cade tried on a strained smile. “You want to go out on the river tonight?”
Sawyer’s ready smile wiped away a portion of the exhaustion and worry Cade had observed since he’d been home. “Sounds fun.”
The years peeled away and instead of Cade feeling as if he needed to keep things from Sawyer to protect him, he and Sawyer talked as equals. Sawyer’s work with the machinery was second nature. A stray thought inserted itself. If Cade did move back to Cottonbloom, maybe he could convince Sawyer to quit the factory and make Fournette Designs a family business.
After Sawyer headed to the house to grab them drinks, Cade did a final check of the engine connections. His hand was ninety percent better. The nerves still tingled at times, but the dexterity and most of the strength had returned thanks to Monroe. He couldn’t work as long at anything that required fine motor skills, but he could do his job. Develop and build and test new engine technologies. He snaked his right hand between the outlet manifold and a stiff hose to tighten a bolt.
The current design was almost ready to be tested, but with Sawyer’s help and insight he planned to upgrade and modify it further. The current design was meant for a boat, but it could be translated to cars. If their suppositions were correct, the efficiency gains would be significant, which would reduce gas usage, which would in turn reduce emissions without losing power. It was every car manufacturer’s wet dream.
He sat back and twirled the wrench around his palm. He’d found working in Sawyer’s garage invigorating. Surrounded by nature, honest sweat dampening his shirt, knowing people he cared about were a stone’s throw away. He could walk down to the river. The source of what motivated him all these years even though he’d sometimes cursed the muddy waters.
His work space in Seattle, much like his apartment and his life, was sterile and uninspiring but tidy and uncomplicated. His life in Cottonbloom had been none of those things and coming back hadn’t changed anything.
* * *
Monroe drove like a granny to Sawyer’s farmhouse, dreading the coming confrontation. Cade’s truck was out front, parked in the grass near the huge willow tree. She parked beside it and ran her hand down the rust-pocked bed. He would leave his truck and leave her to weather life without him.
She’d skimmed through the profile from the business magazine again and hardly recognized the man they’d described. His life in Seattle was so far removed from Cottonbloom, she felt an alien-like displacement even thinking about moving there.
She continued around the back, finding him bent over a huge crate, the engine he’d been working on packed inside. His face was stern yet achingly handsome. This man had turned from protector to hero to lover.
She said his name on a croak and cleared her throat. He looked up, his smile automatic, which only made her stomach spin faster. She took a few steps closer, her ankles and knees like poorly set jelly.
His lips uncurled and drew a straight line across his blanked face. “I can already guess why you’re here.”
She swallowed and opened her mouth, but no words came, dread muting her.
“You don’t want to come with me.” It was a statement and not a question.
“I can’t.”
“I thought you loved me,” he said accusingly, and tossed the wrench he was holding toward a tall red metal toolbox, the clang jarring.
“I do. Of course I do. Do you love me?”
His eyes flared. At his non-answer, she continued. “If you need more time, I get that, but I have a life here. A good life full of good people who love me.”
“I-I do love you, Monroe. Really.” His tripping words were hardly convincing.
Pinpricks of anger helped camouflage the deepening pit in her stomach. “I’m not moving to Seattle so you can test-drive a relationship with me.”
“Is that why you think I asked you to move with me?”
She looked toward the river, gaining solace from what she couldn’t see but knew was there, before turning back to him. “In some ways, leaving Cottonbloom would be freedom. No one calling me to stop tomato marauders or to clean up after one of my mother’s bad nights or to rescue a scared teenager. I could do what I wanted. Which is to be with you.”
Hope flared i
n his face, but it was as quickly extinguished. “You won’t come even with all that?”
“As much as I love you, my place is here in the middle of this crazy town and all the messiness of life. You have a place here, too. Please stay in Cottonbloom, Cade.”
“I want you to come with me.” Emotion hoarsened his voice. He reached for her, but she stepped back and his hand fell to his side. If he touched her, the electric arc of their connection would only make her question herself and add to her devastation.
“Will you think about staying?”
“The first iteration of the engine is done. I’ve got to head back to see to its installation in the test chamber.” It was an evasion.
Reality stamped out her foolish dreams. Once he was away from her, from this place, he would never find his way back. “I’ll wait for you, Cade, but I won’t wait forever.”
The ultimatum was a lie. She would spend forever pining for him. She walked away anyway, forcing her shoulders back and her spine straight. She wouldn’t beg him to stay in Cottonbloom, stay with her. It was his decision to make.
He didn’t run after her to stop her like in the movies, and she drove away, heartbroken.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Cade spun a pen in his right hand while he worked the fingers of his left like Monroe had taught him. He checked the clock. She would be at work, sending some poor soul through their paces. Who was the lucky recipient of her smile and the focus of her attention?
He missed the way her smile lit her from the inside out. If he was making a list, he also missed the way she chewed on her lip when she worried over his hand and the sexy confidence she exuded when they made love and the way she cuddled with benefits.
He missed everything.
“You look like your dog got run over.” Richard stood propped against the doorjamb, his hands tucked into the pockets of his dress pants, a sheaf of papers under his arm.
Cade hadn’t even noticed him, every part of him except his body back in Cottonbloom. He sat up straight and shuffled papers around his desk in a weak pretense of working. “I’m fine.”
Not waiting for an invitation, Richard wandered farther inside and dropped into one of the chairs across the desk, crossing his legs and draping an arm over the back of a neighboring chair. Cade envied his friend’s casual sophistication. Well-fitting tux or not, it was a façade with Cade, whereas it was bred into Richard. Like the river and Cottonbloom and his childhood had been bred into Cade. Not just the bad, but the good as well. He had forgotten that until he’d returned.
Richard sat still and waited, his face serious and assessing. Cade relented, slumping back in his chair and giving up the illusion of working. “What?”
“I know I encouraged—well, ‘bullied’ might be more accurate—you into coming back to work, to your life here. But…” Richard leaned forward and braced his forearms on his knees, holding on to the papers. “I think I was wrong.”
Richard was full of unabashed confidence. He never admitted to being wrong. Misinformed maybe, but never wrong. Cade looked around with an attempt at humor. “Am I being pranked?”
Richard sat back and resumed his position of elegant nonchalance. “We’ve had lovely weather since you’ve been back.”
The abrupt change of subject set off alarms. Cade recognized the tactic Richard employed during their patent-leasing negotiations and squirmed. “Three days with no rain is always welcome.”
“You’ve not taken advantage. Normally, you’d be making plans to hang glide or climb or bike.”
“My hand.” Cade clenched his injured hand into a fist. Tingles shot down his pinky and ring fingers. His hand was a convenient excuse. Whether it was his injury or something to do with the last weeks in Cottonbloom, the obsession to throw himself off cliffs had vanished.
“You’re more a son to me than my flesh-and-blood one, Cade.” Richard ran a hand over his face, a weariness edging into his usual high-energy animation. “You came back from Louisiana different.”
Different. Was he? Or had he fundamentally shifted back toward the boy he’d been? The man who had shed the stifling, suffocating ties of his youth now longed to bind himself tightly to his old life. Perhaps more accurately, a new life in an old place.
Three days gone and he missed his brother and sister desperately. Even worse, Monroe stalked his every thought, waking and sleeping. He’d never gone in for gooey, lovesick thoughts, but he finally understood what it felt like to have part of his soul ripped away. It hurt like hell.
“I love Monroe Kirby.”
“She’s the woman from your past? The one I shipped your tuxedo down for?” At Cade’s curt nod, Richard continued. “Easy enough. Ask her to move up here. Your condo is luxurious. Wine and dine her. Show her how the other half lives. She’ll never want to leave.”
“She wouldn’t care about any of that. She doesn’t belong up here. Neither do I. Not anymore. I miss her. I miss my family. I can’t quite believe it myself, but I even miss Cottonbloom. I don’t want to disband the company, but I can’t live here anymore.” Cade blew out a slow breath. The feelings had been weighing on him since before he stepped off the airplane in Seattle.
Richard looked down and fingered the edges of the papers before tossing them on the desk. Contracts. Cade almost laughed. Richard always could anticipate the twists and turns of a negotiation.
“It’s like you read my mind,” Cade murmured as he flipped through the top document.
“That’s my job.” Richard’s smile cut through the chains binding Cade in Seattle. “We’ll scale down to a simple business office here, which I’ll man. You can set up shop in Louisiana like you want.”
He took what felt like his first deep breath in days. “What about bringing Sawyer on board?”
“Is that wise?”
“My instincts are better, but his technical grasp is unparalleled. We worked together some on the Wallamaker design. I described the concept, and he suggested the nuts and bolts to make it happen.”
“I don’t doubt he’s as smart as you are. I’m thinking more of the family dynamic. Can you work together and get along?”
“A hundred percent of the time? Not a chance. But we’ll work it out even if we have to take it to the toolshed. Our blood is thick.”
Richard pointed to the stack. “Second set of contracts is a job offer for your brother. If things go well, we’ll offer him a partner position in a year.”
“Sounds more than fair.” Cade stood up, the malaise of the past days gone. His body thrummed with the same energy as before a jump off a cliff or out of an airplane. This might be the biggest, boldest leap of his life.
Richard had aged over their conversation. The skin of his cheeks sagged with his frown, and his shoulders slumped.
Cade slowly regained his seat. “When we met, I aspired to be like you in every way, Richard. My father was a good man, happy with his life from what I can remember. I would never have achieved a hundredth of this without you.”
“I appreciate the sentiment more than you can imagine, but don’t emulate me. I gave up my family to succeed, and I’m not sure what I’ve gained is worth it.” The regret in Richard’s voice highlighted one possible path in front of Cade. The one he wasn’t choosing.
“You’ll always have a home in Cottonbloom; I hope you know that.”
A sliver of a smile quirked Richard’s lips. “I’ll come visit. Just not in summer.”
“Fair enough.” Cade laughed and pushed up again. If he hustled, he could sort things out by lunch and then head home. He paused. Home. Not his sterile high-rise condo, but Sawyer’s old farmhouse. Or maybe Monroe’s little house, if she would let him in. Strike that; he would camp out on her doorstep until she did. Prove to her that he was back to stay.
Richard meandered to the door as if Cade had stolen all his energy. Before he made it into the hallway, Cade took three steps and pulled him in for a hug. Not a manly bump of chest and shoulder tap but an honest-to-God father-son hug.
Richard broke away, but not before Cade noticed his teary eyes. Neither of them mentioned it as Richard walked away and turned the corner, out of sight. Cade looked over his shoulder and into his office, already feeling like an interloper.
Everything was changing. He would miss Richard, but without a doubt Cottonbloom was where he belonged, and thoughts of his future with Monroe stamped out any lingering melancholy.
* * *
Three days he’d been gone. A lifetime. Monroe stared into her refrigerator, knowing she needed to eat but seeing nothing that invoked a semblance of an appetite. Very briefly she considered pulling the bottle of muscadine wine out and killing it. On an empty stomach it would get her drunk, and fast. But she didn’t. She was stronger than her mother.
Anyway, Monroe didn’t want to drink away her memories of Cade. They were all she had left. Tears stung. She should be dehydrated considering the amount of crying she’d done over the last three days. Lying on the couch, she closed her eyes and allowed her mind to wander into her recent memories—the press of his body over hers, the pleasure they’d shared, the intensity of feeling that bound them.
Exhaustion swamped her. Sleep had been elusive, and when she’d managed to find it her dreams had been populated by Cade as a boy, as a man, as a protector, as her lover. Her heart was scattered around her in pieces without instructions on how to reassemble it.
The buzz of her phone shot her straight up, her heart knocking. Not Cade, but her mother. She gritted her teeth and answered.
“Monroe. Sweetheart.” Her mother’s words were slurry.
“Are you drunk?” The background noise confirmed Monroe’s fears. Her mother was out somewhere. “Do you need me to come pick you up?”
“No. I mean, maybe I’m a little buzzed, but … that’s not why I’m calling.”
Kiss Me That Way: A Cottonbloom Novel Page 27
