by Ryan, Lexi
Max steps behind the counter as the woman leaves. We’re alone in the front, only us and the sounds of Drew doing cleanup in the kitchen. He slips his hands under my shirt from behind me and draws me against him.
I tense.
Nuzzling the side of my neck, he takes a long, deep breath. “You smell like clean sheets and flowers,” he murmurs. “I just want to breathe you in for days.”
The heat of his mouth against the side of my neck should be sweet and delicious, but instead it makes my stomach hurt. “You’re distracting me,” I protest lamely.
“Mission accomplished.” His hand moves farther north and cups my breast, and even as part of my body reacts, warming and purring for more, another part of me is thinking about Nate. The way his whispers sent an electric buzz of pleasure through my veins last night. The regret in his eyes as he pulled away.
Max must sense something, because his hands still and he takes his mouth off my neck. “Are we okay?”
Three words. A simple question. My throat grows thick. “I didn’t like the way you ran off to be with Meredith last night. It hurt me.”
He withdraws, pulls his hands out from under my shirt, and steps back. “I didn’t go off to be with her. It’s not like that.”
I set my jaw and cross my arms over my chest. I don’t want to know his reasons or what kind of emergency she had. “It made me feel like I was less important to you than she is.”
He exhales heavily and drags a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry you felt that way.”
“That’s not an apology.” I spin and push into the kitchen. All my life I’ve struggled with telling people when their actions hurt me, and all too often it meant being used and trampled. The reason my twin sister is my closest friend is because she doesn’t need to be told when I hurt. She can tell without me saying it.
I grab a tray and fill it with snickerdoodles from the cooling rack.
“I was just about to do that,” Drew says, hands on her hips. She took the early baking shift this morning—thank God, since it was after two when I finally got to bed.
“I got it,” I mutter.
“Don’t let your shitty mood ruin my hard work,” she grouses.
“Drew,” I hear Max say, “can you cover the front so I can talk to Hanna?”
“Trouble in paradise?” she asks, but when I glare at her, she throws up her hands and scurries to the front.
“Did I miss something?” he asks. He crosses to me and turns me to face him.
Instead of meeting his eyes, I stare at his cheesy gym logo on his chest: Hallowell Health Club, Fitness to the Max.
“What’s really going on here?”
I close my eyes. I feel so childish, like the teenager who throws a fit when she sees her boyfriend talking to another girl. “I remembered Valentine’s Day,” I admit.
“Valentine’s Day?” He looks lost.
“You left to help Meredith.” I shake my head. “I understand that I might seem irrationally jealous, but trust takes time to build. You have almost nine months of our relationship to lean on when you have a bad day. I have two weeks and a handful of memories. Last night made me feel unimportant, and I didn’t like that.”
His hard jaw softens. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not saying you can’t help out a friend, but I need to know—I need to believe—I matter.”
“Of course you do.” He runs his finger over my cheek. “You’re my life, Hanna. My future. You matter.”
When he lowers his lips to mine, my anger has melted into a puddle at my feet. Maybe this shouldn’t be the end of this fight. Maybe I should press the issue. But I’m so confused after last night that I just want the security of his touch. I let him kiss me and I kiss him back until the last of my hurt has evaporated into the sweet, sugar-scented air of the kitchen.
“You love birds can’t keep your hands off each other, can you?”
The sound of my mother’s voice has me breaking the kiss and backing away. She’s already sipping a cup of coffee, her Bible tucked under her arm.
“Good morning, Mom. How was church?”
“Wonderful. Just wonderful. I wanted to invite you and Max to Sunday brunch. Max, a few of the ladies from the New Hope Restoration Council will be there. Don’t get me wrong, I think we’re going to get you that grant for your gym—I’ve really been pulling for you—but it couldn’t hurt to schmooze. A little insurance, you know.”
This is the first I’ve heard of Max applying for a grant with the city restoration group, but I’m not surprised. Mom sits on the board, and it makes sense that they would give one of their grants to a business like Max’s.
“I can’t, Mom. I have too much to do here.”
“You work too much,” she says.
Max grins and winks at me. “That’s what I keep telling her.”
“Max, why don’t you go without me? Mom’s right. It certainly wouldn’t be a bad idea to get some face time.”
He nods and steals a cookie off the tray. “I can come by for a bit.”
Mom brightens. “Wonderful! While you’re there, I’ll introduce you to Fred Wellings. He’s the contractor who built my house. Built William Bailey’s too. You can talk to him about building you and Hanna a house after your wedding.”
Max lowers the cookie that was halfway to his mouth, cutting his eyes to me and then back to Mom. “Mrs. Thompson, Hanna and I both have new businesses. We’re really not going to be in a position to build a house for quite a while.”
“Balderdash,” Mom says, waving her hand. “Hanna will get her trust fund once she’s married. There’s plenty there to build a home and have a little nest egg.”
Poor Max looks so uncomfortable.
“We’re going to live in my apartment for a while,” I say.
“That will be great for while you’re building, of course, but you can’t raise my grandbabies in a tiny apartment above your bakery.”
Max and I exchange and glance. “We’ll talk about it,” I promise.
She looks at her watch and squeaks. “I need to get going. Max, I’ll see you at the house later.”
When she’s finally gone, I turn to him and wince. “I’m sorry. She totally blindsided me with that, but that’s pretty much Mom’s MO.”
He takes my hands and squeezes my fingers. “It’s okay. Maybe we’ll talk about it later.”
I nod. “I never really think about my trust fund. That’s money from Daddy’s insurance. If he hadn’t died so young, it wouldn’t be nearly what it is, so it’s not really something I like to think about. She’s right, though. There’s enough there for us to build a nice house if that’s what we want to do.”
“Well.” He tilts his head, his eyes searching my face. “I guess it all depends on how soon you want to give her those grandbabies she’s talking about.”
“I—oh, um… I’m not sure I’m ready to be a mom yet. I mean, we’re young still, right? And…” And if I get pregnant, I’m going to get fat again, and what if you don’t want me anymore?
“Okay.” He squeezes my hands again, but the gesture isn’t reassuring when everything about his expression tells me I didn’t give him the answer he was hoping for.
“So how are you feeling?” Nix asks when I’m sitting in her office on Wednesday morning.
“I’ve been nauseated a couple times, but I think it’s just stress. You know, weddings,” I say lamely.
“How are the headaches?”
“I haven’t had a headache in probably a week.”
“That’s great news.” She looks in my eyes and ears. “And you said you’re getting some of your memories back?”
“Some,” I say, “not all. It’s frustrating, but I’m trying to be patient.”
“What about the other thing we talked about in the hospital?”
I raise a brow.
“Do you feel safe?” She pauses a beat. “Is Max good to you?”
“Oh! Of course.” I wave my hand. “Seriously, I’m sure I just fell down the stairs.
Max is a prince.”
She frowns. “Your sister says you’ve been spending time with her and Maggie again, not isolating yourself like you had been. That’s a good sign.”
“Of course. Other than Cally, my sisters are my best friends.”
“Keep that up. It’s important that you have a support system, not just Max.”
“I will. I promise.”
She nods, looking satisfied. “Did you fast this morning?”
I wince. “Crap. I totally forgot you wanted to do blood work.”
“That’s okay.” She smiles and lowers herself into her chair. “You can swing by the lab any morning to get that done, but I can guess already that it’s going to look better.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, in the two and a half weeks since you’ve been out of the hospital, you’ve gained about six pounds. I know without seeing your lab work that you’re eating again. That’s good news.”
“You’re the first doctor who’s ever called my weight gain good news.” I can’t handle the sympathy in her sad smile, so I study the blue specks on the industrial-grade flooring tiles. “Did you know? About the anorexia?”
Nix takes a breath, surprised at my confession, I guess. “I suspected, but you weren’t very receptive when I tried to talk to you about it over the summer.”
“Do you think I can start working out again? Running?”
“Let’s start with a week of light, low-impact workouts. If that goes okay, you can try a short run. Just ease back in and listen to your body. But I don’t want you working out more than once a day, got it?”
“I’m scared I’m going to gain it all back.” I hate admitting this. I hate letting someone see how much my stupid body affects how I feel about myself. “But I think I’m just as scared of letting food control my life, letting my desire to be thin ruin everything else.” When I lift my head to meet her gaze, there’s more understanding in her eyes than I expected.
“You’re probably going to put on some more weight, at least some of it. When you lose weight in such an unhealthy way, your body can’t maintain it when you go back to eating and exercising normally. There will be an adjustment period where you figure out what weight you can maintain while eating regularly and having a healthy relationship with exercise.”
I nod, but my eyes fill and I have to look away. I only have a few recovered memories of Nix, and I don’t know how close we are. But if I voice my fears to Liz, she’ll just be mad at me.
“What is it, Hanna?”
The floor’s blue specks swim before my eyes. A tear plops onto the tile next to my sandaled foot. “What if the weight comes back and Max isn’t attracted to me anymore?”
“Oh, sweetie.” Then she surprises me by hugging me, wrapping me up against her.
“Are doctors supposed to hug their patients?” I ask, hugging her back awkwardly.
“I’m not hugging you as your doctor. I’m hugging you as your friend.” She squeezes one more time before releasing me. “You need to talk to Max. You can’t live the rest of your life fearing that he might not want you.”
May—Three Months Before Accident
“I’m so pleased to meet you, Miss Thompson,” the lawyer says. She gestures to the chair and takes her seat on the other side of her desk. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I summoned you.”
“I am.” I lower myself into the wingback chair. Her office is slick and modern with just enough homey touches—throw pillows, framed snapshots—to make it comfortable. Well, to make most people comfortable. There’s nothing comfortable about how I feel being called to Indianapolis to meet with a lawyer I’ve never heard of before. “I can only assume I have a distant rich relative who passed away and left me his fortune.”
She laughs good-naturedly. “I keep waiting for that call myself, but unfortunately, that’s not why you’re here today.”
“Bummer.” I force a smile and shift in my chair. Waiting.
“I understand you just graduated from Sinclair and have a successful side business decorating cakes for friends.”
“I did just graduate, though I’m not sure how successful I’d call my business. I do it more for fun than anything.”
“You enjoy it, then?”
“Of course!” My cheeks warm. “It’s fun to make something out of raw ingredients. And cakes just make people happy.”
“And you have a dream of opening up your own bakery in New Hope. Is that correct?”
This will definitely be filed under Strangest Experiences Ever. “Yes, but it’s really more of a pipe dream. Nothing serious.”
“What if it didn’t have to be a pipe dream?” She pushes a thin stack of papers across the desk. “My client who, let’s be clear from the start, wishes to remain anonymous, thinks your ‘pipe dream’ bakery plans, as you call them, could really turn into a profitable venture.”
I pick up the stack of papers and leaf through them, but I’m not really sure what I’m looking at.
“The one on the top is the New Hope revitalization project, explaining tax breaks and grant funds the town of New Hope will give to young entrepreneurs who want to help revitalize the historic square.”
I scan the page, my eyes landing on the maximum dollar amounts the city will contribute. “I know about these grants,” I say, nodding. “William Bailey got some grant money to open his art gallery. I’m familiar with the opportunities, but they aren’t anything near what someone like me would need to open my own business.” I’d be able to do it with the money in my trust fund, but I don’t get that until I’m thirty or married.
Max’s proposal flashes through my mind—the look on his face when I stared at the ring and didn’t speak, the moment he rose off his knee and placed the ring in my hand, closing my fingers around it. “Keep it. That’s how much I want this, Hanna. Keep it. I’ll wait.”
What was the “this” that he wanted? Me or my trust fund? I squeeze my eyes shut.
“That’s why I’m here. My client would like to go into business with you, Hanna. He would provide the rest of the funds you need to open the bakery in the old Woolworth’s building on Main. We’ve had a team of contractors give us estimates on turning around the space, and he’d even put an apartment for you upstairs to compensate for the minimal income you’d expect your first months in business.”
“How can I go into business with someone who wants to remain anonymous?”
“He’d be a silent partner. He’d get a portion of your profits until you choose to buy him out or sell the business.”
“But what if I don’t make a profit? What’s in it for him then?”
She shrugs. “Investments always come with risk, but my client believes you’ll be successful.”
“So if I want to make a decision, how am I supposed to talk to him?”
“Most things you’d be free to decide on your own, but there are major decisions he’d want to be consulted on, and those would go through me.”
Who would want to go into business with me? Who do I know with the money to take on something like this? “Is Nate Crane behind this?”
Her face remains impassive. “Anonymous means anonymous.”
It has to be Nate. And I should say no. I shouldn’t accept his money. Only he’s offering me something I want so badly. I can already picture my bakery on Main, Sinclair students hopping in between classes for a gourmet coffee, a glass case with freshly baked cookies and scones.
“Do you think you’d like to talk more, or is an anonymous partnership out of the question for you?”
“Tell me more.”
AT FIRST, I’m not sure if what I’m hearing is someone knocking on my door because the booming thunder of the storm masks it. Then it comes again. Boom, boom, boom.
I slide my laptop onto the couch beside me and rush to the door.
“Hanna?” Liz calls.
“What are you doing out in this storm?” I hurry to the door and yank it open.
Liz steps in, soaking
wet but grinning. Maggie, Cally, and Nix pile in right behind her. “Impromptu girls’ night!” Liz announces.
“Sorry, I couldn’t hear the knocking over the thunder.”
The girls shed their shoes and jackets by the door, and I grab towels for them.
“It’s a mess out there,” my sister says. She wipes the rain from her face and shakes her curls, not unlike a dog coming in from the rain.
Cally goes into the kitchen and plugs her iPod into the radio, and Maggie hoists a couple of canvas shopping bags on the counter and starts pulling out cream, Godiva liqueur, and vodka—ingredients for chocolate martinis, if I’m not mistaken. Nix removes a box of truffles, cheese, and crackers from another bag.
“You guys,” I say. “I have a wedding dress to fit into in three and a half weeks.”
Liz opens cabinet doors until she finds my martini glasses and sets them on the island. “You’ve never had us over here.”
“We had to remedy that,” Cally says, grinning.
“And Asher and Nate are working like fiends, so I was bored,” Maggie explains.
“Where’s Will?” I ask Cally.
“He’s hanging with Max and Sam at Brady’s.”
I head to the island and pop a truffle in my mouth. “That is amazing!” I close my eyes and chew slowly.
“God, it’s good to see you eat!” Cally says as she chooses a chocolate. “You were losing weight so fast. I was worried about you.”
“She’s doing really well,” Nix says. She winks at me as she grabs a truffle for herself. “Oh, wow!”
“They’re orgasmic, aren’t they?” Maggie says. “Asher got them for me when he was in New York last month. There’s this shop in the city that I swear does voodoo to make their chocolate.”
“Let me try.” Lizzy abandons her half-made chocolate martinis to try the orgasmic treat for herself. “Holy shit! I didn’t know chocolate could be better.”
The speakers click as Cally’s iPod shuffles to a new song, and Nate Crane’s “Lost In Me” begins.
I gasp.
Lizzy reaches over and squeezes my hand, and I close my eyes.
“That’s it.” Maggie slaps her palm on the counter. “What is going on with Nate Crane?”
