“Cosmo.”
Tate raised her eyebrows and looked around the bar like it was the first time she’d seen it. “A cosmo? I’m sorry, are we in Manhattan dining on lobster and wearing our good diamonds?”
Van shoved Tate’s shoulder with a laugh. “Shut up. A cosmo isn’t that fancy.”
“You’re just practicing for L.A., huh?” Tate lifted up her beer and tipped the neck toward Van before taking a swig. “I’ll be over here enjoying my Miller High Life like that classy gal I am.”
Van rubbed her finger over the rim of the glass. “Maaaybeee this winter you will be in Manhattan, sipping cosmos, dripping in jewels.”
Tate plunked her beer down on the table and glared at her best friend. She’d told Van as soon as she got to the bar about her conversation with Cam, spewing it all out in one long stream of breath before they could even get their first drink.
“Van . . .”
Her friend leaned forward. “You’re thinking about it right?”
Tate blew out a breath. “I am, okay? I’m thinking about it very seriously. But Jamie will still have another year of school and Dad . . .” She let her voice trail off. Why was she wishing doom on their heads? He’d been doing well.
Van took a sip her drink and made a face. “Gonna have to talk to Trev about this. Anyway, I think you need to realize they would want you to live your life.”
“But we just got Jamie speaking to us again and he seems to be getting back on track but—”
“Your father is aware of Jamie’s behavior now, so he can help get him back on track. This isn’t all on you anymore. It never should have been.”
Tate scrunched her lips back and forth, mulling it over. She wondered if part of her was scared to take that leap, to travel to an unknown city when all she’d known all her life was Paradise. Was she making excuses now? She looked up at Cam as he sat on his stool at the bar. His head was turned, shouting something to Trevor behind the bar. Then Cam threw back his head and laughed. And the sound was like a warm blanket, wrapping around her, promising her safety. How could she leave that?
“I think I want to,” she said quietly.
“And I think you should,” Van said back, just as quietly.
A chair scraped beside her and she looked up as Marcus took a seat at their table. “Hey, Tate.”
She hadn’t talked to him since that awkward night at the bar. She darted her gaze to Cam, who was no longer laughing, his eyes dark and piercing into Marcus’s back.
She cleared her throat. “Hey.”
“Haven’t seen you around for a while.” Marcus’s jaw was tight, and she didn’t like the glazed look in his eyes, like he’d already had a couple of drinks.
“Uh, just been busy, you know. Working. Helping the family.”
Marcus chuckled, a weird, choked sound. “Right, just working and helping the family and crawling into Ruiz’s bed again. Really fucking busy, Tate.”
Tate was stunned. Utterly stunned. Marcus might not be her best friend, but he’d never been nasty.
“Marcus,” Van spoke up, her voice low. “If you don’t get up right now and leave us be, I’ll be forced to call Trevor and Cam over here, and no one wants that.”
But it was like Marcus didn’t hear her, because his gaze never wavered from Tate.
She put her hand on the table, palm down, in front of Van and met Marcus’s gaze. “First of all, there’s no crawling being done, Marcus. What I do and who I do it with is none of your business.”
He snorted and his lip curled. “You think you’re hot shit again, don’t you? Ruiz is back so you get to relive your popular prom queen days. Well, news flash, Tate. You’re just a high school graduate working at a diner. Cam’s gonna hightail it out of here and away from your white trash ass as soon as he can. You’re nothing but filler.”
Tate’s mouth dropped open. “Wow.”
“Holy shit,” Van said with raised eyebrows. “You practice that filth in the mirror before you came out, Marcus? Damn.”
Marcus pointed in Van’s face, and then at Tate. “Laugh it up, both of you. You’ll see.”
Tate heard his boots first and knew what was coming. She shrank back in her seat, wishing she could hide away in the bathroom.
“Outside, Marcus,” Cam said once he reached their table. His arms hung at his sides, loose, like he was the picture of relaxation, but the veins in his forearms stood out, revealing the tenseness of his muscles.
Marcus’s eyes widened and he smirked. “Oh, you even got your own bodyguard now, Tate. Good for you.” He leaned closer. “But he’s not going to be around forever.”
Cam grabbed Marcus around the biceps to haul him to his feet. “Leave her alone.”
Marcus tried to shrug him off, but Cam held firm. “Fuck you, Ruiz. Just go on and get the fuck out of town already. Looking forward to catching Tate on the rebound again.”
Cam’s face didn’t move, not even a muscle twitch, and it was a little freaky. He stepped up to Marcus, toe to toe, their noses almost touching. “I’m going to kick you out of this bar in thirty seconds but before I do, I’m going to make it clear that Tate will never be on the rebound. Ever. Because she’s with me. And I’m with her. And if I do leave this town, she’s coming with me.”
Now Marcus was the one with an open mouth, speechless. And so was Tate, and so was Van.
Because that was it. Cam had spoken.
And then he was leading Marcus to the front door of the bar and out the door, before Tate could react. “Wow.”
“Holy shit,” Van said.
Tate turned to Van and blinked. Van blinked back. And then they dissolved into giggles. Tate straightened and wiped her eyes. “Am I supposed to be upset about what Marcus said? I mean, it was just kind of mean and weird, right?”
Van plopped down in her chair and sipped her drink as Tate took her seat across from her. “No, you’re not supposed to be upset. He’s jealous and drunk.”
“That was kinda hot. Cam going all ‘Imma tell it like it is.’ ” Tate started giggling again.
Van tilted her head. “I’m glad you’re not getting all weird and letting some asshole get to you.”
Tate wiped the condensation off the bottle in front of her. “Marcus is . . . Marcus. And Cam is . . . well . . . Cam. He says what he means and he means what he says and he doesn’t lie.”
Van’s eyes softened. “And he loves you.”
Tate nodded. “He does. He loves me, and I believe it. I know he hooked up with all kinds of girls in college. I used to stalk his Facebook page when I was feeling pathetic about myself. In his pictures . . . so many girls.” She straightened and leaned forward. “He could have stayed with any of them. Smart, pretty girls who want to be teachers or doctors or whatever. But he didn’t. He came home. And he chose me. Again.” She swirled her bottle on the table. “And I’m going to try really hard not to fuck it up again.”
“What do you want to do?” Van asked. “Cam wants to work in security research but what do you want to do? Weren’t you going to go to college for software developing?”
Tate snorted. She’d had such big dreams in high school. She thought she could do anything. And then life knocked her on her ass and she still hadn’t gotten up. “God, that was a silly dream, and no, I don’t want to do that anymore.”
“So what do you want?” she pressed.
Tate glanced at Cam, who had walked back inside after tossing Marcus out and stopped to talk to Trevor at the bar. “I want to spend time with my family, and I want to be with Cam. Do I have to have huge career ambitions?”
She glanced at Van, who wore a small smile. “No, no you don’t.”
“I feel very anti-feminist. Rosie the Riveter would be disappointed.”
Van laughed. “It isn’t anti-feminist not to have big career ambitions. You just have to agree women deserve equality if they want a career. We fought so we’d have this choice, to have a career or not, you know?”
Tate sighed. “I want to be
a mom.”
Van blinked and brushed her hand under her eye. “You’d make a great one.”
Cam’s boots clomped on the floor as he stepped toward them. He leaned down with one arm braced on the table and the other cupping her neck. “You all right? Dude’s an asshole.”
She smiled. “I’m fine.”
Cam stared into her eyes, like he didn’t believe her. “I heard what he said. You sure?”
She shrugged. “What would that make me if I believe things he said to me over what you say to me?”
Cam frowned. “Uh . . .”
“An idiot,” Tate said decisively. “It would make me a pretty big idiot.”
Cam’s smile started at one corner of his mouth and spread to the other side, until the whites of his teeth showed and his dimples popped. “And my Tatum’s not an idiot,” he whispered.
“Not this time,” she whispered back.
He pressed his lips to hers and stood. “Need to get back to work. You gonna hang out for a little?”
“Yep.”
He gave her another smile, nodded to Van and then walked back to his post at the door.
Van took a sip of her drink. “You lucky bitch.”
Chapter 15
TATE YAWNED AS she wiped down the tables early one morning at the diner. She’d stayed up late with Jamie last night, talking about his grades and possibly joining Junior ROTC next year at school. She’d been going to the bar more often than usual last week to see Cam at work, so she’d stayed home last night with Jamie and her dad.
They’d watched baseball and ate ice cream—moose tracks—and yelled “steeeerike!” at the television. She had to start making sure she spent as much time with them as she could, especially if she planned to leave this fall . . .
Her stomach dipped and a bead of sweat dripped down her lower back. Her hands shook as she straightened a ketchup bottle. She blamed it on caffeine but really, she knew it was the thought of moving. God, what would she even do in New York? She couldn’t picture herself in a big city. Being a “New Yawkah.” Cam always had that attitude, that look, like you knew he wasn’t long for Paradise. But her? No one ever thought she’d leave. She never thought she’d leave. She’d avoided talking to Cam about it. If he brought it up, she told him she was still thinking about it. At first he just smiled, but then the frowns started and now he hadn’t brought it up for a couple of days. She wondered if he was starting to give up on her.
“Damn it,” she muttered to herself. She could leave if it meant keeping Cam, right?
She hadn’t told her dad yet. And there was a reason for that. Because part of her knew he’d tell her to go. And she wasn’t sure she wanted the permission.
“Tate,” Anne’s voice said from behind her, and she straightened up from the table she’d been cleaning. “Yeah?”
Anne gestured the back room with her head. “We got a frozen shipment in the back. Would you help me put it away?”
“Sure,” she answered. She checked with the one table she had, a trucker eating breakfast, and dropped him his check. After filling his coffee again, she told him he could leave the cash on the table when he was finished and to holler if he needed anything.
She and Anne loaded bags of chicken nuggets and fries in the freezer in the back room, throwing out anything that had expired.
“Spoke to your father.” Anne nudged a bag of Tater Tots with her toe.
“Oh yeah? What about?” Tate lifted the bag.
“You moving to New York.”
Tate dropped the bag of Tater Tots on her feet and then howled as hard rocks of frozen potatoes crushed her toes. She kicked the bag off and glared at Anne. “What’re you talking about?”
Anne smiled. “How are your feet?”
Tate glared. “Don’t you worry about my feet. What do you know about me moving to New York?”
“I overhead you talking to Cam—”
“So you were eavesdropping like a weirdo—”
“— and he mentioned you moving to New York with him in the fall. I didn’t realize it was this big secret. I said something to your dad in passing and . . . well . . . he was surprised.”
The blood drained from Tate’s face. “When was this?”
Anne leaned on the steel counter behind her. “A couple of days ago?”
“Why hasn’t he said anything to me?”
Anne sighed. “I think he’s waiting for you to tell him yourself. I’m sorry I spilled it. I didn’t realize it was classified information.” She looked chagrined enough that Tate couldn’t be mad at her. She hadn’t done anything malicious on purpose. And Tate should have told her father all of this sooner. Her own fault really. She wiggled her toes and kicked the bag of Tater Tots. “It’s okay.” She looked up. “What did he say?”
Anne smiled. “I think you need to talk to him about that.”
Tate clasped her hands under her chin and batted her eyelashes. “Pretty please? May I at least have a hint?”
Anne pursed her lips and rolled her eyes. “He wants you to be happy and live your life.”
Tate squinted. “Here or in New York?”
Anne cupped her cheek. “That’s up to you. You have to make a decision for yourself now. It’s time, don’t you think?”
Tate bit her lip and nodded.
BY THE END of her workday, Tate was dead on her feet. Cam had texted about coming over for dinner but she told him she needed to talk to her dad.
His reply text:
Why?
You know.
His next text came five minutes later.
I love you.
Love you, too.
She pulled into her driveway and parked her car. She didn’t see Jamie’s car. Or . . . rather . . . Mrs. Ruiz’s car that Jamie was borrowing until he found something else cheap. She didn’t think he was working tonight. As she stepped out of her car in her bare feet, Jamie pulled in behind her.
He smiled at her as he got out of his car, and then reached back in to pull out a pizza box. “Hungry?”
“Famished.”
“Come on then.”
Jamie called out, “Pizza’s here” when they walked into the house, which was unnecessary because their dad sat on the recliner in front of them, an amused smile on his face. “I see that.”
They set the pizza box on the coffee table and ate their pizza slices off paper plates on their laps. It was Tate’s favorite type of family dinner, sitting around the TV, eating and laughing. Forgetting about everything else that was going on and just enjoying each other’s company. With Jamie’s issues and her stress, they hadn’t done this enough.
She looked over at her dad, and he must have felt her eyes on him, because he winked at her before looking back at the TV.
She smiled and looked down at her pizza, picking off a pepperoni slice and dropping it in her mouth. She mulled in her head how to bring it up, because Jamie was in the room so she had to break it gently to him . . .
The footrest of her dad’s recliner jolted back, and he placed his feet on the floor, leaning forward, eyes on her. “I was waiting you out, baby, but we need to talk.”
Tate’s eyes darted to Jamie and then back to her father. “Um . . . well . . .”
Jamie waved his hand. “It’s cool, I know already.”
Tate threw up her hands. “What the hell? Everyone’s stealing my news!”
Her dad clasped his hands in his lap. “Why didn’t you talk to me about this sooner?”
Tate relaxed her arms and picked at her fingernails. “I dunno.”
“I think you do.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. “Because I wasn’t ready to make the decision yet myself.”
“And why’s that?”
“This feels like therapy,” Tate grumbled.
“Seriously, join the club,” Jamie muttered.
Their father shot them both a stern glance, then focused again on Tate. She felt like there was a bull’s-eye on her forehead. “And why weren’t you ready t
o make the decision?”
“I had to make sure it’s what I wanted. That this time I’m making the decision for me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And is it?”
She nodded. “I’m scared and freaked and nervous, but it’s what I want.”
He nodded and brought down his fist on the arm of his chair like he held a gavel. “Then you go.”
Tate sat up. “But Dad—”
He held up a hand. “I’m doing fine. And even if I wasn’t, you need to live your life. This isn’t what I want for you.”
“But I’m not miserable here.”
“Of course not, now that Cam’s back,” Jamie interjected.
Her father nodded. “Right, he’s back, and you’re happy. I can’t imagine how you’d be if he left without you. Now that you both know what it’s like to be together again, as adults. Don’t you think?”
Damn man. Always so insightful. Like he could read her mind. “Yes,” she said grudgingly.
“So, again,” he said, his voice softer. “You go. We’ll miss you. We’ll miss you so much. But you aren’t far. And I’ll be so happy knowing you’re happy and you’re with the man you’re supposed to be with. You two take care of each other. And that’s the way it should be.”
Tate’s eyes prickled as she turned to her brother. “Jamie?”
His smile was sad. “It’s okay. I only have another year of school.”
“I’ll be at your graduation.”
“I know you will.” But his tone was less than reassuring.
Tate tried harder. “And homecoming. And prom. And the holidays—”
Jamie launched himself across the couch and hugged her. His big hand rubbed her back and she buried her face in his neck. “I know, Tate. I know.”
She pulled out of the hug and wiped her eyes, then stood up and walked over to her father. She bent down and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, kissing his whiskered cheek. “I love you, Dad.”
His voice cracked when he spoke, but she pretended not to notice. “I love you, too, baby.”
IT WAS TWO a.m. when Cam got off work and all he could think about was Tate. He was itching to know how her conversation with her father went. He got into his truck and started it up, then tapped on the dashboard and stared at the clock. It was really late, and he knew she’d be asleep.
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