Hometown Hero

by Cate Cameron

  His face was softer now, and he smiled at her as he said, “You decided not to fight? For real?” She nodded, and he bobbed his head back at her. “That’s a good call, Zare. That’s smart. I’m proud of you.”

  Okay, the bar wasn’t super well lit. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to see the tears welling in her eyes. “Yeah?” she asked.

  “Hell, yeah. Super proud. You’re doing great, Zare.”

  “You, too.” She swallowed hard, and waited until she was sure her voice would be more controlled. “I’m proud of you, too. Everyone at the community center loves you, and you’re making friends, and . . . yeah. You’re doing great, too.”

  He nodded slowly. “We’re Hales. We might not do things the easy way, or the smart way. But we don’t quit. Right?”

  “Right,” she said. Maybe it was a strange thing to be proud of, but she’d take it. “So I’m going to keep working at it. I screwed up, but I’m going to keep going.”

  “If you need me for anything, let me know.”

  “Yeah, okay.” It was supposed to be casual, she knew. Zane was already pouring himself another beer, looking around the bar for someone to hang out with now that his grumpy best friend and weepy sister had abandoned him. She was supposed to just leave, and pretend none of it had ever happened.

  But she was a Hale. Not too caught up in doing the smart thing. So she took three big steps back to the booth, leaned over, and gave him an awkward but sincere hug. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  He looked embarrassed as she pulled away. “Nothing to thank me for. It’s up to you now. Go make it work.”

  She nodded. That was her mission. “Okay,” she agreed, and she had to keep herself from running as she left the bar. She knew who she wanted to talk to, and she knew where to find them.

  The lights were all on at Mrs. Ryerson’s home, and from the cars in the driveway, Zara knew she’d been right. It was a stitch and bitch night, and the gang was all there. Mrs. Ryerson answered the door and gave her a quick hug before saying, “Don’t even explain to me, because everyone else will want to know, too. Get your coat off and come on!”

  Sure enough, as soon as she stepped into the back room, there was a chorus of greetings and inquiries. Zara took the glass of wine someone pressed into her hand and let herself relax into an empty spot on one of the long sofas. This felt right. She wanted to be with Cal, sure, but she wanted to be sure she did it properly, the way he deserved. She needed a chance to rehearse and plan what to say, because she couldn’t stand the thought of hurting him any more. She needed to do this right, and these women could help her do that.

  “I dropped out of the fight,” she said. “I wasn’t sure my concussion was healed enough, so I dropped out.”

  “That seems wise,” Mrs. Ryerson said approvingly. That simple.

  Zara shrugged. “I guess. But I made another big mistake.” She sighed. “Is it okay if I talk about this? It might be kind of long. I don’t want to, like, take over. . . .”

  The women all laughed, and one of them whose name Zara couldn’t remember said, “Honey, we’ve been listening to each other’s troubles for twenty years now! A fresh story? You don’t need our permission to give us something new to talk about!”

  It felt wonderful to spill it all. The women were good listeners, making sympathetic noises at all the right places, frowning thoughtfully as they tried to understand what she’d been thinking, and then looking pensive as she wrapped up. “So I love him.” Probably strange to admit it to them before telling Cal himself, but they needed to know the full situation if they were going to help her. “And I think he still loves me. I mean, it’s only been a few days since he said it, so he probably still does.” She hoped. “But I don’t think that’s enough. I mean, he shouldn’t just love me, he should trust me, right? He should know I care about him, and won’t hurt him again. I need to show him I’m serious, and committed.”

  The ladies were quiet for quite a while, and then it was Ashley who finally spoke. “I know this might not always be a good idea,” she said. “But have you considered a grand gesture?”

  Twenty-four

  CAL WAITED BY the phone all that night, but Zara didn’t call.

  There was a knock on the door around eleven, and Cal was halfway down the hall before he even realized he’d started moving. But when the door opened, it was Zane standing there. “She didn’t come by?” he asked, and Cal shook his head.

  “She dropped out of the fight,” Zane told him. “Before I even told her about your plan, she quit. She’s not fighting.”

  The strongest emotion was relief, absolutely. Relief so strong he was almost dizzy with it. But rolling around underneath that was something else, something angry and frustrated. She’d dropped out of the fight before he’d seen her at the bar. So he could have talked to her then, could have tried to salvage something of their relationship. He’d walked away when he could have just stayed with her, and now? What the hell did he have now?

  “She’ll probably call you tomorrow,” Zane said. “Probably. She said she wanted to get some things straightened out.” He held something fuzzy and blue out in front of him. “She wanted me to give you this.”

  Cal reached for it and stretched it out. Clearly handmade and, judging by the irregular shape of it, not created by a master craftsperson. “She made me a scarf,” he said softly.

  “Kind of,” Zane agreed with a doubtful look at the item.

  Cal let his arms fall to his sides and slumped back against the wall. Was the scarf a good-bye present, or a positive omen? He had no idea.

  “So what am I supposed to do now? Just sit here and wait for her?”

  Zane nodded slowly. “Honestly? If you can? I think you should, yeah.” He saw Cal’s expression and added, “You can call her if you want. I don’t think it’d be the end of the world or anything. But if you can hold off, give her a little space, and let her do this on her terms, I think it’d be a good thing.”

  It wasn’t easy, but Cal followed Zane’s advice. He forced himself to go to bed, managed to get a few hours of restless sleep, and made himself presentable before going to work the next morning. Once he got there, he stalked around the office and growled at anyone who spoke to him and shamed himself in general, and every time his phone rang, he looked at the call display with a horrible mix of anticipation and dread. But it was never Zara on the other end of the line.

  He stayed at the office, pushing paper around on his desk and achieving nothing, until about five o’clock, and then he headed for the front doors. He’d run again, he supposed, maybe do more weights, to exhaust himself and hopefully shut off his traitorous brain.

  But he was only in the hallway, not even to the front foyer, when he heard Zara’s voice. “I just want to talk to him.” Cal stopped walking, bracing himself to face her.

  But then he heard Michael respond, “I’m sorry, he’s not available.”

  “Do you really think you can just lock the door? Like I’m not going to ever run into him and talk to him? Or like I won’t just call him on the phone?”

  “Not ever? No, I sincerely doubt it will take him that long to realize what a mistake this all was. I think he knows it already, to be honest. I just don’t want you to make a scene at our place of business. Why don’t you call him and arrange for him to finalize the breakup somewhere else?”

  “Michael.” A new voice now, and it was enough to make Cal move out of the hallway and into the foyer, where he saw Michael looking defiantly at their mother while Zara watched the whole scene. “This is none of your business, Michael.” Their mother’s voice allowed no doubt. “Please don’t interfere.”

  “This is absolutely my business,” his brother retorted. “Look around you! This is, by definition, my business. And I don’t want Cal’s nonsense here.”

  And that was when Cal finally stepped forward, drawing surprised looks from the
others. “It’s not nonsense, Michael. But I don’t really want Zara here, either—she shouldn’t have to put up with your crap.”

  “It’s fine,” Zara said quickly. She smiled at Cal, tentative but real. “His crap isn’t too impressive. It’s easy to ignore.”

  Michael stepped away then, making a small noise of disgust as he went, and Zara turned back to Cal. “Can we talk?” she asked.

  “Not in—” Michael started.

  “Shut up, Michael.” Their mother smiled beatifically at all of them. “Cal, do you want to head out, or would you rather take Zara to your office?”

  He nodded toward the door. “You ready to go?” he asked Zara, and she followed him outside. Which was a start, at least, but not an ending. But he had no idea what the next step was. “Where to?”

  She looked undecided, then nodded toward the little park across the street. “Can we sit there?”

  It was cold, with a dusting of snow already covering the ground, but Cal didn’t object.

  They sat on the wooden bench, and Cal waited. Zane had told him to let Zara do this her way.

  And she seemed prepared to take charge, reaching inside the fabric bag he hadn’t noticed she was carrying and pulling out a large manila envelope. Then she took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. I should have. And I’m sorry if I’ve made it seem like I’m not into this. If that’s what you thought, I’m sorry. Honestly, it was what I wanted to be true. But I screwed up. I thought I could spend time with you and keep it casual, but then I went and fell in love with you. I tried to pretend that wasn’t true, but it was, and . . .” She frowned down at the envelope in her hands as if she’d lost her train of thought. “Yeah. That’s what happened. I love you.” Another pause, and then she shrugged. “Oops.”

  He stared at her. It was kind of hard to be angry about her reluctance to love him when he was feeling more or less the same way about her. Hard to be angry at all when he could still hear the echo of her I love you bouncing around in his heart. “So we’re both screwed,” he said.

  She looked at him, a quick moment of brilliant eye contact before her gaze returned to the envelope. “Kind of, yeah. Except . . . okay, I get why it’s not exactly what you’d have wanted. I mean, I don’t fit your family’s idea of—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “My family isn’t a problem. You’re right, their crap is unimpressive. And it seems like Mom’s on my side, so really, that battle, small as it was, is completely over.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s fine. I mean, you’ve never really let them get in the way of this, have you?” She sighed. “You didn’t let anything get in the way, except for me. And I get that I’m not a good bet. I flaked out on you. I let you down. You’re afraid I’m going to do it again.”

  He let the words sink in for a while. “Well, yeah,” he said.

  She started tugging pages out of the envelope. “Okay, here’s the thing. I’m doing this because of you, but I’m going to do it whether you want to be with me or not. Okay? I mean, it’s not—what did you say? It’s not transactional. It’s not something I’m giving in exchange for what I want—I’m not sure you even want me to do it, to be honest. Possibly this whole thing is a bad idea. If it is, I blame Ashley.”

  “You lost me a while ago,” Cal said. But already he was finding it hard to care. If he could have this? More of Zara’s bewildering determination, her unexpected conversational leaps . . . if he could have more of this, even if it was temporary, he wanted it. He felt his shoulders lower with the realization.

  She gave him a tentative smile. “If you like it, it was all my idea,” she clarified. Then she flipped over the pile of papers and turned the top bundle so he could read the words. “I made an offer on a house. It’s on the same street as yours, but down a bit. It’s bigger. You might want to stay living where you are, and I totally get that—I love your little hobbit house. But I couldn’t just invite myself to live there, and it’s not really big enough, and I thought maybe I was sending kind of the wrong message if I kept living in a rental. Because I want to be here for good. That’s what I’m committing to. You don’t have to say anything in return, and if things don’t work out between us . . .” She frowned. “Well, that would be very bad, and I can’t say I’d stay here forever if that was the case, but you know, I’m doing what I can. I’m committing.”

  “You bought a house?” he managed.

  “Yes. Well, I made an offer, and they accepted. There’s lots more paperwork, and an inspection. I didn’t have much time, so really I mostly bought a house. If this one falls through, I’ll find another one.” She peered at him anxiously, then pulled out another sheet of paper. “And it’s important that I have a house because a dog wouldn’t like my place in Queens.”

  “A dog?”

  She flipped the page around to show him a grainy color printout of a nondescript brown mutt. “His name is Max, he’s living in the shelter right now, but I can pick him up whenever I’m ready. He’s . . . okay, he’s a bit negotiable. I mean, if you hate dogs or something, I don’t need to have a dog. But the new house has a fenced yard, and they say Max loves to run, so he could do that with us . . . or just me, if you don’t want to, but hopefully us.”

  “You bought a house and a dog.”

  “It’s like the Twelve Days of Christmas. But not quite twelve things. Still, there’s a few more.”

  “What else?”

  “I got my job back at the community center. Just part time, but that’s okay.” She took a deep breath. “Because I still plan to train. I agree that I shouldn’t be fighting now, with my head not quite right, and I like your plan, the one Zane told me about. That’ll keep me pretty busy, but it’s something I can do from here mostly. And as soon as my head is better for sure, I’m going back. I’m going to kick Anna Cade’s ass, and everyone else’s, too. That’s okay, right? I mean, I commit to you. To living here, and building a life with you, if you’ll let me. But I need to do something. To be someone. I want to keep fighting.”

  “Are you asking me?” he asked.

  She frowned. “I’m not asking permission. No. But I’m asking you to be okay with it. Does that make sense?”

  “It does.” He wouldn’t want her to ask him for permission, he realized. It would be too out of character, and her character was what he loved. “I’ll try to be okay with it. I promise.”

  “Okay,” she said, and there was a little tremble in her voice as she exhaled. “That’s a good start. Good.”

  He reached for her hand then, their cool fingers finding warmth as they pressed together. “You didn’t have to do all this,” he said.

  “Because you would have given me another chance without it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t want you to give me a chance, like you know I’m going to mess up again. I don’t want you to have doubts, or be sorry that you love me.”

  “I’m not,” he said, and knew the words were true. “Even before all this, I don’t think I was really sorry. But now? I feel much better about it.”

  She squinted at him as if trying to judge his sincerity. “There’s a couple more things,” she said.

  “I don’t think we need any more.”

  “Too bad. I’ve had the stitcher-bitchers running around like chickens with their heads cut off putting all this together. You’re getting all of it.” She flipped her pages and pulled out a picture of a man in a sweater with a bunch of unintelligible letters and numbers running down beside it. “I’m going to make you this sweater,” she vowed. “And it’s really hard, and I’m terrible at crocheting, so it’s going to take me a long time. But I’m going to do it. Remember you said I could be good at anything I wanted to be good at?”

  He nodded, and she said, “I’m going to get good at crocheting, and I’m going to get good at loving you.”

  “If you want, you can skip the f
irst one and just focus on the second.”

  Her eyes were warm now, and he couldn’t feel the winter weather at all. She leaned in and gave him a quick kiss. “No. I’m going to do both. And I might learn to cook. Like, for real. Maybe.”

  “I like doing the cooking.”

  “Okay, good, forget the cooking then!” Another kiss, and this time she didn’t pull away as quickly. Instead, she snuggled in next to him and they both looked at their entwined fingers as she added, “I arranged for all my stuff to get shipped up here. And I fired Andre. And . . . oh, I almost forgot!”

  She sat up so quickly her head almost caught him in the nose, and then she triumphantly waved a sheet of paper at him. “I entered the triathlon for next year’s Splash. Kayak, mountain bike, and ‘speed hiking’—that’s just running, right? On a trail? I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. You want to do it with me?”

  “Next summer?” The girl who wouldn’t plan more than a couple days ahead wanted him to enter a race with her the next summer? “Yeah. I want to.”

  “Excellent.” She sighed, and she snuggled back into his arms. “We’re going to kick ass.”

  “I think I’m going to make a change at work,” he said. It was still new, nothing decided yet, but it felt right to talk to her about it. “I think you were right that I won’t be satisfied being Michael’s number two, not long-term. I might try to split the furniture business off and really make something of it. If that doesn’t work, I might quit altogether and do something else.”

  He felt her nod against his chest. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe I can help. I mean, there’s not a really strong connection between furniture and MMA, but if you wanted an endorsement or something, I could do that. Or if you wanted to do something else entirely . . . I don’t know. I probably wouldn’t be too useful. But I could learn to cook a bit, so you wouldn’t have to make meals while you’re working really hard.”