The Comfort of Favorite Things (A Hope Springs Novel Book 5)

by Alison Kent

  “That’s Tennessee’s business,” he said with a shrug, wiping a red shop rag over a pair of greasy pliers. He tossed them into a tray she thought must fit the toolbox that sat behind the cab, then he picked up the same two screwdrivers he’d showed to James.

  His mouth a grim line, he said, “I still want to go all Walking Dead on the man who destroyed those boys and their mother.”

  Thea supposed he was talking about screwdrivers as deadly weapons shoved deep into skulls. “They’re not destroyed. They’re doing really well actually. They’ve all come out of their shells a lot these last few weeks. It’s amazing to see. It truly is.”

  “Not knowing them before, I’ll have to take your word for that.”

  Time for some of what she’d come for. “People do recover, you know. Get over tragedies. Move on. We actually talked about this the other day at lunch. Kaylie, Luna. Your sister.”

  “There’s a lot of damage there for sure,” he said, tossing the screwdrivers on top of the pliers, then standing and walking to the open tailgate.

  Thea followed, moving away and giving him room to hop down. “There’s also a whole lot of happiness. A lot of peace. A lot of forgiveness.”

  “Just not any forgetting,” he said with a snort.

  She took a deep breath and forged ahead. What did she have to lose? “I don’t think forgetting is the goal. Take Kaylie and her father. Don’t you think her knowing about the years they lost makes what they have now that much more valuable? And if Luna had forgotten about her friendship with Angelo’s sister, would they be together now? And Indiana—”

  “Uh-uh.” His gaze was sharp and cutting, his words equally so. “You really think my sister wouldn’t want to forget what she went through? What our whole family went through?”

  She took a step back before she realized what she’d done. He wasn’t a threat. Even in anger. She knew that. “I think she’s accepted that the assault happening is why she’s where she is today. And if she hadn’t bought the Hope Springs property to be close to Tennessee because of it, she might never have met Oliver.”

  Dakota leaned against the tailgate, head shaking as he crossed his arms. His ankles, too. “I don’t see it.”

  “Why do you think forgetting is going to make anything better?”

  “Don’t you want to forget what happened to you?”

  “I never will, so I’ve never thought about it,” she said, coming to stand in front of him, taking him in from his worn boots, to his worn jeans, to his T-shirt that had seen better days. The clothes clung to his body, as comfortable a fit as his skin. As the weight of the past he refused to shed.

  “Seriously?” The word brought her gaze up to his. “You’ve never wished that you could put it all behind you and make it vanish for good? Hell, make it not exist?” he added with a wave of one arm.

  She reached up and rubbed at her forehead. “What good does it do to wish for something that will never happen? I lost my favorite cat to a speeding car. He was a roamer, a hunter. He loved his outdoor life. But he also loved crawling into my lap. For weeks after, I pictured him walking through the door. I’d look over when I woke up in the mornings, thinking magic would have happened and he’d be lying there as he always was, waiting to be fed. All I was doing was making myself miserable. Of course, I wish he was still here, but that sort of wishing is so emotionally destructive. It’s a waste of energy and time.”

  He pushed off the truck to stand straight. “So now I’m destructive and wasting my time? Just because I like to imagine what life would’ve been like if I’d never picked up that bat?”

  She was losing him. He was going to leave her, and she loved him, but she would not keep him caged. She would never wish that life on anyone. “I can tell you how it would’ve been. You would’ve gone to school and played ball, and maybe made it to the minor league with a degree in something useless. You would’ve married a cheerleader. You would’ve bought a house in a gated community. You’d have an eight- and six-year-old who’d both be sports nuts. You’d see Tennessee and his wife, probably someone other than Kaylie, for holidays. Indiana would be growing vegetables in third world countries. You might never see her.

  “You wouldn’t know what it was like to wrangle cattle in Montana, to breathe in the sort of air that feels like it’s going to freeze your lungs. You wouldn’t have the thighs you do from pedaling across the Pacific Northwest. You wouldn’t appreciate fresh-caught salmon, or the sound of a tree’s branches crashing through those still standing as it falls to the ground. You wouldn’t know how to build a barista station or a front counter for a coffee shop. And you would be shit at latte art. Absolute shit.”

  “That’s what you think would’ve happened?” he asked with a dry snort of a laugh after letting her words swirl around them and settle.

  “Don’t you realize you wouldn’t be who you are today, the man I most urgently, most desperately love, if you hadn’t gone through everything you have?” She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to appear weak. But dammit . . . “I understand you don’t like thinking about the past. I get it. I really, really do. So don’t. Don’t think about it. But don’t wish it away either. It’s ugly and painful, and I would do anything to make that part vanish, but without the bad, there wouldn’t be the good, and—”

  “Did you just say you loved me?” he asked, his voice gruff and raw and torn from his throat.

  “Oh, Dakota.” She sobbed out his name, and then she just sobbed because she was beyond being able to deny the truth any longer. “I’ve loved you since I was fourteen years old. I’ve spent my whole life loving you. I’ve looked for you in every man I ever shared as much as a cup of coffee with. And the man I finally settled for, thinking close enough would be good enough—”

  He cut her off, hooking an arm around her neck and grabbing her to him, not to kiss, but to hold against his body while the truth ravaged him. He shook as he cried, and he did so silently, purging himself of years of pent-up emotion. Emotion he’d had no one to share with, no one to understand. It broke her heart, seeing him this way, yet this had been inevitable from the beginning.

  How in the world had he survived so long on his own? Because she knew, without a doubt, if he left again, this time he wouldn’t.

  Though Lena had invited Ellie to her place more than once before she’d finally agreed to come, Ellie still wasn’t comfortable being here. Her discomfort had nothing to do with Lena and everything to do with being somewhere unfamiliar and out of her comfort zone.

  For months now, nearly a year, she’d lived in one shelter or another, until coming to stay with Thea. She hoped it would be the last change of address she made until she was out on her own, though more and more she wondered if that would ever happen. If she could get past the fear of Bobby hunting her down and inflicting more than just the lit end of her cigarette to leave scars . . .

  Since she’d ridden to Bread and Bean with Becca this morning, she’d come here with Lena in her car, the cutest little Mini Cooper ever, and she’d spent half the trip looking in the passenger side mirror. She had no reason to think they were being followed—that she was being followed—but the possibility was never far from her mind when she was away from the shop or the house.

  Even on the days she rode her bike to town, she was a wreck by the time she arrived. She tried so hard to be brave, but all she could think about was Bobby chasing her down, catching her, holding her, burning her, telling her she didn’t deserve anything good.

  Shuddering at the memory, she followed Lena out of the elevator and down the hall to the door, her hands shoved in the pockets of her skirt while she waited for Lena to open it so she could get inside. There wasn’t anyone else in the hallway, but someone could have seen her—

  “Here we are,” Lena said, walking in. Ellie took a deep breath and followed, giving Lena enough room to close the door before stopping. She looked to one si
de, then to the other.

  The loft was huge. The second floor of the warehouse had been divided into two living spaces, and Lena had one whole side of the building to herself. It was extravagant. The idea of so much space for one person. Then again, it was smaller than the house she’d lived in with Bobby.

  “This is your place?” she asked, still standing just inside the door and twisting her hands at her waist. Why was she so nervous? Why was she always thinking the worst? Nothing was going to go wrong. This was Lena. She was safe.

  “Only for the last couple of months,” Lena said, dropping her cross-body bag onto the seat of the closest chair. A chair that wasn’t broken in, or stained. A chair with fabric that wasn’t torn. “I’m subletting from Callum. He bought a house for him and his kid, but his lease wasn’t up here, so I took it on.”

  Ellie crossed the room to the wall with the long row of casement windows. “Are you going to stay? When it is up?”

  “I haven’t decided,” Lena said, but her shrug wasn’t exactly convincing. “I hate the idea of moving again, though eventually I’ll have to.”

  “But this is so close to Bliss,” Ellie said, peering across the tops of what buildings she could see.

  “I’m not planning to work at Bliss forever.”

  Of course she wasn’t, Ellie mused, smiling as she turned. “Right. The animal shelter.”

  Lena took a deep breath, and nodded with a weak smile. A strangely nervous smile. “If you ever want to stay here, you can. Like you said”—Lena shrugged—“it’s close to work. No one has to know where you’ve gone.”

  “I’d have to tell Thea,” Ellie said. She was certain Lena had been referring to Bobby.

  But Lena was shaking her head. “I don’t see why. As long as you show up for work, what does it matter?”

  Confused, Ellie frowned. “I owe her so much.”

  “More than you owe yourself?”

  “That’s not fair,” Ellie said, feeling defensive as she crossed her arms. “If not for Thea, I wouldn’t even be here.”

  “You don’t know that. You’re resilient, El. I can see it.”

  “I’m glad one of us can.” Ellie dropped her gaze to the hardwood floor. “All I can see are the years I spent being weak.”

  “How were you weak?” Lena asked, and Ellie sensed her frustration. “You didn’t have family. You didn’t have friends. Doing what you had to do to survive does not make you weak.”

  Oh, but Ellie wanted to believe that. “I could’ve tried another shelter. I could’ve lived on the street. I could’ve—”

  “Stop. Just stop. Now. Please.”

  “I’m sorry.” She had to get it out. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I mean, I’m not sorry that I wanted to do it. Or that I gave in to that want. I’m just too impulsive sometimes and I don’t stop and think about what I’m doing—”

  “Ellie—”

  “Not thinking has gotten me into so much trouble.” She pressed trembling fingers to her forehead. “You’d think I’d learn, but no. Stupid, stupid—”

  “Ellie—”

  “I’m going to go,” she said, holding out both hands like stop signs, which made her want to laugh. She could’ve used them back when she’d opened her mouth and said yes to coming here. “You don’t need me here fucking up your life—”

  This time she wasn’t stopped by the words coming out of Lena’s mouth. There were no words. Just her lips pressing to Ellie’s, her hands on either side of Ellie’s face holding her head still. The kiss was soft and sweet, and would have been chaste if not for the flutter rising from Ellie’s stomach to her chest and into her throat.

  Once there, it beat with tiny, persistent, and oh-so-hungry wings. “I didn’t know—” she tried to say, but Lena cut her off with a gentle, “Shh,” and an even gentler pressure as she tilted her head, her breath warm on Ellie’s skin, and comforting. Ellie reached up and held on to Lena’s wrists.

  It was welcome in ways Ellie had wondered for so long if she would ever know again. Except she’d never known this at all, not even once, not ever. Lena cared, and Ellie had been too wrapped up in her past to see it. But she could feel it, and she wanted to weep with the wonder of losing herself, with forgetting, even though she knew she never would.

  “Your hair is beautiful,” Lena whispered against the corner of her mouth. “I love the color.”

  “That’s because you’ve never been a redheaded stepchild,” Ellie said, her laugh tickling as Lena found her mouth again, kissed her solidly, holding her head as if to make sure she got it.

  But not so securely that Ellie couldn’t cut and run if she wanted. Lena wanted to make sure she knew where they stood. That it was her choice to be here. To have something this good if it was what she wanted.

  She totally did.

  “C’mon,” Lena said, suddenly letting her go. “My turn to make you my favorite comfort food.”

  Ellie pushed her glasses back into place. “You don’t have to cook for me.”

  “Sure I do. It makes for a great first date, lot of prep time for conversation, then a totally fab meal.”

  “Is that what this is?” Another flutter. “A date?”

  Lena nodded, her eyes sparkling, her earlier nervousness crushed by their kiss. At least that’s what Ellie hoped. “It can be. If you want it to. Or it can be two friends hanging out and having fun.”

  “What do you want it to be?”

  “I’m pretty sure I heard the word date come out of my mouth. Also, I just kissed you.”

  “Are you sure? Because I haven’t been on a date in years, and even then it didn’t feel as right as this, and I would love more than anything in the world for this to be one. A date.”

  “Then it is. Though a working date because I’ve got to start the chicken and could use some help with chopping the mushrooms, onions, carrots, and celery for the pot pie.”

  “Goodness.” Ellie clasped her hands against her chest where her heart was singing at the top of her lungs. “Homemade chicken pot pie. This may just be the best date ever.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I’m trying to imagine the last time a full meal, a real meal, was cooked in this room,” Indiana said. Dakota glanced over to where she hovered between the cottage’s small table and the kitchen. He’d banned her from the room where he was using every available surface to cook.

  Tennessee was doing his hovering from the table itself with a beer. He was close to being too big for the bistro chairs, even if they were a welded wrought iron. He sat with his legs spread for balance, the cushion crushed beneath him, his forearms on the table’s glass top.

  It was almost as if one small move would cause his precarious perch to collapse and he’d go tumbling. He wouldn’t, of course. He’d sat in the same chair while they’d scarfed down pizza or wings nights after working late, and he’d eaten with Indiana when she’d lived here.

  Still, Dakota wasn’t going to miss that table at all. Assuming he wouldn’t be living here much longer and using it. Not that he really ever used it. Most of the time he ate on the couch in front of the TV, leaning over the coffee table. Unless he was using the table as an ottoman and his T-shirt to catch his crumbs. He probably wouldn’t be able to get away with that in his new place.

  “I hardly ever cooked,” Indiana was saying in lieu of blowing off nervous steam. “I used the microwave a lot. I had a panini press.” She came closer. “What exactly are you making anyway? Because it smells amazing. And I have absolutely no patience and want to know now.”

  Dakota smiled to himself but kept his gaze on the pot in front of him while he whisked the remaining ketchup and brown sugar glaze. Satisfied, he opened the oven and drizzled it over the meatloaf that was as perfectly brown as it was ever going to get. As were the potatoes. “It smells amazing because it is amazing. Or it always was when Granny Keller made it.”<
br />
  Indiana brought up both hands to cover her mouth and lowered herself slowly into the chair across from Tennessee’s. “You made Granny Keller’s meatloaf and Aunt Ruthie’s potatoes. My favorite comfort foods in the world. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had either?”

  “If Kaylie saw all the cream and cheese in those potatoes, she’d kill me,” Tennessee said, his stomach rumbling.

  Indiana turned to him and huffed. “Please. There’s just as much in most of Two Owls’ casseroles. Not to mention the sugar and butter in all those brownies.”

  “She doesn’t feed me the casseroles or the brownies,” Tennessee said as he finished his beer. “Which is why I’m going to do my best to eat myself into an early grave tonight.”

  “Better to ask forgiveness than permission?” Indiana asked with a laugh.

  “You betcha.”

  And there was the opening Dakota had been looking for. He reached for three plates, put three forks and two serving spoons on top, and held them out to his anxious sister. “Take these. And grab those hand towels for hot mats. Food’s done.”

  The smells of beef and onions, garlic and tomatoes, wafted through the small house as Dakota pulled the pans from the oven. The table creaked under the weight of the casserole dishes, and the juggling of plates, bottles, and glasses, and knees bumping its legs.

  Though the reason for the meal had him wondering how much of an appetite he would manage, Dakota’s plate was soon full. Tennessee mounded his with at least two helpings each of the meat and potatoes. Indiana had enough of both that Dakota figured she’d need a to-go box.

  But that was good. That was fine.

  He wanted his siblings comfortable because what he had to say to them wasn’t going to be. He frowned as he lifted his fork and licked the glaze from the tines, then he set it down and spread his hands over his thighs. He flexed his fingers, stared at the remains of the ink on both of his middle fingers.