Hawthorne Harbor Box Set

by Elana Johnson

  She left her suitcase by the dresser and went into the bathroom. Staring at her reflection, she found a flush in her cheeks. A flush! Maybe she could pass it off as excitement to be at the beach, one of her favorite locations in the whole world.

  “Mom!” Jess’s voice came through the door, and Janey sighed as she went to see what he wanted. She already knew, but she needed to take care of this issue before he hurt Dixie’s feelings. Or Gretchen’s.

  “Get in here,” she hissed at him, and Jess ducked into her bedroom. She cast a furtive glance left and right like she couldn’t be seen talking to her own child.

  “Mom, I can’t sleep in the same room as Dixie.” He looked seriously upset about it, not just surly as he had been for the entire drive here. Even when she’d white-knuckled the railing on the ferry for forty-five straight minutes, he’d still sent her dirty looks about the sleeping situation.

  She sighed and cocked her hip. “Why not, Jess? You guys get along great. She’ll change in the bathroom.”

  He shuffled his feet, his face turning red. Janey hadn’t seen Jess blush about anything since he’d won the spelling bee in fifth grade and the whole school had stood and cheered for him.

  Two sharp knocks sounded on her bedroom door, and then Adam poked his head in. “He can sleep in my bedroom.”

  Janey nearly got whiplash as she looked back to Jess, and then back to Adam. Then Jess. “You talked to him about this?”

  “I can’t sleep in there,” Jess said.

  Adam cleared his throat. “Let him sleep with me, Janey. He has a good reason.”

  “Oh?” She folded her arms. “And what is it?” She glared at Jess. “Hmm?”

  He looked at Adam, his puppy dog pleading eyes alerting Janey to a real crisis here. “Adam?”

  “You might as well tell her,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Janey said quickly. “Moms find out everything anyway.”

  “It’s nothing,” Jess said. “I just....” He lifted his chin and looked at Janey. “Please, Mom.”

  She warred with herself, and having Adam standing so close and smelling so good, she could barely think. “Fine,” she said.

  “Thanks, Mom!” Jess launched himself at her and wrapped his arms around her. The hug only lasted for a moment, which was more than she’d gotten from him since he’d started seventh grade, and then he stepped over to Adam. “Thanks, Chief.” He fist-bumped Adam and walked out of the room. “I’m just gonna go grab my suitcase.”

  Janey waited until Jess’s pounding footsteps faded, and then she trained her eyes on Adam. “So what’s his reason.”

  “Oh, I can’t say.” He held up both hands in surrender and fell back a step into the hall. “He made me promise, and the Chief doesn’t break his promises.” He flashed her a smile that made her heart thump around like a lopsided bowling ball rolling down the lane, and followed Jess down the stairs.

  “Well, at least they get along,” she muttered to herself.

  * * *

  An hour later, she sat on the back deck with a glass of peach lemonade in her hand, her sunglasses shading her eyes, and happiness spreading through her at the tranquil sight before her. Jess had changed into a pair of board shorts and followed Dixie down to the beach despite the wind coming off the bay.

  Gretchen and Drew had disappeared into town to buy groceries, though Adam claimed the fridge was full of food, and Joel and Donna hadn’t arrived yet.

  Which was why she had one hand wrapped around the cold glass and the other laced in Adam’s. “This place is really nice,” she said for probably the third time.

  Adam reclined in his lounger, his eyes closed. “Hm mm.” He wasn’t asleep, because his grip on her hand stayed firm, but she still stole a few seconds to simply stare at his handsome face.

  A smile touched her lips, and she faced the waves again. “So do you like the beach?” she asked.

  “I like running on the beach.”

  “So you won’t go in the water?”

  “It’s September. That water is freezing.”

  “Dixie and Jess are in it.”

  He chuckled and squeezed her fingers. “It’s on the itinerary, so I’m sure I’ll do it.”

  One of Drew’s dogs barked, and Janey’s attention flew to the dog, anticipating a problem. But Blue was just chasing a bird, sand kicking up behind his paws as he galloped along the shore.

  “Do you ever wish you could go back in time and change something?”

  Adam opened his eyes and looked at her. He didn’t seem like he found the question weird or comical. “Yes.”

  “What would it be?” She laid her head against the back of the chair and gazed at him, the moment between them soft now that they were alone.

  “I don’t...know.”

  “You’re not a great liar, Chief.” She giggled, as he’d tried to tell her he didn’t know the answer to why he hadn’t gotten married yet. Maybe he’d tell her now.

  “I’d go back and tell my dad thank you before he died,” she said.

  “Oh yeah? You wouldn’t keep Matt home on the day of the ferry fire?”

  Janey normally would’ve flinched at the sound of his name, that single syllable the cause of so much turmoil in her life. But this time, she didn’t. Her heart didn’t clench, and her stomach stayed steady.

  “No,” she said. “Some things are just meant to be, you know?”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “So I’d tell my dad thank you. He put up with a lot with us four girls, and I never really got to tell him how much I appreciated him.” She smiled, but it did carry a hint of sadness. She cleared her throat and asked, “So what about you?”

  “I’d, well, I’d—oh, wow. I don’t know if I can say this out loud.” He pulled his hand free and sat up straight, his eyes singular on the kids on the beach.

  “You can,” she said. “I won’t judge you.”

  He rested his hands on his knees and took a great breath, like what he was about to say required strength and inner fortitude. “I’d go back to high school and ask you out.”

  She started to laugh, but he continued, his voice possessing a quiet strength. “Even though you had that other boyfriend. And if it didn’t work out then, I’d make sure I called you before that stupid Fall Festival dance where Matt beat me to asking you to dance.”

  Janey’s insides iced over, and she stared at the side of Adam’s face, trying to make sense of everything he’d said. Everything he’d just admitted.

  As if in slow motion, he turned toward her, his eyes locking onto hers. “I’ve liked you for a really long time, Janey. Longer than is even normal, or sane.” Yet he didn’t laugh. His dark eyes seemed electric and fiery, like the sky during a lightning storm. “So if I had one thing to go back and change, it would be to make sure you knew I was interested in you before twenty years went by.”

  His words sat between them like a hunk of cement, and try as she might, Janey had no idea how to respond.

  He stood up, switching his attention back to the beach. “Excuse me.”

  She let him go though she wanted to call him back. Make him explain himself further. He’d been by her side through childhood. She’d cheered for him at the football games. He’d never given any indication that he wanted to go out with her.

  Even on the night of the Fall Festival, when Matt had asked her to dance, Adam hadn’t flinched. He’d said nothing. He’d stood beside Matt as his best man as she married him. Never once had she known he had feelings for her. Never until last week.

  Her heart thundered in her chest, making breathing difficult. Now her stomach swooped, and she thought the crackers and lemonade she’d been snacking on would make a reappearance.

  How had he endured all of that and not said anything? Had Matt known? The questions continued to pile up, but one broke free from the pack and screamed through her mind.

  Had she kept herself from happiness with Adam because she was still hung up on a man who’d died twelve years ago?
/>   Chapter Twelve

  Adam couldn’t stay at the beach house, not after what he’d confessed. “You’re so delusional,” he muttered to himself as he drove down the highway. No way he could go back there and exist in the same space as Janey and keep the relationship a secret. Not after spilling one of his biggest secrets.

  He caught sight of his mother as she and Joel passed him going the opposite way. He should go back. Go back and get everything out in the open so they could get on with the weekend. His and Janey’s relationship didn’t have to detract from planning Drew and Gretchen’s wedding.

  Did it?

  He pulled over to the side of the road and said, “Call Janey Germaine.”

  The screen on his console blipped with blue light and said in a robotic female voice, “Calling Janey Germaine.”

  Adam looked out the window, every organ in his body rioting. He couldn’t seem to settle on any one thought, especially as her phone rang twice, then three times.

  “Hey,” she said, overly chipper. “What’s up?”

  “You’re with my parents, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, just a sec.”

  Scrapes and scuffles came through the line, and then she said, “Where are you?” in a much more hushed and urgent tone.

  “I went for a drive.”

  “I don’t suppose we’re going to make it through the weekend without telling everyone about us, are we?”

  “I don’t know,” Adam said, thinking of Jess’s schoolboy crush on his best friend, Dixie. But Adam knew his crush was way beyond schoolboy stage. And he knew he’d blown things wide open for Janey by saying so much.

  “I’m worried about Jess,” she whispered. “He’s going through a transition right now.”

  Adam half-chuckled. “Yeah, they’re called hormones.” He looked away from his reflection in the glass and said, “Look, I’ll talk to him about it. See how he reacts. Then maybe we can go from there.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice pitching up the slightest bit. “I had no idea.”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s not your fault at all. I shouldn’t have said so much.”

  “Did you really like me in high school?”

  “Do you really think the Chief of Police goes around lying to women?”

  She giggled, which somehow broke the tension between them. “Come on back,” she said. “Your mother already suspects something is going on.”

  “How so?”

  “I told her you were my sister, but then had to go upstairs to talk to you. And she knows you should be here.”

  “Just tell her I went out driving. Wait.” He exhaled, his immature behavior getting him stuck between a rock and a hard place. “Don’t tell her that. She knows I only go out driving when I’m stressed. Then she’ll want to know what’s going on.” He put the car in gear and eased back onto the road.

  “Tell her I had to run and get some drinks.”

  “We have drinks here.”

  “What’s Jess’s favorite soda?”

  “So you’re going to sugar him up and then tell him we’re dating?”

  “If it kills two birds with one stone....”

  She laughed, and he joined in. “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Diet Coke,” she said. “Jess too.”

  “Two Diet Cokes, coming right up.” Adam pulled into a convenience store and stared at the cases of soda. He had no idea there were so many choices for Diet Coke. In the end, he picked what he hoped was regular Diet Coke—no cherry, no vanilla, no zeroes in sight—and headed back to the beach house.

  When he got there, he called, “Here’s your soda,” as if he’d planned to make a drink run all along.

  “There you are.” His mom came out of the kitchen, a wide smile on her face.

  “Hey, Mom.” He set the drinks on the counter and embraced her. “When did you guys get here?”

  “Oh, just a few minutes ago. Joel’s lying down.”

  Alarm pulled through Adam and he straightened. “He is? Is he okay?”

  “He was up most of the night with one of the goats. He’ll be fine once he gets in a little nap.” She nodded toward the huge wall of windows. “Janey’s on the deck. Kids are on the beach.”

  Adam picked up the sodas and moved that way. “Are you going to come out?”

  “In a few minutes. Drew asked me to make those cheddar garlic knots to go with the pizza they’re bringing back.” She smiled, and nothing seemed too off. Adam nodded and went back outside, the sun warm but the wind chilly.

  He sat beside Janey, in the same lounge chair he’d been in before, and set the bottles of soda on the table between them. “Drinks.”

  She looked at him, and he swore an hour could’ve passed and he wouldn’t have known. Gazing into her eyes made everything else fade into nothing, as if she alone held the key to experiencing life.

  Blink, he told himself. Blink now!

  He did, and changed his gaze to the water. “Still goin’ strong, huh?”

  “You’ll have to drag Jess off the beach,” she said, as if he hadn’t confessed his decades-old love for her only an hour ago, right in this very spot.

  “Are we going to talk about what I said?” he asked.

  She reached over and brushed her fingers along his forearm before picking up her bottle and twisting the lid. The hiss of carbonation escaping made a background as she said, “We already did.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  Adam’s chest tightened. “I was jealous of him for a long time,” he said. He didn’t need to say Matt’s name. Janey would know. “Eventually, that faded. And then he died, and then I felt so guilty. And then...then my old feelings came back.”

  “I understand a little bit about feeling guilty.”

  “What do you have to feel guilty about?”

  “Dating someone else.” She took a long drag of her soda. “For a while there, I vowed I never would. But that’s...unrealistic.”

  Adam didn’t want to agree, so he said nothing. His mother poked her head out of the house and said, “I’m going to take a shower. Drew and Gretchen will be back in thirty minutes with dinner.”

  “Sounds good,” Adam said, his voice just a touch too loud. His mom either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and she left.

  He waited through a few agonizingly slow breaths. Then he reached over and took Janey’s hand in his again. She sighed as if his touch healed unseen things and squeezed his fingers.

  Letting his eyes drift closed once again, more joy than Adam had ever known spread through him.

  * * *

  That night, after dinner, after card games, after way too much bread, Adam went upstairs with a slightly sunburnt Jess. “You’ll have to wear more sunblock tomorrow, bud,” he said.

  “It’ll fade,” Jess said. “It always does.”

  Adam had his doubts. If Jess could see the Rudolph quality of his nose, he wouldn’t say that. Adam followed him into their bedroom and paused. “Okay, so Drew put your cot against the wall.”

  His brother had found a couple of hammocks and cots in the garage of the beach house and texted the owner to see if they could be used. When the answer was yes, Drew had brought one cot up to this room and hung the hammocks from the deck so people could nap there tomorrow.

  “You can take the top blanket from the bed,” Adam said, pulling it down. “There’s another one underneath. I’ll be plenty warm.”

  Once they were both lying in their beds, Adam gazed at the ceiling and asked, “Jess, can I talk to you about something?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “It sort of has to do with Dixie.”

  The boy sucked in a breath. “You didn’t tell my mom, did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Good. It’s stupid anyway, and I don’t want Dixie to know.”

  “It’s not stupid,” Adam said, trying to make his words line up. “It’s okay to have a crush on someone.”

&
nbsp; “Right.” Jess’s tone indicated he didn’t need a lecture on the birds and the bees.

  “I sort of have a crush I wanted you to know about.” His mouth was so dry. He hadn’t even told his brother about his feelings for Janey. And telling her son—his best friend’s son—was infinitely worse than talking to Drew about it.

  The cot squeaked as Jess moved on it, but Adam kept his eyes on the ceiling, tracking the lines in the wood he could barely see with the moonlight coming in the window.

  “It’s your mom,” Adam blurted. “I kinda like your mom the way you like Dixie.”

  Jess hissed. Or maybe he was simply exhaling. “Are you serious?” he asked.

  “Kinda. Yeah.” Adam cleared his throat. “See? Women make all men nervous, no matter how old we get.” He chuckled, finding his center and seizing onto it. “How do you feel about that? I mean, what if I asked your mom out and we went to dinner or something?”

  “I...guess, yeah. She never goes out. She’d probably like it.”

  “Why do you think she never goes out?”

  “Because she still loves my dad.”

  Adam pulled in a breath, the words so bare and so full of truth they burned. He didn’t know what to say to such a powerful statement, and he turned his head and looked out the moonlit window.

  “It’s not stupid how you feel about Dixie,” he said, real quiet, almost like he didn’t want Jess to hear him. Several seconds of silence passed, and Adam wondered if maybe the boy had fallen asleep.

  “Yeah, probably not,” he finally said. “And I can tell that you like my mom more than kinda.”

  “Yeah, probably.” Adam chuckled, the sound rolling and gaining strength until they were both laughing out loud.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Janey stood on the back deck, the wind trying to take her hair right off her head. She kept her hands buried deep in the front pocket of her hoodie, not even willing to take them out so she could sip her coffee. It had likely gone cold in the few minutes she’d been waiting for the sun to rise.