“Nah, I don’t think you can. Little Loretta is a mule when it comes to making up her mind, you know that. She convinced you to elope despite both of ya knowin’ how everyone would react. She made a choice and followed through.”
“Maybe this can be different.”
Kingsley stays damningly silent. He doesn’t need to speak. Calum hardly believes himself. Is he trying to give in to the delusions that Rett would ever be his wife again? Are they even delusions, or does he possibly have a chance? He has no idea, but he knows what he wants.
He wants Rett even though they both have changed. Seven years make a difference in who someone is. But she can’t be so different that he can’t love who she’s become.
She is still achingly beautiful. Long silken hair flowing down her back like a river of rich brown, silver eyes that look right through him but see him for who he is. Lips that he’d kissed until swollen more times than he could ever have counted. Her skin is paler than before. She’d had a tan back then, one that stretched across her skin and painted her a beautiful golden. Being away from home changed that for her. Calum wonders if his hands would still settle perfectly on the wonderful curve of her hips. He wonders if it would feel as amazing now as it did when they were eighteen.
He’d always wanted to leave burning fingerprints on her skin.
Kingsley ambles home after another hour, citing a wife to get home to before he gets in trouble. Calum doubts Nadine will mind. It’s Tuesday; she has her book club. Everyone knows it’s less of a ‘book club’ and more of a group of ladies drinking too much wine and gossiping instead of talking about the novels they supposedly read. She’ll stumble through the streets in twenty minutes, and she and Kingsley will go to bed, drunk together.
They’re a match made in heaven.
Calum stays until Marie kicks the stragglers out at nearly three in the morning. He hesitates just outside the door, looking back and forth between the directions he can take. It’s a stupid idea, but he points his feet toward the woods. Neither Georgie nor Charles would mind him sleeping in his old bedroom, but he doesn’t want to be surrounded by the memories. Plus, no one else needs to know how much it is affecting him for Rett to be back in town. It’s bad enough that Kingsley knows.
And everyone else in the bar.
Despite how much he drank, he makes it home without issue. Even the roots can’t trip him up. He knows the path too well. The door squeals as he pulls it open, and he tumbles through the doorway. The door settles in its frame with a solidthunk. He sighs and faces the home he’d asked Malachi Turner for.
Everything is the same as he left it this morning. Clothes rest in stacks on the sofa from where he folded them last night. A plate sits in the sink from breakfast, and his keys hang on the hook beside the door. He shuffles across the laminate flooring to the boxy mint-green refrigerator. The light inside bursts on when the sensor detects the open door, and Calum blinks stupidly in the blinding glare. After a moment, his vision clears, and he grabs a can, pops the top, and guzzles down half the beer in one go.
How Rett can make him want to drink so much with one conversation, he will never know.
Waking hurts the next morning. Sunshine beats through the window over the bed, and Calum fumbles for the cord to shut the blinds. His head pounds, stomach roiling. He hasn’t had a hangover in six years, and he regrets drinking last night. He rolls over and presses his face into the pillow. A second later, he recoils at the damp spot in the fabric.Great. I drooled.
Somehow, he manages to get dressed without falling on his face. He grabs his keys from the hook and steps out onto the porch. In the clearing sits his truck, a rusted old thing he bought at twenty from Charles’s coworker. Calum yawns widely as he ambles toward the truck; his muscles protest when he hauls himself onto the bench seat. His vision swims, so he thrusts his head out, waiting, but his stomach settles after a moment without any vomit.
His headache grows to a full-blown migraine by the time he reaches work. Between the thundering engine and bouncing along the trail made when they were fixing up the trailer when he was eighteen, his morning has gone from rough to worse. He reaches Mitchell’s, parking around back, and rests his forehead against the steering wheel. His hand fumbles for the key before twisting it, and the engine cuts off with a grumble.
After a few minutes, he slides out of the truck and rounds the building to the large bay doors. Movement catches his eye, and he turns and waves at Misses Agatha and Jeanie down the street. The women exchange a look before raising their hands to wave back. Calum frowns but heads inside.
Work takes away his worries and thoughts. All he has to do is focus on the beautiful cherry-red Mustang in front of him and not the fact his not-so-ex-wife is in town. Even if she does look like a million bucks in those jeans that hug her hips and legs justright and a sleeveless top that accentuates the curves she used to let him touch.
He shakes his head. He doesn’t need to think about Rett.
Calum works through lunch and gets sent home early for it. He can’t face the silence he knows is waiting for him, so he heads three blocks down to the corner store. Old men sit on porches, their voices carrying over the street, and children dart across the road amid shrieks and laughter. Calum stops when little Tommy runs into his legs. With a quick apology, the six-year-old runs off to catch up with his friends.
Stephan stands behind the counter, passing over some change to Miss Beth. The teenager nods once in Calum’s direction then moves toward the box on the end of the counter. Miss Beth turn on her heel until she faces the door, and the lines in her face grow deeper with her grin.
“Oh, Calum! It’s great to run into you, honey.” She shuffles closer; her spindly hand latches onto his arm. “I heard Miss Loretta was back.” Her voice drops, softens, when she asks, “How are you doing?”
Calum swallows down the bitterness. Why is everything about Rett and him everyone else’s business? Why do they care so much that it’s ripping his heart out to know she’s only in Oak Creek so they can finalize the divorce she asked for years ago? It involves no one other than the ex-couple. He wants to explode, wants to scream at Miss Beth and Stephan and the whole damn town.
The sound gets caught in the back of his throat, acidic, burning with cruelty.
He plasters a fake smile onto his face and shrugs. “I guess just fine, Miss Beth.”
“It must be so hard knowing she’s getting married to someone else,” she presses, and he carefully disentangles himself from her tight grip.
The words tumble free before he can stop them: “Well, there’s always the chance she’ll come back to me. I won’t rest until she does.”
He freezes as her eyes light up. The biggest, juiciest piece of gossip she can pass on, and he’s given it to her accidentally. He hadn’t meant to say anything about Rett, only to say he is fine with the situation, but instead… Instead, he’s told the damning truth: He wants Rett back no matter the differences in who she is and who she used to be.
He should never have been so honest.
She brushes past him, still beaming, and Calum sighs to himself. Miss Maudie will be angry that Miss Beth knows something first, and she’ll take it out on him in that passive-aggressive style she’s known for. She’ll kill him with kindness and civility.
