The one for you, p.11
The One for You, page 11
She wet her lips, treading carefully. “Ash, I’m sorry. Does your dad hurt you?”
He shifted next to her. “Physically? No. He’s too protective of his job. He knows if he left a mark on me, I’d show it to every damn person I could find. So he just yells at me or ignores me. Fucking coward. He only hits the person he knows would never tell.” He glanced over at her, eyes unreadable. “Can we not talk about this? Can we just pretend it’s not happening right now?”
“Okay,” she said softly, her heart breaking for her friend. She reached out and cupped his shoulder, guiding him to lie back down next to her. He moved like he was going to turn his back to her, but instead she wrapped her arm around his neck. He went willingly when she eased him down to lie in the crook of her shoulder like he had done for her. When another noise made its way through the door, she could feel Ash recoil. She pulled the blanket up over them and pressed her hand over his ear.
He closed his eyes. “KC.”
“Shh, no more talking,” she said, sadness filling her. She wasn’t the only one who couldn’t count on her parents. Ash always seemed so self-contained, so in control, but he was scared and hurting, too. She wanted to go out there and scream at his dad, tell him to go to hell and never come back. But she was just a fifteen-year-old kid. So was Ash.
They couldn’t fix their parents. They couldn’t even share the burden with siblings because they were only children.
But they had each other.
“I promise I won’t bring this up again. But you can always talk to me, okay?” she whispered next to his ear. “Whatever it is. I’m here. I’m always going to be here. I promise.”
Ash took a deep breath against her. “Back at you, KC. And I’ll help you put sugar in Xavier’s tank. No one’s going to hurt you and get away with it. I’ve got your back. Always.”
Something unlocked inside her, and she held Ash close. “Best friends forever.”
She could feel his sardonic smile even in the dark. “We should get matching BFF necklaces from Claire’s.”
“Shut up, Isaacs. Go to sleep.”
They both lay quietly in the dark for the rest of the night. Neither slept.
Nine
Kincaid tucked a set of earbuds in her purse before getting out of the car and carrying two cups of coffee into The Stuffed Shelf. Day one. She could do this. She’d strongly considered Irishing her coffee, but whiskey at seven in the morning seemed a little too close to her mother’s style for comfort. The earbuds would have to do. If things felt weird being inside the store again or brought up hard memories, she would tuck those puppies in her ears, blast her music, and avoid reality while she and Ash cleaned up the store.
She was going to have to get used to cleaning anyhow. She’d picked up the keys to the farmhouse last night and had done a more thorough tour. She didn’t want to think about how many families of spiders she was going to need to evict. She shuddered at the thought as she used the key Grace had given her to let herself into the store through the back door. She took a deep breath, the old book smell as familiar as ever, and then headed down the hallway. The lights were already on in the front, and a movie score was playing a bit too loud over the store’s speakers.
She found Ash sitting behind the checkout counter, feet propped up and a stack of papers in his hand. He was wearing a snug, dark-blue T-shirt that had Go Local Sports Team! across the front and broken-in jeans. His dark hair was slicked back, shorn short on the sides but still long on the top, and his glasses had migrated a little down his nose as he read. The tattoos on his arm flexed as he turned a page. Kincaid shouldn’t be staring, but goddamn, the guy had gotten unfairly hot.
How was she supposed to deal with that? Her brain was all No, girl. Her brain knew why Ash was not that kind of option. Sex was what had messed up things the first time. And God, he’d been a virgin. She felt like such an idiot for not knowing that back then. He’d said he was surprised she hadn’t realized it, but she couldn’t even remember if the sex had felt good or not. The whole thing was a haze of grief. When she’d realized what they’d done, the guilt she’d felt, the anger at Ash…both had exploded inside her and obliterated most of the other memories from that horrible night.
That was what crossing lines in friendship did. So if they had any shot at having any kind of workable friendship now, she needed to keep the boundaries crystal clear. No ogling people you had real history with. Her brain knew that. But every other part of her was all Heyyyy, history smishtory. She set a cup of coffee on the counter, jolting Ash from his concentrated state and forcing herself off her dangerous line of thought.
“Looks like someone decided to get a head start,” she observed.
Ash glanced up from the papers, obviously surprised to see her standing there. “Oh, hey. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I’m a ninja on the side.” She pulled a bag of pastries from her purse. “Plus, this music is loud. I feel like I should be preparing to storm the castle or something.”
He reached out, turned a dial on the old system that controlled the store’s speakers, and the movie music softened. “Sorry. The quiet, empty store was creeping me out a little.”
She knew the feeling. Ghosts were everywhere in this place. She could almost feel their past selves whispering to each other between the aisles somewhere. “Aren’t writers supposed to sleep ’til noon and then stumble to work half-drunk?”
“I’m not so good with the sleeping or the drinking. Plus, the commute from upstairs is short. I figured I’d come down and take a look at some of the numbers.” His gaze drifted to the coffee and greasy paper bag, brows lifting. “You come bearing gifts?”
Kincaid shrugged. “It was buy one, get one free at the new coffee place. You can have the tall one. It’s cold brew something or other. I figured your hipster self would prefer something fancy. There are kolaches in the bag, too. I got those from the Czech gas station because I’m not trusting the fancy coffee shop with my pastries.”
His smile was slow, eyes sparking with mischief. “Cold brew, huh? But is it from coffee beans harvested by baby foxes at the stroke of midnight on the summer solstice from atop a mountain in Costa Rica? Because I have standards.”
She gave a dramatic sigh. “Baby-fox coffee is so over. We’re using armadillos to harvest beans now. We’re calling it grumpy cowboy coffee.”
He chuckled and motioned as if he was tipping an invisible cowboy hat her way and then lowered his feet to the floor. “Well, thank you kindly, ma’am. I appreciate the hospitality. And for the record, I do actually prefer cold brew. Don’t judge me.”
“Judging,” she said, pulling a lemon kolache out of the bag and taking a big bite. “So, find…interesting in…umbers?”
Ash gave her a bemused look and set the papers down. “I’m assuming you’re asking me about the sales numbers. I don’t translate kolache dialect well.”
She rolled her eyes and kept chewing but waved her hand in a gimme motion.
“Right. Well, top headline is that the sales on my books are dismal,” he said with faux dramatic gravitas. “A book about manure sold more than mine.”
“That’s shitty.”
He paused, gave her a look. “Really?”
She shrugged. “You walked right into that one. Or stepped into it, as the case may be. Not my fault.”
“Anyway, my local author status is clearly not moving any extra books—even with the prime cover-facing-out shelf space the Lowells have given me up front. My self-esteem has taken quite the hit.”
Kincaid licked a bit of lemon curd off her fingers. “First of all, are you really a local author? You use a pen name, and you don’t advertise where you’re from.”
“True.”
“Also, maybe you should write some stories where everyone doesn’t die at the end, and they’ll move more copies,” she said, pointing her kolache at him. “You’re probably bumming people out.”
Ash’s gaze, which had drifted to her mouth—probably because she had lemon curd somewhere it shouldn’t be—flicked up to hers, surprise there. “You’ve read my books?”
“Uh… I…” Shit. Things she didn’t want him to know. That she had still paid attention to what he was doing even after everything had happened between them. “I read the first one. The Lowells gave me an early copy, and I knew they’d want to discuss it. I’ve seen some of the reviews of the others.”
He smiled between sips of his coffee. “So you hated it.”
The writing had been fantastic. A page-turner of a thriller. Great characters. And the setting had brought Madrid to life on the page. But… “I didn’t…hate it per se.”
He laughed. “Per se?”
She tried to think of a polite way to phrase it, but that wasn’t her strong suit. Her real opinion jumped out of her mouth before she could edit it. “Ash, you killed off the love interest. And the pet bird. What is wrong with you? Are you trying to make people throw your book against the wall?”
He lifted a finger as though he were in debate class. “Okay, I’ll give it to you on the love interest, but the bird was old. Like ancient. And it made the hero come to terms with the loss of his brother.”
“Old? Percy was a pet, Ash,” she said, giving him a disbelieving look. “You don’t kill the pet. Damn.” She put a hand over her heart. “RIP Percy.” That freaking bird death had made her cry in the waiting room of her ob-gyn’s office. She caught Ash’s expression. “Why are you smiling?”
He bit his lip as if he was trying to hide the smile, but he couldn’t. He looked too damned pleased. “Because you clearly feel passionate about my book. I’ll take that over someone feeling indifferent.”
“Anger is better than indifference?” she asked skeptically.
“Sometimes.” He held her gaze long enough to make her look away.
She grabbed the papers. “Anything interesting besides your sluggish sales?”
He blew out a sigh. “Yeah, the bestselling books for the store make my books look like riding-on-a-unicorn-through-the-clouds uplifting.”
“What do you mean?” She tried to scan the pages but didn’t quite understand the format of the report.
He pointed to a column on the paper. “True crime is the bestseller,” he said flatly. “Particularly books about Long Acre High.”
Her stomach turned. “Are you kidding me?”
“I know.” He shook his head. “I’m surprised Grace and Charlie even stock the stuff, but I guess they were giving the tourists what they wanted.”
Kincaid dropped the papers on the desk, her face getting hot. “I can’t even. Imagine how horrible that has to be for Grace and Charlie. Some rando out-of-towner coming in here, the place where their son grew up, looking for a splashy tell-all about Long Acre High?”
Ash rubbed a hand over the back of his head, his expression weary. “It’s what the town’s known for. I don’t know if that will ever change.”
“Ugh, I’m so done with people saying that. It’s bullshit.” Kincaid felt her anger bubbling up from a much deeper place than the true-crime section of the bookstore. “I get that those books have the right to be written. I get that documentaries are made. I know that some of them are handled with care and respect. The world needs to learn from what happened here. People’s stories should be told. But I am so freaking sick of everything being about that one night. This town deserves better than that.” Her fist curled at her side. “We deserve better than that. We shouldn’t have to stock books in here that tell our horror story. Let people buy that somewhere else.”
Tears of frustration burned her eyes. Dammit. She didn’t want to cry.
Ash frowned, setting down his coffee, and stepped around the desk. “Hey, it’s all right. If this is too hard…”
Kincaid shook her head. “These aren’t sad tears. These are pissed-off ones.” She pressed her fingers beneath her eyes so her mascara wouldn’t raccoon on her. “I just… It’s been a long week. I haven’t slept much. And the whole reason I couldn’t get investors for my bed-and-breakfast was because of how outsiders perceive Long Acre. No one believes that people would come here for a vacation. That horrible night finds new ways to haunt me each year. Don’t we ever get to move on?”
Ash looked like he was going to reach out to her, but then he paused and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You have moved on. Look at what you’re doing. We’re going to sell this store, and you’re going to take the money and open your B and B anyway. And it’s going to be great because…” He shrugged. “Because you’re you, and everything you put your mind to, you’re a success at.”
She scoffed and gave him a disbelieving look. “Oh my God, are you kidding me? That’s your logic? That is so opposite the truth. Do you remember me, Ash? Let me refresh that memory bank of yours. I’m impulsive and regularly get myself into trouble. It’s kind of my thing. I’m just upping the ante now, like buying a half-million-dollar farmhouse I can’t afford in a place where no one wants to visit a B and B. It’s no better than my mother throwing her month’s salary down on a blackjack table.”
“Now who’s talking bullshit?” He pulled his hands from his pockets and crossed his arms. “Kincaid, you came from nothing. Less than nothing. You had no help from the start, and then you got slammed in the face with a national tragedy. Most people would be destroyed by that. Yet somehow, you’ve built up a real estate business, you run a blog, you have a home, and now you’re going to start a new business.”
“Wait, you read my blog?”
He groaned. “Missing the point. I’m saying, look at what you’ve built. You’re killing it. And if you decide you’re going to open a B and B, you’re going to figure out a way to get it done and get people there because that’s what you do. You bulldoze your own path where there isn’t one. That’s your thing. You say screw you with a smile to the people who tell you that you can’t.”
Something warm and fuzzy moved through her, and her lips curved. “That is kind of my thing, isn’t it?”
“Bulldoze and steamroll?” he teased. “Most definitely.”
She playfully punched him in the shoulder. “Oh, Isaacs, you say the sweetest things. You should be a writer.”
He smirked. “I’ll think about it.”
“But you’re right—”
He held up a hand. “Wait. Give me a second. Let me absorb those words fully. I’m right. I’m right…”
“Shut up. No one likes a bragger,” she declared, a little wary of how easily they were slipping back into their old banter. She needed to watch herself. “But you’re right that I shouldn’t stand by and let other people define this town for me. The rebranding of Long Acre starts now. Right here in this bookstore.” She jabbed a thumb behind her. “The true-crime section gets moved to the back. Books about the Long Acre shooting are by mail order only. I don’t care if they’re the bestsellers. Locals should be able to come in here and not be hit with in-your-face reminders. A trigger-free space.”
“Agreed,” Ash said.
“In fact, maybe we take the opposite direction. Maybe there’s a way to celebrate the good things about the town in here. Change the vibe.”
“The good things about the town?” he asked, clearly skeptical. “Like what? The brand-new stoplight down the street? Or the movie theater that only shows dollar movies? The near-religious obsession with high school football?”
“Shut up, snob.” She gave him a petulant look. “There are good things.”
He didn’t look convinced, but he nodded in a go on motion.
“I’m just saying that there has to be some way to show people who come in here that this place isn’t one thing. That it’s a great little town with friendly, interesting people. That it’s worth visiting. Maybe staying.”
Ash tucked his hands in his back pockets and looked around at the store. “Right now, this store says it’s a dusty, sad town that’s seen better days.”
Kincaid followed his gaze, watched the dust motes dance in the early-morning sunshine coming through the windows. “Then I guess we better get to work. Ready to bulldoze?”
Ash’s blue eyes sparkled, a genuine smile touching his lips. “Let’s do this.”
She put a hand to her hip. “You sure you remember how to get your hands dirty, city boy?”
He reached out and grabbed her hand. An electric awareness zipped through her body at the warm, roughened touch of his fingers. For a second, as he lifted her hand higher, she thought he was going to kiss the top of it. But then he stopped, her hand halfway to his mouth, and he looked down at her fingers. “Sure you’re not afraid to mess up your manicure, bumpkin?”
Her teeth clicked together, and she yanked her hand back. “Just for that, you’re assigned the bathrooms.”
“You can’t assign,” he said, amusement on his face.
“Oh, you’re cute. You think this is a democracy.” Then she turned on her heel, grabbed her coffee, and headed to the front of the store.
She thought he would continue to protest, but when she went to throw away her coffee cup a little while later, she found Ash scrubbing the sink of the small bathroom. A glimmer of guilt went through her. She was teasing Ash about being too posh and a city boy, but she knew better than anyone where he came from. Ash’s family had always had more money than hers but just as many problems. She knew he’d been estranged from his family since he’d left town, that they’d cut him off in every way. Anything Ash had now, he’d gotten through hard work and determination—all on his own. She shouldn’t tease him for a little fanciness. He’d earned it.
Kincaid leaned against the doorway of the bathroom. Ash looked over, hair falling into his face. “Everything okay?”
