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“Really,” he said flatly. “We’ll see.”
“We’ll see?” My eyebrows shot up. “What does that mean?”
He put his coffee down and walked over to the door. “Whatever I want it to mean.”
“Don’t you walk away from me in the middle of a conversation!”
He grinned, and did just that, leaving the store and turning in the direction of the parking lot.
I glared at him as he walked past the window.
Jerk.
CHAPTER EIGHT – RAELYNN
My frustration was like a little gremlin that had taken up residence inside me. Don’t feed the gremlins and all that.
Fortunately, that was a rule Chase seemed to be following. We hadn’t spoken for two hours except for me asking for more paint in my tray.
It wasn’t the most elegant paint job I’d ever done. But, hey, I was sitting on a stool with my foot on another and an awkwardly long paint roller.
And this silence fitted me just fine.
That’s what I told myself. I’d have given anything for this silence just a few days ago. For him to fuck off and leave me alone, but now he was talking to me and seemingly feeling indebted to me for hurting me, the silence was horrible.
It was awkward and uncomfortable. We had too much history between us, and I hated it. We’d known each other since high school, and our earlier conversation hadn’t been wrong.
He had asked me out several times in his senior year and my sophomore one. I’d said no because I wanted to focus on my education. I was that weird kid who was too “pretty” to be a nerd, but too “studious” to be a popular princess, at least by societal norms. I hovered in the middle, but I’d taken the quiet way through school.
I needed it because I knew Best Served Cold would one day be mine. If I didn’t get the grades, I wouldn’t get into college, and I wouldn’t know how business worked. There was only so much my grandparents could teach me, and I’d always wanted the degree.
It shut people up when they came around here to try to buy it off the “young, naïve owner.”
I’d always turned Chase down, not because I didn’t fancy him—I did—but because I knew he’d be a distraction. I’d escaped when I’d gone to college, but almost as soon as I’d come home without education for an excuse, he’d cornered me at my birthday party and said the magic words.
“Come on, Rae. You don’t have an excuse anymore. Go out with me. Just once. What do you have to lose?”
Of course, if I’d known back then that two years later my life would flip upside down, I’d have said no. I never thought we’d ever be anything serious. He’d never had a relationship longer than four weeks, and I don’t even think they were relationships in the traditional sense.
More like fuck buddies.
I thought it’d be that for us. I was wrong, and I’d fallen in love with him in a heartbeat. Despite his asshole persona and ability to keep up with my smart mouth, he was charming and thoughtful and sweet.
When my aunt had first gotten sick, he stopped by her place three times a week with soup, and he brought flowers once a week. He used to hang out with my grandpa in the garage getting his hands dirty on whatever project he was working on at the time. Grandma loved him and sent him home with leftovers whenever she could after he got his own place.
He once told her that he was going to start paying her for them because he didn’t have to grocery shop anymore. In response, she told him he knew where the mop was because the mudroom needed a clean.
He’d laughed—and mopped the floor.
I paused and smiled at the wall.
Of course, then everything had changed. My parents—who were running the store at that time—announced they were done here and wanted to move to Michigan to be closer to my dad’s parents because my grandma there was really sick. She recovered, but they never came home.
The same month, my aunt took a turn for the worse, and my grandparents informed me the store was now mine.
In hindsight, I could have handled things better. I could have told Chase I needed a break to handle the upheavals in my life. I could have talked to him more. I could have not burned that bridge, but emotion was a funny thing.
Emotion controlled you in ways you didn’t understand. Instead of being rational, I freaked out. I put all my energy into running the store, ignoring the fact my parents had left permanently, and my favorite aunt was dying any day. I ignored him until I finally broke up with him, and the rest is history.
When I laid all my thoughts out, it wasn’t a surprise he’d opened the store next door. That was his revenge.
