Page 5

Chuck shifted his weight on his sit bones. Of course Aunt Lydia knew. Everyone probably knew by now. Gossip here moved faster than fiber optic.

“Needed a change of scenery.” He fiddled with the carburetor again for show.

“Uh-huh. And the fact you told your boss to shove his ‘innovative design concept’ up his ass in front of a celebrity client had nothing to do with it?”

Chuck winced. “It wasn’t his concept. It was mine. He stole it and then cocked it up.”

“Also the part where you flipped a table of gingerbread onto him during a city council meeting?”

“That was… not my smartest moment in Seattle, I’ll admit.”

Lydia laughed—a raw, wheezy sound that always made Chuck feel like he was in on the joke. “Born with a flair for the dramatic, that’s you. Your mama was the same way.”

Chuck thought of his mother, gone eleven years now. She would have been so disappointed at how he’d burned every bridge behind him. “Flies and honey,” she would’ve said.

He surprised himself by saying, “Jeremy dumped me that night. Too ‘unprofessional’ for his world.”

Lydia rolled her eyes so hard it was almost audible. “Duh. He only liked how you looked in photos. I never liked that guy.”

“You never met him.”

“I got Instagram. I’m not dead. This ain’t the Cretaceous period. I saw plenty. He had the look.”

“What look?”

“Like he’d kill his dog for the right booth at a restaurant.”

Chuck snorted. She wasn’t wrong. Jeremy’s status fixation—the right restaurant, the right wardrobe, the right friends. Impressions.

He shook his head, but a smile tugged at his mouth. Lydia always cut straight through the nonsense. Even now, after everything.

Chuck had been the city boy’s tame brute, the working-class ruffian with enough raw talent to make Jeremy look edgy by association. For a while that had worked fine for both of them. Until Chuck got legitimately “edgy”—and suddenly his image didn’t serve Jeremy’s ambitions anymore.

“That’s all that, then,” Chuck said. “I’m back. For a bit.”

“A bit?” Lydia echoed. “You got some plans somewhere?”

Chuck shrugged. “Get work. Fix things. Stay out of trouble.”

“Uh-huh. Best of luck with that last one, buster. You’re not what I’d call a blushing virgin, and this town’s got a long memory.”

“Tell me about it,” Chuck muttered. He’d gotten a double take from the Soggy Beans barista that morning. Locals went quiet and whispered every time he passed. “I swung by the used bookstore today.”

“Driftwood? That old dump still open?”

“Barely, looks like. It’s run by a guy named Niall now. Niall Ashworth. Year or two behind me in school.”

Lydia’s eyebrows rose. “Elise Yao’s ex? Huh. Wouldn’t have pegged him for a bookstore bum. I always thought he was a homo, but I guess he dated guys and gals like you did back then.”

He bristled, then let it slide. No point in picking a fight, and she wouldn’t understand his point if he did. “It was cool, though. You know him?”

“Know of him. Married Elise Yao right after college, I think. A real firecracker all ’round—used to lead all those protests—whales, cranes, wetlands. Always going off on someone doing wrong.”

Chuck shrugged.

“Talk about wrong! About six, seven years back, she up and leaves her nice husband and their kid. Gone. Left Niall with the toddler and her parents breathing down his neck so she could go screw a yoga instructor in Miami. Awful.”

“Out of the blue, then.” Chuck worked a nut loose and set it on the porch planks.