AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Men didn’t wait. Not really. Caleb might think he’d been speaking the truth when he’d said he wasn’t going anywhere. He might even do it too, for a little while. Until he found someone else who wasn’t so difficult and then she’d be nothing but a memory. After all, that’s what people did when they got tired of her tendency to direct everything to the nth degree—they disappointed her. Ember and Cole were two really vivid examples of a pattern she’d been dealing with her entire life.
Havana presented her plan to Damian, got the green light from his investors—with the six-month caveat—and the revamp of Superstition Springs geared up in a big way. She volunteered for cleanup duty since Caleb needed every extra hand he could get. And it was solid, mindless work that had the benefit of obvious progress as a natural reward system. There was immediate gratification as she cleared a wide swath of debris in first one building and then a second.
This was how she could help for now, and it had to be enough.
The cleanup task took the better part of a week. She rarely crossed paths with Caleb, which she didn’t believe for a second was an accident. He was giving her space, which she appreciated. At first.
Eventually she caught herself missing him. At night she drifted to the window of her bedroom in hopes of catching him out on his balcony.
She’d come to think of that as their place, a private venue where she could count on having an honest conversation with some romance thrown in. But he’d obviously gotten too busy to spend time there. Sometimes she imagined that he didn’t go out on the balcony because he missed her as well, and it was too painful to be out there by himself. Probably it was the former.
Good thing he never did appear. Because as the week wore on, she’d probably be unable to stop herself from joining him, and then where would they be? Kissing again in a pure rush of feeling and emotion with no clear path forward. That would be awful.
Except for the kissing part. And the way he made her feel, as if she might float away if he didn’t have such a solid grip on her. That part was so amazing too. She couldn’t help but think about what it might be like if he’d tilted his head toward the bedroom in silent invitation and she took him up on it, following him through the door to a place where they could lose themselves in each other, heightening their bond in the most physical way.
But they hadn’t gotten that far. Her fault. Mostly it was better that way. Probably.
At the end of the week, she’d finally moved on to the old art studio. She and Aria had been teaming up in the mornings to fill the large temporary dumpsters that Caleb had rented from a waste management company out of Bastrop. They’d left the art studio for last because it had the most junk still left over from its last tenant in the eighties.
They’d been working for about thirty minutes when Havana had enough of a pile that she was ready to start making trips to transfer the debris to the nearest dumpster. But when she stepped outside for the first time that day, someone was leaning over near the door, hand over her eyes as she peered inside.
When the woman straightened and met her gaze, Havana’s hands lost all feeling. The metal scraps fell from her nerveless fingers.
Mom.
No. Havana’s throat closed, even as her heart cried out. Her mother was dead.
This woman was very much alive, with red-gold highlights that Havana had always envied and an attitude problem that eight years hadn’t erased apparently, judging by the sharp angle of her sister’s jutted hip.
“Ember. What are you doing here?” Havana asked more calmly than should have been possible given how her pulse had skyrocketed.
Instantly Ember’s face shuttered as they stared at each other. “I could ask you the same thing. I was looking for Aria. The hot new mayor said she was here.”
Havana blinked at Ember’s off-the-cuff description of Caleb but let it ride. He was a beautiful man, inside and out, so she had no call to pull out her cat’s claws because another female had noticed him. “She is. I am too. Is there something you want?”
Look how civil they were being. She hadn’t spoken to Ember in eight years and wouldn’t be today if Havana hadn’t come back home. The things unsaid seethed between them, but she bit them back until she had a better feel for how this surprise encounter was going to go down.
“I’m not sure what business it is of yours,” Ember said point-blank. “Don’t let me get in the way of you running back to your life in Austin.”
Ah, yes. The famous Nixon temper that had somehow skipped Aria and doled out her share equally among Havana and Ember.
“Same goes, except I have to insert ‘wherever you ended up’ since you didn’t bother to let me know.”
Ember sighed and smoothed back her silky curls that even a scorching Texas spring couldn’t wilt. “Is that still stuck in your craw, Van? That was a m
illion years ago.”
“Funny, it feels like yesterday,” she countered with a fierceness that the situation didn’t warrant, but it had been a long time since someone called her Van. And hearing her sister use it so casually dug at a tender place inside that longed for connection and family and people to care about who cared about her in return.
Which, outside of Aria, she’d yet to actually cultivate.
How much of that was her fault? One hundred percent?
Havana sucked in a breath through her nose, hoping it would calm her. The fallout with Ember was a long time ago. Why was she so stuck in the past? Ember wasn’t a seventeen-year-old girl anymore, knocked up and defiant about it. In fact, she must have a child somewhere around here that Havana had never even met. Was she really going to stand here and argue about ancient history?
If even fifty percent of the reason Havana felt so empty inside sometimes was her own fault, that meant there was something she could do to change it. She could figure out what Ember needed from her instead of telling her what she needed. Starting now.
“I’m sorry,” she told Ember sincerely, and with it, the knot in her chest eased. “I was just shocked to see you. I’m not handling this well. How are you? Are you staying in La Grange or someplace else?”
