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Cassandra has continued seeing a therapist and said the sessions are helping, but I feel her wake in the night sometimes, shaking with memories. Like everything, including my injuries, it will take time. I am pretty much good as new, and it’s a good thing, too. Because my health isn’t the one we have to worry about for the next nine months. Just before our wedding and our abbreviated honeymoon trip to Puerto Rico, four of the sexiest, most intimate days we’ve ever had together, we decided that Cassandra would go off birth control.
Cassandra took a test last night after feeling sick for a week or two and confirmed it. We’re having a baby, and I’m so over the moon about it that I want to shout it from the Hope Pizza rooftop. But Cassandra is a little more superstitious and private. Once news of her pregnancy makes it to the tabloids, it’ll be blasted all over the place. Since she’s only a few weeks along, we want to keep it to ourselves until we tell my family, then try to keep it in that inner circle for as long as possible.
Which, in a town like Hope Crest, will be damn near impossible. But we’ve already been through the wringer, and if good news is the tea that’s being spilled, then at least I can be happy about it.
It’ll be a hell of a feat to get our house done in time for the baby’s arrival, since my wife decided to nearly gut the entire farmhouse, but I can see us moving in with some less important rooms still needing to be redone. Cassandra is leading point on the project, and I can tell by her choices and designs that there will be nothing but love and thoughtfulness filling the rooms of our home.
For now, we’re still in the guesthouse, and I almost have it in me to call our contractor and tell him to finish the master bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen first so we can move into our half-finished house. I love my family, but I am tired of them being just steps away. The months after our wedding have been spent trying to preserve our alone time, having sex without trying to make too much noise, and awkwardly moving our furniture around as we accommodate for the “necessities” Cassandra had shipped here from LA. Who knew a thousand-dollar espresso machine was a necessity?
Warren whizzes past my office, and I try to catch his ear to talk about the price of the new point-of-sale system he wants to install, but he’s already out the door. Things have been tense with him here, and I wonder if he’s finally decided to leave the restaurant. We’d miss him, but I can tell he wants to stretch his wings and something is holding him back.
According to my wife, that thing was that he was in love with Alana. Or that she was in love with him. On some level, I could always see it happening. But at the same time, I found it unbelievable.
The two of them had been best friends since … hell, since I could remember. Not only had it always been platonic, as far as I knew and as far as my brain would let me consider my sister in that light, but they would never work as a couple.
Still, the frosty reception between those two these days made me think that maybe Cassandra had a point.
“I’m going to fucking strangle him.” Liam stomps into my office, face red, and plops down in the chair across from me.
I chuckle. “He might be a dick sometimes, but he’s a culinary genius. We already got two write-ups in regional papers who never dared set foot in here. They called Evan’s food miraculous and generation jumping.”
“Oh, shove it.” He rolls his eyes, but he knows I’m right.
Evan’s new menu is bringing in clientele we couldn’t have dreamed of. For the first time in our history, the four siblings have begun to discuss expansion options, not that my parents knew yet. But with the extra land Liam is planning to plant on this year, due to the sale of the Mauer land to my family, it will give us more product and produce.
“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you, what the heck is up with Miss Murphy?” I lower my voice, just in case anyone passes by my office.
They’re all out in the dining room, tending to people or feeding on town gossip.
Liam makes a clicking sound in the back of his throat, his eyes doing that faraway thing they’ve been tending to do these days.
“I don’t know why she came back here.”
The devastation in his tone has my suspicions rising. “She left while we were in high school, right?”
Miss Murphy might have been my teacher, but I wasn’t paying attention to her, only the subject she taught. I try to think hard, remember back, and I can’t pull much from my memory bank.
Liam nods, his voice quiet when he starts to talk. “The first day I saw her, I knew I was in trouble. Walked into her class andthwack, the universe hit me with an uppercut. I tried to stay away from her, I swear I tried.”
Every hair on my body stands on end; the secret my brother is letting me in on. “Liam, what happened? Did she do something to you?”
He was a student when she left. A senior. And she was our teacher. Different classes, but he had her, too.
Now he meets my eyes. “Shedidn’t do a thing. I fell in love with her, I sought her out. I tried to …”
My mouth is dry, and suddenly it all clicks. Why he’s been so miserable all these years.
“From the moment I saw her, it was like … I don’t know, like the planets fucking aligned or something. But we couldn’t. And when I finally tried, I lost her.”
Something dark and powerful has my brother in a chokehold. It’s what could have happened to me if things with Cassandra went sideways or got in deeper back then. The cracks of the organ still breaking in his chest nearly echo around us, and his loss is palpable. I don’t know how I didn’t realize it before, but I guess he’s gotten good at hiding things from us.
“She’s back now.” Any hope I can provide here would be better than him spiraling.
“Twelve years later,” he harrumphs but gives no other clues as to how he feels about that.
“And you’re still clearly in love with her. You keep looking at her like you want to piss on her leg or rip the throat from any man who sniffs in her direction.” My laugh is weak, but I’m not lying.
“She left, Patty. Left me without a word. Without any way to contact her. I tried for years, chasing leads I thought might turn out. But nothing.”
