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“Yeah.” He pivoted on the mattress to face her. “It’s bad. I have to go.”
She didn’t cover her disappointment quickly enough. He saw it before she gave him a smile. “Of course. I understand. But it’s the middle of the night. Are you going to be okay to drive? You hardly got any sleep.”
He was going to have to be okay. He’d been tired even before he’d gotten on the roadtoBaton Rouge. He’d been putting in long hours over the past week to free up today and part of tomorrow to be here with Becca. It looked like he wasn’t going to be catching up anytime soon. “That’s what coffee was invented for, right?”
She still looked concerned. “Zeke and Mitch can’t handle it?”
He swore. “I have to call them.”
He wanted to comfort Becca and make sure she understood he was sorry to be leaving, but he really needed to get people over to help his mom. “Hang on.” He quickly punched in Mitch’s number.
He hated to wake his friend up in the middle of the night, but Mitch had been awakened by things like this before, and he would understand. In fact, both Zeke and Mitch were the type of guys who would be upset if Beauhadn’tcalled them once they found out what happened.
“Beau? What’s up?” Mitch asked seconds later, his voice scratchy.
“There’s a water leak at the B and B. I’m in Baton Rouge. Can you—”
“On my way,” Mitch said before Beau even finished the question.
Fuck he loved that guy. “Thanks. I owe you.”
“Bullshit. We all owe each other so much at this point there’s no reason to keep track.”
Beau huffed out a laugh. “Good point.”
“I’ll grab Zeke.”
“Was gonna call him next. But I need to get a hold of Hannah too.”
“No problem. We’ll be up there in a few.”
“Thanks, man. I’m heading back but obviously it’ll take me a bit. Call me when you get up there and see how bad it is.”
“’Course.”
They disconnected, and Beau immediately dialed his Aunt Hannah.
“Beau? What’s wrong?”
Yeah, another thing about middle-of-the-night calls, people assumed it was something bad. Because it almost always was.
“Hey, sorry to call so late. There’s a water leak up at the bed and breakfast. I’m out of town. Mom needs help with some of the guests.”
“Of course. We’ll go right up.”
“We” included his Uncle Jerry. “Thank you. I’m on my way back, but it will be a few hours.”
“Are you with Becca?”
“Yeah.” He couldn’t even look at her. He was disappointed, but he knew she was even more so. No doubt she had plans for them for tomorrow.
“I’m sorry,” Hannah said. “Tell her hello from us.”
Beau knew that his entire family—hell, the whole town—loved that he and Becca were together. They seemed like a match made in heaven to everyone in Autre. Two hometown kids who’d grown up as friends and then fallen in love. He supposed on paper, that made sense. Because he and Becca were like all of them. So of course everyone would assume they would want the same things everyone else in Autre wanted.
But this was hard. Being five hours apart, feeling like his life was pulling him in two very different directions, feeling like he wasn’t doing a good job at any of it, was wearing on him.
Like the fact that they’d just made love for the first time and now he was leaving her in the middle of the night to go confront a major catastrophe back home.
