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“She jokes,” I replied.
“Another thing you should know… I’m hilarious.” She looked up at me through her eyelashes. “How much do I owe you?” She pulled out a credit card and sat it on the counter.
I took the glove off my hand and shook my head. “Nah, it’s on the house. Aveline hospitality.” I shrugged and closed the case.
She stood before me, both hands clutching the white bag filled with her donut, and she tilted her head to the side. “Wow, and here I was thinking you were insufferable.”
I chuckled. “Oh, I am. It’s just the town, you know? Gotta keep up appearances and whatnot.”
She nodded slowly. “Ah, yes. Those pesky appearances. Well… thank you.”
“Yep. Safe travels for wherever you’re going.”
She walked toward the door and turned around. “Who says I’m going anywhere?”
And then she stepped out of the bakery.
I stood, staring, until I heard Lenora make a “tsk” sound. I turned around slowly and gave her a vexed look. “Oh, what?”
Lenora, a smile beaming across her face, shrugged. “Nothing at all. It’s not like me to meddle,” she replied.
It was exactly “like her” to meddle. I knew Lenora well enough to know that she never kept quiet for the sake of not meddling. If she hadn’t been a baker, she could have certainly been a professional meddler.
“Say it and get it over with.”
Lenora sighed and wiped at the counter feverishly. “It’s just… I have a feeling you just let your future wife walk out of this bakery, and you didn’t even catch her name.”
EIGHT
2017
TUCK
I didn’t have anywhereto go. I hadn’t had anything that felt like a true home in twelve years. I had spent most of my time in military housing or overseas for deployment, heading to the next place as quickly as I could to avoid any attachments. Now, though, after a long career and a leg that refused to fully heal, it was time to finally go back and start over.
Back to the small town that held so many memories of my past life, both exceptionally good and extraordinarily bad. I had always wanted to find my way back to the town that built me, but I’d found throughout the years that it was easier to avoid Aveline altogether than to face who I had been then.
To face what could have been.
But I was thirty, not an immature eighteen-year-old anymore—a grown man with nowhere to go but an old house on Peach Street. As good a place to start as any.
Traveling was easy because I had few possessions I actually wanted to bring with me. I packed up some clothes and a cast-iron pan, said goodbye to my Army comrades, and gave a moment of silence for the ones I had lost along the way. I’d become so accustomed to goodbyes, they didn’t even phase me anymore.
Maybe that was because I’d never let anyone in enough to make it hurt to leave them.
I rubbed my left leg, the spot that was still healing from my recent injury, the one that had earned me a Purple Heart and an honorable discharge even though I’d begged to stay on. A soldier with a limp hadn’t exactly been the top choice for combat, and it had taken my entire recovery to come to terms with the fact that my life as I’d known it was going to change.
I had to find a way to be comfortable with a slower life. A settled one. One where I set down roots and knew my neighbors because, despite the fact that I had been at this base in Georgia for two years, I had spent most of my time deployed and had hardly gotten to know anyone.
I turned on the ignition to my truck, but just as I was about to head out, I felt a bang on my window and turned to see an angry face staring back at me.
Shawna Baker.
Shit.
I rolled the window down as slowly as possible—I was probably one of the only people on the planet who still drove a vehicle that didn’t have automatic windows and locks, but this truck had seen me through a lot in my life, and I had every intention of driving it until the wheels fell off.
Shawna stood with her hands on her hips, and I knew I was in for a lecture.
