Page 28 of Hero Next Door
On a business level, I agreed with her.
Now, riding the bus back to Arberry, I wasn’t so sure. The recording session hadn’t been difficult and she could have pulled it off on her own. Instead, I’d spent the entire day on high alert, looking for trouble while she was in the recording studio, and now I was getting back to town hours after I would have happily been asleep.
Not my happy face.
The good news was that Jackson met us at the bus station and gave me ride back up to the house, so I didn’t have to bother with figuring that out. Avery kissed me soundly and told me that she owed me—which she did—and then their tail lights were disappearing in the distance, leaving me in the absolute darkness that can only happen outside of town limits, and far away from any large city.
I looked up at the stars, marveling at how many there were up there, and then breathed deeply and turned to house. I’d told Dev earlier today that I wouldn’t be at the house today but that he could feel free to come over.
And then I’d spent the entire day missing him.
I couldn’t wait to see what he’d done inside, and if he’d left me anything. A note or a sample or even an old faucet that he thought was really cool. Something to prove that he’d been here.
The thought had my blood turning fizzy with excitement.
Weird.
I reached out with my key, but found the door still unlocked. “Dev,” I hissed. “You don’t leave someone else’s door unlocked after you leave. Come on.”
When I stepped into the house, though, I found that he hadn’t left the door unlocked.
He was still here.
And he’d brought a picnic with him.
Or rather...
“Pie?” I asked, looking at the spread on the kitchen table, which he’d pulled into the entryway. The table held three different kinds of pie, along with plates, forks, and a few bottles. “And... wine?”
“Cider,” he corrected. “It goes better with pie.”
“Oh, obviously,” I agreed. “And you brought pie because...”
He shrugged. “I figured you would have had a long day and not eaten much, and I further figured that you’d be getting home late enough that you wouldn’t want to cook.” When he looked up and saw what was no doubt a shocked and somewhat overwhelmed look on my face, he narrowed his eyes. “Don’t think this is something it’s not. I just don’t want you getting a late start tomorrow because you were hungry all night. We have lots we have to accomplish.”
I suppressed the grin that wanted to climb right onto my mouth, walked over, and sat down at the table, noting the bucket of half-melted ice behind him and the bottles of cider, which were so cold that condensation was running down the sides.
“Of course,” I said, still fighting the urge to smile. “How long have you been here?”
He didn’t answer for a moment, and I thought he was probably trying to find an answer that wouldn’t make me feel too special. Something that sounded like he hadn’t gone out of his way to make sure I had pie and cold cider when I got home.
“Long enough that I built the entire schedule for tomorrow,” he finally said gruffly.
I picked up my bottle of cider and toasted him. “Well then we won’t have to talk about it over breakfast. Cheers.”
He raised his own bottle and toasted with me, and I took a sip of cold, bitter cider, my insides aflutter with something I hadn’t felt... well, ever.
People almost never bothered to take care of me. They certainly didn’t wait all night with cider in a bucket of melting ice, just so they could be here when I got home. Even my best friends just didn’t think about it.
I was always the one taking care of them.
But Dev...
Dev had somehow turned the tables on me. And I wasn’t sure, yet, how I felt about it.
CHAPTER15
Dev
