Page 60 of Making New Plans

I looked up at him with blurry eyes and shook my head. “It’s not your fault. It will always be mine where she’s concerned. I’m sorry you had to endure that.”

He cupped my face in his hands, his brown eyes soft with concern. But I shifted my face out of his grip, my mother’s criticism still ringing in my ears.

“I’ll drive you home,” Hunter said quietly. He slipped on his jacket and held the door open for me.

In the car, I checked my phone out of habit. No messages. It’d only been an hour, but it felt much, much longer. I’d told Rose and Sarah why I was canceling on them, and they’d expressed their condolences and assured me they could manage without me. But my gut still churned with regret. If I didn’t give something 1,000 percent of myself, I felt like a failure. No doubt why I felt like either a failure or a strung-out mess most of the time.

I peeked at Hunter out of the corner of my eye. He was pulling onto my street, having found his way back to my house with little prompting on my part.

He didn’t look freaked. Or angry. Or anything. He was just Hunter. I’d been ready to leap across the dining table and kiss him when he’d batted my mom’s questions back at her like a tennis pro. I’d never seen anyone go toe-to-toe with Miranda Higgins before and not come out crying. Maybe his years of living with his parents then at an all-boys boarding school had left him with a thicker skin than I’d realized.

But I knew a deep well of emotion lived underneath that hardened exterior. Not big, dramatic, grand-gesture sorts of emotions, but the small, quiet ones. Like bringing me coffee. Sewing decorations with me. Taking me to a concert. Walking a dog he couldn’t adopt. Helping me out around the lodge. And, most of all, seeing parts of me that no one else did and, by all accounts, liking those parts.

Crap, I had it bad.

When he put the car in park, I didn’t immediately reach for the door. I didn’t want to be done with him yet. Despite whatever toxins my mom had tried to inject me with, that stubborn bit of hope that he wanted me as much as I wanted him fought through.

I fiddled with my purse. “So…”

“So…” He turned to me, a smirk curling his lips. “I’ve eaten much better rolls.”

Laughter burst from me like air being released from a too-full balloon. “Glad to hear it. No reason to go back then.”

His smirk disappeared. “That wasn’t the reason I went in the first place.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said,” he interrupted gently. “But I went to be with you.”

My cheeks heated. “Oh.”

I kept fiddling with my purse strap. Then an idea blossomed in my mind.

Reaching for whatever scrap of courage I had left, I asked, “In that case, would you like to come to the event this weekend? I’ll be there. Well, I’m helping out a bit, but not too much. So, I’ll be around. To hang out. You know, if you do want to come. Which you don’t have to! But it could be—”

“Chloe?”

I glanced up at him, wishing I could evaporate. “Yeah?”

He smiled, the streetlights twinkling in his eyes. “I’d love to come. But what is it exactly?”

“Oh! It’s called Bikes, Brews, and Bonfires. We hold it once a year. People bike around the square, usually while drinking some local beer. And there’s a big bonfire and all kinds of food and live music and usually a charity auction of some kind. I believe, this year, it’s for a new slide for the park playground. Ours is from the eighties I think.”

I babbled myself into silence while he sat there and gazed at my lips as if in a trance. Well, since he was already looking at mine…

Hot damn, his lips looked so soft and supple. Obviously, I knew they were from experience. But wow, they looked particularly tasty tonight. And that light stubble of his. Would it be too scratchy or just rough enough? I hadn’t even noticed against it my skin at the concert.

When I bit my lip, his eyes shot up to meet mine, and then we both looked away, guilty at being caught.

“Well,” he said, leaning back in his seat. “I’ve already done one town event. I’m sure I’ll survive another. Does this town have events every other weekend or what?”

I smiled. “We do have a fairly full social calendar every month. It’s our way of making sure to have fun and keep the gossip lines full.” Tapping my fingers on my leg, I tried for a light, casual tone. “You know, if you were around in November, you could attend the Casseroles, Crafts, and Cardigans event. It hit number one on the event polls last year.”

Hunter laughed. “You’re kidding, right? Okay, A, this town loves its alliteration too much, and B, that actually sounds just kooky enough to be entertaining.”

Warmth spread through my chest. “It is.”

We were quiet a moment. Probably both thinking the same thing—that, if everything went according to his plan, he’d leave in two weeks and sell the lodge. He’d been purposely cagey with my mom tonight, but I assumed that was more to irk her than any actual doubt on his part. We’d been such good terms lately that I was afraid to ask.

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