23. Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-three

Remington

Least I could do after being a burden of a guest was have coffee waiting for Hannah when she woke up.

She padded out of her bedroom a quarter past nine, hair a mess, yawning, wearing an old flannel shirt that barely cleared the tops of her thighs, and I froze on her couch, too stupefied to spring into action.

“‘Morning,” she chirped sleepily. “You let me sleep in.”

That got me moving. Crossing the small space, I took her by the shoulders and shifted her to the side so I could pour her cup.

“What do you take in your coffee?” I asked.

She snorted a laugh from behind me. “Did you just move me?”

I turned, mug in hand, eyes wide. “Uh…yeah. Guess I did.”

She took the mug from me and set it on the counter. “This is too much commotion for me when I just woke up. Is this how you are every morning?”

“Uh, no. Not really.”

Winding around me, she went to the sink, filled a pink plastic cup with water, and grabbed the pill bottle sitting next to it. Shaking one into her palm, she tossed it into her mouth and downed the entire cup of water, slamming it onto the counter. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then laughed, finding me staring at her.

“Surely me taking my ADHD meds is not that interesting, Remington.”

I rubbed my nape, off-kilter already. “I—feel like crap for keeping you up last night. I had big plans of making it up to you by fixing you coffee and taking you out for breakfast.”

“You don’t need to feel like crap.” There wasn’t much space in the kitchen, so it didn’t take much for her to come to me and loop her arms loosely around my neck. “If I wake up at night, it takes me a while to fall back to sleep. Don’t think for a second I minded being there for you. You don’t need to make up for anything.”

I winced. “No matter what you say, I don’t like being the cause of you missing sleep. Glad you could catch up a little this morning.”

“You were quiet as a mouse out here. I almost thought you went home.”

“Nope. I wouldn’t leave without saying something.” I spread my fingers across her back and trailed down to her hips. “I called the station from your porch. They went out to see Cleve last night. He denies any involvement. Jacob’s footage didn’t pick anything up either.”

She nodded. “That’s what I expected. I appreciate you taking care of it for me, though. One less thing for me to think about.”

“Told you I would,” I reminded her.

Her pretty brown eyes softened on mine. “That’s right. You did. Thank you for being a man of your word.” Her lips grazed mine once then went in harder for a second time. “You know, I wouldn’t object to being taken out for breakfast. But you should be aware if people see us out together, tongues will wag.”

“You think I care what anyone in this town has to say?”

She lifted a shoulder. “Gossip has a way of filtering back to my family. You might care about that.”

“And you imagine they’ll have a problem with me treating you to breakfast?”

She speared her fingers into the back of my hair and shot me a little grin. “Okay, Remington. If you don’t care, neither do I. Just thought I should give you fair warning.”

I slid my hand down her back to cup her bottom, which was smooth and bare. Blood rushed due south to my groin, but I ignored it. I’d fucked Hannah six ways to Sunday last night, now was the time for me to be a gentleman.

“Noted.” I gave her butt a light smack. “Why don’t you get your pretty little ass dressed, sweetheart?”

“All right.” Her fingers left my hair, and her palms came to rest on my chest. “I put a new toothbrush out for you in the bathroom. I had to choose between a red one and a blue one. I decided on red. Hope you like it.”

I grinned at her, pleased as hell to experience Hannah Kelly in the morning. “Red’s my color. You chose well.”

“Good.” Teeth digging into her bottom lip, she stepped away from me. “Give me ten minutes. No—fifteen. You wrecked my hair last night. I have to deal with the consequences.”

She whirled away, and it took all my willpower not to follow her to her bedroom.

Saturday mornings, half the town of Sugar Brush converged at Grey’s Diner, and for good reason. The pancakes were steaming, and the bacon was crispy. I had early memories of coming here with both my parents, back before life went to hell. And later, memories of accompanying the Kellys here for breakfast, and later later, when I was in high school hanging here with Caleb and our friends after Friday night football games.

Even with how busy it was, old man Grey ran a tight, efficient ship. We were led to a booth after waiting no more than five minutes. Along the way to our table, Hannah was stopped several times to greet neighbors and people who knew her family. I received nods and some looks of wariness, but I got that. I was somewhat of a stranger to this town now.

We finally slid into a two-seater, and though there were plenty of eyes on us, my focus was on the woman across from me. She’d tamed her hair into some kind of complicated braid draping over one shoulder, a few tendrils grazing the sides of her face. Her cheeks were rosy, lips shiny, lashes dark and sooty. There were light freckles sprayed across the bridge of her nose, and one had gone rogue, landing just below the bottom corner of her mouth.

She looked up from her menu and caught me staring. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re nice to look at,” I said. “Pretty as hell.”

The rose in her cheeks bloomed, but she quickly covered it up with a groan. “Aw, Remington, don’t go soft on me now.”

My brow winged. “It’s Remington again? What’d I do to deserve that?”

She chuffed. “The googly eyes and compliment. I can’t handle it.”

“You think you don’t deserve a compliment?”

“I don’t know.” She waved me off with a casual flick of her hand. “I’m not good at taking them, I guess. But…thank you. Sorry I’m such a weirdo.”

“You’re not a weirdo, but I do think you haven’t been complimented enough in your life.” I picked up my coffee-filled mug, warming my hands with it. “I’ll make it my goal while I’m here to get you inoculated to hearing how utterly gorgeous you are.”

She puffed up her cheeks and blew out a breath. “Please don’t. If you do, I’ll get used to it, and when you’re gone, I’ll be bereft of the praise you took with you. Let’s just keep on how we were, all right? That was working fine.”

There was more behind her request, but this wasn’t the time or place to dig. Besides, she was right. Did I even have the right to dig when this was temporary?

“If that’s how you want it,” I conceded.

Our orders were taken, then one of our high school teachers stopped by the table to catch up. Mrs. Shepherd had taught art and photography. She’d lent me her Nikon, and through her, I’d caught the bug.

“I’ve followed your career, Remi,” she said. “I have to admit, I tell anyone I can that I was your mentor at one time.”

That made me smile, knowing I’d been remembered so fondly. “Well, that’s the truth. Without you giving me your camera, I don’t know where I’d be.”

She was pleased with that and squeezed a promise from me to come visit her photography class once school started up again. When she left, Hannah raised an eyebrow.

“Won’t you be gone by September?”

Sudden dread weighed down my gut. “I keep telling you I don’t have plans. Well, I didn’t until now. I said I’d be here, so I’ll be here.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Where did you live before your last trip overseas?”

“With an ex-girlfriend in Seattle. It was her place. When I left for my last job, that was that.”

“Hmmm.” She rested her chin on her fist, her gaze lively and inquisitive. “In all these years, where did you consider home?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t have one. Not really. Seattle was off and on for two years, though a lot was off with me traveling. When I first left here, I ended up in New York. I crashed there, worked, took some classes. Then I met a freelance journalist headed to Central America, where a war was breaking out. He asked me to go with him to document it. I wasn’t attached to New York. When it came down to it, I wasn’t attached to anything, not even my own life, so I went.”

“How old were you? Nineteen? Twenty?”

“Twenty,” I confirmed. “Got my eyes opened real fast. This world we live in can be brutal. More than most of us lucky ones can even imagine.”

Our food was delivered, bringing a pause to our conversation. Hannah had gotten a stack of chocolate chip pancakes while I’d ordered fried eggs, bacon, and biscuits with gravy. The way Hannah’s face lit up as her food was placed in front of her made me wish I had my camera. Strange, considering I hadn’t picked it up since the accident. But if anything deserved documentation, it was this, now.

She didn’t dig in as quickly as I’d expected. After cutting a few pieces, she looked up at me. “I lied to you, you know.”

With a mouthful of biscuit, I cocked my head in question.

“Well, it wasn’t entirely a lie. I told you Graham was the one interested in your career, not me. I tried not to be, but…your work is too compelling. I have an alert set on my phone for when anything of yours is published.” She wagged her fork over her pancakes. “You take photographs that make me feel things. It makes me wonder how you’ve witnessed what you have and are still able to get up, go out to breakfast, and live a normal life.”

“First, I’m honored to know that despite your disdain for me, you appreciate my work.”

She snorted. “Disdain is a little extreme.”

I raised my brows. “Is it?”

“For the most part, I was indifferent to you until Graham was dying. Then…okay, yeah, you could say I felt disdain. But I’d already been following your career for several years by then. I’d gotten hooked on how you tell a visual story.”

Warmth coated the inside of my chest. She may not have been good at taking compliments, but she was pretty brilliant at giving them. And I’d heard a lot of praise for my photos over the years. I’d won awards, had them hung in museums, but nothing had ever made me feel as tall or proud as I did now. Hannah Kelly wasn’t easy to impress, and I’d done it without being aware. Now that I knew, every photo I took in the future would be done with her seeing it in my mind.

“I learned on the job,” I explained. “A big lesson I took from the vets I met was I was there to work, to document, not be part of the narrative. The only way I was able to do my job was to learn how to detach myself through my camera lens. I met journalists who were so weighed down by what they’d seen they were never the same. The frequency of PTSD amongst the people who cover conflicts is really high.”

“Not you though?”

I inhaled slowly, considering my answer. “I had a pretty volatile childhood, Hannah. I got good at compartmentalizing the bad stuff and locking it away. That helped me in being able to do the same with my work. That’s not to say I haven’t been changed by my experiences. I undoubtedly have. My worldview is a hell of a lot darker than it once was. But at the same time, I think I’m able to understand there’s no black and white. Sometimes, the bad guy is just a scared teenager forced to hold a gun. Sometimes, the guy who looks like a suicide bomber is a distraught husband walking for miles and miles to find medicine for his dying wife.”

She rubbed her lips together, nodding. “You’re going to go back? Once you’re healed, you’re going to put yourself back in danger?”

I bit off a piece of bacon and slowly chewed. “I don’t know how to do anything else.”

“Right.” After a beat, she perked up and stabbed her fork into her pancakes. “Well, maybe you should break out your camera while you’re here so you don’t get rusty.”

“Maybe I will. Your mom and nephew reminded me it’s just as important to document the beauty in the world too.”

She smiled at me around a mouthful of pancakes, and my fingers twitched. For the second time this meal, I wished I had my camera to document the beauty across from me.

Instead, I dug into my food, the flavors richer than I remembered. That might’ve been the company affecting my taste buds, but it didn’t matter. All I knew was I was enjoying being here with Hannah—talking to her, answering her questions, looking at her. For the time being, there was nowhere else I’d rather be.

Until a shadow crossed our table. Right before an excited voice called our names.

“Aunt Hannah! Remi! What are you doing here? Why are you guys having breakfast together?” Jesse bounced on his toes at the end of our table. “Dad, look who’s here. Weird, right?”

Hannah put her fork down to grab her nephew’s hand. “Hey, dude. You convinced Dad to treat you to breakfast?”

“Yep.” Jesse nodded proudly. “I had to drag him out of bed.”

Caleb put his hand on top of his son’s head. “Think it was the other way around, kid.” Then his gaze swept from his sister to me, his expression unreadable. If he was pissed, he wasn’t giving it away.

Hannah didn’t seem alarmed at her brother’s presence. Then again, she hadn’t been the one warned to stay away.

“I’d invite you guys to join us, but I don’t think you’d fit,” she said.

“That’s okay. We’re having guy time,” Jesse proclaimed.

Hannah held her hands up. “Oh, excuse me. I would never intrude on guy time.”

Caleb’s eyes were locked on me. His nostrils flared as he sniffed. “So, this is happening?” he gruffed.

I nodded, bracing myself for what came next. There was no use denying it. I was too old to sneak around. More than that, I didn’t want to.

“Yeah. It’s happening.”

“You’re gonna heed what I told you?” Take it easy on my sister…

“I will.”

“All right then.” For Caleb, that was that. He was a man of his word, and he was taking me at mine. I appreciated that about him. Plus, the last thing I wanted to do was let him down again. Actually, no—the last thing was letting Hannah down. Caleb came in a close second.

Jesse shuffled closer to me. “Are you going with Aunt Hannah to the rodeo?”

I glanced at Hannah then back to the boy. “She hasn’t invited me. Think that means she doesn’t want me to go?”

Jesse’s head whipped to his aunt. “You don’t want Remi to go to the rodeo?”

She rolled her eyes. “Maybe I haven’t gotten a chance to ask him.”

“Well, you should,” he declared.

Caleb interrupted, rapping his heavy knuckles on the table. “Come on, kid. Let’s go get some grub.”

When they left, Hannah smirked at me, clearly amused. Something told me it had nothing to do with my lack of rodeo invitation.

“What’s got you smiling, Hannah Kelly?”

“Did you just perform some manly passing of the baton—me being the baton—with my brother right in front of me?”

Laughing, I reached across the table to nab her fork. It happened to be loaded with pancakes, so she tried to steal it back, but I managed to get it in my mouth before she could. To make up for it, I returned the fork along with a piece of my bacon.

She ate it, but she did so with a deep scowl aimed right at me.

“A while back, Caleb asked me to take it easy on you. That was him checking in, making sure I was keeping my promise.”

“Hmph.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I guess you lied then.”

My brow dipped. “What? In what way?”

A devious curl started at the corners of her mouth. “Do you call what you did to me last night taking it easy? I don’t remember it that way, but—”

Barking a laugh, I tossed my napkin at her. “Fucking menace,” I muttered. “You had me worried.”

She grinned. “Good. Can’t let you get too comfortable.”

“Always on my toes with you.”

Her teeth dug into her bottom lip, biting back a smile. She really was pretty. I was glad I hadn’t noticed back when we were teens. Caleb wouldn’t have been as easygoing if I’d been crushing on his fifteen-year-old sister. That, and it would’ve been a lot harder to leave.

“I meant it, you know.” Locking eyes with her, I grew serious. “I know you’ve had a huge upheaval with Graham passing, and Cay said there was an ex who did you wrong. I’m not going to be another cause of you hurting. I need you to tell me if you see that happening and I don’t notice.”

She swallowed hard. “We’re just having fun, aren’t we?”

It didn’t feel like the right word for what we were sharing, but I didn’t know what else it could be.

So, even though my skin pricked with unease, I agreed. It was all I could do. “For as long as you want to, sweetheart.”