Chapter 35

CHAPTER 35

Fox

Why does doing the right thing always feel shitty?

I stood in the guest bedroom on the second floor, watching her through the mostly closed blinds as she packed up her car. It felt wrong for a thousand reasons. Josie had just loaded a box into the backseat. She stopped halfway to the door and used the back of her hand to wipe sweat from her forehead.

“Why don’t you open the blinds?” she yelled while looking straight ahead. “It’s less creepy.”

Shit.I jumped out of the window’s view, my back flush to the wall next to it. My heart pumped like a criminal who’d just gotten caught red-handed. Fuck. Maybe I was one. After I caught my breath, I leaned forward and chanced a quick look outside. Josie was walking out of the house with another box, and it looked like she was struggling to carry it. Halfway to the car, it fell, toppled over, and the cardboard busted. Shit started to roll down the driveway.

Fuck. I can’t watch this. I jogged over like some kind of hero and started to scoop shit up with her. Josie held up a hand, without looking up. “I got it.”

“Just let me help.”

“You’ve done enough.”

“Jos…”

She looked up and narrowed her eyes, like they were loaded with daggers she was trying to shoot at me. But it was the things she couldn’t cover up that made my chest ache. Her eyes were swollen from crying and rimmed with dark circles.

“No,” she snapped. “You don’t get to Jos me, like I’m the one being ridiculous. You’re the one being ridiculous. You haven’t looked my way in two weeks, and then today you run over here like I’m some sort of damsel in distress. I’m not. I don’t need your help, and I don’t want it. You only want to make yourself feel better.”

I stayed kneeled down next to the box while she hastily tossed shit inside, not knowing my next move. But the next move wasn’t mine, apparently, it was Josie’s.

She stood, smacked dust from her hands, and marched into the house. Since she didn’t slam the door behind her, I took that as a sign she was coming back out. For all I knew, she might be getting a bat to hit me over the head, and part of me hoped that was what she was doing, because I deserved it. But what she came back with hurt much worse.

Josie held out a check. “I looked up how much all the work you did around the house would have cost. This should cover it.”

When I didn’t lift my arm to take the check from her hand, she waved it around as her voice climbed a few octaves. “Take the damn check.”

I stood. “I’m not taking the check, Josie.”

She shoved it into my chest. “Take the damn check!”

I held my hands up and took a step back. “I’m not taking the damn check. I did that work because I care about you and wanted to. Not because it was a job.”

“You care about me.” She laughed maniacally. “You mean cared. Past tense.”

“It’s not like that.”

“No? Then tell me what it’s like, Fox. Because one minute we were spending a weekend at a bed and breakfast and you were making love to me, and the next I was tossed to the curb like garbage.”

I dug both hands into my hair, yanking. “This is what’s best for you.”

“Best for me? You don’t get to decide what’s best for me.”

There was nothing I could say that she wouldn’t toss back at me. She didn’t understand how things worked out with a selfish bastard like me. Evie hadn’t known either. I hung my head. “I’m sorry.”

She softened. “I am, too. Will you please take this check?”

“I’ll take it, but I’m not cashing it.”

That seemed to pacify her for now. I shoved the check into my pocket, and she marched into the house again. When she came back out, I leaned forward and snuck a peek inside. The house was empty—even the cards on the walls were gone.

Josie shoved the box into the backseat and closed the door. She walked around to the rear of the SUV and slammed the hatch shut, turning her attention back to me. “I gave away all the furniture or threw it out. The real estate agent said it will rent better unfurnished. But I’m leaving Daisy’s house in the back. Would you at least keep an eye on her for me?”

I pushed my hands into my pockets. “Of course.”

“Thank you.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Before the sun comes up tomorrow morning.”

I swallowed. “Okay.”

She stayed quiet until my eyes lifted and met hers. “Goodbye, Fox.”

Fuck. It hurt more than any bone I’d broken in my twenty years of playing hockey. It felt like all the air had been squeezed from my lungs. Eventually I managed to mutter two syllables.

“Bye, doc.”

***

I stood at the front door at four AM, watching the taillights fade away down the block. I hadn’t slept all night. Couldn’t manage to close my eyes long enough to try. Even after the car turned the corner and there was nothing more to see, I kept standing there staring, lost in thought. At six, the garbage trucks rolled down the street. I looked to the curb next door and saw no cans had been put out. She had to have garbage after packing up the last of the house. So I walked next door to double check.

Both cans were packed, so I wheeled them down to the end of the driveway, just as the sanitation guys approached the house.

“Morning, Fox.”

I nodded. “Hank.”

Hank swung open the attached lid from the first can and heaved the contents into the back of the truck. I couldn’t get my feet to walk away, so I figured I’d help him out and peeled the top back from the second one.

Hank tossed the first can back on the curb and grabbed the handle to the second. As he lifted, the contents caught my eye.

I put my hand up. “Hang on a second.”

Hank stopped, setting the can back down. “Something wrong?”

It was dark. I thought I might’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion, so I reached inside and scooped out some of the contents of a box that sat open inside the can. Sure enough, they were Christmas cards—all the ones she’d had on her walls, all from people here in Laurel Lake.

Jesus Christ. I’d fucked up so royally that she no longer believed the fantasy she’d been carrying with her for fifteen years.

***

My face heated. “You’re fired.”

Opal’s response was to cackle. She waved me off and sat her fired ass down behind her desk. “Oh please. Your idea of typing is pecking at the keys ten words a minute with two pointer fingers, you don’t know how to use any of the software, and doing payroll is signing the checks after I figure out all the taxes and deductions. The last time I had a day off and the printer ran out of ink, you drove forty minutes to the nearest Best Buy and bought a new one because you couldn’t figure out how to change the cartridge yourself.” She shook her head. “I’m not fired. In fact, I think I deserve a raise.”

Porter had walked into the office halfway through Opal’s rant. The fucker tossed me a pity smile. “Grumpy because Josie left,” he said.

“Get the fuck out!”

“He’s miserable,” Opal said. “Biggest mistake of his life, and he knows it.”

Porter nodded. “I still regret breaking things off with Stacey Krans when I was twenty. Thought being tied down was stupid when I was that young. Now she’s married with a kid and owns an exercise studio. Looks better than she did then.”

Was this seriously my life? These two idiots... I took in a deep inhale of patience and blew it out. “What do you want, Porter?”

“Tile guys on the job over in Two Lakes said they weren’t going to be able to finish tomorrow. Gonna need another two days, so we’re going to have to push back the appliance deliveries.”

“Bullshit. Tell them to get extra workers here by this afternoon and don’t go home until it’s finished. They’re finishing on time.”

Porter looked to Opal. She nodded. “I’ll call the delivery company and have it moved to Thursday, just in case two days turns to three.”

“Thanks, Opal.”

“No problem, honey.”

I tossed my pencil into the air as Porter walked out.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I growled. “I run this company, not you.”

“Well, then get your head out of your ass and do it. Will Rupert is the tile guy on that job. His mother was put on life support last week, and his thirty-three-year-old wife is in the middle of her second round of chemotherapy for breast cancer. They’ve got two kids under five, too. There’s no good reason we can’t push the appliance delivery and cut him some slack.”

“Fine,” I gritted out between clenched teeth.

Opal sighed and stood, then sashayed her ass over to my desk and parked it on the corner.

“Listen, honey. I get that you’re hurting. You did something dumb. You let that woman leave yesterday, and you’re lashing out because you think it’s going to make you feel better to make other people hurt. I’ve been there myself a time or two. But you know what? It doesn’t work. You’ll just wind up hating yourself more.”

My jaw clenched as I glared at her. I could almost feel steam billowing out of my nose.

“You love this girl. I know you do.” Opal pushed up off my desk and strolled back over to hers. She opened a drawer, pulled out her purse, and lifted it onto her shoulder. “So stop being a coward and figure out how to fix yourself before it’s too late to get her back.”