Passion in Bloom (Hometown Heartstrings #2)

Chapter 11

Heather

P lease, please let this be a normal day.

No more looks. No more people asking about me.

And hopefully, no more sightings of David. He hadn’t come by since that day he knocked on my door. I hadn’t seen him in town, either.

I refused to get my hopes up high that he was gone. Nothing could ever go that well in my life. To simply wish him gone, and poof he was no longer an issue. Not seeing him was worse. The ambiguous threat hanging over me made me anxious all the time.

If I didn’t have to worry about Roarke butting into my life, that would help too. I was defensive against him, but after kissing him and giving him head, I felt like a hypocrite to push him away. Clearly, I wanted him for something. Obviously, I didn’t want to resist him that consistently.

At work, though, I had the numbers and boring, old paperwork to keep things constant. I couldn’t rely on my job at the bank to always be a distraction, but for now, it was serving that purpose.

Fergus came along with me to pick up the charity donations that people had left at the various locations on Main Street. I already did the actual toy item pickups yesterday. Those days, it was hard not to feel like an elf or Santa, lugging a huge tote bin of toys. At first, when Janelle gave me this project, I thought that I could delay the actual toy collection, figuring that not many people would drop off physical things to go toward the county-wide effort.

I was wrong.

I got so sick of the businesses on Main Street calling and nagging about “needing” toys picked up that I changed my habit of going twice a week instead of once. It irritated me that a shop-owner would act like it was such a terrible inconvenience to have toys sitting in the provided bin for more than a few days. Like the sight of something as harmless as donated toys could be in the way. It wasn’t like the bins were overflowing and spilling into their storefronts. It wasn’t as though the items were a nuisance for their operations. Yet, it was far simpler to just go along with it all. To just suck it up and make two trips to avoid any petty complaints from people who seemingly just wanted to complain about any and everything they could complain about.

Nance had taken up the routine coming along with me so I wouldn’t be alone, but she had a dentist appointment today. Fergus perked up at the idea that he could come with me despite how much he seemed to grumble about the toy drive last year.

“It’s easy to feel like a secret elf from the North Pole,” he joked as we walked down Main Street.

I scoped the scene, checking for David. “Mmm-hmm,” I replied.

“I mean, not a secret. Because we’re obviously just walking down the sidewalk and all, but...” He shrugged. “You know what I mean.”

“I do.” Sadly, I just couldn’t get myself into the Christmas spirit yet. The magic of the holiday season was always hard for me to get into. When I was younger, my parents soured it all. They never decorated, never got me gifts, and they always used me as an excuse to solicit for cash at the corners of the highway exit in the next town over. Just to use that income to buy more cigarettes or lotto tickets.

When I moved to Chicago and met David so quickly, I came to learn that he thought all holidays were a waste of time.

I hadn’t been here long enough to form my own, unbiased thoughts about holidays yet. It seemed that my life would always be put on pause, stalled until I felt stable to really live .

“Any plans for T Day?” he asked, smiling and chipper. He drew a deep breath in, as if the chill in the air made him feel brighter.

I tried it, engulfing a huge, deep breath. It only tickled and then burned my throat, all that chilled air needing to be warmed up first. Coughing, I tried to find my voice again. “Uh, no. Not that I know of.”

“Well, it’ll be coming sooner than you think.”

I nodded, trying my best not to think of my last Thanksgiving. Where David kept me locked at home, without food and waiting for me to apologize “properly” for saying I didn’t want to go with him to his parents’ house for the traditional dinner that felt like torture. They were all so stuffy and hard to please, and with a migraine I couldn’t kick, I only wanted to rest and sleep and not suffer the ordeal.

“You can come to my place,” he offered. “I’ll be having a remote dinner, keeping friends on a call while I make a little turkey dinner for myself.”

I smiled, imagining him seated at the head of his small table with multiple tablets propped up as a virtual dinner. He was the techy guy out of us at the bank, but it made him more adorable, not dorkier.

“Thanks, but I’ll have to see what that week looks like.” He was right. Thanksgiving would be here soon, at the end of the month. All I could anticipate that far ahead was that I’d still be anxious about the David situation.

We walked into the post office next, checking if anything was in the toy bin. “Empty,” Fergus reported.

I nodded. I figured it would be. Their bin was seldom full, and it made sense. People came here with things to mail, one clear task in mind. He walked with me as I approached the donation box on the counter, using the key Janelle gave me from the county office to unlock the narrow container and check for checks and cash.

“Hey, I heard your man got in a fight last night,” a man said from the few in the line.

Fergus turned, raising his brows. “ My man?” He shook his head. “I’m not seeing anyone.”

“No,” the man replied. “Hers.”

I gave up on unlocking the box for a moment, turning to face the guy. I recognized him, but just vaguely. He was another Grand River ranch hand.

“I don’t have a man either.”

Shit. I knew very well which man would be going around town and claiming that I was taken.

David.

“Roarke,” the ranch hand said with a chuckle as he moved forward in line. “He sure looked a little rough this morning.”

Oh, shit.

I tensed. First, because anyone would claim that Roarke was “my man” when I was so desperate to be independent. And second, because he’d been in a fight. I didn’t need to think long and hard who he couldn’t been fighting. When he’d intervened that day David came to my door, I was half certain he’d punch him then and there.

“Oh, yeah,” a woman said from behind the man. She nodded and smiled. “I was there at the bar when it happened.” She winked at me. “He sure landed that pretty boy on his ass.”

The ranch hand laughed. “Not surprised.”

Shit!

It seemed that when I reiterated it to Roarke that I wanted him to back off, that I didn’t want to talk about David or deal with anyone poking in my business where my ex was concerned, he didn’t understand a single word I spoke.

“Roarke fought someone at the bar?” Fergus asked.

“Yeah. Some smug jerk named Davis?” the woman said. “My sister was picking up a shift tending bar and she said the dude was acting like a tool.” She rolled her eyes. “Probably deserved it.”

David deserved a lot more than a fight with Roarke. He deserved a lot of agony and pain for how horrible of a person he was. To me and everyone else in his life.

But Roarke was not supposed to be the one to show him that.

“David,” Fergus said, glancing at me. “Right. Nance asked me if I’d seen him at the bank...”

I tugged on Fergus’s sleeve, eager to leave. This was snowballing too fast. Roarke wasn’t supposed to fight David, and I didn’t have to wonder why he might have. It seemed I’d need to remind him—again—to butt out of my life and stop meddling with David.

“Wait,” Fergus protested as I ushered him out of the post office lobby. “You didn’t check the donation box yet—”

“I will. Later.”

“Then what’s the rush to get out of there?” He frowned at me on the sidewalk again.

“I need to go. Tell, um, tell Janelle I’m taking an early lunch.”

He nodded, but his brow was still creased with concern. “Why, though?”

“I’m going to go to the ranch and make sure Roarke is okay.”

“From a bar fight?” He huffed, then grinned. “You have seen that tall, hulking, fine piece of male specimen before, right?”

Oh, I’ve seen all of him.

“He can handle a little fight.”

“But—” I shook my head, unable to explain why I really needed to rush out and see him.

Not only to see that he was all right and unharmed—which I suspected he would be—but furthermore to scold him for not backing off. For being so careless to get into a fight with David at all!

It might have started as wishful thinking, but I had to cling to the hope that this wasn’t necessary. That if I could wait out David and mind my own business by not engaging in any interactions with him, he’d eventually have to give up on me someday. He would have to lose interest. He couldn’t stay away from work indefinitely. Sure, he was rich and had money. But he couldn’t make chasing me and having me under his control his whole life.

Right?

A half hour later, I saw Fergus back to the bank and texted Janelle. She wasn’t in, already on her lunch break in her office. She rolled her eyes at me through the window, pointing at her phone and indicating she was on a call she couldn’t get out of.

Heather: Running out for lunch. Be back soon.

She was that chill of a boss that the text would be sufficient.

I hurried outside, not too distracted to slack in keeping an eye out for David hiding in town. When I didn’t see him, I hurried toward my car.

The sounds of someone retching made me slow to a stop.

I turned, finding Navaeh in the alley behind the bank.

Now what? Seriously?

I cringed, impatient to get to Roarke, but I couldn’t walk away from someone so obviously in pain. She hadn’t given me any sign that she’d want me to come near. Every time I tried to look out for her, she snapped at me like a cornered, feral cat.

But I didn’t have it in me to just walk away and ignore the fact she was leaning against a dumpster and puking.

“Nevaeh?”

She groaned, hearing me coming near.

“I won’t ask something stupid like if you’re okay...”

She winced. “Then do me one better and fuck off.”

You never stop. Never tone it down. I wanted my privacy too, but I didn’t lash out from the get-go like this. I hated that I could see myself in her. That we had this similarity of wanting to be left to ourselves. While I was like this to maintain my independence because it was the only way to survive, I had no clue what prompted her to be this bristly yet at other times eager to beg for help.

“Come on, Nevaeh. What’s going on?”

She hunched her shoulders as she focused on breathing. “Nothing. Nothing that’d be any of your business.”

Ouch.

It was like looking into a mirror, hearing a line I used so often myself.

With her so clearly sick and weak, though, I wondered what it would take for her to let someone in before it was too late.

Not now. Not here.

“Leave me alone,” she muttered, turning to avoid all eye contact.

I exhaled a long breath and did as she wished.

I left, but with the intention of going to talk to Roarke, I would be mentioning her sick state to him as well.

It was ironic, insisting on not leaving her alone like that, but I realized it didn’t matter. If she didn’t want me interfering in her life when something was clearly wrong, then she could hate me later.

I’d never live with myself or handle the guilt if I didn’t speak up somehow.

As I walked to my car, though, I dreaded the idea that this was how Roarke might feel about me and my stubbornness for him to butt out of my life.