The Damaged Hearts Bargain (Tetherington Hearts #2)

Chapter Thirty Three

C al sealed up the final box with tape. “You really didn’t have to come.”

“I’m fully aware of that,” Syd said, picking the box up and stacking it on top of the others. “However, I do have a big truck and all you’ve got is a little motorbike, so I’m not sure how you were planning on moving any of this stuff.”

“Less of the little,” Cal said. “And I was planning on renting something or renting someone I suppose.”

“Wait, you can rent people here?” Syd asked. “Small town life is weird.”

“You know what I meant. Like a removal service or… or a cleaning service or something.”

“Well, I figure three trips to the tip should do it, we’ll get rid of all this stuff, come back and run a vacuum cleaner around and then you should be fit for the estate agent.”

“Except the vacuum cleaner is in one of those boxes ready to be thrown away,” Cal said, wiping her forehead with her arm.

“I’m not unpacking them again,” Syd said. “And I need to be back in the pub by tomorrow morning, so I don’t have all day.”

“It’s fine. Rosalee from the pub will let me borrow hers. At least I think she will.” Cal had been studiously avoiding the pub all week. In fact, she’d been avoiding the entire town all week. When Syd arrived the day before, she’d driven them both over to the next town to get something to eat and pick up cleaning supplies.

“Great. Let’s get this stuff loaded into the van then,” said Syd.

The day was as hot as ever and Cal couldn’t help wishing that just for once they could be having a typical English summer, complete with rain and cooling winds.

“I’m not going to get to meet her then?” Syd asked as they were piling boxes into the back of the van.

“Who?”

“Lucy, obviously.”

Cal stopped what she was doing and put her hands on her hips. “And why exactly would I go around introducing all my exes?”

“So we can gossip about all your flaws,” said Syd. “Anyway, I’d have thought that you were still friends. You’re friends with me.”

“Well, we’re not.” Not that they weren’t friends. They were… complicated. As much as Cal tried to stay on the good side of the women she’d dated, there was something different about Lucy. It just… it hurt. More than Cal had expected.

She thought she was doing the right thing for Lucy. Thought that taking her broken self out of Tetherington was the best thing to do. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t get a searing pain in her chest every time she thought about Lucy’s smile.

“You know the problem with you?” Syd said conversationally.

“No,” said Cal, picking up another box. “But I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“You eat out of vending machines.”

Cal paused, tried to make sense of this and couldn’t. “What?”

“You eat out of vending machines,” Syd said again.

“Since I don’t actually eat out of vending machines, I assume that you’re trying to make a point here?”

Syd put down the box she was carrying and sat on it. “See, you’re standing at the vending machine snacking when there’s a restaurant just down the street with great food. But you, you don’t think you deserve the restaurant. You don’t think you’ve got the right clothes, or the right manners, or whatever else. So instead of eating nutritious, well-cooked food, you’re just popping coins into that vending machine and leaving unsatisfied.”

“That… that is a stretch,” Cal said. “I mean, look at me, do I look like I belong in a fancy restaurant?”

“The restaurant doesn’t have a dress code though, Cal. You just assume it does. You just assume that it’s too good for you. And you don’t see that you’re doing yourself a disservice, that you’re undervaluing yourself by acting this way. You deserve to be in that restaurant just as much as anyone else does.”

“Right up until I spill my water everywhere or eat with my mouth open,” Cal said.

Syd shook her head. “Where does this come from, Cal? Why do you not think of yourself as a deserving person? I don’t get it. You’re attractive, you’re considerate, you’re fun to be around and smart too. Yet you don’t see any of that.”

Cal looked up at the empty house, studied it brick by brick. “Maybe because I’m not worth it,” she said quietly. “Maybe because when I needed it most, the person I trusted the most refused to stand up for me. Maybe because I learned that I’m not worth protecting, not worth fighting for.”

“That’s bullshit.”

Cal turned to her. “You’re like the worst therapist I’ve ever seen.”

“Just as well I’m a bartender then, isn’t it?” Syd said.

“I’d rather you were mixing me a drink than trying to get to the bottom of my problems,” said Cal, nudging Syd off the box and picking it up.

“I’m just trying to help,” Syd said. “You’ve got this crazy idea that women are like camp grounds and that you’re supposed to leave them better than you found them.”

“That’s not crazy, it’s polite,” said Cal, heaving the box into the back of the truck.

“Yeah, except you’re never the camp ground, are you, Cal? ”

Cal rubbed her face with her hands. “All these metaphors are doing my head in.”

“Why aren’t you ever the one that is left better?” Syd asked.

Cal had no answer for that.

“Alright, try this then. Lucy obviously meant a lot to you, and you’ve given me all this bullshit about why you’re not good enough for her and blah, blah, blah, but my question is: why is she good enough for you then?”

“Because… because she made me feel good,” Cal said weakly.

“Try harder.”

“She made me feel… comfortable. Protected maybe. She didn’t, it’s weird, but she didn’t look at my butchness as… as masculinity maybe. She didn’t expect me to lead, didn’t expect me to do everything. She looked after me. Took control sometimes. Like she didn’t have this preconception of what I was supposed to be. It was nice.”

“Nice to be looked after.”

“Yeah.”

Syd sighed. “I’m not sure what more you can ask for from someone. And yet you seem to want more than that.”

“Am I being greedy now, is that the problem?”

Syd shook her head. “No, Cal. Not greedy. Maybe just… blind. It seems like this woman really liked you, really saw you, but you don’t seem to understand that.”

Cal slammed the back doors of the van closed. “I thought you had a pub to get back to? If we don’t start taking this rubbish now, we’ll never be done in time.”

“Fine, fine,” said Syd. “But we’d better stop off and get that vacuum cleaner otherwise we’ll forget.”

“The pub’s on the way out of town anyway,” Cal said, and climbed into the van.

CAL LEFT SYD in the van and slid in through the back door of the pub. She skulked around the corner until she saw Rosalee come close enough to the end of the bar that she could hiss a hello at her.

“Jesus, you about scared me out of my wits,” Rosalee said. “You’ve seen it then, I assume?”

“Seen what?” asked Cal. “I just came in to see if I could borrow a vacuum.” She hesitated. “Not to steal or anything, obviously. Just because I need to run one around the house before the estate agent drops in tomorrow.”

Rosalee gave her a funny look. “Yes, of course, you know where it is, just make sure it’s back before we need it in the morning. You haven’t seen it then?”

“Seen what?” Cal asked again, impatient to get going.

“Listen,” Rosalee said. She looked over at the bar, but it was quiet, so she stepped closer to Cal. “I need to apologize.”

“For?” Cal was really not at all sure where this was going or what was happening.

“Just know that I’m truly sorry. I’ve got no excuses, no justifications. I’m sorry and you don’t have to forgive me. And know that I’ll tell everyone that comes into this pub what really happened, as soon as you give me your permission to talk about it.”

“Talk about what?” asked Cal. She was getting more confused by the minute.

Rosalee sighed. “I think you’d better go look outside.”

“I just came from outside, I’ve got a van in the car park.”

“Go out the front door and turn right, just so that you can see that big wall that faces the road.”

“Why?” Call asked.

“Just do as you’re told for once,” Rosalee said. “It’ll explain faster than me trying to do it.”

Cal considered just taking the vacuum and going but there was something going on here and she was starting to have the sneaky feeling that she might be involved in it. So she did as she was told for once and went out the front door.

Oddly, there were people standing on the corner of the road, Syd among them. Cal hustled her way over. “I thought you were waiting in the van,” she said .

“I was. But the windows were rolled down and I heard people talking, so I came to see what was going on.” Syd was looking at her funny. She grabbed Cal’s arm and turned her.

Which was when Cal finally saw what everyone had been looking at.

The entire wall was filled with a simple mural, painted in the colors of the sea, and in letters so large that they couldn’t be missed was written ‘Cal Roberts is Innocent.’

“Makes you sound like a serial killer on death row,” Syd said.

“No, no,” said Cal quietly. She’d recognize those ocean colors anywhere. “Lucy did this.” She looked at the crowd that was gathering around the wall, taking pictures of it even. “What’s happening?”

Syd grinned. “Looks to me like you’ve found someone who thinks you’re worth standing up for.”

And Cal’s heart filled so full that for a second she couldn’t breathe.