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CHAPTER 13
Cheyenne
My cheeks rounded as my mouth lifted in a smile that I felt all the way down to my toes. I couldn’t believe that Cash was standing on my porch. He’d never just stopped by before. And now here he was after two weeks of not seeing or talking to each other.
Which was why immediately after the shock wore off my heart sank and my smile dropped.
He didn’t do social calls so there had to be a reason that he was here and it wasn’t something he could have told me over the phone.
Had something happened to Billy? Or Hank? Or Jimmy? I’d just seen them a few hours ago, but I knew that didn’t matter. Everything could change in the blink of an eye.
“What’s wrong?” Panic gripped me.
“What? Nothing.”
“Why are you here?” I hadn’t meant for the question to come out so bluntly, but I couldn’t help it. Apparently, fear trumped my good manners.
He glanced down at his feet, and then back up again. “Can we talk?”
“Um…” Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. All of the oxygen had been sucked out of my lungs. Or at least that’s what it felt like. I’d wanted to talk to Cash, really talk to him for months, but now that the opportunity was standing right in front of me, I felt like the walls were closing in on me. If movies and books were to be believed, nothing good came after the phrase can we talk. “It’s not really a good time, actually.”
“Miss Shaw mentioned that you were going,” he paused as his eyes dropped down to my overnight bag, “out of town.”
Damn. I was still getting used to living in a small town where the gossip spread like a bad rash. It’s not like there wasn’t gossip in the circles that I’d grown up in but it wasn’t as rampant as here.
I shouldn’t have told Miss Shaw that I was going on a road trip, but she’d caught me off guard when she asked me to come back in on Thursday. I’d said the first thing that came to my mind. Which happened to be the truth.
It’s not like everyone wasn’t going to find out that I was gone anyway. I’d just been on the phone with Isabella seeing if she could stop by and feed my cats. And I’d had to call subs for all my classes.
My trip wasn’t necessarily a secret. I’d just wanted to have a head start before my brothers, namely Billy, discovered that I’d left and more importantly where I’d gone. I knew that they wouldn’t want me to face Wayne alone. But they were all too busy with their work and personal lives.
Billy had the bar to run and he and Reagan were newlyweds. Hank had his own construction business and Skylar and her daughter Luna had just moved in. Jimmy owned a charter boat business and he and Isabella were planning a wedding.
I didn’t want any of them to feel like they needed to chaperone me, and I couldn’t wait to find out the answers I needed.
“Um yeah, I’m going on a road trip.” I tried to make it sound as casual as possible. Isabella hadn’t blinked an eye when I’d told her the same thing, so I hoped that Cash would do the same.
“Are you going alone?”
I opened my mouth to answer but then realized that I had a question of my own, one that he’d yet to answer. “Why are you here?”
His jaw tensed and I could tell that me revisiting that question irritated him. But we hadn’t spoken in two weeks and he’d never shown up on my doorstep before. “I stopped by to let you know that I’m going out of town.”
“Where?”
“Fishing.”
“Fishing?” I repeated. I’d never heard him talk about fishing before. I remember that we used to do it as kids, but he hadn’t said boo about the pastime since I’d been back. And besides, Firefly Island was world-renowned for deep sea fishing, why wouldn’t he just stay here and fish?
“Can I come in?” He stared down at me with an intensity that melted any defenses I might have managed to build up in the short time since we’d seen each other.
“Yeah, but I’m about to leave.” It was a ten-hour drive, and it was already getting late. I’d considered leaving tomorrow, but I’d decided to ride the wave of take-control-of-my-life momentum that I was currently on.
I was scared if I didn’t I would spend the night overthinking it and then chicken out.
When he stepped inside, Marshmallow began making a figure eight around his feet. He leaned down and scratched her behind her ear.
She purred and pressed her face into his palm. I didn’t blame her. If he’d pet me behind the ear I’d do the same thing. It was an odd thing for me to see her doing because she was usually wary of strangers. But then again, I supposed since Cash had spent the night with her and fed her he wasn’t a stranger.
