“She said her help didn’t come in on time this morning.”
“That’ll do it,” Kat says with a nod. “She works her ass off, and she expects the help to work just as hard. Which, unfortunately, isn’t likely. They don’t own this place. Their success doesn’t hang in the balance of whether or not we succeed. If we don’t, they move on to another restaurant. But the rest of us will be fucked.”
“I hear you,” I reply with a nod. “She’s talked to me about the lack of work ethic in the people she’s hired before. It’s got to be disappointing.”
“For sure. I had another bartender quit on me yesterday and that’s the third one since summer started.” She shrugs. “I’d love to take a weekend away with my husband, but I can’t just go. I know the girls would cover for me. Riley’s not a half-bad bartender when she has to be. But, this is my responsibility. I know Mia feels the same way.”
I nod and swallow down the last of my drink. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I hope you don’t plan to drive home now.”
“I’m gonna go find a place to have breakfast, on foot, and then I’ll head home. I’m fine, though, Kat.”
“I trust that you are,” she says. “I hope your day gets better.”
“I’ve been cut off until tomorrow,” I inform her. “So, it’s going to pretty much suck. I know we haven’t been seeing each other for long, but I miss her when she isn’t around.”
“That’s sweet.” Kat smiles. “And I know what you mean. I miss Mac too. Maybe if you call her later, you can talk her into letting you come over.”
“I think I’ll give her some space.” I stand. “What do I owe you?”
“This one’s on the house.” She winks at me and I nod, then leave the bar and pass by Addie on my way out.
“How did it go?” Addie asks.
“Well, we’re lucky that I don’t need an ambulance for stab wounds.”
She covers her mouth with her hand, trying to cover her laughter. “Well, there’s that, I guess.”
“Yeah.”
“To be fair, I did try to warn you.”
“You did. It was my fault. Next time, I’ll leave the coffee with you and make a hasty retreat.”
“Good idea.”
Twenty-four hours without her and I want to punch something.
Or someone.
I texted her this morning, but didn’t get a response, so I’ll just see if she’s home. I miss her. And I’ll be damned if she’s going to shut me out now.
Her car is in her driveway. Taking that as a good sign, I knock on the front door, but there’s no answer. It’s unlocked, so I walk in and listen.
It’s quiet. Maybe she’s sleeping.
“Mia?” I call out and leave my phone, wallet, and keys by the front door. There’s no answer as I walk through the living space and check her bedroom. The covers are messy, but she’s not in her bed.
Not in the shower.
I backtrack to the kitchen, but she’s not here either. The back door is open, and I can see her kneeling in the garden. I lean on the doorjamb and watch her for a long moment.
Her long curly hair is tied back in a tail, and she’s wearing a pink, wide-brimmed hat to hide her face from the sun. She’s wearing gardening gloves, and is ripping weeds out of the earth as if they’ve all personally offended her.
I walk down the steps and stop next to her. She glances my way, but doesn’t even pause.
“Good morning,” I say and shove my hands in my pockets.
“Hello.”
She still doesn’t look up at me, so I decide to enjoy the quiet and just work next to her for a while. Her wheelbarrow is across the yard, so I fetch it and load it with the weeds she’s already pulled, then I start at the opposite side of the garden from her and begin to pull weeds myself. When I’m about ten feet from her, I gather my weeds and toss them in the wheelbarrow.
“How are you today, Mia?”
“I’m pretty good,” she says quietly.
“You know, I realize that I owe you an apology for something I said yesterday, but I’m not entirely sure what that is. What did I say?”
She finally sits back on her haunches, pushes her hat high on her forehead, and looks up at me. She’s wearing sunglasses, but she takes them off, and I’m glad to be able to see her blue eyes, which are a bit shiny, as if she was crying earlier.
“I know that it’s considered funny by men to accuse a woman of being on her period if she’s in a bad mood. I get it. But frankly, I don’t think it’s funny.” She stands and takes her gloves off, slapping them against her leg to knock the excess dirt off. “In fact, I think it’s a passive aggressive way of calling me a bitch. So, you called me a bitch.”
“That’s not at all what I meant.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she says with a shrug. “I heard a really good quote once that went something like, ‘When a person tells you that you’ve hurt them, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t.’”
“I would never intentionally hurt you, Mia.”
She nods once, glances down at her gloves and then sighs. “I know that I can fly off the handle, and most of the time, I’m told that I’m being irrational. But between the morning I had before you came in, and then hearing you call me a bitch, it was the perfect storm for me to be pissy. And I’ll apologize for taking it out on you, because that was my fault, and it wasn’t fair.”
She swallows hard and bends over to pull one weed that she missed.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t realize how upset you were,” I reply and reach out to brush some dirt from her cheek.
“I overreact,” she says, but I shake my head in disagreement.
“You’re passionate,” I reply. “I don’t think you overreact at all. You feel your emotions deeply, and you express them passionately. You’re not trying to be a drama queen.”
She’s watching me now with wide eyes. “You know, I’ve never thought of it that way before.”
“It’s true.” I pull her in for a hug, and feel the weight of the past twenty-four hours lift from my shoulders. “What else can I help with?”
“Well, if you don’t mind watering the plants with the hose over there, I’ll start picking some of the veggies. I haven’t done that yet, I was too busy weeding.”
“I can do that.” I kiss her forehead and hold her chin in my fingers. “Are we okay?”
“Yeah.” She grins. “Thanks for coming over.”
“I tried to text you but I didn’t get a response.”
“I turned my phone off last night and haven’t looked at it since. I need some time to just be. I’m sorry if you were worried.”
“I’m okay.” I turn on the hose and drag it over to the garden, and begin to water the plants. The nozzle on the hose lets just a trickle of water out, so although it takes longer to water, it doesn’t harm the plants.
“Look at these carrots,” she says with excitement, holding up some impressively big carrots. “These are going to be perfect in the salads.”
We work side by side for a while. When her bounty is all collected, she takes it inside, then returns to help clean up. She’s just dumped the weeds out of the wheelbarrow, and turned back toward me when I decide to point the hose at her and turn the spray up.
“Oh my God!” she cries and holds her hands up over her face. “What the fuck?”
She’s laughing, so I spray her again. She runs to the opposite side of the house, and before I know it, she returns with another hose turned on full blast.
“Two can play this game, buddy.”
She sprays me, and then turns her back to me so my spray hits her shoulders.
“It’s so cold!”
We run all over the backyard getting each other and everything else sopping wet.
“Uncle,” she cries and drops her hose, holding her hands up in surrender. “I can’t.” She’s laughing so hard, she can hardly catch her breath. “Seriously.”
I drop my hose too and tackle her t
o the ground, roll us until she’s under me, and drag hair that worked its way out of the ponytail off of her face.
“I love you, Mia.”
She immediately stops laughing and stares up at me. “Wait. What?”
“You heard me.” I kiss her cheek and then her forehead. “Why do you look so surprised?”
“I don’t know.” She leans away so she can look in my eyes. “Maybe because you’ve never said it before.”
“I’ve been wanting to say it for a long time,” I admit with a shrug and then kiss her sweet lips. I should have told her weeks ago, but I didn’t want the moment to seem forced. “Playing with you, watching you laugh, is one of my favorite things with you, and I just couldn’t help myself.”
“I look horrible,” she says. “I’m in my grimiest clothes, my hair is a wreck, I probably have dirt in all of my most secret places.”
“You didn’t bathe in the garden, did you, sweetheart?”
She grins. “No.”
“So probably just dirty on the outside, then.” I rub a particularly dirty patch on her cheek. “But still gorgeous, and I’m still in love with you.”
She closes her eyes, and looks like she’s physically having a hard time letting the words soak in.
“Look at me. Why don’t you believe me?”
“I didn’t say that I don’t believe you,” she says, but still won’t look me in the eye. She’s toying with a string on the sleeve of my T-shirt. “I don’t think you’re lying.”
“Well, that’s good to know,” I reply, but still can’t figure out the lack of response from her. “Mia?”
“Uh huh.”
I kiss her deeply, plant my thigh between her legs, and feel her immediate arousal. She’s clinging to me, but she ends the kiss and stares in my eyes for a moment, until I ask, “What is it?”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you love me?”
I pause, thrown by the question. Jesus, there are a billion reasons to love this woman, I have no idea how to go about listing them. But the most important question of all is, why does she need to ask me that?
“Don’t you think you’re loveable?”
She frowns—and a myriad of emotions play over her face before she looks away—and I can see tears threatening to form. The last thing in the world that I ever want to see is Mia in tears; so before she can answer me, I stand up and hold my hand out to help her up off the ground, which she immediately takes.
I lead her into the house, through the kitchen and into the living room where I dropped my phone.
“I want to show you something.”
Chapter Fifteen
~Mia~
Holy fuck.
He’s staring down at me with so much raw emotion in his face, in his voice, that I don’t even know what to do.
Do I say it back to him? Because I want to more than anything. I love him so much that my chest aches with it.
“Don’t you think you’re loveable?” he asks and drags his fingertips down my cheek.
I don’t know.
That’s the ridiculous response that’s running through my head. I don’t know if I’m loveable. Or worthy of love, at least from him. The girls all love me, and my family loves me, but this is so different.
Suddenly he stands and helps me to my feet, then leads me into the house. I’m not even going to think about the fact that we’re tracking dirt and water through the house that I spent all morning cleaning. He grabs his phone and turns back to me.
“I want to show you something.”
He pulls me onto the couch next to him, cuddles me, and wakes up his phone from standby so I can see the screen. He opens his photos, then finds a folder that’s labeled Mia.
“This photo,” he begins as he starts at the most recent image, “was the other day when we were watching that horror movie. You were curled up in the corner of the couch, that orange blanket pulled up to your chin, and your eyes were so damn wide. I love your blue eyes, by the way.”
He scrolls to the next photo. “This was at the farmer’s market this week. You were smelling the peaches, and the look of pure joy on your face is just stunning. I love how much you love food. Oh, and this one was that morning that you slept through your alarm.”
“I’m sleeping in this photo.”
“Yes, I woke up with the alarm, and I knew I needed to capture this. Look at how sweet you look!”
I would call it a hot mess, but I’m not going to argue.
He flips through a few more photos, then stops on one where I’m laughing.
“Is this at that comedy show?” I ask.
“Yep, and I love it when you laugh.”
“I look horrible in this one. I have about fourteen chins.”
“No you don’t,” he says and kisses my forehead. “Besides, you’re making my favorite sound in this picture.”
“Did I snort?”
“No, you’re giggling.”
“My giggle is your favorite sound?”
“It is,” he says and shows me a photo he took while we were dancing. “Look at how happy you are here. You seriously love to dance.”
“Yeah.” I grin and examine this photo. I was wearing the cute black top that Addie helped me pick out, along with some skinny jeans and fun shoes. “I felt sexy that night.”
“You were so fucking sexy that night that I thought I was going to have to kill some of the fuckers who kept eyeballing you.”
“Whatever,” I reply with a snort, but he looks down at me with deadly serious eyes.
“Trust me, they were looking.”
“But I only have eyes for you,” I reply and bat my eyelashes.
He kisses me and flips to the next photo.
He flips to one of me just smiling at him from the top of a ladder at the orchard. “That was a fun day.”
“The pies went over amazingly at the restaurant,” I reply with a nod. “And yeah, the whole day was fun. Picking the apples and making the pies together. I enjoy being with you.”
He smiles down at me and keeps going through the photos.
“This was during filming,” he continues, and shows me a photo with my back to him, and my hip is cocked to the side. “Did you know that you dance while you cook?”
“Yeah, I catch myself doing that a lot. I try not to do it in front of the others at work.”
“I fucking love it when you do that,” he says with a smile. “It’s like you have your two favorite things at the same time: food and dancing.”
“Cooking makes me happy, so I dance.”
“It’s sexy as all get-out, so don’t stop doing it on my behalf,” he says. He shows me a few more, and then flips to a photo that makes me stop cold.
“Camden.”
“This was the day before you left me.” His voice is quieter now. “We’d been married for about two days, and you had made us dinner. You said—”
“I wanted to cook something delicious for my husband,” I whisper and clench my eyes closed. I’m so young in that picture. “I’m a horrible person.”
“You, you aren’t. Keep looking. Here’s one from the day you told me you thought you were pregnant.”
“I look terrified.”
He nods. “I haven’t looked at this photo in a long time. You’re right, you do look terrified.”
We’re quiet for a moment, and then he flips to more of me laughing, sticking my tongue out at him, while dressed in my school uniform and holding a measuring cup full of milk.
“I was so young,” I murmur. “And thinner.”
“We were all thinner then,” he says with a smile.
“Oh please. If you’ve gained a pound at all it’s just because you’re even more muscly than before.” I squeeze his bicep and he obliges me with a flex, making me grin. “I really do appreciate your arms.”
“Good to know,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows. “This is the last photo.”
It’s just me. Sitting at my desk in school,
smiling shyly at him.
“This was before we moved in together.”
He nods and sets his phone aside. “I’ve loved you for a very long time, Mia.”
I swallow hard, honestly surprised. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
He sighs. “I wanted to. I’m just not good at saying the words. I think that if I show you—by doing nice things for you, holding you, being affectionate—that I don’t need to say the words.”
“Why is it hard for you to say it? Did you have a crappy childhood or something?”
He shakes his head. “Not at all. I had a great childhood. I’m no shrink, but it’s probably because of the way my parents died when I was a teenager.”
“You never speak of them.”
“I know, and that’s not right because they were awesome parents, Mia. Steph is four years older than me. I was sixteen, and she was away at college when it happened.”
I want to ask him a million questions, but I sit and wait patiently as he gathers his thoughts.
“They had gone to New York on a business trip for Dad, and they were in the car on the way to the airport. They’d called me to make sure that I had cleaned the house. Mom hated coming home to a dirty house. Steph was in college, but she went close to home, so she’d been staying there with me while they were gone.
“She spoke to them and then handed the phone to me. My mom sounded happy, and she was ready to go home. They’d only been gone for about a week. We were joking about something, and she said, ‘I love you, kiddo.’ I said, ‘I love you too.’ And as soon as I said that, I heard an enormous crash. They’d been hit by a semi on the freeway. He wasn’t looking and he hit them head-on.”
“Oh, Camden.” I kiss his hand gently. “You were on the phone with them when it happened?”
“Yeah. And it was the last thing I said to her.”
“That’s a gift,” I reply. “So many people wish they’d been able to tell their loved ones that they loved them before they passed.”
“I know. I don’t have that regret.” He smiles sadly. “But it was probably the worst moment in my life, only above the day I came home to find you gone. I don’t say that to make you feel guilty all over again, Mia.