Kiss Me That Way: A Cottonbloom Novel (7 page)

Monroe’s twist of emotions for a man she knew yet didn’t was profoundly confusing.

“Lord help me, is that who I think it is?” Regan asked.

“Cade Fournette is back in town recovering from an injury. And—” Monroe checked her watch “—he’s my next client.”

“Geez, he’s gotten bigger and even rougher looking if that’s possible. He always scared me a little,” Regan added the last part on a whisper.

Cade’s path intersected theirs a few feet from the door to the PT offices.

“Afternoon, ladies.” Steel girded his voice.

“Cade, you remember Regan Lovell, don’t you?”

“I could never forget the girl who broke my brother’s heart.”

“
His
heart? He’s the one—” Regan puffed with a deep breath before deflating. “It’s not important now. You’re on board with the fund-raiser, right?” She pointed a finger toward Monroe.

“For the greater good.” Monroe pumped a fist.

“That’s the spirit.” Regan’s sweet tone bordered on fake. “Welcome back to town, Cade. I’m sure with Monroe’s help you’ll be feeling better in no time. She’s the best PT in Mississippi.” Regan strode back toward the river and her interior design studio.

“What kind of fund-raiser do you two have planned?” Cade asked as Monroe led them into the offices.

“It’s Mr. and Mrs. Tarwater. Andrew too, I guess. They’re hosting a cocktail party slash fund-raiser for my girls at risk program.” She snapped her fingers. “Hey, I’ll get Tally an invite since she was instrumental in getting the whole thing off the ground.”

He didn’t acknowledge the offer. An awkwardness descended. Her attempts at small talk stalled. She affected a professional attitude even though inside she was confused. She demonstrated each exercise before making him perform a set. One exercise followed another. Twenty minutes in, the uncomfortable vibe had eased.

Sweat crawled from his forehead into his beard, and his shirt was damp. “Dang it, woman. Are you sure this is helping and not slowly, tortuously killing me?”

Her laugh died when he raised his shirt to wipe his face dry. His stomach was well-defined with a tempting trail of dark hair. A silvery scar tracked from his ribs around his side, stopping an inch above the waistband of his shorts.

Her hand was out before she considered her actions. With a light touch she traced the scar, faded but still raised. A mark he’d never lose. “Was this from one of your epic adventures?”

“No.” He covered her hand with his, but instead of brushing her away, he trapped her hand against his warm skin. “It happened a long time ago.”

He dropped his hand and his shirt. Although his warm, smooth skin beckoned further exploration, she pulled her hand to her chest in a fist. “How old were you?”

“Sixteen. Mom and Dad had died a few months earlier, and I was out looking for food. Heard something out in the dark. I went running like it was Bigfoot and tangled with a barbwire fence. It made me pay.” Although he tried to sound jokey, she could imagine his fear.

“Did you go to the hospital?” The cut must have been deep to leave a scar after all these years.

“Naw. Uncle Delmar stitched me up.” He rubbed a thumb over the scar on his palm. “I swear he did a better job of it than that ER doc did on my hand.”

She refused to bite on the subject change. “Obviously, you went back out again or we wouldn’t have met.”

“Had no choice.” He rolled his shoulders. “What’s next?”

While he’d shared some of his troubles with her on those full-moon nights, now that she was an adult she wondered how much he’d kept to himself. Questions she’d been too young to formulate burned, one above all others. Had anyone taken care of him while he was taking care of everyone else?

“Do you rock climb El Capitan–like faces on a regular basis?” She’d done some research on the Internet and watching the videos of elite rock climbers gave her vertigo. And if he was attempting to summit El Capitan he was elite—or crazy.

“Go big or go home, right?”

“In the South that generally refers to hair, not climbing sheer faces of rock.”

His smile was a brief flash of white in his beard. “I’ve heli-skied and hang glided and rock climbed for years. The thing on El Capitan was a freak accident.”

“I’m not getting you better so you can go back and kill yourself, am I?”

“Will you quit as my PT if I say yes?” All laughter was gone from his face, the sudden seriousness tilting her off-balance. “All that stuff has become kind of a compulsion, I suppose. Not sure I can stop.”

“Why do you really do it? Are you trying to prove something to yourself or this town? All that stuff doesn’t matter. You were born here and you’ll always be welcomed back to Cottonbloom.”

“I don’t think either side of this town would welcome me home with open arms even if I were the president.”

“Certainly not if you ran as a Democrat.”

A beat of silence passed before he burst into laughter. Belly laughs that filled the room and made her join him for the joy of watching him.

Finally, his laughter subsided, but not his smile. “In a way, Cottonbloom is refreshing. No apologies or hiding its jacked-up social hierarchy and bigotries. They are clearly marked and on display.” The slight disdain in his voice galvanized her pride.

“We have our faults, but this is a good town.” She poked him in the shoulder. “Both sides of the river. And while the rest of the country has drifted further apart with wealth inequality, Cottonbloom has actually closed the gap.”

“You sound like you like it here.”

His green eyes probed. His experience with the town had been tainted with grief and responsibility.

“I wouldn’t have come back here after college if I didn’t.” She dropped her gaze to the speckled linoleum floor. The truth was more complicated and nothing she wished to discuss.

“How’s your mama?” he asked as if reading her mind. His soft voice attempted to strip away the years, but she’d spent most of her life covering for her mother.

“She’s fine.” It wasn’t a lie. At the moment, she was sober and even holding down a job. “Come on; we have a few more stretches to get to before we run out of time.”

They finished up in relative silence except for the heavy breathing involved. As he gathered his things, he said, “For the record, I don’t do all that thrill-seeking stuff to prove something to this place.”

“It’s for the adrenaline rush, then? I’ve heard it can be addictive.” She made a note in his file.

He stepped in front of her, and she looked up, clutching the file to her chest. His warmth drew her closer, her body swaying. His light touch on her arm froze her. Goose bumps rose. She waited, sensing that any prodding from her would silence him. His long, slow breath made her understand how difficult this was for him.

Like that night so long ago, she slipped her hand into his. Even though she’d touched him throughout their session, positioning his body and stretching his limbs, the contact of their hands was more intimate, more important, casting back to long-ago promises.

“Part of why I took risks was the exhilaration of experiencing freedom. But I think a bigger part was trying to eradicate fear.”

“I remember.” Every word of their conversations had been carved into memories.

He tensed. “What do you remember?”

“What you were most afraid of.”

He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, broke eye contact, and gave a shake of his head. She wanted to cup his cheek and force him to look at her. Instead, she squeezed his hand.

He was quiet for a long moment, and she worried she’d overstepped. Finally, he spoke, his voice scratchy. “Every night I lay awake and schemed to keep my family together. The state would have put them somewhere I couldn’t protect them.”

“Cade.” She breathed his name on a sigh, drawing his gaze to hers.

Even after the years, the success all three siblings had achieved, a torturous fear reflected on his face. That’s what he’d tried to leave behind on the rock face, in the sky, on a mountain, but he couldn’t. It would be like ripping off a piece of his soul.

Hadn’t she done the same in her own way? Black belts in jujitsu and karate, constant training to stamp out her own fears. Had it worked? She trusted her abilities to defend herself, but in her nightmares she was powerless against the creeping terror and doubts.

“You can’t cut those sorts of memories out of your head. If you did, you wouldn’t be … you.” Her words echoed with a hollowness off the sterile floor and walls.

“Some people might say that’s a good thing.” His voice had hardened and the vulnerability and affinity between them vanished. He extricated his hand and opened the door. “I get time off for good behavior, right?”

“You need to continue to stretch and work your leg and hand even on your off days.”

He nodded and walked out, his gait looser and his limp less noticeable. His excellent overall physical condition meant he wouldn’t need many more sessions before he would be close to a hundred percent. Then what? No doubt he’d hightail away and probably flip Cottonbloom the bird on the way out of town. A full, exciting life awaited.

What would her life have been like in some other town in some other state? More fulfilling? Lonelier? It was a useless road to travel. She tried to put Cade Fournette out of her mind while she focused on her last client and failed.

*   *   *

Cade wandered back over the bridge to his side of Cottonbloom. Restlessness pervaded his mood, but not the kind that sent him climbing the nearest cliff. While he couldn’t qualify the feeling, without a doubt Monroe was the cause.

Bees darted through Sawyer’s wildflowers. Who would have thought Sawyer had such a wide sentimental streak. He snapped one of Sawyer’s flowers off, closed his eyes, and took a breath of the sweetness. The sorrow that welled up was tempered by a strange happiness. His mother lived on in the flowers and his father would live on in the old Dodge truck. Cade had moved the rusting hulk to Sawyer’s garage.

The internals were in better shape than the frame. There wasn’t much to those types of trucks. The mechanics were simple, and the truck was released before everything went computerized. Every spare moment he had would be spent on getting the truck running. It had become an obsession.

Rufus waved from the front of his restaurant. As Cade approached, Rufus wiped his hands on a stained formerly white apron, a gold-and-purple LSU emblem emblazoned across the front. Cade’s heart grew in his chest.

Rufus had been the first one to give him a job. It had paid next to nothing, but Rufus had let Cade take home leftovers. For a while the Fournettes had eaten well, but the need to bring in cash had forced Cade to find something else. Still, it hadn’t been uncommon for Rufus to press food into Cade’s hands whenever he had wandered by the restaurant in those first tough months.

“Heard you were back. Del keeps me up on the news. You’re a big shot, I hear.” Rufus’s voice sounded like it had been infused with river rock. All the years working his smoker had taken a toll.

Words failed Cade, so he threw an arm around the other man’s shoulders and gave him a half hug. Rufus was lean and a good five inches shorter than Cade. He had the skin of an aged outdoorsman, leathery and wrinkled. The comb-over he’d maintained a decade ago had been buzzed short, leaving the top of his head as bare and brown as an acorn.

“I’ve traveled the country sampling barbeque. None of it came close to yours. You got some fresh back there?” Cade dropped his arm and stepped back. The unusual show of emotion on his part was another surprise.

“Actually, I’m getting ready to pull my smoker around for our little party.”

“What little party is that?”

“Why, your welcome home party, of course.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Del called me this morning. It won’t be as big as one of our regular block parties, but we’ll get up to some fun, and I’ve got the food covered.” Rufus retreated back into the restaurant, and Cade followed. Nothing had changed, except the addition of more autographed pictures of LSU football players lining the walls.

“I don’t want a party.” A thread of desperation sharpened his words.

Rufus’s laugh was smoky and rough. “Exactly why no one told you about it. Tally was supposed to knock you out and drag you along if necessary. We can call it a get-together if it helps. A get-together with welcome home cupcakes.”

His frustration was offset by a warm fuzzy feeling and a shot of dark humor. A forced-home welcome party. Without being asked, he helped Rufus set up the smoker and carried out folding tables and chairs. By the time they were done, people were showing up.

Tally strolled down from the gym and gave him a hip bump. “Didn’t even put up a fight. How unlike you.”

“I was ambushed.” Still, a smile he couldn’t quite stem lightened the words.

An older lady with bottle-red hair and a grin carried a plastic bin filled with cupcakes. Tally gave the woman a hug. “Cade, this is Ms. Effie, my across-the-hall neighbor.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am. Tally’s told me all about you.” Besides Monroe, he got the impression Ms. Effie was one of Tally’s only friends.

“She’d told me about you, too, young man. I was acquainted with your parents. Your mama made the best deviled eggs in Cottonbloom. People loved to see her coming at the church potluck.”

Cade’s smile came easy and natural. It felt strange. “I remember. She was like the pied piper of deviled eggs.”

Ms. Effie patted his arm and laughed. He’d been hugged and patted and touched more since he’d been home than in his many years in Seattle combined. The distance that separated people in Seattle was absent in Cottonbloom. Maybe because everyone’s lives intersected at some point, like interlocking threads creating cloth.

By the time Rufus whistled for everyone’s attention, fifty or more people milled along River Street, laughter punctuating the conversations. Rufus quieted the crowd and got everyone to bow their heads for a brief prayer. The men whipped off hats.

Most of the people Cade recognized. They had been fellow church members or fishing buddies of his daddy or master gardeners like his mother. His second-grade teacher was there and clapped her hands when he greeted her by name.