He must have taken my hesitation for rejection. His eyes bored into me. “You don’t want to?”
“What? No, I’d love to have lunch. It’s just that, well, I’m…afraid you’ll be disappointed. I’ve changed.”
“Not so far as I can see.” He brushed his knuckles against my cheek. “You’re still the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”
My eyes filled. “Oh, Cole.”
“Have lunch with me. Please.”
“I’m not like I was when we were kids,” I said.
“Give me the chance to know the new you, then.”
I let out a long breath. Let yourself have this, I said to myself. Give life the opportunity to prove not all is lost. There were second acts in life. Or third ones, perhaps? This was the boy I’d loved with all my heart standing before me with every vulnerable part exposed to me. “Yes, all right. I just need to run back to my mom’s and put the groceries away. In this weather, they wouldn’t last long in the car.”
“Great. Good.” His eyes were as warm as the touch of his hand as he brushed my bare shoulder with his knuckles. “Carlie Webster. What a good day this is turning out to be.”
A surge of anticipation whipped through me. “I agree.” So much for keeping my head.
I pointed at his empty basket. “What were you shopping for?”
He laughed. A quiet rumble from inside his chest that reminded me of distant thunder, exciting and soothing all at once. “I have no earthly idea. You’ve made me forget my own name.”
And just like that, Cole Paisley was back in my life.
I found Cole sitting on the outside patio under the shade of an oak.
“Hi. I hope you haven’t been waiting long?” Perspiration between my breasts made me feel like the girl I’d been when I first fell for him. He could weaken my knees with a glance in my direction.
Cole stood. “Only thirty years.”
I laughed. “Well, here I am.” All the way here, I’d been thinking only of the questions I wanted to ask him. How was Drew? Had Luke been all right after they left? Did he ever mention Beth?
All that was forgotten as he leaned close to kiss my cheek. “Thanks for agreeing to meet me.”
“I’m glad you asked.”
He remained standing as I slid into the bench on the opposite side of him. Glasses of water bled onto cardboard coasters. Since I’d worked here in high school, Logan Bend Pizzeria had updated its logo.
“After you left, I worked here.” I wrapped my fingers around the glass and then brought it to my mouth to take a quick sip. “Do you know something I used to wish for?”
“What’s that?” He placed his hands on the table.
“I used to hope that one day I’d look up from the register or from wiping tables and it would be you who walked through the door. There was this bell back then, and it would ring every time a new customer came in. But it was never you.”
“If only I could have,” he said.
His green eyes darkened to the color of Logan Mountain. He glanced below the deck where a slender creek ran alongside the building. The gurgle of water over rocks was as familiar to me as the scent of the wood-burning pizza ovens.
“How is Luke?” I reached across the table and placed my hand over his.
He met my gaze. “Luke’s really good. He’s a doctor now. A surgeon.”
“I knew he would be. He always did what he said he’d do.” I smiled at an image of Luke’s earnest green eyes as he asked my mom for another slice of lasagna. All three of the Paisley boys had eaten at our table more times that I could count. They’d been at ease with my family. We must have been such a haven from the chaos of his house. I really hadn’t thought about it at the time, too happy to have Cole sitting across from me gobbling up my mother’s meal.
“He’s married to a woman he met in college, and they have three gorgeous daughters.” He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out his phone to show me his screen saver. Three pretty blonde girls wearing Santa hats smiled into the camera. “These are my nieces. Sarah, Jessie, and Olivia. That’s from last Christmas. Sarah turns sixteen tomorrow.”
I brought his phone closer to get a better look, shielding the screen from the sunlight with my hand. “The middle one looks just like Luke.”
“For sure. The other two look more like their mama. She has blue eyes like theirs.”
“You’re close to them?” I asked, already knowing the answer. The look of pride on his face told me everything I needed to know.
“They put up with me. I worship them.”
“Was it hard to move away?”
He hesitated before answering. “Yeah. But I had to come back here. For my sanity.”
I put a pin in that to come back to later. “How are your parents?” I held my breath, fearing the answer.
“They divorced after we left here. Mom’s remarried to a retired doctor and is super happy. My dad died five years ago.”
“I’m sorry. Mine too.”
“I’d heard that.” He tilted his head and fixed a sympathetic gaze on me. “My heart sank when I learned he was already gone. I know how close you two were.”
“I miss him every day.” I glanced heavenward. “I know he and Beth are up there together. That gives me comfort.”
Cole grimaced. “I’d like to say I miss my dad, but it’d be a lie, and I don’t have full confidence he’s in heaven.”
“He was a hard man to love.”
“Yes, he was.” He shrugged one shoulder in a dismissive gesture that I suspected wasn’t at all how he felt. “I was the only one of the three of us who had a relationship with him. He’d alienated my brothers years
