Page 7 of Cursed to Love (Cursed to Love #1)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Saturday, October 5

P aige slumped against the bathroom counter as she waited for her tea to steep. She’d set up both her Keurig machine and the microwave between the sinks on the long counter. Like everything about her situation, it wasn’t ideal, but having her morning coffee and evening tea were necessities. It also meant she didn’t have to spend money buying a coffee each morning. She hadn’t spent money on takeout or going to a restaurant either. With only a microwave, their dinner choices were limited, but luckily Emmie hadn’t yet tired of nuked mac and cheese.

When her tea was ready, Paige removed the tea bag and took her mug back to her bedroom . That’s what she’d started calling the storage room with a mattress on the floor and boxes all around, to normalize their situation for Emmie.

She sat with her back against the wall and placed her mug on the floor. Her laptop rested on a box in front of her. She checked to make sure the virtual background she selected was behind her and turned her monitor and sound back on.

“Hey, Dad. I’m back.” Just seeing her dad made her both happy and anxious. She loved chatting with him every week, but she hated lying to him. The week before, she’d been nervous the entire call, waiting for him to figure out they weren’t in their apartment.

“Hey, kiddo.” Her dad frowned. “Didn’t you get a tea?”

Shit. For months she and Emmie had sat at her small kitchen table while video chatting. Her mug would have always been visible sitting on the table. Picking up her tea off the floor, she raised it enough for it to be seen. “Yup, right here.”

She’d bought Emmie a low stool so she could kneel like she’d done on the kitchen chair. That had been the easy part. Explaining why she couldn’t get off the stool and what she could and couldn’t say to her grandparents had been more than just difficult. Paige had felt filled with guilt because of her lies. Last week everything had been new—a novelty for Emmie—but this week she’d been fidgety and too full of energy.

Several times Paige had to redirect Emmie before she said something about the strip mall. After the third time, Paige cut the call short, saying Emmie was wound up and it would take time for her to calm down and fall asleep.

Her dad frowned. “Kiddo, talk to me. What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, hoping none of her swirling anxiety was clear in her tone.

“What’s with the background? Last week you said the apartment was messy… I didn’t believe it then and I still don’t. Even as a kid, we didn’t have to nag you to clean your room. Your brother and sister? All the time. But not you.”

It was true. Dusting wasn’t her thing, but she’d been neat and organized. She hated not being able to find things or having to step over items strewn on the floor. Every single day she had her bed made within ten minutes of getting out of it. She could leave a tidy pile of books on her nightstand and another one on the floor in a corner, but her bed had to be made.

“I broke my kitchen table,” she blurted, her lies adding up. In for a penny… “It was old, and I leaned on one side and the leg broke. Now we’re sitting on the floor and I have my laptop on one of my boxes I hadn’t bothered to unpack when we moved in.”

“Why didn’t you just tell us?”

Paige sighed. Even though she’d sold her table instead of breaking it, the result was still the same—she didn’t have one. “Because I’m an adult and I don’t have a kitchen table. It’s embarrassing.”

“No, it’s life. Things happen.” Her dad smirked. “Did I ever tell you that your mom and I stacked milk crates to use as a table for three months before we could graduate to a card table?”

Paige laughed. “Really?”

“It’s the truth. The card table lasted six months before we found a solid oak dining room table in a garage sale. The owner had used it for painting on. I swear it took me more than twenty hours just to sand the thing. Then there was the time we needed a new bedframe. Someone had given us an old one, you know, one of those metal frames, close to the ground where the legs unfold. Well, one day we woke up with a start because all the screws had worked loose. I decided I could build us a bedframe. Now, let me tell you how that went…”

For twenty minutes she listened as her dad regaled her with stories of him and her mom being newlyweds and then young parents, barely getting by. It was a side of her dad she didn’t get to see often.

By the time she hung up, she felt a bit lighter. She pushed herself to standing and stretched. Maybe she’d get herself a low chair so she could reach her laptop from its position on a box. Sitting on a concrete floor wasn’t fun.

Once she’d washed her mug and checked on Emmie, she went back to her “bedroom” and looked around. Her mom and dad may have had some hardships while raising three kids, but they’d never been reduced to living in a strip mall.

She flopped down onto the air mattress. “Ow,” she muttered and lifted up to rub her butt. In all the months she’d slept on her couch, she’d never thought she’d miss it. Turned out there were worse things than sleeping on a couch.

Too wired to sleep after a full mug of coffee, she leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes, relaxing.

Like they’d done a hundred times in the last week, her thoughts wandered to Blake. She hadn’t heard from him since his weird zombie episode, but she’d left a message for him on Thursday. He hadn’t returned her call, and now she expected that if she heard from him at all it wouldn’t be until Monday.

He looked a lot like he had years ago, only better, and with more delicious muscle. At twenty-one, Blake had been good-looking, but now he was drool-worthy. If she was ever in the market for a man again—which she wouldn’t be—Blake would make a fine partner.

Or maybe not. He wouldn’t be an ass like Craig, but Blake wasn’t a pushover either. He was impatient and strong-willed. He hadn’t tried to control her when they’d been together, but maybe that was only because she’d allowed him to make so many decisions. Where they went to eat or studied hadn’t been important to her, so she’d deferred to Blake more often than not. But in the end, she hadn’t been important enough to fight for, so maybe he wouldn’t treat her as an equal partner and value her opinion. If that happened, she might fall into her old pattern of pleasing, and that was something she never wanted to do again.

Pushing herself off the air mattress, she groaned, making a mental note to buy a foldable chair too. She checked her watch and groaned again. Only nine o’clock on a Saturday night and she was ready for bed. Pathetic.

After she brushed her teeth and washed her face, she went to the front of the shop to make sure all the blinds were closed.

She ran her hands along the slats on one to make sure they laid flat, then walked the blind’s length to make sure they all did.

Back on her air mattress, she pulled up her e-reader and went through the new books she’d downloaded. She lay back and the overhead light shone in her face. She’d forgotten to turn it off. Debating whether to get up and turn it off now or when she finished reading, the light pinged something with her.

Checking the blinds had been easy because she’d left a light on. Shit. She scrambled to her feet, almost toppling over several of her boxes. Once she had the boxes steady, she raced to the front of the shop and flicked off the light.

Banging on the back door made her jump.

“Paige! Open up!”

* * *

Blake turned in his truck seat, resting his arm on the steering wheel. “I’ll wait until you get inside safely.”

“You sure you don’t want to come inside?” Kyleigh pushed out her bottom lip in a pout. “It’s still early.”

He and Kyleigh had gone out on and off over the last few years. The dates had helped keep his loneliness at bay, and he liked her, but it just wasn’t feeling right anymore. It wasn’t her fault that every time he looked at her his mind wandered to Paige, as it had for the past week. And when he wasn’t thinking about Paige, he worried about the curse.

“No. I’m going to head home,” he told her, hoping that would be enough.

Her eyebrows raised in question. “Next week?”

“I don’t think so, Kyleigh. I like you, but?—”

She held up a hand. “Don’t say it, Blake. We agreed this would just be two friends scratching an itch. I guess I just wanted to scratch it more often than you did. Bye, Blake.”

Kyleigh got out of the truck and didn’t look back. He waited until she was inside her house before pulling away, thankful she hadn’t made the situation worse. Like all the other women he’d dated, she’d find someone else who could love her and give her what she wanted.

At one time he’d wanted what his parents had—a loving partnership and a house full of kids—but not anymore. He’d doubted his change in plan a time or two or a hundred. Today had been one of those days where he knew his decision to stay single and only date like-minded women was the right decision. And not only because he didn’t want heartbreak, but because of the curse.

He and Jake had been working on Jake’s deck, trying to get it finished before it snowed, when another curse episode hit him. Jake was measuring while Blake cut. He’d already turned the miter saw on and had the plank in place when the curse froze him.

If Jake hadn’t noticed right away, Blake could have lost a hand.

Like all the other episodes, the curse had come on without any warning. Blake had found himself in the late 1800s. A woman had fallen in love with a man who was in a higher social class, but he didn’t care about that. They proclaimed their love for each other and planned to marry. Misinterpreting something she saw led the woman to believe her lover was leaving her for another. But he hadn’t. He had asked a female cousin to help plan an elopement for his beloved. Before either of them could get to the truth, jealousy and distrust ate at the woman, breaking her heart. She spiraled into depression and neither spoke to the other again, and eventually they both died lonely and bitter.

The feelings of loss and loneliness had stuck with Blake for the rest of the day. He probably should have canceled his date with Kyleigh, but he’d been hoping going out with her would help him shake the feelings.

He was beginning to think that if Jake was right and the curse was showing him failed love, it was also showing him that he was too late. That no matter what he did, his love was bound to end in failure. Would it even be worth trying if his love was already doomed? He’d already had his heart broken once and seen his mom living like a shell of her former self after losing the love of her life. Add to that all the suffering the curse was showing him, and he had no intention of falling in love only to have his heart broken anyway.

His phone rang. Gage’s name flashed on his console and Blake pulled over. He was probably too distracted to talk and drive at the same time anyway. Once he talked to Gage, he’d head straight home.

“Hey, Gage,” he said when he answered. “Something wrong?”

Gage let out a short laugh. “Not really. But I must need to phone more often if you assumed I call only when something’s wrong.”

“I’d be good with you calling more.” He could probably count on both hands the number of times Gage had initiated a call in all the years he’d been gone, and still have a few fingers left.

“I was, uh.” When Gage hesitated, Blake had to bite his tongue not to push him. At times like this he remembered his mom telling him to be patient—difficult at the best of times, but almost impossible today.

Finally, Gage spoke up. “Our birthday is coming up.”

On October twenty-fifth, Gage and Ford would turn twenty-five. Blake knew there was a word for that type of birthday, but he couldn’t remember what it was. Their mom would have known. Regardless, turning twenty-five was kind of a big deal.

The last time Gage and Ford celebrated their birthdays together had been their twenty-first. Blake, Jake, Cade, and Dane had decided to drive Ford to Gage and had taken them to a restaurant to celebrate and ordered the twins their first legal beer.

“Yeah?” Blake prompted, forcing his tone to stay casual when hope bloomed inside him.

“I was thinking I’d come and visit.”

“Great. You want to stay with me?”

“I don’t know.”

“When you figure it out, let me know.” Channeling his mom’s patience, he didn’t say anything more. God, he missed her. She’d be able to advise him about Gage and about the curse. There’d only been nine days between today’s episode and the second one, coming two days sooner than the last. He didn’t know if they would start coming more often and what he was supposed to do.

“Blake? You still there?” Gage asked, bringing him back to the present.

“I’m here.”

“Did you hear anything I just said?”

“Sure.”

Gage laughed. “Yeah, right. No worries. I was just talking about the job. What’s got you so distracted? A woman or the curse?”

“Both.”

“Want to talk about it—er—them?”

“The curse hit again today.” He gave Gage the highlights and tried to make light of it by mentioning he still had all his fingers.

Gage was quiet for a moment. “I guess you have to fall in love then. Now tell me about the woman.”

“I saw Paige last week.”

“Paige? The one you dated in college who crushed your heart?”

Blake snorted. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I would. So, where did you see her?”

“She’s the real estate agent for the strip mall we’d talked about looking at.”

“Why were you—You haven’t replaced the VP of commercial ops?”

“Not at that time. But Henry said he’d take the job for a year as a stepping stone to his retirement.”

“Then you’ll look for a replacement?”

Blake hadn’t mentioned the job to Gage yet, but maybe this was the perfect opportunity. Gage wanting to come for a visit was a good sign he might be open to it. “I have someone in mind, but he won’t be finished on another job for a year.”

“Who do—Oh. We’ll see.”

“That’s all I ask.” Since Blake had zoned out while Gage had talked about his job, Blake asked him a few questions to cover what he’d missed. Before they ended the call, Gage promised to let him know about his birthday.

Back on the road, Blake headed home. Since Kyleigh didn’t live in his stomping grounds, he was still a ways away from his house, and he realized he was going to drive by the strip mall Paige had shown him.

The traffic light by the property turned red as he approached. Stopping, he glanced over at the strip mall and noticed a light was on. It was in the last unit—the spa. Paige must have forgotten to turn it off after she showed the property to another client.

As he turned back to check the stoplight, he saw movement in the window and the place went dark. The blinds were already pulled closed, but he swore he saw someone walk by inside.

As soon as the light changed to green, Blake drove to the next street and turned so he could double back to the strip mall. The parking lot behind the property was empty except for a single car. It sat directly behind the last unit.

Blake pulled into the space behind it and got out. The car was the same model as the one Paige drove, so he looked in the back window. There was a child’s car seat like there had been in Paige’s car.

If Paige was inside, could she be showing the property? Had he jumped the gun? Her car was the only one there besides his, but she could have driven the client to the property.

He tried the door handle of the last unit. Locked. Pounding on the door with his fist, he yelled, “Paige! Open up!”

If she was with a client, he would come across as a crazy person, but he didn’t care because he had an uneasy feeling about her being in there at night.

He waited about twenty seconds and pounded on the door again. “Paige! I saw the light and your car is here!”

More seconds passed. Blake raised his fist to bang again when he heard the lock on the door disengage.

The door pulled inwards, and he walked in. Silently, Paige moved behind him to close the door, then reached over and flicked on a light.

He blinked at the sudden brightness, then took in her appearance. Her feet were bare, and she wore lounge pants and a baggy sweatshirt with their college name written across the front.

“Is that my sweatshirt?” The words were out of his mouth before he even realized what he was saying.

“Uh, maybe.”

She’d kept his sweatshirt all these years, even after breaking up with him? He was about to ask about that when he spied the empty spaces behind what used to be stylist stations, bringing his thoughts back to the present.

“Why are you here, Paige?”

“I…” She looked around, and he knew she was trying to come up with a plausible lie.

He held up his hand to stop her, even though he’d asked her a question. She was dressed for bed. It didn’t take a genius to figure out she was staying in the unit. Turning around, he strode to the back of the shop.

“Blake, wait. I can explain,” she called after him.

He didn’t say anything for fear he would say the wrong thing. Emotions swirled around inside him. Anger for whoever had forced Paige into a situation where she was reduced to living in a strip mall. Confusion for wondering why she hadn’t asked anyone for help. Guilt for not realizing she was living here when she’d shown him the place. And lastly, hope. That was the craziest of all the emotions he was currently feeling and he couldn’t dissect it. Not yet. There were other things to deal with first.

When he’d been there before, he hadn’t made it down the hallway. He pushed open the first door and flicked on a light. The room was paneled with wood and had been a sauna at one time, but it was now filled with boxes.

A light was already on in the second room. An air mattress lay on the floor, a discarded e-reader on top of the blankets. A laptop sat on one box, and several pairs of shoes and a suitcase were lined up against one wall.

Blake turned around and almost ran into Paige. Her hands were in the pockets of her pants as she lowered her eyes to the floor.

Going to the next room, Blake expected he already knew what he’d find. He didn’t turn on the light, not wanting to wake the child sleeping in the small bed. The light from the room Paige used cast enough light that he could make out the child-sized furniture set up in the small space.

Blake pushed open the door of the final room. As if his feet had a mind of their own, they carried him into the space that used to be a locker room before he could stop himself. The light came on as soon as he entered. The last stall held a large shower with towels neatly stacked on a shelf.

Pivoting, he eyed the long counter with two sinks. A coffee maker sat between them and a microwave took up the space on the far side. Two toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste lay at the head of one of the sinks.

His gut tightened.

A mother and child were sleeping in a strip mall. He didn’t know what had led Paige—the strong, independent woman he remembered—to come to squat in a vacant property, but he didn’t need the reasons right then. He was more concerned about Paige and her daughter.

Paige wasn’t in the hallway when Blake walked out of the bathroom. He looked in the rooms as he strode by them and found her standing near the blinds at the front of the shop.

In that moment, he knew he was about to make what could be the biggest mistake of his life. Paige and her daughter needed a safe and comfortable place to live. If he moved Paige in with him, he could easily fall in love with her, and that would give her the ability to crush him. Again. Only this time, if she left him, he might not be able to pick himself back up.

He pictured his mom in the months and years after his dad died and then the feeling he’d felt when Paige had walked away, his gut tightening further. He’d sworn he would never put himself in that position. But knowing that didn’t change his mind. Even if he doomed himself, he knew what he had to do.

“I’ll help you pack,” he told her.