Page 55 of Dear Future Husband (The Dearly Written #1)

Maybelle

“Scoot, Belles, scoot! They close in less than five minutes!”

“I’m trying. We just need the cheese.”

Catapulting myself across our shopping cart, I launched at the cheese sitting on the top shelf.

“Alright, package secured,” I announced, and Penny snorted.

“Fall out then, before we get locked in here and have to build lives for ourselves like Natalie Portman in that Where the Heart Is movie.”

I stopped right there, in the middle of the grocery store aisle. Another announced reminder over the loudspeakers saying the doors would close soon rang out. I ignored it to give my bestie a disgruntled look.

“That was such a beautiful movie based on a beautiful book, and that was main takeaway?”

Penny smiled too sweetly before she shoved me forward. “Nope, my main takeaway was to play safe with boys because they’ll end up abandoning you in the middle of nowhere, anyway.”

We were at a grocery store a little too far from home.

Tomorrow Trey was coming home after he and the team had been gone for almost a week, playing back-to-back games out of town.

In celebration of both wins, them coming home, and the semester ending, I thought I’d make Chelsea’s famous lasagna for the boys.

Chelsea was a fancy gal, so, of course, her food was too.

The lasagna called for specific ingredients that weren’t available at any of the local shopping spots.

So, Penny, being the best friend that she is, came on a little ingredient scavenger hunt with me.

Luckily, we found everything I needed at this random grocer just before closing.

We both hustled toward the self-checkout line and halted as we got to an open machine.

“Things not going well with Daniel?” I asked as Penny handed me the groceries and I scanned them.

“What? No, things between us are great. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. That was just a very pessimistic thing to say for a happy girl with a boyfriend.”

She stopped handing me items to look at me. “Daniel and I aren’t dating, Belles.”

I abruptly stopped as well to look at my friend. “What? Since when?”

“Since forever,” she said, handing me another item. “Danny and I are just friends.”

“Hmph,” I grunted, throwing the cheese into a bag. “Could’ve fooled me.” We both went quiet then. I finished scanning, paid, and we walked outside into the balmy night.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Penny said, interrupting the rhythmic sound of our feet clicking against the pavement. “I do like him—it’s just complicated.”

Nodding, I adjusted the few bags in my hands up onto my forearm. “What’s complicated about it?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. It’s just… Oh, oh no.”

“What?”

She searched around herself, frantically checking her pockets. “Shoot. You wouldn’t happen to have my phone, do you?”

Leveling a sarcastic smirk at my friend, I said, “You had it when we walked into the store. Did you leave it in the bathroom when you used it?”

Groaning, Penny spun back toward the front of the building. “I bet it’s going to be a hassle trying to get them to open the doors for me. Ugh, I’ll be right back.”

I sniffed, continuing my approach of the vehicle that sat at the back of the vacant parking lot. Before Trey left, he had given me his car keys saying, “What’s mine is yours”.

Having been trusted with something as great as a car, I was overly cautious when I parked. Now, as I trudged the distance, I regretted trying to be extra safe with my boyfriend’s car.

When I made it to the Jeep, I set the grocery bags down next to the rear wheel and knotted my hands around the cross-body strap of my purse.

The parking lot was void of life besides me.

Still… There was a fraction of my subconscious feeling extremely twitchy .

Straightening, still facing the car, I stretched my back out, digging in my back pocket for the keys. Heavy footsteps clunked behind me. I didn’t think to look because I thought Penny was coming back—but I was wrong… I was so wrong.

“Maybelle.”

Startled by the male voice so close behind me, I lost my hold on the keys and my panicked heart. I spun to find a tall, blonde man standing mere feet behind me. I didn’t get the chance to look at him as my keys slipped from my clumsy fingers and clattered to the ground.

Right in front of his black dress shoes.

Chuckling, he stepped forward. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I recognized his face instantly as he bent down.

He maintained eerie eye contact with me as he picked the keys up and jangled them carelessly from one hand to the other.

He wore the same high-priced business attire he’d always worn when I served him at the coffee shop.

A white button-up, dress shirt, black slacks and a luxury watch on his right wrist that reflected the lone streetlight down the way.

“Rick,” I breathed. “Wha—what are you doing here?”

Rick, my every-loyal coffee customer. The one that tipped me well and grabbed a coffee before silently taking a spot in the far corner of the shop. Where he sat and watched me go about my day-to-day tasks at work.

Warily, I extended a hand to accept the keys.

He didn’t react, he only watched me. It differed from the way he looked at me all those days while I worked.

In the shop, his staring always seemed so absent-minded.

As if he were daydreaming and his focus unintentionally fell on me, but not now.

Now, his gaze, his studying dark eyes, ate at me, ripped at me and stripped me.

“Maybelle?” he said again, gently, with an unsteady step closer and I stilled. It was difficult to make out the entirety of him in the limited light. Except for the smile that was already sharpening his lips.

We were in the vacant parking lot of a store, in the middle of a town Penny and I hadn’t recognized. It was far from campus and the coffee shop. With that being said, it was more likely for this meet up to be an act of divine intervention rather pure coincidence.

Or it wasn’t an accidental run-in at all.

I should’ve run then. I should have left as soon as I saw his familiar face. I should’ve bolted straight for the store, for Penny when I had the chance, but I was glued in place.

“Yes?” I confirmed, shooting a quick glance at the still empty lot behind him.

Now that he was closer, I got a nose-full of a chemical, heavy smell that radiated from him. I couldn’t name the specific notes of the scent. My mind was tangling with the details before me. It was warring with several instincts.

Numerous fears, reasons and facts twisted into an indiscernible mess.

All because of that one smell.

I didn’t know why, but the smell made me want to cry—no, it made me want to scream.

My hand remained out, barely shaking, but ready to accept the keys as I studied him.

Rick was handsome, appearing as his usual clean-cut self.

Except, as the distance between us continued to shrink, I saw a slight rumple to his appearance I hadn’t yet witnessed.

His hair was combed back, but a few stray blonde tufts fell out past his eyes.

His clothes were neat if not for the rolled-up, uneven sleeves of his shirt that cinched around his elbows.

His choppy chuckle brought my eyes back to his. He was taking full inventory of my body. His languid perusal froze my bones.

“What’re you doing here?” I bit out again, quickly growing uneasy with his creepy theatrics.

He took one step back, like I might’ve struck him. “Oh, Maybelle. Don’t you recognize me?”

“Yes,” I shoved out. “You’re Rick. I serve you coffee where I work.”

“Maybelle,” he drawled disapprovingly. “My name is not Rick.”

Goosebumps crawled a warning path up my skin. I was in danger and my body knew it before I could truly register the threat.

When I didn’t speak, that sharp sneer melted into something akin to bitter amusement as he shook his head.

“You really don’t remember me,” he muttered.

I didn’t care to understand what he was trying to say, what point he was trying to prove. Instead of paying his unsettling words any more attention, I stretched my hand out farther.

“Please give me my keys. I’m expected home.”

He didn’t flinch. That smile returned and kept growing, like an infection. He tutted as he pilfered the remaining safe distance between us with only a couple steps forward. I didn’t try to step back. I was pinched between this man and the Jeep, leaving no room for me to retreat.

“Home?” he asked. His voice was soft, almost sing-song like, but that smell… It was so strong, and it was invading my brain. Everything in my body was crying out in a million different, terrified voices for me to run, to hold still—to remember.

“Yes,” I said breathlessly. “Home.”

I continued to hold my hand out for the keys, but Rick refused to acknowledge my request as he held the keys to his side.

“Your home isn’t here,” he said lowly, the closeness allowing me to scent the alcohol on his breath. “Your home is with me.”

I should’ve panicked at how close he was. I should’ve been scared of the way he watched me. Like I was a treasure he sought out and finally found. But I couldn’t think past the ruckus of frantic thoughts banging against my brain with that damned smell.

Remember. Remember. Remember.

My vision blurred with trapped tears. I licked my lips, and his eyes sluggishly followed the movement.

“You’ve been gone for a long time. I missed you.”

He was so close now, his breathing hot on my face, but his arms were hotter as they wrapped around my rigid body.

Remember. Run. Remember. Run.

My brain couldn’t recall his real name right away, but my body knew his touch. Even though it never knew it to be gentle like this .

My joints locked up. My limbs paralyzed.

I was a child again.

A helpless, terrified, speechless child. I could feel it. The seeping in of recollections, the terror-filled memories that this man owned. Like each hit I’d ever been dealt was being struck against my skin at the same time.