Page 27 of Love Songs (Harmony Lake #3)
Wait. More in love?
My whole body jerked, the thought catching me off guard. Fortunately, our server chose that moment to appear with our food, so no one noticed.
Was I falling in love with him? I liked him a great deal. I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—deny that. But love?
I looked up to find him watching me with a sort of affectionate reverence that had my toes curling.
The little crinkles in the delicate skin at the corners of his eyes were soft, and there was a gentle lift to the edges of his lips.
This time, my heart and stomach joined forces, and my whole body swooned.
Shit . I was falling for him. And strangely, even though the feeling had caught me off guard, it wasn’t unwelcome.
I didn’t know how we were going to work.
If we could, because it would figure that the first guy I went and fell for was someone with no roots.
And I had roots. My roots were dug in deep and thick and fully entwined with everyone in Caldwell Crossing.
My roots were twined so tightly with my three best friends, my chosen brothers, that they were inseparable, and they were growing deeper with each addition to our life tree.
The fear I had of my best friends finding their people and leaving our small town hadn’t come to pass.
Instead, our tight circle was only growing.
But Dallas was different. Dallas was rootless, a rolling stone.
But even rocks found solid ground to settle in to . . .
I cleared my throat and picked up my utensils.
“So, what brings you back to Caldwell Crossing?” I asked Dallas, pushing my revelation away as we tucked into our tantalizing gourmet breakfast. “How long are you staying?”
“Daddy’s taking me to see—” Jaylin started but Dallas choked on a mouthful of food he apparently tried to inhale. She turned worried eyes on him. “Are you okay?”
My body kicked into firefighting mode on autopilot, braced and ready for action, but he nodded and washed down his food with a big gulp of orange juice. I released a quiet sigh and settled back into my chair.
“Just for the weekend,” he said with a rough voice and a nonchalant shrug that didn’t fool me. Not with the way he’d rushed to say something before Jaylin could finish her sentence. “I wanted her to see the infamous sight of the stage fire.”
Long way to go to see a stage .
She gave Dallas a funny look, not buying his act either, then turned to me and flashed a smile that I already knew meant trouble. “Did you know you went viral on the Internet after that?”
“Yes,” I said with a snort-chuckle. “Took a minute to figure out why I suddenly got a bunch of new followers online.” I shifted my gaze to Dallas and playfully added, “I got a ton of date offers, too.”
Dallas narrowed his eyes ever so slightly, and I fought back a grin. That was exactly the reaction I was hoping for.
“But I guess everybody found something shinier to follow when I never responded,” I added, my voice light and gaze still locked on Dallas. I took a bite of my maple syrup-soaked bread and moaned as I chewed.
Dallas pursed his lips as if to hold back laughter, or a snarky remark, and Jaylin tittered.
What could I say? It was moan-worthy French toast.
“So,” Dallas said after mopping up the dregs of maple syrup from his plate with his last bit of bread. He shot a glance at me, a flash of blue, then, as though nervous, he stared at his plate and asked, “If you’re not busy today, would you like to hang out with us for a while?”
Yes ! I wanted to shout, but because I was cooler than that, at least in my mind, I said casually, “Unless I get called into work, I’m yours all day.”
The smile Dallas gave me made my heart flutter, while Jaylin snickered and mumbled something under her breath that sounded like “so Hallmark”.
“Good.” Dallas rose from the table. “There’s something I want to show you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “There’s something in my town that you want to show me?”
His lips quirked. “I’ll drive.”
A few minutes later, we all piled into a plain brown rental sedan and Dallas steered us toward Caldwell Crossing, but instead of veering off Lake Road and onto Main Street, he kept going.
“We’re leaving town?”
Dallas pressed his lips together, smirking, but kept his eyes on the road.
“No hints?” I teased, hoping for something.
He shook his head but looked in his rearview mirror, and said, “No hints.”
I spun around and raised an eyebrow at Jaylin, who mimed zipping her mouth shut.
I harrumphed and settled back into my seat. I didn’t know where he was taking me, but curiosity and excitement had me bouncing my knee. I loved surprises.
Dallas turned off Lake Road and onto Harmony Drive.
Ah , so he was taking us on a scenic drive around the lake.
I hadn’t been out this way again since I’d seen that offensive red sticker on the Ferguson house FOR SALE sign, not wanting another reminder about my lost dream.
Not wanting one now, I decided I’d find the other side of the street more interesting when we drove past it.
The road ribboned its way parallel with Harmony Lake, and I knew that hideous sign would come into view around the next bend. A shot of adrenaline spiked my pulse, much like when the alarm tones sounded through the speakers at the fire station for an incoming incident announcement.
Anticipation rose by the second and I felt like I was holding my breath, waiting for the not-so-funny punchline. I tried, I really did, but I couldn’t help the overwhelming pull to look. We cleared the turn, and my gaze slid toward the scene of the crime.
The slanting sign and its ugly sticker were gone.
The breath whooshed from my lungs and Dallas shot a quick grin at me, his eyes alight with excitement, oblivious to my inner turmoil.
I wondered who the new owners were. If they were there right now. And most of all, what they were going to do with my house.
Dallas eased off the gas and slowed down. He flipped on his left turn signal.
No .
He steered into the driveway.
My lungs froze mid-breath.
It can’t be .
“Is this it?” Jaylin chirped from the backseat, leaning forward with her hands gripping the backs of my and Dallas’s seats to see between us.
“Yes, it is,” Dallas said, his voice full of pride.
“What is she talking about?” I stammered, furrowing my brows while my heart pinged off my ribcage and my head felt dizzy. “What are we doing here?”
Dallas stopped in front of the decrepit gate that was going to be the first thing I repaired when I eventually bought the property. Except I would never do that now because someone else bought my dream.
He shifted the car into Park and turned to me with a waggle of his eyebrows. “Hold that thought.”
He hopped out, opened the gate with a few grunts and groans as it fought him the whole way, then climbed back into the car.
He didn’t say anything as he put the vehicle into Drive and slowly navigated the unkempt laneway.
The rental car rode so low that the undercarriage scraped along the ground a few times.
The potholes were deeper and the weeds taller than when I’d last been down this driveway.
Then the old house came into view, and I stopped breathing until my body took over and forced my lungs to expand.
She looked worse than the last time I’d seen her, when we’d been called out because some kids had gotten inside and one of them had gotten his foot stuck in a broken tread on the staircase.
The once cheery yellow wood siding looked grayer and more brittle—like a stack of cards that one strong breeze could send tumbling down.
Some of the window casings were hanging by single nails or were completely gone, and then there was the ever-present graffiti on the boarded-up windows.
She was in a sad state and in dire need of some major TLC.
I wanted to be the one to give that to her.
I wanted to be the one who brought her back to her former glory.
I wanted to be the one to call her home.
Dallas parked the car in the gravel area near the front of the house, overgrown with weeds and wildflowers, and cut the engine.
“Surprise,” he whooped, his voice full of energy and face radiant with uncontainable joy. “I bought a house.”
I amended my previously stated love of surprises. This was one I could do without.
I stared at him, unable to comprehend what he’d said for a moment. I didn’t know what kind of expression my face revealed, but his smile slipped, and his eyebrows knitted together.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, the shining light of his excitement dimming from his eyes.
A noise escaped my mouth, and I wasn’t sure if it was a gasp or a sob. Whatever it was, it hurt my throat on the way out.
“Conor,” Dallas said, his voice low and laced with concern. He placed a hand on my biceps, gentle but firm in a way that let me know he wasn’t pushing, but that he was there for me. “You’re scaring me.”
I opened my mouth a couple of times, feeling like a fish gasping for air because my windpipe was so tight that I couldn’t push enough breath through it to speak. My lungs had frozen along with the rest of my body.
“You bought my house,” I finally mumbled in disbelief.
I hoped he hadn’t heard that, but Dallas stared at me for a minute and tilted his head. Confusion slashed across his face.
“What do you mean?” He eyed me cautiously. “Was this your house?”
I still couldn’t find my words, but Dallas had been so excited to share this with me, and Jaylin was bouncing in the backseat as though she couldn’t stand waiting any longer to go inside.
That last thing I wanted to do was put a damper on this for them.
No matter how much it hurt to learn that this house would never be mine.
But if I couldn’t have it, then at least knowing Dallas had been the one to buy it took the sharp edges off my shock.