Page 13
Story: Monsters, Vows, and Growls (Monster Bride Romance #39)
This was a bad idea. I didn't like how I had stuttered—that wasn't me—I didn't like the way my heart was thumping in my chest—or maybe palpitating—I liked least of all the way I’d just let Patrick McCloud lift the picnic basket out of my hands and say, “Come on. I want to show you something.”
He made it seem so normal, as if the past ten years hadn't happened. For a moment, I considered saying, I'm sorry, I changed my mind. This was a bad idea. But then he turned and smiled that smile at me, and I followed him like a complete idiot.
Now we were walking through a narrow trail that cut behind the east side of Cedar Hollow. His truck was parked under a cluster of pine trees. I kept two steps behind him, surreptitiously taking in the way his shoulders flexed while he carried the basket, making it look easy.
The forest was quiet, except for a breeze rustling the leaves overhead and the occasional crunch of twigs beneath our boots—oh, and the absolute chaos happening inside my ribcage.
I was hyper-aware of everything. The warmth of the sun on the back of my neck.
The soft piney smell of the woods. The fact that I hadn’t put on enough lip balm.
The way Patrick had looked at me when he said, “Let me.” Not bossy.
Not pushy. Just… that soft kind of firm he used to reserve for when I was being particularly stubborn.
Which, according to several sources, I was—quite frequently.
We came to a small and private clearing, with a little rise that overlooked a field of late-blooming wildflowers and offered a view of the Hollow below. It was breathtaking. The spot reminded me of the cover of a romance novel.
Which was probably why I started panicking.
I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t even sure what exactly set it off.
The dappled light? The quiet? The stupid way he crouched down to spread the blanket?
Or maybe it was the way he looked up at me when he finished.
With that soft, quiet look. The one I had seen a million times in my dreams. The one that said I was his favorite person in the entire world.
I forced a breath in through my nose and told myself, You’re fine, Ella. It’s just a picnic. With a man. Who shattered your entire belief in love. No big deal .
“Sit?” he asked, gesturing to the blanket.
My legs obeyed before my brain could vote.
Traitorous knees. I watched him unpack the basket with the same kind of care he used to spread the blanket and arrange the dishes.
It was supposed to be a menu test, not a date.
A professional, curated, field-tasting opportunity for Patrick to sample potential dishes for the Cedar Hollow opening.
It was. That’s what I’d told myself when I’d carefully folded the napkins and packed the lemon-rosemary chicken salad, the roasted pear and arugula sandwiches, the hand-rolled oatcakes with blackberry compote.
I had poured sparkling elderflower water into reusable glass bottles and made a mental list of feedback questions.
“You made all this?” he asked, lifting the lid on the basket.
I nodded, already regretting the menu cards I’d handwritten and slipped in beside each container. “It’s part of the new concept. I wanted your feedback.”
He pulled out a sandwich and raised a brow. “Roasted pear and goat cheese?”
“With arugula. And fig jam.” I specified.
He took a bite, and I swear to God, his eyes fluttered shut. Just for a second. Causing my stomach to do something I’m not legally allowed to describe.
“I think I just fell in love with a sandwich,” he said.
“That’s good,” I replied, trying not to show how much it meant to hear him say it. “Because that sandwich took three test runs and a two-hour debate with Evan over whether figs are pretentious.”
“They’re incredible, ” he said, already reaching for the little container of oatcakes. “What is this one?”
“Oats, honey, lemon zest, and some grated hazelnut. The blackberry compote is in the jar.”
“You did all this for me?” he asked quietly.
I flinched. This line of questioning was becoming too intimate. “I did it for the restaurant.”
His eyes bored into me, telling me that he didn't believe a word I just said, but he didn’t press. He just poured us each a glass of sparkling water and said, “Well, the restaurant’s going to be unreal . ”
The silence that followed was warm, wrapped in sunlight and a pine-scented breeze.
“This is my favorite spot in the Hollow,” he said after a while, glancing out at the view. “I used to come here after PT, when I needed to breathe.”
I glanced at him, caught off guard. “Why here?”
He looked over at me, his smile gentler now. “Because it’s where I came when I missed you the most.”
Oh, hell. There it was again. That feeling .
My pulse stuttered, and all the carefully balanced professional boundaries I’d set unraveled like the edge of the napkin flapping in the breeze.
This was no longer a menu test. This was me, sitting on a blanket, falling— again —for a man who once broke my heart so completely, I hadn’t known where to find the pieces.
And worse?
This time, I was doing it willingly, fully aware of what he was capable of.
I picked a crumb off my napkin, forced my voice to stay neutral, and said, “So… PT seems to have been successful for you.”
The moment of silence that followed was thick.
Way to go, Ella, way to break the ice . I hadn't been looking at him when I asked, but now I chanced a glance up—just a flick of the eyes—and found him watching me.
He didn't look surprised or angry. Maybe a bit startled.
Quietly, he said, “Yeah. Eventually. It took some time, though.”
My fingers still played with the poor napkin, pulling on it, balling it. “Your mobility—it’s… I mean, you move really well now.”
His smile was faint, a little sad. “That’s the nice way of asking if I’m still broken.”
“No,” I said quickly. “That’s not—I didn’t mean?—”
“I know,” he said, cutting me off gently. “I’m not offended.”
I let out a slow breath and watched a breeze stir the hem of the blanket, stalling for time while I made up my mind to continue on this dangerous path or change the subject. Well, in for a dime and all that …
“I wasn’t there,” I whispered, before I could talk myself out of it. “When it happened. I should’ve been, but I wasn’t.”
His brow furrowed. “Ells…”
“My mom had one of her mental fits,” I rushed out.
“It was nothing, really, just her usual bullshit. It was the only time I ever missed a game. I thought—God, I thought I had time. I thought there would be so many more games. I missed one. Just one.” The old guilt assaulted me.
How could I not have been there when he needed me the most?
Patrick was silent, and I read it like an accusation, so I kept going, “I found out when Carol called me. I picked up the phone, and she was screaming so loud I didn’t understand what she was saying at first.”
He nodded slowly. “She saved my life.”
I already knew that, but it seemed like this was something he needed to get off his chest.
“She was in the stands,” he said. “She saw me go down and knew something was wrong before the medics even got to me. She jumped the fence, screaming at the trainers to check my spine. The first guy thought I was just winded. Carol made sure they didn’t move me.
” He smiled wistfully. "I watched the recordings, later…
much later. She tackled Coach." Now he was chuckling, but I was willing to bet it had taken him years before he could chuckle about it.
I had seen the same videos. Everybody had been there.
Everybody had their cameras trained on the star football player.
My stomach still turned, the memory of watching Patrick go down too fresh to join in his chuckles over Carol tackling Coach to the ground to stop him from removing Patrick's helmet.
A feat that was later hailed as having saved his life.
“She called you and my dad from the ambulance,” he added.
The amusement in his eyes from a second ago had been replaced by torment.
We both knew he had left one fact out. Carol had called his dad because Patrick's mom was already dead at that point. Had been dead for three months. She and Patrick had been at the gym when she had suddenly keeled over. An aneurysm had ruptured in her brain. An aneurysm nobody knew about. A ticking time bomb in her head, a reminder of how fragile life could be. Patrick had taken it hard. He’d talked her into going to the gym with him, watched her collapse, and held her as she died.
That night, the family hadn't even recovered from the sudden shock of losing her.
And they were all back at the hospital. Waiting for news on Patrick this time.
Henry had been my rock when I should have been the one holding him up.
Gabe and Carol had bickered as usual. At that memory, I couldn't stop myself—a small giggle escaped me, and Patrick looked at me, brows lifted in question.
“Gabe called Carol an Encyclopain, ” I said, wiping under my eye as I tried to hold back another laugh.
“What?” Patrick's laughter still sounded a bit forced, his mind still on past tragedies. “They never told me. What happened?”
“Oh, it was in the waiting room. Everyone was on edge, as you can probably imagine. We were waiting to hear from the doctors, assuming the worst. Tense doesn't even come close to how it was. Carol kept grilling the nurses, demanding updates, quoting spinal injury stats like a walking med journal. Gabe was pacing like a caged tiger, and she told him to sit down before he wore a hole in the linoleum . He snapped back, Why don’t you shut it, Encyclopain ?”
Patrick barked a laugh, hand over his mouth. “ Encyclopain? ”
I nodded, grinning now. “Yeah. Carol turned bright red and called him an emotionally stunted meathead, which, to be fair, wasn’t entirely inaccurate.”
“Sounds like Carol.”
“Right? And then Henry told them both to shut up or take it outside. Meanwhile, I sat there, holding onto a paper cup of cold coffee like it was holy water, wondering if anyone in that waiting room was not slowly losing their mind.”
He shook his head, smiling that soft, nostalgic smile I hadn’t seen in a decade. “Nobody ever told me.”
“You didn’t miss much,” I said. “Except for Carol threatening to stab Gabe with a thermometer.”
Patrick laughed again, and this time the sound was warm and full. It rolled through me like sunshine.