Desires, Sweets, Secrets (Men of NatEx #2): A Package Handlers Novel Read online

  “Not a thing,” I answer before biting the inside of my cheek.

  When the comforter rustles with her movement, I turn my head toward her. My sister releases the blanket and faces me, her eyes red with unshed tears. Then she wipes her face to clear away the ones that fell.

  “Really?” She sniffles.

  I nod. “Not until Meli.”

  “So, why her?” she asks, picking at her sleeve. “I specifically said—”

  “I know what you said, Dani, but it had nothing to do with that. Like I told you before, I saw her before I knew she was your boss and I was already done for. The deal was sealed before you asked me not to,” I inform her. Then I shrug. “I couldn’t help it.”

  Finally, she cracks a smile. Then a small laugh bubbles out of her throat. “Okay. I can understand why anyone would love her, which is why I told you to stay the hell away.” She laughs some more, and it’s contagious, so I join her. “I saw that coming from a mile away.”

  I put a hand on her knee. “But only because you thought I was some sex-crazed maniac.”

  “Ew.” She gives me a playful shove. “You’re my brother. That’s gross. Don’t say stuff like that.”

  “Well, stop thinking I’m like that!” I chuckle, lightly pushing her back.

  She laughs some more, but when it dies down, she goes thoughtful on me. “So, does she love you too?”

  My heart stalls in my chest as I blow out a big breath. “I have no idea, Dani. And that’s scary as hell.”

  My sister purses her lips before sitting up in her bed. Then she tucks her hands under her legs. “Well, she better. Even though you have a tendency to make horrible decisions, she’s not one of them. You could do a lot worse, and so could she.”

  “Thanks for having such a high opinion of me,” I deadpan, raising an eyebrow at her.

  She raises one right back. “Seriously? Do we need to go through this again?”

  I smirk at her, but then it falls from my mouth, and instead, I’m apologizing. “You know how sorry I am for all of that, right? I had no idea anyone was going to find out, and I didn’t think it’d happen more than once, if that means anything.”

  She releases a deep exhale. “How about we just leave it at ‘I’m sorry,’ okay? I’m honestly tired of it, and I’m glad I haven’t run into anyone I know here so they could rub it in my face some more.”

  “Okay, but you realize you’re the one who’s brought it up plenty of times while you’ve been here?” I point out. “I’m not trying to be a dick, honestly, but if we both want to move past it, maybe we should put it behind us. It happened, it’s over, and I’m not repeating the past. This is different.”

  She stares at her hands as she fidgets her fingers.

  “Think we can do that?” I ask, praying that she’ll accept my desire for a truce. “Can we move on?”

  Instead of answering, she nods without looking at me. Then she reaches her arms out and wraps them around me, hugging me in an awkward position. “I love you, Jer. I’m sorry we’ve been fighting. I just…” Without warning, her words morph into tears. Long, drawn-out, sobbing tears that shake both of us and the bed.

  “Hey,” I say, hoping to soothe her. “It’s going to be okay. We’re okay.”

  She continues to sob, trembling in my arms, so I squeeze her harder, hoping to steady her while she can’t steady herself. It gets worse before it gets better, but I keep her in my arms, holding her tight. Then I start to rub her back, hoping that it helps her calm down. I don’t know what else to do when a woman is crying—but this can’t be just about us.

  “What’s going on, Dani?” I ask, pressing her head to my shoulder.

  She doesn’t answer me yet, so I move my hands to her arms and push her back a little.

  “Hey. It’s okay if you want to keep crying, and I’ll hold you as long as you want me to,” I tell her, dipping my head to be at her eye level. “But I want to know what’s going on.”

  As she wipes her eyes and her nose, she shakes her head. Then she takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m not ready to talk about it yet, Jer.”

  I swipe my thumb under one of her eyes, catching a few tears. “So there’s something else?”

  She sniffles before confirming. “Yeah, there is. But now isn’t the time.”

  Slowly, I nod. “Okay. You’ll let me know when it is though?”

  Finally, she looks at me. “Yeah.”

  Not knowing what else I do, I nod again. Then I go to get up, but her voice stops me.

  “Jeremy?”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Hmm?”

  Dani clears her throat and pierces me with her watery gaze. Then, with a muted smile, she says, “If it means anything, I hope she loves you too. I really like her.”

  I return that muted smile with my own. “Thanks. Me too.”

  After one last hug initiated by my sister, we both leave her bed. As we walk out the door, she pokes me in the back.

  “You know what you could do to make up for all of this?” she says, a slyness in her tone.

  While we march down the stairs, I ask, “What would that be?”

  “You could take me out to breakfast.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, I face her and find the cheesiest grin on her face. Her eyes are red and puffy, adding force to the tug on my heart to give her whatever she wants. So, obviously, I agree.

  “Where do you want to go?” I ask.

  She raises one eyebrow and tilts her head to the side. “Where do you think?”

  I release a breath, my shoulders falling forward. After all of that, she wants to go there?

  “Are you sure?”

  With her sleeve, she wipes her nose again. “You should tell her how you feel, Jer. For real this time, and find out if she feels the same.”

  I find myself biting the inside of my cheek again. It’s becoming a habit under all of this stress. “And what if she doesn’t?”

  “Then at least you know,” she says, sounding much older than sixteen. “There’s something to be said about the truth being revealed.”

  I jerk my head back involuntarily and stare at my sister like she has three heads. “Who are you right now?”

  She puts a hand on my shoulder. “Someone who’s looking out for you. That’s all.” Then she spins to head back up the stairs. “I’m gonna take a shower and get ready to go.”

  I’m left at the bottom of the steps, confused as fuck. “What the hell just happened?” I mumble to myself.

  This has been the strangest fucking morning of my life. Dani found out about me and Meli. Then I told Meli that I love her because I’m a goddamn moron. Then Dani and I hashed it out, but she fell apart in my arms over something she won’t tell me about. Yet “the truth being revealed” seems to have some sort of secret power, according to her. So, basically, I don’t know which end is up.

  But my stomach rumbles, reminding me that it’s been a minute since I’ve eaten. A long minute. I thought I’d take Meli to dinner last night, but we didn’t make it that far. And not for a good reason, either. So I let my body guide me to where I need to go. The shower and then the bakery.

  For food. Nothing else.

  Yeah.

  Right.

  Chapter 12

  Amelia

  There’s a first time for everything. That’s what they say. And, today, I’m proving them right.

  This is the first time I’ve closed the bakery on a Friday. But it feels necessary. It’s time.

  Instead of taking a left at this light to go to my shop, I take a right. This street will take me all the way down to where I’m going, where I haven’t been in at least a year. It was easier at first, if only because I felt obligated. So I went nearly every day. But then it began weighing on me. It was harder and harder every time I showed up and nothing had changed. So I started making excuses, needing to bake to sell more product so I could earn more money to take care of my responsibilities.

  Now? Now, I’ve stopped making excuses—
and, in the process, stopped going. What was the point anymore? It’s not like it’d make things better. It’s not like he knew I was there. Or when I wasn’t. So why? Why torture myself every single time when I could do everything possible at the bakery to make sure I had the funds in case anything happened again?

  That’s been my thinking for the last year—but that changed a couple of weeks ago. When I met Jeremy.

  Who, speaking of, has just sent me a text. But I stick my phone in my cup holder, leaving the message unread. I won’t lie and say that it’s because of him that I haven’t been in so long. That’d be me kidding myself. I made choices, even when I’ve felt terrible at making them. It’s just easier to say that I’m bad at making them so I don’t have to take responsibility. But, well, that’s not how it works.

  So I’m choosing today. Today, I’ll go back to the beginning. Back to the place where my stomach knots up and my heart aches for days after I’ve been there. Back to the place where reminders of the past haunt me. Because it’s the right thing to do.

  Just turning into the parking lot has my lungs locking up. Air is hard to come by even when I step out of my car. My legs don’t seem to want to carry me to the door, so I struggle to lift the lead weights they’ve morphed into the few yards that way. And, when I enter the building, the muted beige tones of everything from the carpet to the walls and the chairs blind me even though they shouldn’t.

  No part of me wants to be here, except for my heart. The traitorous organ won’t untangle its grip from this place no matter how much I want it to. And I understand, but that doesn’t make it less painful. Not at all. In fact, it makes it the opposite: so, so much more hurtful and difficult. If my heart could stop loving, I’d have a much easier time. But it can’t.

  So here I am, walking these familiar halls to a familiar room, hoping beyond hope that something’s changed. It’s foolish and destructive to hope for something that will never, ever happen. That never seems to stop me though. It never seems to change.

  Except today. There’s a first for everything. That’s what they say. And, today, I’m proving them right.

  Today, I’m hoping for peace—no matter how that needs to show up.

  When I reach room 508, I take as deep of a breath as I can, squeeze my eyes shut to hold tears back, and twist the knob. But, before I can walk in, someone stops me, their hand on my shoulder.

  “Oh, hey, Amelia,” Bethany says quietly, her cheerful smile not affecting me the way it should. “I haven’t seen you in a while. How are you doing?”

  “Busy,” I say on autopilot. “Keeping the bakery running and customers happy.”

  “Good, good,” she replies, giving my arm a gentle squeeze. “Did anyone here get ahold of you the other day? They said they tried a few times, but no one could reach you.”

  Automatically, I take my phone from my purse and turn the screen on like that’ll tell me if I talked to someone a couple of days ago. But then I shake my head when the effort of checking the call log is too much. “They might have. The bakery…” I trail off, knowing I shouldn’t make an excuse. “I’m running myself ragged, if I’m being honest. I’m being pulled in a lot of different directions right now.”

  She gives me a well-practiced pout, one I’m sure she’s used to pasting on her face from time to time. “That’s okay. It seems to have passed now, but go on in with him, visit, and I’ll have the doctor bring you up to speed, okay?”

  With no emotion, I nod. If I let emotions bubble to the surface, I’ll find ones I don’t approve of. Hope. Relief. The thought, Is this finally the end?

  Then guilt soars through my veins, making me feel worse than usual about this. Luckily, Bethany has moved on, so she didn’t have to witness it. Thank god. I tamp the guilt—and every other emotion—down, slap a smile on my lips, and enter his room for the first time in far too long.

  Machines beep and chirp—that’s usually the second thing I notice. Today, a day for firsts, is different. My eyes are closed as I walk in. My hope is that I can prolong this for as long as possible. If I can’t see it, it’s not real. But I’ve known for years that this is real even if the truth didn’t want to settle in. Unfortunately, I can’t go inside if I can’t see, so I reluctantly open my eyes to the scene before me.

  My breath stalls in my chest—mostly because things look incredibly unchanged even though I haven’t been here in over twelve months. Shouldn’t time make things look different? Shouldn’t clothes change, hair grow, or laugh lines pop up? The answer is yes, but not for him.

  He’s wearing the same pattern on his hospital gown. He has the same buzzed hair as before. And he hasn’t laughed since that fateful night that took him from me. So, here, time doesn’t get to snake its tentacles around him and make things look different. Here, time can’t touch down and create change.

  Except, when I get closer, I realize how different things are. Though they’re not different because of him—they’re different because of me.

  I’ve changed. I’ve been made to look different—made to look at things differently than I did before. I’m different than I was, and that’s a crushing blow I didn’t expect to deal with here or today. Time may change nothing in this room, but it sure went on without him and changed me.

  I only hope he can forgive me for the next things I need to change now.

  I set my purse on the table beside the bed and then take a seat in the chair next to it. When I’m settled, I dare to reach a hand forward to take his, but a knock on the door startles me and my hand rockets back to my side.

  “Oh, sorry,” the doctor says as he enters the room. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” His polite smile sets me more at ease than I was a moment ago, but it’s not enough to completely erase the panic over being here. “Hi. I’m Dr. Stone.” He extends his hand to me. “I’m the doctor on his case now.”

  Tentatively, I reach the hand I just extended before out to the doctor. “I’m Amelia. Nice to meet you. Thanks for taking care of him.”

  “My pleasure,” he says as he takes my hand and shakes. “Did Bethany fill you in on what happened a couple of days ago?”

  I shake my head, a million thoughts zinging through my mind. Is this positive news? Has he made some progress? Is that actually positive now that I’m in a new situation?

  Luckily, Dr. Stone puts me out of my misery and informs me. “Well, he had a spike of brain activity a couple of weeks ago, and we thought that was a good thing. This week, however, he hit the lowest level we’ve seen him at.” He puts his hands in the pockets of his white coat. “We were hoping he’d recover, but it doesn’t look like things are headed in that direction.”

  I mostly blink at him while he speaks. I’ve heard things like this in the past, talk of brain activity, hand squeezes, and even finger or toe movement. I’ve even felt some of those things or seen them with my own eyes. And I’ve felt the soaring highs and the crashing lows that come with hope and disappointment. Today, however, is different. I’m on a steady, even keel of despair at knowing that it’s time to make a choice and finally put this to rest.

  “So I should choose is what you’re saying,” I say in a monotonous tone to the doctor.

  “It’s probably best, Amelia,” he says, clasping his hands in front of his body. “And we can talk about those choices…”

  But I stop listening. I know what those choices are. I’ve heard them a million times. Or at least it feels like I have. I’ve heard them so often that I had to make myself stop coming here just so no one would repeat them at me over and over again until I finally made a choice.

  If only life or death were as easy as simply choosing one over the other. If only.

  Choosing has never been easy for me. It doesn’t come naturally like it does to some. But my ability to choose was severely damaged the night I made a split-second decision based on impulse. I decided to go one way that forever altered the course of my life. And I haven’t quite been able to recover ever since.

  “Okay,” I te
ll Dr. Stone. “Can you…just give me a minute?”

  “Of course.” He gives me a practiced expression one might call a smile. “Take your time,” he says before he leaves.

  I try to choke out, “Thanks,” but my voice is gone and nothing comes out. Then the door shuts and I’m alone. I expect tears to well in my eyes, but honestly, I’ve cried enough over this for the past three years. There’s no time for more of that now.

  Instead, I take a deep breath, lean forward, and take his hand. Before I can start talking, I rest my forehead on our hands. Then I look at him and get to explaining what I’ve had to finally choose.

  And I start with, “Hey, Danny. It’s me. Amelia.”

  ~~~~

  By the time it’s done, I’m a wreck and a half. The weight of the guilt from the relief I feel is enough to crush me, but the sorrow and the finality are enough to keep me alive, in a state of pure torture. I have no idea how I’ve made it home, but I realize I’m here when a knock on my window brings me back from the dead.

  It takes me three tries, but I manage to open the car door and step out. A hand on my arm helps me rise to my feet, and I know that the man’s speaking, but the words don’t really register. Something about texting me all day and being worried. The blood pounding through my veins is too loud for me to take in what he’s saying.

  For a few seconds, I stand here, trying to find my bearings. Then I recognize the face in front of me. Jeremy. My neighbor. My employee’s brother. The man who’s stolen bits of my heart and my soul when I thought there were none left to give. He’s still talking, but whatever he’s saying doesn’t matter right now.

  So I wrap my arms around his neck and hug him until he stops speaking and hugs me back. His arms are warm and tight around my body, and the pressure keeps me from falling into a million pieces. But we can’t stay on the driveway forever, so I unwind myself, extend my hand, and wait for him to take it.

  When he does, I guide us to his house. Through the door. Up the stairs. Into his bedroom. On top of his bed. The darkness of the night envelops us as I pull the blankets down so we can get in. It keeps me safe as I strip down to nakedness to be rid of anything that can tie me to being in that hospital room. And it slides out of my grasp as we both hunker down under the covers, skin to skin, silent and slow.