Page 7 of After You

He grinned. Hannah shrugged. She hadn’t been kidding.

“The Blue Brigade?” he asked. “Oh, please tell me aboutthat.”

“No.”

He pulled his phone from his pocket, swiped his thumb over the screen, and began typing. It was how he took notes when he was away from paper andpen.

“What’s that?” she asked, not wanting toknow.

“My first question to the good people at Dottie’s over potpies,” he said. “The Blue Brigade is totally going in mybook.”

If Hannah had anything to say about it, the entire book wouldn’t be going anywhere. Kade might enjoy messing around, teasing her about writing a book set in Sapphire Falls, but he couldn’t write one of his typical thrillers based on her hometown. She had a hard time sleeping after reading his stuff anyway, and if he conjured images of her favorite place in the world as she read—and then ruined it with a bloodbath—she was going to have to find a new best friend.

“It’s very difficult being best friends with someone whose books I hate,” she told him. Not for the firsttime.

“It’s harder for me,” he said with a little frown.

“I’m doing you a favor,” she told him. Also not for the first time. “If I wasn’t around to keep your ego in check, you would be completely insufferable.”

“As opposed to just mildly insufferable likenow.”

She lifted a shoulder. “Moderately insufferable. Butyes.”

They crossed Main Street two blocks down from the square and then headed the final blocks to Ty’s place.

Ty’s place was what everyone called the huge, old two-story house on Crimson Street that had been turned into what was essentially a boarding house. It didn’t have an official name. It was really just a house. The house Ty Bennett had bought when he’d moved home to be close to the woman he was wooing—the woman who was now his wife. There was one kitchen, one living room, and two bathrooms that all of the guests shared. Then there were four bedrooms upstairs and two down, so only six people could stay at any one time—unless they doubled up. She was going to be at her grandmother’s for the rest of her stay, but since they’d gotten in late, she and Kade were sharing the room tonight.

“So, I guess, if I’m not allowed out of my room alone…” Kade began.

Hannah gave him a look that said, “No you’re definitelynot.”

“Then maybe I should come to your grandma’s with you tomorrow.”

Hannah frowned. “No.”

“I don’t know if you should go alone the firsttime.”

She didn’t know either. After the surgery, when Alice was out of the hospital and home and needing some help getting out of chairs and bed, and had some heavy equipment to move around, Hannah would need Kade there. She couldn’t do that lifting with her neck issues, so Kade had to be her muscles.

But this first visit was to take Alice for her pre-op appointment with Kyle. While Hannah would love the moral support, she was afraid that both her grandmother and Kyle would be too polite if Kade was there. If there were things that needed airing out, Hannah wanted to get it over with so they could get on to the business of Alice’s surgery and recovery.

Because the faster and smoother that went, the sooner Hannah could be back in Seattle. Where she was safe. Where no one expected her to hold things together and fix everything. Where there was no specific plan laid out for years in the future. Where she wasn’t responsible for anyone’s happiness but her own. And maybe Kade’s, when he was stuck on a plot point or behind on a deadline.

“The first time will be the worst. I’ll get through it. I’ll just focus on Grandma and stick close to her house and lay low,” she said. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t need to go out and get a bunch of reminders about everything I left behind or miss, okay? I’ll just…stay in my grandma’s house and pretend it’s in…Michigan.”

“Why Michigan?”

“Because I don’t miss anything about Michigan.”

“Listen, I don’t think your being here is a good idea. You know that. But Sapphire Falls has been affecting your whole life,” Kade said, his tone a little gentler. “At first you were dealing with rehab and getting your shit back together. But it’s been together. For almost two years. And you’re not moving on. You don’t date, you don’t make new friends, you don’t go outmuch.”

“My best friend is essentially a hermit,” she pointedout.

“Yes, you also have bad taste in friends,” Kade agreed drolly. “But it’s also because you can’t get past everything you left here. You need to use this trip to get over this town and these people, and I don’t think you can do that by hiding at your grandma’s. I think it’s possible that you’re remembering things a little rosier than they actually were. Just get out there and prove to yourself that you’re not really missing anything.”

But she already knew how that would go. She was missing Sapphire Falls. She could not sit in the gazebo and watch the town go by without wanting to mail Christmas cards to every person she saw. She could not float down the river on an inner tube and not want to build a house on land that overlooked that very water. She could not take a drive down a dirt back road without wanting to do that every single night for the rest of herlife.

And she could not be in this town when the Ferris wheel rolled onto Main for the annual summer festival. She was really praying that her grandmother’s rehab would take more like four weeks, rather than the six predicted. She wouldn’t be able to handle attending the festival without breaking down, pulling out her cut-off denim shorts, and slipping on her boots. And never taking them off again.

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