Page 40 of Under Pink Skies

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“Going straight for the throat today, huh? I haven’t even gotten the sugar and flour out yet.”

Imogen pinned me with her stare as she tief the red and white plaid apron behind her back. I followed her lead and retrieved my matching, monogrammed, slightly ridiculous apron from the pantry. We got them back when Imogen had first inherited the homestead from her grandmother. They were a promise to one another to always remember that friends and family were the most important part of our lives. Everything else could come and go, but as long as we had each other, everything would turn out okay.

The first room Imogen renovated in this house was the kitchen. Never a fan of the sad beige style that plagues most ranch-style homes, Imogen envisioned something moodier. She replaced the white cabinets with deep blue ones with golden knobs and accents. Instead of granite, she opted for butcher block countertops, weaving wooden accents throughout the kitchen. She saved a ton of money by refinishing the existing hardwood floors rather than ripping them up and replacing them with laminate. The only traditional ranch kitchen element she kept was a giant farmhouse sink. The result was a moody and cozy kitchen that felt incredibly welcoming, despite the darker hues.

“There’s no sense in beating around the bush, babe,” Imogen said, a teasing lilt to her voice. “You and that boy of yours are the talk of the town yet again.”

Pink tinted my cheeks as I gathered the milk and eggs and stuck them back in the fridge, leaving out only what we needed for today’s baking. We’d decided on snickerdoodle cookies per my suggestion. If Imogen remembered that those were Connor’s favorite, she chose not to call me out on it.

“I don’t see why,” I mumbled. I could still feel Imogen’s eyes on me as I gathered flour, sugar, and baking utensils, and I knew resisting this line of questioning would ultimately be futile.

“If you remember, Connor and his uncle used to drum up drama back when we were kids. Ellis wasn’t exactly a great guy.”

“And Connor unfairly withstood that reputation,” I said, the metal measuring cup clanking too loudly on the ceramic bowl as I dumped the first cup of flour into it. “Connor was a freaking kid, just like we were. It was unfair of the townspeople to attach his uncle’s reputation to his.”

I always felt this defensive about Connor. I never interacted with his uncle beyond awkward run-ins at various establishments in town. Connor had told me his uncle was an asshole and that he wanted nothing to do with him. I suspected there was more at play than just him hating his uncle, but I hadn’t known how to handle it. After walking through Imogen’s healing journey alongside her, I knew more about the warning signs of abuse.

Connor was deeply misunderstood, even by me. Everyone in town, myself included, saw what we wanted to see in him. I can blame it on being in love—the love you believe in at seventeen—but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had been part of the problem too.

We often want people to fit neatly into the molds we create for them in our minds. But in Connor’s case, he didn’t fit into any of the boxes people tried to place him in. Some wanted to hate him because of Ellis’s actions, while others wanted to protect him from the unfair judgment he weathered.

Imogen gave me a soft smile as she cracked the eggs into the bowl attached to her stand mixer. I continued to mix the dry ingredients together.

“I love you, Abbie. I will always try my damndest to support you in whatever way I can. But this new connection between you and Connor makes me nervous.”

I huffed out a laugh, wiping my forehead with the back of my hand.

“I know why you would be nervous, Imogen, but it’s not like that. He’s not idiotic enough to win me over after everything he did.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, sucking the flesh between my teeth as I chose my next words carefully.

“I think I just need closure,” I said. Imogen flipped the stand mixer on to cream the eggs, butter, and sugar together. We stood together with the sound of the stand mixer whirring.

“My therapist would say I’m projecting, but I need to get this off my chest,” Imogen said, unlocking the machine and lifting the dough hook clear of the mixing bowl so I could pour in half of the dry ingredients. “You will not get closure from him. There are some wounds that no amount of time or discussion can fix. He left you, Abbie. He abandoned you and disappeared without a trace. Years came and went, and he never once reached out to you. And now he shows up back here in Watford, expecting us all to accept that it was some freak coincidence that his business partner sponsored the very festival you were asked to coordinate?”

Imogen had never been one to pull her punches, and most of the time, I appreciated that. This was not one of those times. She gave voice to many of the misgivings I had about this entire endeavor, and if she had doubts about whether Connor’s interest in the festival—and by extension, me—was genuine, I knew others in town would be suspicious too.

Hot tears stung my eyes. Imogen wouldn’t judge me for crying. Baking day was meant to be cathartic, after all.

I was tired. I didn’t want to shed another fucking tear over Connor Harvey.

“When is it going to be enough?” I whispered, propping my elbows onto the flour-dusted countertop and dropping my head into my hands. “I feel like I’ve been carrying the weight of the freaking world, and I was so happy, Im. I was so happy to finally have someone back in my life who knew me, where things could be easy, where I could ask for something and know it would get done. And you’re that person for me most of the time, but it’s not fair to always be leaning on you, not when you’ve also been through so much in the last few years.”

Imogen wrapped her arms around my waist, and I finally let the tears fall, the half-mixed snickerdoodle batter forgotten on the other end of the kitchen island.

“You aren’t selfish for being caught up in your own crap, Abs,” Imogen said. “We both have different ways of dealing with the men who broke our hearts.”

A small cry escaped my lips as a new rush of pain washed over me. The memories of Imogen stumbling into my apartment, bruised and terrified. Memories of how she held me while I sat at the window table in Blackbeard’s during the rainy season, waiting to see a blue truck on Main Street that never showed. How I had a bad feeling about her ex-husband from the start, but Imogen had been so desperate to get away from her parents that I’d still gone with her to the courthouse that summer to support her. Later, I drove Imogen to physical therapy in Brighton and sat with her in the courtroom while she waited to see whether her abuser would be brought to justice.

“I’m so grateful for you,” I said, pulling back from her embrace. “So grateful.”

“I’m grateful for you too,” she said, her eyes shining with tears that mirrored mine. “Now, let’s finish these cookies. My entire kitchen smells like cinnamon, and I want it to smell like baked goods, too.”

I snort-laughed, getting in line behind her at the kitchen sink so I could wash my hands before returning to the stand mixer.

After our unexpectedly heavy discussion about Connor, we opted for lighter topics of conversation, dominated by the discussion of what we were currently reading on our Kindles (me, a fantasy romance by one of my favorite indie authors. Imogen, an insanely spicy dark stalker romance).

Imogen was right—we dealt with our past trauma in peculiar ways.