Page 13 of Harmony Island Gazette
Boone didn’t flinch as I got closer to him. In fact, he kept his gaze focused on me even though I’d just closed the space between us. He was so calm and unbothered that it was bothering me.
“Do you want free groceries?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. Then I shook my head. “You’ll be disappointed to learn that my dad doesn’t give out free food to me, and I’m his daughter. You don’t have a prayer in hell…” I whispered, letting my voice trail off. “What is it you want from my family? From me?”
A silence fell between us as my last question lingered in the air. Boone’s gaze was still locked with mine. There was a pain in his gaze that I’d never noticed. He was hiding something. But it wasn’t just anything. It was something that had caused a wound big and deep.
I wondered if I should be worried. After all, I knew very little about this man. But instead of fear, a different feeling arose in my gut. It was the desire to heal whatever was haunting him.
Maybe it was because he was the only person on the planet who knew about the baby. Or the fact that he’d been there to support me through the last few traumatic things I’d gone through. But I cared. I cared enough to want to know more.
As if he suddenly realized that he was exposing more of himself than he wanted to, he blinked, pulled back, and returned to eating his eggs. After a few bites, he turned back to me. The storm had disappeared from his gaze.
“I don’t want anything from you or your family. I just need a place to crash for a bit, and then I’ll move on. That’s it.” He shrugged as he cut another chunk of eggs off with his fork and slipped it into his mouth.
I narrowed my eyes at him. If he noticed, he didn’t acknowledge it. He couldn’t possibly think I was going to buy that. I’d seen the pain he was carrying around. There was a mystery here, and I was going to solve it.
Maybe it had more to do with the fact that I wasn’t ready to face my own demons—and focusing on Boone’s was the perfect distraction—but I was going to find out why Boone was sleeping on my parents’ couch. I was going to figure out why he got honorably discharged. And maybe I could lift some of the weight he seemed to be carrying around.
My problems were written in stone. I couldn’t escape the inevitable. This baby was coming, forever tying me to Kevin and the Proctor family.
I couldn’t imagine Boone having similar issues, which meant his problems had solutions. And I was going to spend all of my free time figuring out what those solutions were.
5
BOONE
I cleaned up the kitchen after breakfast. Juniper offered to help, but I just shook my head and told her that I had it handled. She studied me, and I could tell that she was trying to size me up, but then she just shrugged and told me that she was going to take a shower. If I didn’t want to clean everything, she’d finish what was left when she got out.
I nodded as I turned my focus to the dishes in the sink and waited for her to leave the room. Once she was gone, I felt like I could breathe.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want her around—I wanted her near me more than I should. There was just something in her that made me want to spill my guts. There was a depth to her gaze that both scared me and made me feel at home.
Maybe it was the secret she’d shared with me. I was pretty sure I was the only other human on Earth that knew her secret. It was intoxicating that she trusted me enough to let me in. I didn’t realize it until now, but I had been craving a human connection, and Juniper had given it to me.
Now she was a drug that I didn’t want to quit.
“You’re an idiot,” I whispered as I flipped the faucet on and watched the water pour over the dishes. I grabbed the dish soap and squirted a blue stream into the water. Suds appeared almost immediately.
I grabbed a dish cloth and plunged it into the water. My mind shut down as I washed each dish, rinsed it, and stacked it in the drying rack next to the sink. I didn’t stop until I felt a hand on my shoulder. I startled and whipped around, flinging suds everywhere when Juniper came into view. She was standing there, her hair damp and her eyes wide.
“Boone, it’s just me,” she whispered as if she was trying to calm me down.
I forced my nerves to settle as I rolled my shoulders and cleared the fog that had settled in my brain. “Sorry,” I said as I moved to grab the nearby dish towel to wipe my hands. “You startled me.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Sorry.” Then she motioned toward my phone, which I’d set on the counter before I started cooking breakfast. “Your phone was ringing. I thought maybe you were listening to something.” Her gaze drifted to my ears.
I grabbed my phone and stuffed it into the back pocket of my jeans. “Thanks,” I mumbled before I stepped around her and strode out of the kitchen. I didn’t want her to ask me what I’d been thinking about so hard that I didn’t hear my phone. I didn’t want to stand there under her curious gaze. I didn’t want her to get to know me.
I just wanted to hide.
I shut the bathroom door behind me. The sound of the door handle engaging echoed in the silence. I flipped the lock and then collapsed on the toilet seat, resting my elbows on my knees and dropping my head. I took in a few deep breaths as I tried to calm my body and my mind.
Not only had I slipped into a sort of trance while washing the dishes, but when Juniper touched me, my first instinct had been to react physically. Thankfully, the sight of her face as she stared up at me had been enough to pull me out of the haze that seemed to get thicker and thicker by the day. I feared what I might have done to her had I not bounced back so quickly.
I pulled my phone from my back pocket and stared at the black screen. How had I missed the sound of my phone ringing? That wasn’t like me. I shook my head, trying to settle my thoughts that were pounding in my skull. I felt broken. And I was worried I would never get fixed.
I wasn’t built for a quiet life in a small town. My childhood had been chaotic, and I had never settled down even when I was old enough to move on. My career in the military only exacerbated my need for action. There were never calm waters when you were a Navy SEAL.
To go from that to being alone with nothing to do in Harmony was eating away at me. Problem was, this black hole inside of me seemed to grow no matter how hard I tried to stop it.
