Page 46 of Hold Me Instead
He winced, and when she raised an eyebrow, he went for broke. “Or not,” he said.
Her eyes widened.
“I’ve missed this. Our friendship.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair.
“Me too,” she said. “Though, until yesterday, I was starting to think I’d imagined us ever being friends.”
Yesterday. When he’d bit a cookie from her hand, her fingers a breath from his lips.
“No,” he replied. He hated she questioned it. “We were.”
He remembered her favorite sandwich from More Than Bread on Birch Street. Certainly a friend thing to know. He’d gone to her graduation party, which was a very friend thing to do. And he didn’t know what she used to smell like—a very good friend boundary.
Lavender. She smelled like lavender. Sometimes coffee and cinnamon in the mornings, if he was lucky to be near her before lunch.
He stayed silent, since he was spiraling down a bright stairway of broken boundaries.
Her nod was slow, likely trying to decipher whatever she saw on his face. Had his stomach fallen to his feet? Because it felt like it.
“Well, good.” She smiled and backed away, pulling more strands of hair from her lips as the wind whipped it around her. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”
He nodded, made sure she got in her sedan, then shoved inside the building.
Tomorrow.Not soon enough. How was that possible?
He yanked off his coat as he stepped into the office, Maple on alert. “Fuck, what am I doing?” With a groan, he sat and plugged his face in his hands. Maple waited a beat, then settled.
As he picked through the pile on his desk, his mind picked apart his behavior. How pleasantly surprised he’d been to see her. What his reaction to her meant.
His hand hovered over the envelope at the bottom of the pile, tucked there in haste before he’d left the office the night before. Its return address shouted at him, the font clean, exact. Thick, rounded letters stamped out the nameNeptune Corp, a candy company diversifying its assets by buying up privately owned veterinary clinics around the country. While they weren’t the only business doing so, they were known to be overly involved in the day-to-day, micromanaging until the clinic fit their mold, with barely a hint of the old practice left.
Zachary pulled out the contents, finding brochures of the company and pamphlets of practices transformed claiming positive experiences. A glossy file geared toward convincing the seller that this was the best decision they’d make in their life.
The seller.Dad.
A small piece of paper floated onto his desk, the scrawled handwriting unsettling:
Daniel, Looking forward to the cookout!
The signed name was illegible, and every other document was generic to the company and not the rep communicating with his father. But it was clear—Zachary would find out soon enough how big a deal the cookout would be.
Chapter 13
Charlie
Broken!
“Damn.” Charlie stared at the note stuck to the coffeepot, the wordsjust like our spirits!added below it in different handwriting. She smirked. “Hey, Maura?”
Maura met her in the hallway and followed Charlie to her office.
“Can you order a carafe or two from Village Coffee until we get our situation figured out?” Charlie handed over her credit card.
Maura smiled. “Sure thing.”
“Thanks,” Charlie said.
She settled at her desk and scanned lab results, noting which clients to call during lunch and which could wait until end of day. A buzz of excitement raced through her, and she couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder repeatedly, watching for Zachary, even though he had surgeries that morning. Even a glimpse of him would do. She was eager to see what today would bring after what felt like their friendship returning. A sense of normalcy.
