Page 18 of Small-Town Secrets
In response, Sarge walked up to the door and stopped to shoot me another look.
Okay then. I opened the door and stepped inside, picking up my dog just in case. Sarge was generally more accepted inside locales when he wasn't roaming free. "Hello?" I called out, accompanied by the sound of the bells above the door. I spotted a woman at the cash register. Probably the shop keeper—my brother had told me about her too. He was such a gossip. It wasn't the woman who approached me now, though. She shot me a welcoming smile, but then her assistant came to greet me.
Laurence.
He froze in his step when he saw me, but only for a millisecond, then he recovered, forcing a smile onto his face. I felt a little bad for making him smile at me in my role as a customer at his workplace, but that couldn't be helped. "Hi," I said. "I'm here to buy some flowers for a friend's birthday." It was a thinly veiled lie, but I hoped Laurence wouldn’t see right through me. In retrospect, I should have taken Jake with me. He was probably a well-known customer here.
"You need flowers for a friend?" Laurence asked with just a hint of suspicion in his tone.
"Yes, but I’m not sure what kind of flowers he might like. Do you have any recommendations?"
Laurence rubbed his chin. “We got the usual, like roses, orchids, tulips… my favorites are the lilies, though. We have a great selection of those. Different colors too." As he spoke, he turned and led me deeper into the store. While walking, he stole a glance at my dog. "Cute Chihuahua."
Cute? I thought the only appropriate adjective to describe Sarge in his biker get-up wasbadass, but since it was Laurence, I let it slide. "Don't say that too loudly. Sarge already has a huge ego, and he thinks he'sverycute."
"That's because he is." Was that a genuine smile I saw on Laurence's face? It only lasted for a moment, but I was pretty sure it had been there. Laurence had always had a beautiful smile, and even though the right side of his face was burned now, it was still as heart-warming as it had been when we were teens and I was desperately trying not to look at him too hard. “Are you..." He paused, glanced back at his boss by the cash register, then started again. "Are you really here to buy flowers for a friend?"
"Yeah, I am.” Was he worried that I might be buying flowers for a date?
When we reached the section of the store with the lilies, he confirmed my suspicions that he thought I was here for something more than a friend. “The red ones are the most romantic,” he said, pointing. “I like the white ones best, but…” He finished with a half-hearted shrug, looking almost a little sullen.
I kind of felt like I was being tested.
He couldn'tstillbe having a crush on me, could he?
I had to find out.
"I actually won’t be the one handing these flowers over," I said. "My friend will be the one doing that. You could say that I'm running an errant for Jake." A favor Jake didn't yet know I was doing him, but whatever.
“Oh. I didn’t realize that.” Laurence wasn’t looking at me, but I thought I heard a hint of relief coloring his voice. I could have been imagining it, though. I inhaled, taking in the floral scent of the lilies before me—and the scent of Laurence. He'd always smelled a little like flowers as well, but not completely. There was still something so distinct about his scent that I could pick it out even as the fragrances of all the colorful plants around us tried to tempt my nose away.
"I want to be honest with you," I said as Laurence's scent reminded me of the night we'd spent together, and of the reason I was here now. "I didn't come herejustto buy flowers."
Laurence's eyes narrowed just slightly as I spoke. "Are you here because of my children?" he guessed correctly.
"In part," I agreed. "But also because I kind of regret that I've never taken a moment to talk to you since you've come back to town. I figured you wouldn't want to, but still." While I was speaking, Sarge squirmed in my arms as if he could feel my discomfort. "Easy there, buddy," I said to him in a soft tone of voice before I focused back on Laurence. "I think I owe you an apology. Both for what happened when we were teens, and for what happened in the gym last week."
The omega before me responded to my words with a look of confusion. "What do you mean what happened at the gym last week?"
So Chris and Tyler hadn't told him... But maybe heshouldknow. "Your son got into a fight with one of the other kids."
"Oh, yeah, I kind of guessed that." Laurence sounded so weary as he said it I could tell this wasn't a rare occurrence in his life. "Tyler's got a bit of a temper. Or was it Chris? No, I bet it was Tyler."
"It was. But Tyler's temper isn't really what I wanted to talk to you about." I took a step toward the lilies and crouched down by them to give the appearance that I was closely eying the flowers—just in case Laurence's boss was watching and wondering if he got caught up in chit-chat. I didn't want to get him in any trouble. Sarge leaned forward to sniff at the flowers as I glanced back at Laurence. “I really wanted you to know that your son had a bad kind of bad reaction to me when I broke up the fight. I might have played up the alpha male a little too much.”
“You scared him?”
“I wasn’ttryingto. But he ran out of the gym as soon as I let go.”
“I’m sorry,” Laurence apologized, even though he had nothing to be sorry for. “He got a little clingy just after we left Lake Forest, but…” Laurence shook his head. “I didn’t know he was still struggling with that. Thank you for telling me.”
“I just wanted to make sure that incident wasn’t the reason your children aren’t coming to karate anymore.”
"No, it's..." Laurence looked at the flowers, then back at me again, as if he wasn't sure what to say.
"I'm sorry about what happened between us," I said, hoping the long over-due apology would make him feel a little more comfortable. "It shouldn't have happened and I should have taken responsibility the morning after instead of doing my best to ignore you like the jerk I was." I hadn'tmeantto be a jerk. I'd just been a little awkward when I was younger. One of the reasons I liked dogs so much better than people. They were easier to be around. Easier to handle than a younger omega with a crush on you—especially when you kind of secretly returned that crush and didn’t know what to do about it.
"You don't have to apologize. It's fine. Water under the bridge, right?" Laurence sighed and then he muttered something under his breath that I barely heard but that sounded like, "Lord knows I enjoyed that more than anything that followed." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, though, he turned away from me. I got the feeling he'd spoken without thinking and he hadn't wanted me to hear that. "Look at these lilies," he said, picking a bunch of red flowers. "I think Conner would like these, don't you? If you’re running an errand for Jake, they must be for Conner."
