Dear Roomie (Rookie Rebels #5) - Kate Meader Page 0,105
unravel years of knots in his relationship with Bast, it was quite another to apply the lessons learned to a love that had barely bloomed.
“I can’t force her to love me, Cal.”
“She already does, dummy.”
He sounded so sure and God almighty, Reid wanted to believe him. “You can’t know that.”
“Listen, Reid, you need someone to pull that hockey stick out of your ass and show you there’s more than that one track you’ve been stuck on forever. She needs someone to ground her and make her feel safe. These are the gaps you fill for each other, and you’ve already figured it out because we just fucking told you and we are right. So convince her you’re the man for the job.”
“Grand gesture, mon ami.” Remy puffed on his cigar and grinned like a wise old king. “Grand fucking gesture.”
36
There was a particular cruelty in visiting a familiar place and finding that it hadn’t changed one iota. That it had the audacity to carry on without you and didn’t miss your presence. As if you never existed.
Dramatic much?
“I’m getting wistful in my old age, Buck.” Her faithful companion for the two-hour drive to the past perked up at the mention of his name. Reid would probably have a fit if he knew she’d taken him across state lines—but as Reid had chosen not to visit his dog and leave custody in her hands, then his opinion on the matter shouldn’t register.
Except he was why she was here.
His accusation that he was merely an assignment for her and that she should just run back to Asia had cut deep. As if she was trying to escape. She was a traveler, a nomad, an embracer of new experiences. Avoidance wasn’t in her vocabulary. Reid Durand, who kept everything close to his chest, didn’t know the first thing about it.
She was here to prove him wrong.
Silver Springs, fifteen miles east of South Bend, Indiana, hadn’t changed a jot since she left. The drugstore on the corner of Central and Main was still there, with the slightly off-kilter sign. Her dad used to stop there on the way back from the university to pick up day-old donuts, Midwestern frugality at its finest. The bank, the post office, the florist, all the same. The coffee shop might be new—or that might be a fresh coat of paint. Driving through, she wondered about homes—and hearts—frozen in time.
Had she placed the past on a pedestal? Well, clearly she had. But so much so that she shut herself off to all possibilities? Over the last six years, she’d certainly had opportunities to open herself up. Start anew. Yet she even kept her distance from Edie because it would make it easier when her gran moved on to the great bingo hall in the sky.
That’s what she had been searching for all these years. A path to minimize the potential for heartbreak. She was no risk-taker—not in the slightest! Not like Reid.
This man was willing to work on himself, make all these small but crucial changes to widen those cracks in his armor. Loosening that grip on his control took effort, but that was Reid: the hardest-working person she knew.
People said that about her. You’re so busy. You work so much. But unlike Reid, she wasn’t working toward something. She was working to keep the past at bay, the present in stasis, and the future from evolving.
She kept driving, past the Congregational Church where her dad used to embarrass her by sing-shouting the hymns. He would wink at her and draw her smothered giggle.
God wants you to express yourself, Ken. He doesn’t care how you do it, as long as you do it with joy.
The Kennedy of old would claim wholeheartedly that she was doing just that. With every stamp in her passport, with every bite of a new cuisine, with every sunrise over a foreign hill. But she wasn’t sure she knew true joy until she had run around a park with Reid and Bucky or listened as he patiently explained to her the game of hockey or lay in his arms surrounded by a blanket fort dressed with pillows and bed linens.
She almost missed the turn to her old street—the horn of the car behind her told her she took the corner too suddenly. Someone else had built a new structure in the ashes of the old. The only thing that was recognizable was the cherry blossom tree, now naked and frost-flecked.