The Peach Keeper

  “You’ll find it,” Willa said.

  “I hope so.”

  “I’m here if you need me.”

  That, ultimately, was why she called. She needed to hear that. “Thanks, Willa.”

  SIXTEEN

  Shedding the Armor

  “Dr. Rogers will see you now,” the receptionist said to Willa. “His private office is around the corner.”

  It had been a long shot, and Willa had waited almost an hour, but now she was finally going to talk to Sebastian. “Thank you,” she said, entering the inner sanctum and trying not to look into rooms where the whirring and swishing noises were coming from. It made her queasy. She’d always hated dentists’ offices.

  She entered Sebastian’s personal office, but he wasn’t there. She took one of the two seats in front of his desk and looked around. It was nice but utilitarian. It didn’t look as though he spent a lot of time here. There was only one photograph on his desk. When she turned the frame around, she saw it was a photograph of him and Paxton, one where they’d held the camera in front of them and grinned as they snapped the shot.

  She heard Sebastian’s voice in the hall and quickly turned the photo back around. Sebastian entered and smiled at her. He didn’t have on his suit jacket, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. He was so strangely beautiful. He hid it behind a lot of makeup in high school, but he seemed to have come to terms with it now. She was staring at him, but she realized he was probably used to it.

  “You’ve done a nice job with the office,” Willa finally said. “It doesn’t look anything like I remember Dr. Kostovo’s office.”

  He walked behind the desk and sat. “You mean it doesn’t look like a medieval torture chamber anymore.”

  “Yes,” she said, shuddering. “Who does that? In a dentist’s office? As if half the patients aren’t scared enough already.”

  “You should have seen his house when I first moved in,” Sebastian said. “He left behind a suit of armor.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No. It’s in my basement.”

  Willa laughed. “You should give it to Paxton as a housewarming gift. Can you imagine the look on her face?”

  His brow knitted. “Housewarming gift?”

  “She bought a townhouse.” Willa paused, suddenly questioning her being there. In a fit of indignation, she had decided that if Sebastian didn’t know how much grief he was causing Paxton, then someone had to tell him. But maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all. “I take it she didn’t tell you.”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  There was an awkward moment before Sebastian asked, “Is that why you came to see me?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He nodded in understanding. “I always wondered why none of the other people in her life have confronted me. I think they assume she knows exactly what she’s doing. To answer the first question I know you want to ask: Yes, I know Paxton is in love with me. To answer the second question: No, I don’t want to hurt her. I’ve been doing everything in my power not to.”

  “Then try something else,” Willa said as she stood. “It’s not working.” She reached over and took a notepad and pen from his desktop. She wrote something down and handed it to him.

  “What is this?”

  “Her new address. Her schedule is really tight, because the gala is in three days. But I happen to know she’ll be there between four and five today.”

  He nodded as he stood, putting the note in his pocket.

  Willa opened his office door and walked out, and Sebastian followed. He escorted her to the front desk, putting his hand on her back, low and firm. That’s when she finally understood. Just like that. I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was. That’s what he’d said outside her store on Saturday.

  Startled, she turned to look at him, and he winked.

  Oh, Paxton, she thought. You have no idea what’s in store for you.

  She walked out into the sunshine, smiling. Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren’t always shown the path in life you’re supposed to take. But if there was one thing she’d learned in the past few weeks, it was that sometimes, when you’re really lucky, you meet someone with a map.

  Happiness meant taking risks. No one had ever told Paxton that before. It was like a secret the world had been keeping from her. Paxton didn’t take risks, at least not when she was sober. She knew what she was getting into before she ever committed to anything. The fact that all the changes she’d made in the past few days scared her to death had to be a good sign.

  At four o’clock, she let herself into the townhouse with the keys Kirsty Lemon had let her borrow. Willa had called her earlier, telling her she couldn’t make it after all. So Paxton put the box of doughnuts she’d just bought on the kitchen counter and decided to use this time to do what she did best.

  Make lists.

  She was on the sixth sheet of paper when the doorbell rang. She was going from room to room, taking measurements and drawing little pictures of what she thought would go where. She took the earbuds of her iPod out of her ears and walked to the door, thinking maybe Willa was able to break away from work, after all. She checked her watch. It was a quarter till five. She was going to have to leave soon, but there was still time to give her a quick tour.

  She opened the door, and the one person she wasn’t expecting was the very person who stood there.

  He’d loosened his tie, and his hair looked like he’d run his hands through it one too many times. “Sebastian,” she said. “How did you know I was here?”

  “Willa told me,” he said. “Why didn’t you?”

  Willa told him? She stepped back numbly and let him enter. “It happened pretty quickly.”

  “This is a big step for you.”

  “It should have happened a long time ago.”

  He looked around, his hands in his pockets. He seemed so shut off that it made her heart ache. “I have a question,” he said. “One I can’t stop asking myself. Why did you kiss me when you’d seen me kiss another man all those years ago? Is there some twisted side to you I don’t know about, Pax? Did it turn you on?”

  She was caught off guard by the question. “No,” she said, appalled. “It wasn’t like that at all.” He stared at her, and she shook her head. “God, Sebastian, people fall in love all the time. And it’s not always with the right people. And it’s not always reciprocated. I fell in love with you. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop it. But I was prepared to deal with it in silence until it went away, or at least lessened to the point where I could see you and not want you so much. That night at the pool house, I was out of control, and I hated the feeling, and then you came by because you were worried about me when no one else was. If you cared that much about me, I thought maybe I could turn it into something more. It was careless and selfish and, as I have said time and time again, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Sit down,” he said. “I have something to tell you.”

  “I don’t have any chairs. And I don’t think I want to hear anything you have to say right now.”

  He walked over to her and took her arm. He led her to the stairs. “Sit down and listen to me,” he said in a tone she wasn’t familiar with. He was nervous.

  She slowly sat. She set her notebook and iPod next to her on the step, then folded her hands in her lap.

  He stood in front of her for a moment. Then he started pacing. “I didn’t belong anywhere growing up,” he finally said. “Not at home, not at school. As a teenager, I spent a lot of time at that diner on the highway, mostly as a way to keep from going home and facing my father. One Saturday night when I was sixteen, I was sitting there in the back booth, it was probably three in the morning, when a group of teenage boys came in, asking for directions back to Asheville. They’d gotten lost coming home from some party they’d gone to in South Carolina. They were loud, flamboyant, happy, not like anyone I’d ever met before. One of them spo
tted me, and it was like he’d spotted a lost member of his tribe. He came back to me and started flirting. His friends joined him, and we all had coffee and laughed. A door suddenly opened for me, this door of acceptance. Hours later, they said they had to go, that their mothers were going to be mad enough as it was. But they said if I could find a way to Asheville, they hung out at Pack Square every afternoon, and if I wanted to join them, I could. Then that boy who had first come over to me, Alex, ran his hand over my hair and said, ‘Who knew something this beautiful grew way out in the backwoods?’ ” Sebastian shook his head. “I think humans are basically pack animals. And I finally found a pack. I’d never had one before.”

  “Are these the same boys I saw you with at the Asheville Mall?” Paxton asked.

  “Yes. And the boy you saw kiss me was Alex. It was a confusing time for me. Those were my friends. They saved me. And on some level, I loved them. I loved Alex. But the reason I became one of them is that I needed to belong somewhere and they took me in. I didn’t become one of them because I was one of them.” He gave her a look she knew meant that what he’d said was significant, but she didn’t understand.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m not gay, Pax,” he said.

  She felt his words burn into her skin.

  “When I entered college, I started seeing a counselor who helped me work through some issues. The best, most accepting people I’ve ever known were gay. But it was a fallback position for me, and it wasn’t who I was inside. So I began to date women in college, and I even fell in love a couple of times. But it never worked out because none of them understood me—they saw me as a platonic friend, or thought they were converting me. Those were some interesting years, and not ones I would ever care to repeat. It got to the point where I was simply tired of trying to defend myself. How people choose to live their lives, and who they fall in love with, should never have to be defended. So I made the decision about five years ago to not address my sexuality in any situation anymore. And that decision made life so much easier. Until I met you.”

  She stood. She wasn’t going to cry. No matter how much she wanted to. “What kind of game are you playing with me? I don’t deserve this from you, Sebastian.”

  She tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her by the arms and made her face him. “I’m not playing a game,” he said in short, measured words, words that dropped like falling off a cliff.

  “Then why are you telling me this?”

  He let his hands drop. She swayed a little. “Because I love you in a way that’s deep and raw and terrifying. And I don’t know what to do. I’ve never felt anything like what I felt when you kissed me.”

  He was scared. She could see it so clearly now. “Then why did you stop it?”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “Because I was still clinging to my conviction that sex only ever gets in the way of good relationships.”

  She swallowed. “And now?”

  “My past will always be with me. It’s a part of who I am. And I didn’t think there was a single person in the world who could know everything about me and love me anyway. Until I met you. I love you, Paxton, and I have every intention of being with you forever, if you’ll have me.”

  She’d been in his position just weeks ago. She knew what it felt like to stand in front of someone and ask them to love you, to try to pull them to you by the sheer force of your desire, a force so strong it felt as though you were going to die from it. She didn’t stop to think. She knew only that she didn’t want him to feel the way she’d felt. She reached for him and kissed him. Her arms wrapped around him, holding on for dear life. He backed her against the wall and her head thumped against it, but she didn’t stop. She pushed at his jacket until it was off, then reached for his tie. Their hands were everywhere, getting in the way. Paxton lost her balance when the toe of her bare foot got caught in the cuff of his trousers, and she went down, taking him with her.

  Sebastian rolled over, pinning her to the floor. She reached, trying to pull his lips down to hers again, but he resisted.

  “I need you to say it,” he said, breathless.

  She looked up at him, confused. “Say what?”

  “That you’ll have me.”

  She suddenly thought about that list she’d made in high school. “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted, Sebastian.”

  He kissed her again, and she worked at the buttons on his shirt. One of them popped off, and she heard it tick across the bare floor. “Are we going to do this here?” he asked against her lips. “We can go back to my place.”

  “No. Here. Now.”

  She felt his smile. “At least I know you don’t love me for my furniture.”

  “Don’t you dare bring over that suit of armor.”

  He lifted his head again. “Willa told you?”

  Her hands went to his hair. “Some things she tells me, some things she leaves out.” Like telling her Sebastian was coming over.

  He lifted one brow. “So you compare notes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I better make this good.”

  She hesitated. “It already is,” she whispered.

  An hour later, Paxton woke up to her cellphone ringing. She reached over Sebastian to her tote bag but couldn’t find the phone. She ended up dumping the contents out onto the carpet and fumbling through them until she found it.

  She felt Sebastian put a hand on her back and lightly stroke.

  She looked at the screen. It was Maria, the manager at the Madam. She’d had an appointment with her an hour ago about last-minute details with the gala. She groaned as she put the phone down and turned to Sebastian. “I have to go.”

  “Okay.” He sat up and winced as he scooted back to lean against the wall.

  “Are you all right?” Paxton got up and started picking her clothes up off the floor.

  “My back. This is why I don’t camp out. Can I buy you a bed as a housewarming gift?”

  She smiled as she dressed, well aware of the fact that he was watching. It didn’t bother her, for probably the first time in her life. “I’ve seen your bed,” she said. “You have very good taste in beds.”

  “You could try it out, you know. To get a feel for it.”

  She walked over to him and went to her knees beside him. “This is real, isn’t it? It really happened.”

  He put his hand to her hair. “Regrets?”

  She took a deep breath. All she smelled was cut grass from the open living room window and the sugary smell of the doughnuts she’d brought in and put on the counter. “None,” she said. “What about you?”

  “Not a single one. Well, maybe the lack of bed. Love me, love my creature comforts.”

  She took his hand in hers. “I do love you, Sebastian. And I’m scared out of my mind.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Willa said happiness means taking risks. And if you’re not a little scared, you’re not doing it right.”

  That made him laugh. “If that’s the case, we have nothing to worry about,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her. “Let’s be terrified together again.”

  Which ended up making Paxton another hour late.

  SEVENTEEN

  Fly Away

  Wednesday morning, Willa got to her store before Rachel did, so she started taking the chairs off the café tables by the large window, which was as blank as a movie screen because of the morning mist. Occasionally, the lights from a car would speed by, and it was unquestionably a local. Only locals knew where they were going at this time of morning. Tourists got lost and drove slowly in circles until the fog lifted.

  She had just started the coffee when the bell above the door rang and Paxton entered.

  “Hi,” Willa said, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

  Paxton shrugged. “I was taking a different way to work this morning and saw your light.”

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Yes, that would be great. Extra c
ream, no sugar,” Paxton said.

  Willa flipped through Rachel’s coffee notebook on the bar and said, “According to my barista, Rachel, your coffee order means you want comfort but you’re afraid to ask for it.”

  Paxton didn’t ask who Rachel was, or what strange coffee anthropology she was studying. She just laughed and said, “That is uncomfortably accurate.”

  “She claims it’s a science.”

  “This is a great store,” Paxton said, looking around. There was a short silence before she finally said, “Actually, I stopped by to thank you.”

  “For what?” Willa asked as she poured the coffee into two large red-and-white-striped cups.

  “For going to see Sebastian yesterday. For telling him to come see me.”

  Willa picked up the two coffee cups and walked to a café table. “So, things worked out?”

  “They worked out very well,” Paxton said as they pulled out chairs and sat. “I actually stayed at his place last night.”

  That made Willa grin. “That’s why you were taking a different way to work this morning.”

  Paxton hid her smile behind her cup of coffee. “Guilty. I take it Colin stayed with you?”

  “I left him asleep. I didn’t have the heart to wake him up.”

  “My mother is probably having a conniption right now,” Paxton said.

  “You don’t sound too unhappy about that.”

  “I’m not.”

  Willa leaned back in her seat. “So what’s on your agenda today?”

  “I’ll be at the Madam all day. Last-minute details for the gala. Plus, I have to write my speech.” Paxton gave her a worried look. “You’re still coming, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I’m going to wear that vintage beaded dress your grandmother gave Georgie.”

  Paxton gasped. “Oh, Willa, that’s perfect.”

  The bell over the door rang, and they both turned in their seats. Woody Olsen had just entered.

  As always, it took Willa a moment to recover when she saw him, to see past all the potential bad news he could bring.