“Almost twenty-one,” I say, shifting the chandelier to my left arm and clenching my jaw under its weight. I find the problem wire and slowly untangle it from the others.
“Did you disconnect the electricity before climbing up there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you check for frayed ends before you started pulling at those wires like a chimpanzee?”
A chimpanzee?
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you—”
“Leave the poor boy alone, Earl.” Vivian, Earl’s wife and one of the inn’s more outspoken guests, enters the lobby with her short blue-black hair wrapped in pink curlers and her thin, pursed lips coated in pink lipstick. She’s tall and slender and manages to look poised even when she’s gripping a martini and slurring her words—which is often. “He doesn’t need you distracting him.”
“I’m not distracting him, Viv. I’m helping him.” Earl gestures to me, like I’m an idiot.
“Uh-huh.” Vivian glances up at me through a pair of dark brown eyes. “You just go on and do your fixing, honey. Don’t mind my meddlesome husband.” She walks to the front desk and starts complaining to Haley about the bar’s hours.
“Meddlesome, my ass,” Earl mutters.
Vivian and Earl travel from Georgia every summer to stay at Willow Inn. Their visits are never shorter than four weeks and they make themselves right at home, hence the pink curlers.
They make an odd couple, with Vivian being a good five inches taller than her husband and at least a hundred pounds lighter. Side by side, they look like a pink giraffe and a white-whiskered monkey.
Earl watches me wobble. “Have you ever had professional electrical training, son?”
Good Lord.
I steady myself and keep my eyes on the wire. “Did you catch the game last night, Earl?”
He starts rambling about idiot referees, and I know I’ve bought myself a few minutes’ reprieve from the tutorial on everything I’m doing wrong.
“All I’m saying,” Vivian’s Southern drawl carries through the lobby, “is the bar should be open before noon.”
“Yes, well. I’m sure Ellen has her reasons for the bar’s hours.” Haley lowers her voice a smidge. “It’s probably because of everything that happened with Mr. Clemons last year.”
“… things are different now.” Earl’s voice pulls me back.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“I was just missing the good ol’ days.”
For the next ten minutes, Earl picks apart my electrical skills and chats my ear off about how the world was so much better when he was young and how people these days don’t know anything about hard work. He says these things to me as I’m balancing on the world’s oldest ladder while holding a lighting device that weighs more than I do.
“What can I say,” I grit out as I finish with the chandelier. “We’re a lazy generation.”
I climb down the ladder and turn the electricity back on before returning to the lobby. Earl is still in his front-row seat, eagerly waiting to chat my ear off about politics.
Like hell I’m touching that subject.
On my way to the light switch, my eyes catch on a flyer pinned to the activities board by the front desk. It’s an advertisement for the annual Copper Springs Fourth of July Bash, one of the few festivities my hometown actually does well.
Every resident attends, and the town spares no expense on live music, games, food, and pyrotechnics. This will be the first year since I was nine and had a mad case of chicken pox that I won’t be in attendance.
I flip the light switch, and the chandelier lights up in all its ridiculously complicated glory.
The Amazing Levi, ladies and gentlemen. I’ll be here all week.
Just as I’m turning to walk back to my ladder of doom, Pixie rounds the corner and slams into me. Chest to chest, body to body.
The smell of lavender wraps around me as she looks up through startled eyelashes and, for a moment, it’s thirteen months ago and everything is okay. Nothing is broken. Nothing is lost. Her green eyes slowly sink into mine, soft and safe, and I like it. I like it a lot.
Panic floods my veins.
Desperate to rectify any hope, or memory—or God, anything good—I see reflected in her gaze, I give her an annoyed look and make my voice as sharp as possible. “Can I help you?”
The softness vanishes and a sneer twists her face. “Nope.”
She moves past me with a jerk and my heart starts to hammer. I head back to the ladder, my thoughts jumping in and out of memories.
The fourth grade when Pixie would drink all my chocolate milk when I wasn’t looking. Junior year when she would sing along with the radio at the top of her lungs as I drove her home from school.
It feels like a lifetime ago. It feels like yesterday.
“Mm, mm.” Earl stares after Pixie’s retreating form. “I love watching that girl walk away.” He makes another appreciative throat noise, and my fists tighten around the rickety ladder as I fold it up.
“Easy, Earl,” I warn.
I swear to God, between Ellen and Pixie and all the assholes that gawk at them, someone’s going to get their face smashed in.
A gravelly laugh tumbles from his mouth. “Nothing about that girl looks easy.”
I sigh. Tell me about it.
After a few more repairs, I finish for the day and head back to the front desk to collect my mail. Angelo is leaning over the counter, speaking to Haley in his thick Jersey accent.
“Vivian Whethers was trying to get a martini from me before breakfast had even started. That woman can drink her share of liquor, I’ll tell ya that much.” He leans closer to Haley like he’s spilling some huge secret. “And I swear to God she leaves her sticky fingerprints all over my bar top on purpose.”
Haley giggles. “She probably wants to leave her sticky fingerprints all over more than just your bar top.”
“Well, that’s too bad for her.” He winks at Haley. “ ’Cause Vivian ain’t my type.”
I try not to make a face as I step behind the desk. I’m pretty sure Angelo and Haley are sleeping together, which is unsettling because Haley is sweet and bubbly and Angelo is… well, terrifying.
He’s nearing fifty, but carries himself like an angry forty-year-old. He’s built like a bulldog and resembles one too, with his shaved head, golden canine tooth, oversized jowls, and sleeves of tattoos. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a mob boss with minions and a shovel resting beside a bulk supply of hand sanitizer in his trunk.
“How goes it, Levi?” he says, turning his head in my direction.
“It goes.” I frown at the beige envelope topping the pile of mail Ellen set aside for me. Its placement is no accident.
“Good to see you’re finally picking up your letters,” he says. “They’re an eyesore, ya know.”
“Oh, I know,” I say. They’re hurting my eyes as we speak.
Gathering the stack, I go up to my room and toss the top letter on my desk, where it joins five other beige envelopes. All unopened. All making my chest tight.
I’d rather fix a thousand chandeliers than deal with one of those envelopes.
5
Pixie
“I will pee on your bed.” This is my big, scary threat.
Levi used all the hot water again this morning, so I marched into his room in a rage. I never go into Levi’s room. It’s a personal rule of mine.
Our relationship—if you can even call it that—works because it’s simple. We never talk about the past. We sometimes argue. And we always stay out of each other’s business.
But here I am, in the business of Levi’s room, gripping my towel as cold, wet hair drips down my back. I haven’t had a hot shower for four days. Four days. This nonsense has got to stop.
“You seem stressed.” Levi, whose jeans are so low on his bare hips that I can tell he’s going commando, tilts his head. “You know what you need? A nice hot shower… oh wait.” He gives me an impish smile.
I might just pee on his bed right now.
“Joke all you want, Levi. But the next time you’re out fixing a broken window or a fire alarm, I will sneak into your room and pee on your bed.”
I’m dead serious here. If I don’t get a hot shower tomorrow, I really will pee on his bed. Or at least find a cat to come pee on his bed. But either way, there will be urine on his sheets and I won’t feel bad about it.
The impish smile grows. “I can think of better things for you to do in my bed, Pix.”
Silence.
If his plan was to make me uncomfortable by flirting with me, it totally backfired. Because the second those words left Levi’s mouth, his body stiffened in awareness and the space between us became electric. So now we’re staring at each other’s lips and we’re both breathing heavier than necessary, and neither of us is really dressed.
I shift in my towel and feel the material slip a bit as I pull my eyes from his mouth and try to coax my face into a look of something less come-and-get-me and more ew-you’re-pathetic.
I’m gearing up for my comeback—which will be brilliant and kick-ass as soon as I nail it down—when his eyes drop to my chest, and all the air leaves the room.
He’s not looking at my cleavage.
He’s looking at the raised red scar peeking out from the top of my towel. The scar that cuts diagonally across my torso, running from my left hip bone to the top of my right breast. The scar I normally keep hidden under strategic shirts and dresses.
It’s hideous and jagged, but I don’t hide my scar because it’s ugly. I hide it because it’s a reminder of pain and loss. And Levi’s eyes are fixated on it.
Pain. Loss.
My heart starts to pound and I no longer care that my shower was cold or that we have weird sexual tension. I don’t care about Levi’s forearm muscles or the way the bathroom smells like his soap.
I care about my scar and what it means. It hurts me. It hurts him.
It’s the only thing we still have in common, the only thing we absolutely avoid, and now it’s glaring at us—marked on my skin in permanent red, rising along with each of my breaths.
The horror in his eyes has me hollowed out and helpless, and I have no words. Unable to speak, I numbly turn and head down the hall to my room, shutting myself inside a millisecond before my body starts to shake. I lean against the door and try to take a deep breath.
I’m fine.
I’m fine.
I hear Levi’s bedroom door slam closed with a heavy thud, and the vibration runs down the wall and shakes against my back.
He’s not fine.
I’m not fine.
6
Levi
Fuck.
I clench my fists until my arms are shaking. I want to hit something, and I want to scream. God, do I want to scream.
Fuck.
I shove my hands in my hair. I grit my teeth. I stare at nothing.
I slam my fist into the wall and throw my weight behind it, welcoming the sharp sting that smacks against my knuckles and travels up my arm. I punch the wall again and this time the plaster cracks, giving me an odd sense of satisfaction. Another punch and the drywall gives way, leaving a hole, as crimson streaks of blood run between my fingers. I beat at the wall until the pain catches up with me and my fist begins to ache and throb.
Standing back, I rub my uninjured hand across my mouth and survey the destruction. A giant black hole stares back at me as a few leftover pieces of bloodstained drywall crumble to the floor.
Ellen is going to be pissed I broke the wall. But hell.
I’m the fucking handyman.
7
Pixie
I avoid Levi for the rest of the week and he avoids me too. The only real benefit of all the avoidance is the abundance of hot water every morning. Either Levi has decided he no longer needs showers or he’s taking them when I’m not around.
I should be happy about this.
I’m not.
Looking into the bathroom mirror, I frown as a blonde curl falls in my face. I didn’t straighten my hair after my hot shower this morning, so now it’s back to its natural state of wavy chaos. I haven’t worn my hair curly in nearly a year, so the weightlessness of my untamed waves feels foreign as I run a flat iron down my locks until there are no more curls.
My phone beeps on the counter and I look at the screen. Crap. Another text from Matt. I keep forgetting to call him back.
Are we still on for tonight?
Yep! I text back, making sure to add a smiley face. I really suck at the whole keeping in touch thing.
It’s Saturday night and I have plans to meet Jenna and Matt in Tempe to go bar hopping. I spent all week looking forward to ditching the inn, but for some reason I’m no longer excited about leaving.
Rummaging around in my makeup bag, I find my eyeliner and lean over the sink as I carefully start applying it. I hate putting makeup on. I find it to be a waste of time and, frankly, a bit dangerous. Like right now, all it would take is a minor hand cramp for me to poke myself in the eye and render myself permanently blind. Who the hell cares if my eyes are lined in black or green or chicken poop? No one, that’s who.
“Hey, you,” comes a silky voice behind me.
Jenna, my heavily tattooed college dorm mate, enters the bathroom wearing skintight pants and a black shirt that shows off the caramel skin of her flat stomach. Her dark brown hair is straightened and pulled back into a long, sleek ponytail. Her eyes are shadowed in dark purple, she’s got a spiked bracelet on her left wrist, and every piercing she has—including her nose and the seven holes running up each ear—is filled with either a diamond stud or a small black hoop.
Jenna always looks like an angry rock star.
She steps out of her shoes and climbs onto the bathroom counter with the grace of a jaguar before sitting cross-legged beside the sink. “Miss me?”
I lower the eyeliner and look around in confusion. “Where did you come from?”
“Yes,” she says. “Your answer is supposed to be, ‘Yes, Jenna. I missed you like crazy and I wish we were still living together.’ ”
When the semester ended, Jenna got to move into a fancy apartment with two of her cousins, while I got to shack up in the hallway of frigid water and awkward tension. So not fair.
“Yes, Jenna. I missed you like crazy,” I repeat. “Now, where did you come from?”
“The girl at the front desk told me you’d be up here,” she says. “She also told me the woman in room three is a lush and that someone named Earl has a foot fetish. Chatty lass, that one.”
“You have no idea.” I return to lining my eyes with the sharp stick of potential blindness. “But why did you drive all the way out here? I thought I was meeting you in Tempe.”
She shrugs. “I thought I would pick you up so you wouldn’t have to drive. And besides, I wanted to check out your new place.” Her eyes cruise around the bathroom. “So this is where you live?”
“Yep. I sleep in the bathtub.”
“Nice.” She nods. “And where does the handyman sleep?”
I shoot her a look. “Please tell me you didn’t come all the way out here to meet Levi.”
“I didn’t come all the way out here to meet Levi.”
“Jenna.”
“Oh, come on,” she pleads. “He’s like this mythical creature from your past that you keep hidden away. He’s like a puzzle to me. A jigsaw puzzle. One that’s missing like four pieces and the picture guide that goes on the box. I must meet this puzzle.”
When Jenna and I first met last year, I wasn’t looking to become friends with anyone, let alone a crazy Creole girl with ink all over her body and a plethora of voodoo dolls in her suitcase. Yet somehow she managed to crowbar her way into my life—and the vault of my past—and pry out a few scraps of sensitive material, such as my history with Levi.
“He’s not a puzzle or a fictitious creature, and I’m not hiding him,” I say. “How’s Jack?”
Shre
wd golden eyes narrow at me. “And she changes the subject. Curiouser and curiouser.”
I point the eyeliner at her. “Don’t talk like Alice in Wonderland. You know that creeps me out.”
She takes the eyeliner from my hand and starts to add another layer to her catlike eyes. “I don’t want to talk about Jack. I want to talk about Levi.”
“Not happening.”
“Why not?”
“You know why.”
“Come on—”
“Stop,” I say more emphatically than I mean to.
She stares at me for a second. “Fine.”
I turn around to examine my backside in the mirror. I spent all week in ratty jeans and stained T-shirts, so I’m trying to live it up tonight. And for me, living it up means wrapping my butt in a short piece of leather. I’m out of control.
“Is this skirt too short?” I tug the skirt down, but my booty is too bootylicious to be properly contained so the material bounces right back up.
“No. You look hot.” She lowers the liner. “But what’s with the granny sweater?”
She means the cardigan I threw on to hide my scar. I’m not ashamed of my scar—not at all—but I don’t want to run into Levi with my chest exposed and risk a repeat of the other day. A knot forms in my stomach and I swallow to keep it from rising into my throat.
I glance at Jenna and shrug. “I was cold.”
With a few more fruitless yanks of my skirt, I turn back around and start digging through my stuff for another deadly makeup utensil.
“So,” Jenna says casually as she goes back to lining her eyes. “How’s the sex thing going with Matt?”
Oh jeez.
“It’s not,” I say.
She scrunches her nose. “Was your first time really so bad?”
My sexual experience is limited to a one-time disaster with a guy named Benji Barker—that was his name, I kid you not—and it was drunk and sloppy and just… bleh.