Heart So Hollow (Dire Wolves Book 1), page 15
Moments later, Hannah appears in front of him, “Can you drop me off at my apartment?” I hear her say as I arrive at his side.
The audacity.
He casts her a blasé look, “Where’s your man?”
“He left.” She’s curt and to the point. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Can’t.” He’s also curt and to the point.
She scowls at him, “Why?”
In her effort to ignore me, Hannah doesn’t notice my head and eyebrow movements as they volley back and forth between her and Bowen, making a mockery of her plight. But Bowen sees it, evident by the twitch in the corner of his mouth as he tries not to laugh.
“Did you ask Hildy?” he asks, glancing around for his sister.
“No.” Hannah mumbles as she gazes off into the distance.
Right then, Hildy and Jay appear on the porch with Bowen’s parents, Leona and Rick. Leona looks like she’s ready to hit the next party in her black strappy heels and tight, pink maxi dress. Rick looks like he just wants to go home and sleep.
Hildy stops in front of Bowen, “Are you ready to go?”
He reaches for my hand and starts down the brick steps, “Yep.”
All of us descend into the parking lot and head toward the back corner where Bowen’s truck is parked. I remember Hildy and Jay’s SUV is parked in the same direction. As my heels click against the asphalt, all I can think about is how amazing it’s going to feel when I take them off.
Bowen turns to me, “Why don’t you drive?”
At first, I don’t register his question. But when I do, a sense of dread washes over me.
My head falls back in exasperation, “Please don’t do this.”
“Why?” He sounds mildly insulted.
“I don’t want to drive your truck,” I whine forlornly.
I assume Bowen’s implying he’s had too much to drink. Not only do I not want to drive his tank of a truck after a night of partying, but it catches me off-guard that he would even suggest it. He never lets anyone drive his truck. I’ve only driven it twice; once when Bowen dared me that I was too scared to drive it, and the other time I moved it when it was blocking someone else in the driveway. And when he came out to leave for work the next morning, it looked like someone ran it off the gravel driveway in a drunken stupor and ditched it in the yard.
Bowen stops as we reach the corner of the lot, “Fine,” he turns to me, “then just drive yours.”
“Did you forget you drove here?” I snicker.
Bowen tosses something at me and I flinch as I catch it against my chest. It’s a set of keys.
“I told you I don’t want to drive your truck,” I say, holding the keys back out to him.
Bowen lowers his voice, “Why don’t you check out those keys?”
When I finally look at them, I realize it’s my pink carabiner with my condo keys, my bike rack key, and my key ring cards for the grocery store and library. But something is missing...
Instead of the car key for my old Impreza, there’s a Chevy key fob in its place. I look up at Bowen in utter confusion. He bows his head and motions over my shoulder. When I turn around, I come face to face with the back of a bright white Tahoe with a bike rack—my bike rack—affixed to the hitch. I look at Bowen, back at the Tahoe, and then back at Bowen again.
He stares back at me with a half-smile, “Your birthday’s coming up, I figured this would be a good time to surprise you.”
My mind is racing and I have no idea what to think.
“What?” I finally shriek, my mouth hanging open while cheers and laughter erupt behind me. “You bought me a car?”
He nods, his Cheshire Cat grin spreading across his face.
“Happy birthday!” Hildy cackles over my shoulder.
I whip around to her, still in shock, “Did you know?”
“Of course, I did,” she rolls her eyes, “who do you think drove it here?”
I remain in the middle of the parking lot, dumbstruck as both Hildy and Leona embrace me on both sides, squeezing me between them. After finally composing myself, I turn and jump into Bowen’s arms, knocking him backward.
“I love you, baby girl,” he presses his cheek to the side of my head, speaking into my ear, “now you don’t even have to take your bike off the rack if you don’t want to.”
I laugh to myself, impressed that he would even remember such an insignificant complaint about limited backseat and cargo room. One thing is for sure, I definitely never would’ve anticipated this. The Tahoe isn’t as big as his F250, but it’s still big. Not a barge, but maybe just a shrimp boat.
Over Bowen’s shoulder, I steal a glance at Hannah, and our eyes meet for a split second.
To anyone else, it’s a casual exchange, regarding the people standing around me. But the eyes betray emotion. And while I’m filled with exhilaration, the look of forced happiness on her face is overwhelming. The lack of glimmer and smile lines in her expression tells the real story. But a second later, it doesn’t matter. Once I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of my brand-new SUV, I forget all about everything else. Except one thing.
“Bowen,” I turn the key fob over in my hands, “do you still want me to live with you?”
He reaches over from the passenger seat and slowly plucks the carabiner from my hands.
He flips through the keys and lifts a silver one with a hexagonal head between his thumb and index finger, “You already do.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Brett
One Year Ago
I’ve never been good at packing. I waver between a capsule wardrobe that can fit in a weekender and a full-size suitcase filled with 30 pairs of underwear and a pair of cowboy boots, just in case. This time is no different.
I commit to a carry-on, which is more than enough space for a four-day trip to Toronto. Except that right now, it looks like my red suitcase is vomiting the contents of my dresser drawers across the bed. Waylon lays sprawled across the grey carpet, in the middle of the room, snoring. He’s adorable, but no help. I turn back to the bed, realizing that, in addition the packing, I should’ve gone through my clothes after the move and donated about a third of them. So, that’s what I do on a Sunday afternoon, the day before Bowen and I are supposed to fly to Toronto to spend Christmas with my sister, Jo, and my brother-in-law, Omar. Instead of packing, I go through all my clothes and decide what to donate and what to pack into totes to store until summer.
I should’ve done this when I moved in. The market was still hot when my condo sold a month ago and even though I hadn’t lived there that long, it still sold for over asking price. I’m still riding that high, ecstatic to put some money in the bank and not have to turn around and throw it on another down payment. When it was all said and done, I filled the entire bed of Bowen’s truck with boxes of books and he built two brand new bookshelves to hold the ones that wouldn’t fit on his existing shelves.
Once my warm-weather clothes are packed up, I begin carting them down to the lower level of the house. Currently, it’s a sparse second living room, lined with floor to ceiling windows and a sliding glass door leading out back. There’s an extra bedroom that serves as an extra storage space filled with shelving, boxes, and random furniture that doesn’t go anywhere else. The totes full of warm weather clothes will go here, too.
I find a space next to a metal shelving unit and sit the tote down next to it. Bowen doesn’t do clutter, which is fortunate because neither do I. Maybe that’s why I decided to move in with him. He’s organized. Very…organized.
Everything has a place, and this room where all the extras go to live is no different. I stroll over to the metal shelves, examining the boxes and containers and extra books stacked neatly. At the far end of the shelf, I come to a maroon binder and two brown leather photo albums leaning against a cardboard box with another shoebox sitting on top of it. I lift the maroon binder off the shelf and open it. It’s filled with an array of colorful, themed scrapbook pages. The title page is labeled with, Bowen Garrison, Social Studies, clearly a middle school project. The first brown leather album is filled with random family photos that span Bowen and Hildy’s entire childhood. The second one includes photos from high school; a mixture of parties, vacations, and sporting events.
For a moment, I wonder if I should be looking through Bowen’s stuff like this, but I brush it off—it’s only old photos and memorabilia. I replace the albums and reach for the shoebox. Inside is a pile of loose photos and papers. The first is a high school soccer team photo with Bowen standing in the back row. His black hair is longer and tied back at the crown of his head. The second is a high school softball team photo with Hildy kneeling in the front row, her black hair much longer and flipped up at the ends.
I flip through the rest of the photos and papers, examining each one: Hildy and the redheaded girl from the photos upstairs, both in softball uniforms, a page torn from a yearbook with the senior photo of the same girl, and a printed news article, the headline reading, Canaan Senior Vanishes, with a photo of the redheaded girl below it. I scan the article from years ago, reading about how Evie Maguire disappeared from a gas station one night, a month before graduation. She was a star softball player bound for UCLA on scholarship.
This must be who Bowen was talking about, his friend who died back in high school, for whom he got Amy Lee’s lyrics tattooed on his ribs. My muscles tense and I feel a chill creep over my skin. I quickly fold up the article and tuck it back into the pile, flipping to the next photo.
The next few are of Bowen and a girl I don’t recognize from any of the pictures upstairs. She has long, thick, auburn hair and green eyes that pop when she smiles. In most of the photos, she has her arms around Bowen, obviously his girlfriend at some point. There’s nothing that says her name, only pictures.
I replace the photos and fold the top of the shoebox down. As I tuck Bowen’s past back onto the shelf, I remember I’m supposed to be packing. I wonder if the girl with the auburn hair is the one who ghosted him. Logic would say so, but I suppose it doesn’t matter now. We all hang on to random memories from the past, myself included. Who knows what I have saved in middle school photo albums and journals from long ago. So, for now, the nameless girl will stay a mystery in Bowen’s miniature sarcophagus of memories.
●●●
Unlike me, Bowen is much more concise when it comes to packing for a trip. It takes him five minutes to pack a duffel bag with everything he needs for a week. It takes him even less time to realize why I’m staring at him like a lunatic as I watch him do it. By Monday afternoon, his five-minute bag is sitting on the floor of Jo and Omar’s guest room next to mine, which looks like it’s been detonated by the bomb squad. Again, I’m organized in every other aspect, but packing is still a struggle.
“I don’t know what I’m doing with you,” Omar mutters to Jo as he takes another biscuit from the cast iron pan in the middle of the table, “this guy should just move in.” Then he nods at me and Jo, “You two, return to the States, I’ll be up here eating butter and lard like a king.”
Jo tosses a crumpled-up paper towel across the table. It bounces off Omar’s chest and falls to the floor.
“Or,” Jo glares at him, “you could just have him teach you how to make them and you could be the biscuit king, too.”
“I think that would make you the biscuit prince,” I smirk while slathering my own biscuit in butter.
Omar scrunches up his face and waves me off, “Small detail.”
“Where’d you learn to make these?” I turn to Bowen, “The last time I tried to make biscuits, they turned out flat.”
Bowen takes a swig of coffee, “Nanna Ginny, my dad’s mom. Six years old and she had me cutting lard into the flour.”
“Oh, I thought you were going to say your mom.”
“Nanna never gave mom the recipe,” he snickers.
“Why not?”
“No one knows,” he replies, leaning back in his chair. “She kind of did before she died, but they turned out awful, so everyone thought she gave mom the wrong directions on purpose. Like, on her deathbed.”
Jo explodes in laughter, nearly spewing coffee across the table, “I’m sorry,” she takes a breath, brushing her sandy hair away from her face, “that is next-level petty, and I love it.”
I can’t help myself, I have to laugh too, as I envision Leona glowering at a pan of ruined biscuits, cursing her dead mother-in-law for sabotaging her attempt to carry on the coveted family recipe.
Bowen grins and looks over his shoulder at me, “It’s kind of like your book—bad blood over the family secrets.”
“Plot twist—” I take a bite of my biscuit, “the big secret is Crisco. Voila! This book just wrote itself.”
“Speaking of which,” Jo stands up and takes her plate over to the sink, “have you finished the book?”
“Not yet,” I shake my head and stand up to follow her, “but I will. It goes a lot slower when I can only write for a couple of hours at a time.”
Omar sits back in his chair and throws his hand in the air, “Quit your job!” Then he motions to Bowen, “He makes money. Family business, right? He’s the American Dream. What’s the problem?”
Now it’s my turn to choke on my coffee. “No,” I cough, “I’m not going to quit my job.”
Bowen shrugs, “Why not?” he cracks a smile, “I mean, if you’re serious about being a writer…”
“See?” Omar brushes the crumbs off his hands and onto his plate, “What are you complaining about? Done!” he declares, considering the matter resolved.
“Thank you,” I empty the rest of my coffee into my mouth, “in the future, I’ll just let the two of you all make my major life decisions for me.”
Bowen stretches and clasps his hands behind his head, “We bring solutions to the table.”
“For the record, I wouldn’t usually endorse something like this, but,” Jo leans back against the edge of the sink, “you’re an amazing writer and someone is going to want to publish it, so,” she glances to the side, “they might have a point…”
Claps and shouts erupt from the table as Jo shrugs, reluctantly taking their side.
“You all are ridiculous—especially you, Captain Sensible,” I narrow my eyes at her, “I am not talking about this right now!” I exclaim through the cacophony of laughter. “Moving on. Christmas Eve—what’s the plan for today?”
Jo crosses her arms and looks up at the ceiling in thought, “Dinner at seven,” then she lets her eyes fall to me, “I told Bowen he has to take you to the Christmas market in the Distillery District because you’ve never been and it’s amazing. But prime rib will be done by seven, so don’t be late.”
“You guys aren’t coming?” I ask.
“Not this time,” Jo replies with a shake of her head, “we still have Christmas stuff to do around here,” she glances at Bowen and Omar with a slight smile, “so, get out.”
Omar lets us borrow his Audi to take to the Distillery District, but I don’t know how to drive a stick. However, Bowen can, which he makes known by drifting out of their neighborhood and shooting down the highway like a NASCAR driver. Speeding past every other car on the road, Hildy’s voice pops into my head and I immediately remember her talking about how Bowen and Jay used to street race in high school.
My eyes dart between him and the dashboard, the speedometer climbing rapidly until it reaches 90 mph. Bowen doesn’t say anything, he just watches me out of the corner of his eye, glancing back at the road every few seconds as everything whips by at warp speed. I let out a startled gasp when he suddenly swerves into the right lane, smoothly passing the car in front of us. A few moments later, he takes the off-ramp so fast that he drifts around the curve, but he never crosses the line onto the shoulder.
When he turns the next corner into a straightaway, he jerks the gearshift and slingshots over the undulating pavement into a tunnel of pines, sending a wave of butterflies through my stomach. At the next curve, I raise my arms over my head and close my eyes, harkening back to summer trips to Cedar Point with my friends back in middle school. We’d ride the rollercoasters over and over again, all day long, daring each other to keep our arms raised the entire time.
I don’t lower my arms or open my eyes until I feel Bowen let off the gas. The Audi coasts to a legal speed as we approach a traffic light in the distance, bringing the rollercoaster to an end. A sharp heat hits my nostrils, the faint smell of acrid rubber and brake rotors drifting through the vents. Then I notice he’s watching me from the driver’s seat with an expression I’ve never seen before. His mouth is slightly ajar and he’s looking at me like he’s seen a ghost.
I give a faint laugh, “What?”
“Nothing,” he replies softly, shaking his head.
“Oh, sorry,” I say sarcastically, “was that not the reaction you were expecting?”
Bowen smiles, “Something like that,” then he reaches over the console and slides his hand over the inside of my thigh, “you would’ve been my shotgun back in the day.”
Once we’re in the Distillery District, it seems like Bowen knows where he’s going. We weave through the crowd, immersing ourselves in the balsam and cedar and sticky aromas of cinnamon and vanilla. I stroll at a glacial pace past the booths filled with Christmas ornaments, perusing the porcelain turtle doves and pine silhouettes covered in glitter and holly berries.
Bowen Garrison never claimed to be a sentimental person, but I suspect he does have some shred of nostalgia based on the box of photos and tragic memories in his basement. Granted, he doesn’t know I’ve seen the box and I’m not about to tell him. But in spite of my lack of urgency, he waits for me to sift through the racks and racks of Christmas ornaments to pick the perfect one.
“I didn’t know you were so hardcore about Christmas ornaments. You don’t have many of them,” he says while perusing a rack of postcards against the wall.
“That’s why I have to pick the perfect one—because I only pick one each Christmas.”
