I Stand Before You (Judge Me Not #2)(39)

Walking next to Chase, things are so far beyond okay I can barely contain myself.

I return the bump, with my hip to the top of his leg. “Maybe I’m just saving all my talking for when we get to the diner,” I shoot back. “Just wait, soon enough you’ll be missing the quiet me.”

“Any you you’re giving, Kay, is fine with me,” is his quiet retort. His words make my heart skip two beats this time.

Despite his ability to say these things that make my heart thump and skip, I am actually growing more comfortable around Chase. This complicated guy may have moments of intensity that catch me off guard, but there’s this current of ease—of rightness—I feel in just being around him. You know how once in a while you meet someone you just connect with, right from the start. Well, it’s like that, but…more. I feel connected to Chase, but pulled to him as well. Something is developing here, something intoxicating. Whatever it is it makes me positively giddy. I don’t want this feeling to pass, but I sure hope Chase feels something similar.

At the diner, back in the same booth as yesterday, we order food and talk about our mornings. We also eye each other knowingly a while later when our waitress, who has turned into a bitch since shortly after we sat down, ignores us for the umpteenth time. I’ve already told Chase I suspect our disgruntled server’s change in attitude—from overly friendly at the start to progressively dismissive—is a direct result of him not flirting back when we first sat down and ordered. The waitress, a different one from yesterday, worked her game pretty hard initially, giggling and trying to catch Chase’s eye as she took our orders and brought us waters. She gave up though when she realized the beautiful man seated across from me wasn’t going to play with her, a fact that pleased me far more than it probably should have. But it did, especially since our waitress is very pretty.

We finished our meals a while ago, but Miss Disgruntled has yet to clear our plates. I also asked for more water about ten minutes ago, but that’s apparently been forgotten as well.

While we wait, I steal a few leftover fries from Chase’s plate, and we check out the old photographs lining the dividers between the big windows. The photo closest to Chase depicts a part of town that was once all farmland.

“The first house my dad ever built is in the plan that’s there now,” Chase says, unmistakable pride in his voice as his eyes remain on the faded photograph.

Everyone in town knows Chase’s father passed away several years ago out in Vegas. Suicide is the rumor. But even though it was a long time ago, there’s no telling how raw the wounds remaining still may be. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, firsthand, it’s that time doesn’t always heal every wound, especially those on the psyche. Therefore, I tread carefully.

“That’s pretty impressive,” I begin. “I’ve driven by that plan a lot, and those homes are very nice. Really well-built, too, I’ve heard.”

Chase’s eyes stay on the photo. “Yeah, I guess they are.” His voice is so low I can barely hear him.

“So, you’re family has always lived here? Like, your grandparents, are they from Harmony Creek too?”

I’m trying to not talk specifically about his father—those wounds obviously still run deep, as I suspected—but I don’t want to change the subject completely. I’d like to learn more about Chase’s background.

“Yeah,” he replies, looking away from the picture and back in my direction. “My grandparents were born here and they lived here all their lives. The house I live in now has been in our family for decades.”

“That’s out on Cold Springs Lane, right?”

I know the answer, but I want to keep the conversation flowing. Chase nods, and then, to my delight, he shares a little bit of detail from his early childhood.

His parents lived with his grandmother in the Cold Springs Lane house right after they were first married. They were young, he tells me, just turned twenty. Chase was born soon after. He says some of his earliest memories are of living in the farmhouse. He recalls his father once putting him up on his shoulders, walking around the property, and telling him it would one day all belong to him.

“Never thought it would be this soon though,” Chase says sadly as he glances back at the picture of the land where his dad built his first house.

Chase seems to become a little lost in his memories as he continues talking, telling me how his mom used to read him bedtime stories when he was really little. She’d tuck him in his covers, kiss his forehead, and promise him their family would always be together.

“We’re strong, honey,” he tells me she’d say. “I love you and your father more than life itself. Nothing will ever tear us apart.”

That’s what she’d tell the little boy who grew into the stunningly handsome man now sitting across from me. But even I know how that turned out.

Chase suddenly looks like maybe he’s divulged too much, and he quickly moves his story forward, detailing instead how his father’s construction business started to do really well. His parents moved out of the farmhouse, stayed here in Harmony Creek for a few more years, and then moved out to Nevada. His little brother, Will, was born out there, back when Chase was nine.

“Las Vegas, wow, can’t get much different than here,” I say. “So, what was it like?”

I mean the climate, the city, but Chase thinks I mean something else, something more personal. He looks away, out the window, to where there’s a family walking by—a dad, a mom, a little boy.