Search Me(6)

Instead of arguing that I’d been the same height, if not same barely B cup size the last time he saw me, I continued stacking jam. When I remained unresponsive, he cocked his head at me. “So this is all you’ve got for your old buddy and esteemed serviceman?”

“I told you welcome home, didn’t I?” I winced at the harshness of my words. Was I really being this cruel to him after all he had been through? After I shoved a jar of apricot jam on the shelf, I turned back to him. “Did you really get shot in the bu**ocks like Forest Gump?”

He chuckled. “No, that was just something I told Maudie so she wouldn’t worry so much.” He jerked the hem of his shirt up to show a scar just above the waistband of his jeans. “It came awfully close to nicking my kidney.”

For a moment, my annoyance with his ego was forgotten momentarily, and my heart swelled with sympathy for him. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that. I really am,” I murmured. Then my gaze focused on the way his jeans sat low on his hips, giving me a side view of his washboard abs. A shudder ripped through me as I remembered what those abs felt like against my hands…against my body. I shook my head free of my ridiculous thoughts and started shoving jars of jam on the shelf.

We stood in awkward silence for a few seconds. Conversation had never been this strained between us—even when we were kids and were mad at each other about something. Maddox rubbed the stubble along his chin. “So…after all this time and everything that has passed, I’d hoped you weren’t going to hold a grudge.”

A jar of Muscadine jam slipped through my fingers and then smashed onto the ground. “A grudge? I was trying to be gracious and polite by trying to ignore what you did to me. I mean, what happened between us wasn’t like the time you ‘accidentally’ burned my hair as a kid!” As his serious expression turned to amusement, I changed course as well and snapped, “I had to have four inches cut off! I barely could get it up into a bun for my recital!”

“What can I say? I was a punk through and through. And you,” he leaned in closer to me, “were such a little princess.”

I shoved him back. “I was not.”

“Yes you were.” He grinned at me. “You never wanted to play outside and get dirty, go fishing, or do any of the things I wanted to do.”

“Oh, is that why you’d put worms down my shirt or would shove me into mud piles so you could get me to do what you wanted?”

“Nah, that was just me being a prick,” he replied.

“Your main character trait.” I started to bend over to clean up the broken jar when Maddox took my hand in his.

He gave me a sincerely apologetic smile. “Look, I really am sorry for what happened before.” His jaw clenched and unclenched. “I want more than anything in the world for us to have fun working together, like we did a few years ago. Do you think we can put that one mistake behind us and move on?”

I gazed down to where his fingers wrapped around my arm. Maddox touching me again made my skin crawl. But most of all, it was the fact he thought he could just brush what he had done under the rug so easily. I jerked my arm away and announced, “I’m taking my break.”

“What about this mess?” Maddox asked, motioning to the broken jam.

“You clean it up.” I then narrowed my eyes at him. “After the way you treated me a couple of years ago, I think you owe me a favor or two!”

As he made a strangled noise, I whirled around and started for the refrigerated section. After I grabbed a bottle of my favorite Miss Maudie’s Apple Core cider, I slipped out the door onto the back porch. Luckily, there were no customers eating outside due to the intense heat, so I popped open my drink and eased down in one of the rocking chairs that overlooked a small stream. As the sweet flavor coated my throat, thoughts of that infamous Fourth of July crept into my mind, and for a moment, my stomach tightened so hard I thought I might throw up.

Chapter Three

Three Years Ago

Turning left and right, I surveyed my reflection in the bathroom mirror. The slinky red sundress was probably one of the most daring ensembles I’d worn off the stage. It showed more skin, mainly more cle**age, than I was used to. But I needed something that would catch his eye. Tonight was the night I was going to finally tell Maddox how I truly felt about him.

It had all been building to this moment. I’d been crushing on him for the two previous summers, but he hadn’t given me the time of day until this year. It started out small—hanging around me to talk, winking at me from across the store, asking me to eat lunch with him. Then we started spending time together after hours at his house or mine, usually watching movies or playing video games. All the signs that we were a couple were there…except for us saying the words.

So tonight more than anything, I wanted him to acknowledge how he felt about me. To give me some sign to wait for him while he was gone. You know, the whole old-school romantic notion of being the girl he wrote home to and begged for care packages of homemade cookies. Even though long-distance relationships sucked, I was willing to do anything for Maddox—I loved him that much.

Drawing in a deep breath, I cast one final look at my somewhat wanton appearance before heading out of my bedroom. “I’m on my way to Sarah’s,” I called to my parents who were watching a movie in the living room. A surge of both recklessness and remorse flooded me at lying to my parents. But as overprotective as they were, they would have never let me go to a party at Maddox’s with Maudie gone.