Righting a Wrong (A Ripple Effect Romance Novella) (8 page)

A peaceful feeling of home struck Jace as he drove into Bridger. It had been a long day of haggling with suppliers over raised prices and stressing about what it would mean for his business. He’d cut back everywhere he could, but it wasn’t enough, and if prices continued to rise and his revenues stayed flat, in only a matter of years he’d have to cut his losses and close up shop. The thought made him ill.

Jace needed to decompress and get his mind on other things. He’d go home, eat whatever he could find, take a long, hot shower, and find a home improvement show on TV. Tomorrow, he’d worry about the store.

As he pulled into his driveway, he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and slammed on the brakes. A woman stood outside his front window with her nose pressed to the glass. He leaned forward and squinted. Was that Cambri?

Ever so slowly, she twisted around, moving her hand up to shade her eyes against the light. Next to the darkness of her hair, her face looked pale, almost Snow White-ish. It was pulled back into a loose knot, with a few locks framing her face and deep, red lips. If there was a magic mirror around, it would probably decree Cambri as the fairest one of all.

Too bad Jace was no prince charming.

He quickly killed his engine and his lights with it, leaving Cambri standing in the darkness. She must have recognized his truck because she closed her eyes and shook her head, as though wishing the ground would swallow her whole.

A smile tugged at the corner of Jace’s mouth. In all of his memories, Cambri had always faced life head-on without the typical insecurity or awkwardness that most teenagers experienced. But ever since she returned, or at least whenever Jace bumped into her, that confidence seemed to take a back seat to fluster. It was refreshing and even endearing, as much as he hated to admit it.

Jace slid from his truck and closed the door with a slam. He took a few steps toward her and stopped. “Stalking again, are we?”

She lifted her hands, palms facing up. “You caught me.” She drew her lower lip into her mouth in a nervous gesture, as though she had no idea how to explain her current peeping Tom status. Finally, she shrugged. “It’s not like I set out to spy on you. I was out wandering around and couldn’t resist dropping by my favorite old house—which is now yours, I hear.”

She made it sound like recent news, as though she’d just found out. “From whom?”

“Lydia. She was just leaving when I showed up.” Cambri gnawed on her lower lip again before rushing on to say, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have peeked, but you’ve done such a great job with the outside, I just wanted to see what the inside looked like.”

“Oh.” Jace wasn’t sure how he felt about her liking the house. While the prideful part of him couldn’t help but preen, another side wanted her to hate it—the way Eden would have hated him for updating her childhood home. This was his place now, and all the renovations he’d made had been to make it his home—not Cambri’s. But now that she’d approved of the changes, she was back in everything, and Jace suddenly felt like he needed to make over his makeover just so it could be all his again.

Cambri shuffled her feet then waved her hand in a flippant gesture. “So there you have it—the story of how I inadvertently became a real stalker. Want to call the police now? I’ll go without a fight if it means I don’t have to stand here feeling stupid anymore.”

There it was again—that charming insecurity that sneaked under the fence of his indifference and touched a tender spot in his heart. “Did you walk here?”

Another shuffle. Another shrug. “I didn’t mean to walk this far. My feet just kept on going.” She cringed. “I think I need to stop talking now. That sounded lame.”

A snicker escaped Jace’s mouth, and his gaze dropped to the ground. His foot scuffed against the crumbling walkway, dislodging a piece of concrete. He reached down to grab it then held it up for Cambri’s inspection. “I always told you this place was a wreck.”

“And yet you bought it.” It was both a statement and a question.

Jace tossed the piece of concrete to the ground and shoved his hands into his pockets, looking up at the house. “It came on the market a few months back when I happened to be looking and it was pretty much my only option.” He chuckled. “The one house I used to tease you about liking. And now I own it. Go figure.”

“It’s called karma.” Cambri smiled. “Admit it. I was right. This place has character.”

“Maybe.” He smiled slightly, glancing her way. “It definitely reminds me of you.”

She caught his gaze and held it, making Jace’s heart pound in an uneven rhythm. “In a good way or bad?”

Whether it was the darkness of the night or the reminder of a time when he used to talk to Cambri about everything, Jace felt himself wanting to open up to her. But like a rusted hinge being pried open, the words didn’t come as easy as they used to. “A little of both maybe. Mostly good, though. And yes, you were right, it does have great character.”

Cambri stepped to his side and indicated the house. “You’ve made it beautiful—more so than I ever envisioned. I always knew you were talented from all the cool things you used to make in your shop classes—but this
…
this is impressive. It’s very you.”

Three little words, and suddenly the house was all his again. “Thanks.”

“Did you have to kill the tree though?” Cambri smiled as she said it, but there was an underlying sadness in her voice that pricked Jace’s heart.

But what else could he do? There was no disguising the tree, or changing it to make it Jace’s and not hers. Every time he’d driven down Rose Street, that maple taunted him with the reminder of a perfect kiss gone way wrong and a friendship destroyed.
It had to go.
“The roots were making the sidewalk buckle.”

She looked at the spot where it had once stood and shook her head sadly. “It was so big. So beautiful. So perfect.”

And so in his face. “Your attachment to that tree wasn’t healthy. You’ll thank me for getting rid of it someday.”

She cocked her head at him and lifted an eyebrow. “Just like you’re now thanking me for accidentally driving your bullet bike into the pond?”

Jace frowned. “I’ll never thank you for that. That was a travesty.”

“And you accuse me of having an unhealthy obsession,” she muttered.

“What are you talking about? You loved that bike too.”

“Not enough to fish it out of the pond and hold a burial service for it.”

“That bike was family.” Jace shook his head, then chuckled at the memory. “It took all day to dig a hole big enough for that bike.”

“I know. I helped! Remember?”

Jace did remember. Cambri, covered in dirt and sweat, glaring at him from the bottom of the hole. “This is taking forever,” she’d said. “Why don’t we just throw it in front of a semi just to break it down a little? Or better yet—have it cremated?”

“Is that what you’d want done to you after you die?” he’d countered.

“No.” She wiped her matted hair away from her face. “I would have wanted you to leave me at the bottom of the pond,” she grumbled. “Which is exactly where that bike should still be.”

And that was why Jace had insisted on burying the bike. He got to spend the entire day with Cambri because of it. Even though it made him look overly attached to a hunk of metal, it had been worth it.

“I’ve always wondered if the new owners of our old house ever dug that up,” said Jace. “It’s not like we buried it that deep. All it would take was a good tiller to expose some of those rusted old remains.”

Cambri shivered. “Don’t say that. I can’t stand the sound of grinding metal or metal scraping anything. It’s almost as bad as fingernails on a chalkboard.”

“You mean like a shovel grating against rock or the sound of car breaks grinding or—”

“Stop.” Cambri clamped her hand over his mouth. “I almost forgot how evil you can be.”

“Almost?” Jace said, his voice muffled by her hand. He’d meant it as a joke, but the humor drained from her face as she met and returned his gaze. Her hand slowly dropped from his mouth, and she looked away.

Jace would give anything to know what she was thinking.

She cleared her throat, and her voice took on a forced brightness. “Hey, you don’t, by chance, take on side projects, do you? I was thinking of having my dad’s old shed rebuilt. It’s falling apart, and he could really use a bigger one.” Her eyes met his again, looking anxious. “I’d pay you, of course.”

Her question was met with silence, mostly because Jace didn’t know how to answer. Once again, his shoe scuffed against the sidewalk, and he watched the concrete crumble. Like the digging of that ridiculous hole for his bike, he wanted to say yes, to spend more time with her. He wanted to remember the old and discover the new, but she was leaving, and Jace had learned long ago that the only thing she wanted from him was friendship. He didn’t think he could go back to that.

“I’m actually pretty busy right now with this house. But I know a guy who’d be interested if you want his name and number.”

“Oh, um, yeah
…
” Did she sound disappointed? “That’d be great.”

Jace nodded toward the house. “C’mon in, and I’ll get it for you. I’ll even let you take a look around—in a non-creepy, legal way.”

“Ha ha,” she said.

Inside, Jace watched Cambri as she walked slowly around the bare room. She ran her hand up and down the smooth banister, across the white fireplace mantle, and briefly touched the gray semi-gloss paint before turning back to him.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Did you do all this work yourself?”

He nodded. “I like to stay busy. It keeps me out of trouble.”

“Since you were always such a troublemaker,” she joked.

“I was,” said Jace. “Mr. Badboy himself.”

Cambri laughed at that, and Jace stiffened. He hadn’t heard that laugh since she’d returned. It was her real laugh—the one that used to warm him up from the inside out and make his days happier. The one that brightened the bare, dimly lit room now. The one that would be walking out the door in just a few minutes.

She wandered into the kitchen and ran her fingers across the ugly orange laminate countertop. Other than the floor, Jace hadn’t done anything to the kitchen yet.

“What do you plan to do in here?” she asked.

“Leave it as is,” came his answer. “I’m a sucker for that orange.”

Cambri laughed again, and the room brightened a little more. Even the countertops looked a little less hideous. “You could always paint the cabinets black and make it Halloween-ish since you love that holiday so much,” she teased again. Jace had once made the mistake of telling her that he hated Halloween and all the gruesome costumes that came with it. From that point forward, she’d shown up on his doorstep every October 31, wearing the most hideous costume she could come up with.

Jace leaned against the counter and folded his arms. “I should enlarge some of those pictures of you in that Joker costume to hang on the wall.” Thinking about it still gave him the heebie geebies. The blackened eyes, the white, crackled face, the bright red lips that bled beyond the point where lips should bleed. And her hair—all scraggly and oily looking.

“I used to dress up as a princess or maid or movie star,” said Cambri with a wistful smile. “But then I got to know you and
…
things changed.”

“I’ll say. I brought out the worst in you.”

Cambri looked down and picked at the corner of the counter, where a bit of laminate had come loose. “Maybe when it came to Halloween costumes. But otherwise I really liked myself when I was with you. With everyone else, I always felt like I had to say the right thing, look the right way, and fit the right image. But with you, I could be goofy, stupid, ugly, and silly, and I knew you wouldn’t care. You liked me no matter what.”

She peeked at him in a hesitant way, and a palpable energy filled the space between them.
Why did you leave then? Why didn’t you return my calls? Why didn’t you keep in touch? And why did you kiss me back?
Because she had. It had been tentative at first, but then her fingers were in his hair and her lips moving hard and hungry against his. For a brief moment, Jace had felt like he’d somehow managed to get the one girl he never really believed he could ever get.

But then Cambri froze, slowly backed away, and asked him to drive her home. Two days later, she’d left town and that was that. No explanation, no goodbye, nothing. Just gone.

The feelings of way back when slammed into Jace once again, feeling fresh and raw. Six years, and he still hadn’t put it behind him. Six years, and she could still make him feel this way. His jaw clenched in frustration.

“Listen, Jace.” Cambri was back to picking at the laminate with her fingernail. “I know this is long overdue, but I owe you an apology.”

Jace swallowed. “No need. It’s all water under the bridge now.”

Her head shook. “Maybe for you it is, but not for me. It never has been. I know I have no right to ask you anything, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d hear me out.” She paused. “Please.”

With a sigh, Jace dropped down on a barstool and nodded.

The mole to the side of her lips twitched a moment, and then she began. “When Mom died, everything changed, including Dad. He went from being the person who stayed out of my way and let Mom deal with me to someone who was always in my way. Nothing I did seemed to satisfy him. He hated that I was a cheerleader. He didn’t like my friends—except you, of course. And when I started talking about going across the country to school, he got after me about that too. He couldn’t understand why I wanted to go to Penn State over CSU. It didn’t matter that Penn State had the program I wanted to attend and CSU didn’t. And the more he pushed, the more stifled I felt.”