CHAPTER 5
Axel Vaughn.
The first thought Brynn had when her eyes fluttered open was of the man that had caused her to toss and turn in a sheet-twisting night of fantasy and frustration.
He’d filled every second of every minute of every hour of her thoughts since he’d walked off her deck after their dinner the night before at nine p.m. She’d tried to go to sleep. Hadn’t worked. So, she’d tried to lose herself in her Netflix. No dice. Tried again to read her new book. That was the biggest failure of all. She’d just kept picturing Axel as the hero.
The only time she’d ever come close to experiencing this level of obsession was the first time she tasted a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut. Mrs. Lindy had brought in a box as a treat and left it in the teachers’ lounge. One taste was all it took and she’d been utterly addicted. She’d tell herself that she wasn’t going to have one, and then find herself in line ordering a dozen. Having two doughnuts with a cup of coffee for breakfast had been a daily habit that had resulted in her not fitting into any of her jeans three months and fifteen pounds later.
She’d tried to ween herself off of them, but she ended up having to go cold turkey. Saliva still filled her mouth every time she walked into the break room and saw that damn white box with the green dots. It was a problem.
And she feared her new neighbor was a problem as well. He was even more potent and addicting than the gooey, sugary goodness of a glazed doughnut.
How could a man that she barely knew hold this much power over her brain?
She grabbed her phone off her nightstand and was not surprised at the time displayed. Every morning, without fail, she woke up at five a.m. Sleeping in was not an option for Brynn. She had a paper route from twelve to fourteen and since then she’d had an internal clock that was always set. It didn’t matter if she’d been up all night; at five a.m. her brain decided it was time to rise and shine.
When Ryder was a baby it had been miserable. Thankfully, she was younger and had more energy then. She wasn’t sure she’d fare as well now if she were dealing with a newborn on such little sleep.
Knowing that she was up for the day, she sat up and tugged her laptop, which was beside her on the bed, onto her lap. She tapped the space bar and the screen lit up, illuminating the darkened room. When it did, Brynn typed “Axel Vaughn” into the Google search bar.
“It’s totally reasonable to want to know who is going to be living on the property,” Brynn explained to Lucy who was curled up beside her. The pug couldn’t care less but Brynn felt better stating it out loud.
She’d been tempted to do a little background check on him after dinner last night. But she was afraid that it was the wine that was spurring her on. Drunk texting got a lot of people in trouble, she didn’t want to drunk search.
As the screen populated, she scanned down the first page of results. There was not a lot of information on him. No social media. She clicked on ‘images’ and saw none that matched the man who took her breath away.
Her nail tapped on the side of her laptop as she bit the inside of her lip. There had to be some digital evidence of his existence.
“Yes!” she exclaimed as a thought hit her and she typed “Izzy Vaughn” into the search bar.
She had no idea if his little sister shared his last name, or if it was creepy trying to get information on him via his teenage sister, but if Izzy was anything like the teens Brynn knew, she’d have a social media presence.
When she pressed enter, the first result was an Instagram page. She clicked on it and saw a young girl with long blonde hair and deep brown eyes that were the spitting image of the ones that she’d stared into over dinner last night.
Bingo.
It only took one scroll down to hit the jackpot. There was a picture of Axel glaring at the camera and Izzy smiling brightly as she took a selfie at a baseball game. It was captioned big bro + baseball = good times. There were several more pictures of Axel, in most he was wearing the same unhappy expression. It was clear he was not a fan of having his picture taken.
There were other pictures of Izzy alone, Izzy with friends, and Izzy with food, but Brynn noticed that there were none of her mom.
She clicked on another photo of Izzy and Axel and when she read the caption it squeezed her heart like a vise. It was a sequence of pictures. Some were side by side in split screen and some were solo.
The first was a teenage Axel in a hospital room holding a newborn baby that had the words Day One written across the bottom.
Axel in a cap and gown throwing that same baby up in the air.
Right beside it was a shot of a young Axel in his fatigues with a towhead toddler on his shoulders, at the bottom it read Year Two.
She swiped her thumb across the screen and saw Axel in dress blues on what looked like his wedding day bending down and talking to a girl with big blonde curls wearing a white dress, a flower wreath, and holding a basket of petals with the words Year Three written below.
And it kept going like that.
A shirtless Axel in the pool with Izzy wearing floaties with words Year Four under it.
Axel in basketball shorts and a T-shirt holding the back of a bike as a young Izzy’s blonde hair flew out from beneath a helmet with Year Five written.
There was one where Axel is sitting in a hospital room next to Izzy lying in bed holding a sign that read Goodbye Tonsils and beneath it saying Year Six.