CHAPTER 10
Axel’s chest was tight from the brief eye contact he’d just shared with Brynn. It was a sensation he’d been getting used to over the past week. She had the ability to render him speechless with a single smile and to take his breath away with a single look.
He needed to keep his distance.
And he had. Right up until he’d seen her crying. Then he’d had to reach out. It was silly. He knew that her tears were due to the performances she’d just seen, but his heart had still ached at the sight.
Both his mom and his sister tended to get hysterical when they cried. There was yelling and sobbing. As much as he hated seeing them like that what he really couldn’t handle was when they were trying to hold it together and still the tears would fall.
The worst part was that seeing the smile that had spread across her face when she’d seen his text made him feel better and lighter than he had since…well, since their dinner together.
Being the one to put a smile on her face gave him a high that he was afraid he could easily get addicted to. It made him feel like Superman. Making her happy inspired a false sense of invincibility in Axel. If the opportunity presented itself he was sure he could leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Brynn called the next student up and he did another scan of the crowded theater. He was keeping a low profile and staying out of the way for the kids’ auditions. More importantly, he was trying to stay away from Brynn and her hero-inspiring smiles.
He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Other than the fact that there were close to twenty women lining the walls. He recognized a handful of the women because they’d stopped by the theater to welcome him, often bringing muffins and other baked goods. They’d all pretended to be interested in the renovations, but all the conversations had quickly turned personal.
Was he married?
Single?
Gay?
Straight?
Divorced?
Did he have kids?
Once the conversation got off woodworking, he politely excused himself and got back to work.
Other than that, things had been fairly quiet for the week he’d been in Whisper Lake. Luckily, since it was off-season there weren’t many tourists, which gave him a huge advantage.
It wasn’t difficult to decipher who was and who wasn’t a resident of the small, close-knit community. This place was like the town version of Cheers where everyone knew your name. He’d been in town a short time and word had spread like wildfire about him. The women visiting him at the theater weren’t the only ones interested in asking about his personal life. He couldn’t go anywhere without someone, usually several someones, striking up a conversation about how he was “settling in” and asking him about his life and family before he’d arrived there.
At first, he didn’t understand what these strangers’ angles were. Why did they all keep “welcoming” him? Izzy liked to joke that suspicion was part of his DNA. His sister would always tease him by saying that he thought trust was a four-letter word.
She exaggerated but there was truth behind her ribbing. Growing up the way he had, with men coming in and out of his mom’s life, taught him how to spot a hustler, a user, a scammer, and an abuser. He’d developed a fairly fine-tuned bullshit detector by the time he’d reached puberty, and it had only sharpened with time.
His phone vibrated in his pocket and he ducked out of the theater to take the daily call from his sister, still begging him to pick her up. He’d naively assumed once he’d struck the deal with Izzy that the discussion of whether or not she was staying was over.
It wasn’t. At least, not on her end.
“Hey, Squirt. How was school today?”
“Don’t call me that.” He could hear her seething through the phone.
“Sorry,” he automatically apologized.
He honestly hadn’t meant to use the nickname that she’d banned several years ago. Pita, Izzy, and Sis were acceptable. Squirt, Peanut, and Kiddo had been nixed. Sometimes she let his slip-ups slide, but not when she was upset.
And she sounded very upset.
“School sucks! I hate it here!”
“It’s only been a week,” he reasoned.
“I know how long it’s been! Why are you always updating me on the amount of time that has passed since I’ve been here?!” She deepened her voice in what he assumed was an impression of him. “You’ve only been there a couple of days. It’s only been four days. You haven’t even been there a full week. It’s only been a week.” Her voice returned to normal. “Believe me, I’m aware of every day, every hour, every minute, every second that I’m here because it’s excruciating torture!”