Sweet Southern Sorrow Read online

She stands up quickly, almost knocking the chair over. “I was told I was going to be a production analyst. Not a frickin’ lackey,” she seethes, and I try to suppress the grin that’s threatening to cross my face when I hear her Southern accent coming out.

  “You’re not going to be a lackey. You’re going to be my right hand. I’m taking on more responsibility and I need to be working with someone I trust. Call it fate or whatever, but you landed in my office and I can’t think of anyone else better suited for the position. However, I need to know that you’re committed to this job. That you’re not going to run away if things get tough. I need to know you’re with me on this one hundred percent, all the way.”

  Her scowl returns and I know she gets what I’m trying to say. Surprisingly, she doesn’t play into it. “I assure you, I’m committed to this job, and I’ll work my ass off. But this needs to be strictly business. I didn’t move across the country to be back in the same room with you day in and day out, but it’s a little late to turn back now,” she says, looking at me straight in the eyes, waiting for me to respond.

  “I can be professional, Ms. Hamilton,” I tell her, and she narrows her eyebrows when I use her last name. I decide to act cool so she doesn’t know that her very presence is getting to me. “I’m sure you learned this morning about our strict sexual harassment policies, and I have no intention of ending up in HR because of our past. The way I see it, that was a lifetime ago. We’re both adults, and a lot of time has passed since that summer. There’s no need for any awkwardness.”

  The look in her eyes changes from defiance to what looks like hurt, but I know I must be seeing things. It’s cold the way I just brushed off the summer we had together, the one where she made me fall in love with her. It’s just that, with her standing here in front of me, knowing that she probably hasn’t given me a single thought in the last six years makes me want to put up a front, yet at the same time, when I look at her, I can still see my Cheyenne, my pretty girl, and I want nothing more than to wrap her up in my arms, begging her to never leave me again.

  Her voice tears me away from my thoughts, and it’s a damn good thing because I was close to remembering that day on the dock, the when I finally got up the courage to kiss her deeper than I did at the tattoo shop. “Understandable, Mr. Callahan. And you’re right. We’re both professionals and should treat this working relationship as such,” she says, and the way she reverts back to being formal grates on my nerves.

  This isn’t the Cheyenne I remember, but then again, we’ve probably both changed since that summer. Fuck this, I tell myself, vowing to wipe all thoughts of our past out of my mind. It’s obvious she has no interest in getting reacquainted, so I may as well get used to that now. Instead of making any more small talk, I go about telling her the details of my latest project, one that’ll have us working a lot of long hours alongside each other. She doesn’t know it yet, but I can be a pretty damn demanding boss. And when it comes to Cheyenne? Well, let’s just say I used to be putty in her hands. Not this time. My pretty girl’s about to find out just how bossy I can be.

  I HATE THE WAY he calls me Ms. Hamilton. I hate the way he just got in a jab over what he obviously thinks are my commitment issues. I hate the way he’s looking at me like my boss, not the boy I fell in love with, the boy I didn’t let myself believe I was missing until he walked into that small auditorium, back into my life, as quickly as he’d left it. Or well, was pushed from it. And I hate, really hate, the way my heart started racing when I saw him looking me up and down when I first came into his office. For a split second, I was back in Shiloh Grove, a young, naïve girl getting naked for the first time in front of someone. The heat in his eyes was the same as it was back then, and I quickly try to push the image out of my mind, not wanting to relive those days—at least not here in his office, in his presence.

  “Okay, you can drop the formalities. Almost everyone here except for the interns calls me Sawyer. Mr. Callahan is my dad, not me. And frankly, it just sounds wrong coming from your lips,” he says, and I don’t miss the way he looks at them, like he wants a taste, just a small nibble. Part of me wants that, too.

  I don’t know why being around him for five whole minutes has me already wishing he’d clear off his desk and bend me over it, but I can’t get the image out of my mind. While he’s going on about job responsibilities and work hours, I take a moment to check him out up close. He looks practically the same as he did the last time I saw him, almost as if he hasn’t aged a bit. His hair’s a little shorter than it used to be, and it’s got product in it, something he never did again that summer after I ribbed him about it the day we met.

  “Cheyenne, are you even listening to me?” he asks, interrupting my thoughts.

  Clearing my throat, I silently hope the blush isn’t too noticeable on my face. “Yes,” I lie, but even I know it sounds forced.

  He cocks an eyebrow as he sits back in his chair, watching me. “If you were listening, then what did I just say?” he challenges. Dammit. This definitely isn’t how I expected my first day to go.

  “Uhh, you were telling me about the next project we’re going to be working on. It sounds fascinating,” I tell him, hoping I’m somewhere in the ballpark.

  I know I’m caught when he starts shaking his head, chuckling under his breath. “Well, it’s nice to see that not everything has changed. You always were a terrible liar. Where’d you go just then?”

  He’s right. I never could lie to him, not even about the smallest things. Not liking his insinuation that I’ve changed, I decide to suck it up and tell him what I was thinking. Sure, some things have changed, but that’s life. That happens when you grow up. I’m still the same person I used to be. Maybe a little stronger. Maybe a little more jaded. But I’m still me.

  “I was looking at your hair.”

  “My hair?” he asks incredulously, as if it’s the strangest thing.

  Gesturing to his brown locks, I nod my head. “It’s shorter. You’re using product again. I don’t know. It’s just different. By the time Wyatt was done with you, you didn’t look like a city boy anymore, and I guess that’s the picture I’ve had in my mind all these years,” I say, flinching at my admission.

  “You’ve been picturing me since you left Georgia? I find that hard to believe,” he scoffs. “You hightailed it out of Shiloh Grove and never looked back, so forgive me if I don’t exactly believe that you’ve bothered to think of me at all since then.”

  His tone is disbelieving and slightly angry. Yeah, this is definitely not the way I expected this day to go. I can’t blame him though, knowing how I left things all those years ago when I packed up and drove off to California. But he’s wrong. I looked back. I’ve been looking back ever since.

  “Sawyer, you know I had to get out of there. I couldn’t be around her any longer without exploding. It’s not like it was exactly easy for me, you know.”

  “And what about me? Were you that desperate to get away from me, Cheyenne? That you couldn’t even bother to say goodbye to my face? I had to find out you were gone in a fucking letter?” he asks, seething. So much for keeping this strictly business.

  The last thing I want to talk about is what happened back then. I can admit that the way I left Shiloh Grove was completely messed up. I’ve been berating myself for it for years, but rehashing it isn’t going to change anything.

  “Sawyer, this isn’t the time or the place to talk about this. I made some mistakes in my past, and I can own up to them, but I’m not going to sit here in your office, as your employee, and discuss my previous love life. If you don’t think we can work together without having our history constantly coming up, then you need to tell me so I can find alternate means of employment.” I’m terrified of having to find another job since I just completely uprooted my life for this one. But more than that I’m terrified of the constant reminders of that summer. It’s hard enough sitting here and trying not to be affected by him. To not be able to reach out and mess up his hair. To not th
row my arms around him and tell him how much I’ve missed him this entire time we’ve been apart.

  He clears his throat and picks up an overturned picture frame off his desk, fingering the wood on the frame. “You’re right. I apologize, Cheyenne. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s just…” he trails off, leaving me to wonder what he was going to say. He stands up and rounds the desk. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. If you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting across town that I need to get to. You can see my secretary to get the files for the project I was telling you about. Take the afternoon to get acquainted with it and we can discuss it further in the morning.”

  Nodding, I stand, thankful I got out of that conversation unscathed. “It’s fine, Sawyer. This will probably take some getting used to. I’m sure we’ll be fine. We’ve always been able to get along. I don’t see why now should be any different. And yes, I’ll look over the files and jot down any notes I have for tomorrow.”

  I’m about to leave when he stops me, handing me the picture frame. When I look down, I’m surprised to find a photo of us, one I’ve never seen. Despite my mocking grin, I can see how happy I was in the photo, and my eyes race to meet his, wondering where in the hell he got this and why in the hell it’s in his office.

  “You’re not what I’ve been picturing all these years either. Keep it. Looking at it, all I feel is disappointment. Sorrow. For what I lost. How I lost it. And all the years spent searching for it, only to find that it was something that can’t be duplicated.” He lets out a small laugh, shaking his head. “A part of me always thought you’d come back. Or at least contact me somehow. I held on to that damn swallow legend with everything I had, believing that you’d find your way back to me. That you’d realize it wasn’t that big of a deal, that what we had was worth so much more than everything going on around us. Looking at you now, I realize that was a pipe dream. I guess those damn birds let us both down.”

  Without saying another word, he turns and leaves the office. His words penetrate my heart, and I have to sit back down to catch my breath. I close my eyes tight, willing myself not to let the tears fall. He just went for the jugular on that comment and he hit his mark. That one hurt. Inadvertently bringing up my dad was an asshole move, but it was damn effective. He made his point, and now I’m sitting here wondering just how much I hurt him when I left.

  “I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE this. It’s like fate or something,” Cori gushes, and I’m not surprised the romantic in her thinks that the universe is trying to tell me something by pushing Sawyer and me back together. If I’m not careful, I’m going to end up as a case study on her relationship blog, the one she runs even though she’s never been in a serious relationship in her life. It’s pretty damn successful, regardless, and women everywhere seem to flock to her site for relationship advice.

  Unfortunately for Bryan, she’s too invested in everyone else’s love lives to notice that he’s been in love with her since they were on opposing sides on a debate in our ethics course freshman year at Berkeley. They continued their argument after the class ended, and to this day, they still argue about it from time to time. Sometimes I think Cori does it just to get him riled up, and he always falls for it. I have no idea if she’s really that oblivious or if she is just ignoring it. I want to shake her sometimes.

  I want to shake Bryan sometimes too. Hell, I wish they’d just sleep together and get it over with. I know they’d be perfect as a couple, but Cori swears she has no plans on settling down until she’s at least thirty. I think that’s part of why the three of us have gotten along so well all this time. We were all completely focused on our studies and then our careers. Relationships were never a thing, and we had live-in study partners. It was a win-win all the way around.

  “It wasn’t fate, Corinna,” I tell her, causing her to scowl when I use her full name. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that an economics major ended up working at a firm like Wellsley, especially one with his father’s connections. It just caught me off guard. That’s all.”

  “You should’ve seen him running after her,” Bryan interjects, and he yelps when I kick him under the table. “Dammit, what the hell?”

  “He wasn’t running after me. Seriously, you two are making a big deal out of nothing. Was I expecting to see Sawyer? Probably not so soon, but I knew I’d eventually run into him, especially if I go see my mother.”

  When I got to Berkeley, I no longer felt like Mama was the appropriate term for the woman who gave birth to me, so I’ve only called her Mother since then. I’m not surprised that Sawyer picked up on it. I still have no idea if or when I’m going to tell her I’m in town, but I realize I might as well before he breaks the news for me.

  Bryan shakes his head, and I groan, knowing he isn’t going to let this one go. “Keep telling yourself that. He looked shocked as shit when he saw that it was really you. And I saw the look on his face when you grabbed my hand? I’m pretty sure he was ready to commit murder. Yours or mine, I’m not sure, but he was not happy about that. You better not get me fired, Cheyenne,” he jokes.

  “Sawyer’s not firing anyone. It’ll be fine. We’ll have a professional, platonic working relationship. He’s had plenty of time to move on, and with how damn attractive he is, I’m sure he has plenty of women waiting in the wings.” I try to ignore the pang in my heart at the thought of him with other women. It’s not like I expected him to sit around and wait for me, but I never let my mind wander to the place where it had to imagine him touching other women the way he touched me, with a sweet, gentle passion that I used to believe was only reserved for the person you love.

  “Damn attractive, you say?” Cori asks, interrupting my thoughts about Sawyer’s hands all over my body. “Hmm. It’s been a while since you hooked up with anyone. Why not get back in the saddle with him? You already know he’s good in bed.”

  “There’s no way I’m going there again. He’s my stepbrother, for crying out loud. Plus, I’m pretty sure he still hates me for what I did.”

  Cori just shakes her head at me. “Cheyenne, think about it for a second. You guys barely qualify as stepsiblings. You were both adults when your parents got married. You never even lived in the same house. It’s not like you guys grew up together and used to take baths together when you were little. And come on, you know you thought it was hot in Cruel Intentions. If Sebastian was my stepbrother, I probably would’ve been sleeping with him too,” she says, getting all dreamy eyed at the thought of a naked Ryan Phillipe.

  Bryan clears his throat and gets up from the table, claiming he’s going to get another round of beer for the table, but I know he’s just trying to get away from the sound of Cori talking about sleeping with another man, even if it is just a celebrity.

  “What’s his deal?” she asks, nodding after him. “He’s been moody ever since we left California.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. He’s as broody as he’s ever been. You know how he gets.”

  She taps her chin, trying to figure him out, and I just want to yell at her to open her damn eyes. I’m about to say something when she frowns. “Hmm. You don’t think he was seeing anyone before we left, do you? He did start going out a lot after work. Maybe he’s depressed and he misses her. That has to be it! He was excited about the job offer, so he should be thrilled right now. Instead, he seems miserable. Well, he better get over it because I can tell you right now, long-distance relationships don’t work.”

  She really must just be oblivious, but I don’t mind watching her try to determine what Bryan’s deal is if it means she gets off the subject of Sawyer. “Cori, he wasn’t seeing anyone. I think we would’ve known that.”

  “Yeah, but then why all the going out right after work without inviting us? That was weird. He always used to invite us.”

  The truth is that Bryan joined a gym in an effort to get in shape and build muscle “for the ladies”—his words, not mine. I have no idea why he wanted to keep it a secret, but he didn�
�t want us to find out. I just so happened to be working on a marketing plan for the gym and spotted him one day when I was dropping off an invoice. He made me swear to secrecy, something I take seriously, even if it is something so silly.

  “He was probably just networking, building his client base. He didn’t need the two of us goofing off and ruining his business vibe.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. Still, he needs to get laid. Maybe that’ll make him feel better,” she says, causing me to nearly choke on my beer. “What? He does! It’s not like it’d be hard for him to find someone. He’s hot. He’s successful. He’s hilarious and a great listener. He really is quite the catch. Hell, maybe I should date him,” she jokes, and I wonder if her voicing the list of good qualities about Bryan has her thinking about him in a different light for once.

  Grinning at her, I can’t help but egg her on. “That’s the best idea you’ve ever had! You two would be such a cute couple. And you’d make the most beautiful babies. Seriously, why didn’t we think of this before?”

  Her eyes widen as she watches Bryan return to the table. “I was joking, Cheyenne. Don’t you fucking dare say a word to him,” she hisses, loud enough so only I can hear.

  “Okay, are we done talking about banging dudes, or do I need to go away for a little while longer?” he asks, sitting down next Cori. They really would make the cutest couple, and I don’t miss the way she studies him like she’s seeing him this way for the first time before she turns her attention back to me.

  “Oh, that’s right! We were talking about Sawyer. So you’re going to be working directly for him? Awkward City. Are you going to look for another job?”

  “No, of course not. I ran away before, and it was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I’m not going to do that this time. I’ll do my job, and I’ll do it well, regardless of who my boss is.”

  “Do you really believe that you can work that closely with him without old feelings coming back?” Cori asks.