Lemon’s gaze follows mine and she grins. “Think we have time for a sneaky swim?”
“Nope.”
She screws up her little button nose and folds her arms over her chest, then she surprises me by smiling. “God, how I missed this place.”
“Bet there ain’t nothing like it in New York.”
“No, sir. There is not.”
I head to my horse and slip the thermos from the saddlebag before pouring a cup of sweet tea.
I offer it up and she takes it from my hands, bringing the cup to her lips. Before she drinks, she pauses and says, “You’re not tryin’ to poison me, are you?”
I roll my eyes and snatch it back, downing the liquid in one go. I pour another cup and thrust it toward her. “No poison.”
“I was kidding …” She shrugs and looks away sheepishly. “Mostly. I wouldn’t blame you, ya know?”
“For poisoning you?”
“For being angry.” She leans up against the fencepost and stares at me.
“I’m not angry,” I lie. “I’m not anything anymore.”
“Right. Me too.”
Jesus. Why are we lying to one another like this? I’m fuckin’ livid, but she’s moved on. She was going to marry someone else, and what I feel, what I want doesn’t matter anyway. She’s back home to bury her father and then she’ll be gone again. Back to New York. Back to her life that doesn’t involve me. “So, what’s this fiancé of yours do?”
“He’s an oil tycoon,” she mutters as if on autopilot, and then shakes her head. “Was.”
“He’s no longer tycooning oil?” I say with a forced grin. I don’t wanna know this shit. If I had my way, I’d strangle the asshole. But I don’t know how else to talk to Lemon, and I can’t handle the silence between us when we used to have so much to say.
“No. He is, or his family is. Stav just sits around board meetings pretending to give a shit. But … he’s … no longer my fiancé.”
I glance up at her then. Flaming hair and cool blue eyes meet mine, and all I want is to remove the distance and years between us. “Why not? You skip out on him too?”
“No. He cheated.”
I whistle. “I bet that went over well. I know how you feel about cheaters.”
“With my best friend.”
“Ah, hell. I’m real sorry to hear that.”
She cants her head to the side and studies my expression. “Are you?”
“Just said I was, didn’t I?”
“Sorry. These days I’m having a hard time separating what’s true and what’s not. I know you’ve never had a malicious bone in your body.”
“Well, you’ve been gone a long time and I’m a different man now, but I still never want to see you hurtin’.”
She smiles at me, the barest hint of her lips turning up in the corners, and with that one look she drives a dagger right through my heart. As angry as I am that she left, that she didn’t give us a chance, what I just told her is true. It killed me to see Lemon broken all those years ago, and the idea of being the one to hurt her now, cuts me right to the core.
We ride back to the stables. The others are all there, sitting on lawn chairs, drinking beer, having finished their work early. Lemon gasps as she climbs off her horse and slowly leads Teraway into the barn and then her stall respectively. She whimpers, and I turn to glance at her over the stable wall. “You okay?”
“Mm-hmm. Just fine.”
I study her face and slide my gaze over her body, or as much of it as I can see. She’s moving so tentatively she must have pulled a muscle on her dismount. And then it hits me—for the last twelve years, Lemon’s been living in the city, riding the subway or cabs, or driving her fancy car to work. I bet she hasn’t so much as even seen a horse, much less been on one since she left this ranch. I don’t know what it’s like to not ride for twelve years straight, but I’m betting she’s feeling every inch of the ground she covered on that horse today.
“You know I can do that for you, if you wanna head on up to the house?” I offer.
She turns and glares at me with her brow arched. Oh, shit. That’s not a happy face. “I’m just fine where I am.”
“Still as goddamn stubborn as ever, huh?” I say and finish currying Knievel. I send him into his stable with a light smack on the ass that I wish I could deliver to Lemon instead.
She practically snarls at me and I throw my hands up in the air and walk away before I can say something I’ll regret.
Outside, West offers me a cold beer. And I accept gratefully and take the fourth armchair beside Cash, falling into it harder than a two-hundred-pound cowboy probably should.
“Rough day?” West asks, raising his beer to me.
“No thanks to you, yeah.”
“I gotta say, I’m amazed she didn’t quit.”
“Well, if there’s anything I know about Lemon Winchester, it’s that she’s twice as stubborn as the number of brothers she has.”
West nods and takes another pull from his beer. “She make you do everything? Maybe we should be paying you for two days’ work?”
“I wouldn’t say no to the extra cash, but I meant it when I said she hasn’t gotten any less Winchester in the time she’s been gone. She wouldn’t let me do anything alone.”
“Not even jack it?”
“Don’t be an ass,” I snap at Wade, and Lemon uses that opportunity to exit the barn. She takes one look at the beer in my hand, walks over to me—though I can see the pain in her face with every step she takes—and she snatches the bottle from me.
“Hey,” I protest, but she just downs the rest of the beer in one go, and passes back an empty bottle.
“Thanks, I needed that.”
The boys laugh.
“Winchester wild,” Wyatt crows.
“Yeehaw!” Whoops and whistles go up as Wade dances about and pretends to spank an imaginary pony.
Lemon shakes her head and turns toward the house.
“Come on, sis?” Wyatt calls. “You don’t wanna stay for a beer?”
“Nope. I’m good.”
West chuckles. “I’m surprised you lasted so long.”
“Anything you can do.” She throws over her shoulder, and ambles away. All six of us burst out laughing because Lemon is walking bowlegged all the way to the ranch house.
“Jesus.” Cash tilts his beer in her direction. “Are we sure she’s not walking funny because she was riding more than a horse out in that field?”
All eyes turn to me, glaring, suspicious, and accusatory. I roll my eyes and sigh heavily. Leaning back in my seat, I place my hat over my face and close my eyes. “Not even if she begged me.”
“Right,” West says gruffly, and the others offer up their opinions that I don’t even have the energy to debate.
I may not like spending time with her, I may not trust the woman anymore, and I may even just hate her a little because seeing her after all these years lets me know I’m never getting over her. But I know one thing for certain—I’m never betting against Lemon Emersyn Winchester again either. Because she never loses. Not when she’s backed in a corner, not when it comes to a battle of wills, and not when it comes to my heart.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lemon
The bell above the door jingles as I enter and every set of eyes in the Buttermilk Café turn toward me.
“Well hell, as I live and breathe if it ain’t Lemon Winchester.” A woman in a waitress uniform stands behind the counter, hip popped, coffee pot in hand, and I take off my glasses and do a double take.
“Zadie?”
“In the flesh. Girl, where you been?”
I take in her gorgeous mocha skin and deep brown eyes. Her hair is no longer natural but instead worn in brightly colored box braids. She’s every bit as stunning as she was in high school, and I am still just as jealous of her beauty as I always was. Zadie never had to bother with a ton of makeup and perfectly set hair like me. She could have been a damn model if she’d had any inclination
to get out of this one-horse town.
I take a seat at the counter in front of her and set my purse on the stool beside me. “I’ve been in New York. I have a gallery there.”
“Yeah, I think I heard that from your brothers, actually. They’re real proud of you.”
I laugh, because I’m not sure we’re talking about the Winchester boys. With the exception of Wyatt, I doubt they’ve missed me all that much, and I guarantee they have no idea what I actually do in New York City. “You mean Wyatt’s been singing my praises, right?”
She purses her full lips. “Nope, West and Wade too.”
I frown, not entirely sure what to make of that information.
“You know I was real sorry to hear about your daddy. I would have been at the funeral, but I had this place to run.”
“Oh, it’s okay. I …” I’m not really sure what to say. I didn’t just run out on Colt and my family twelve years ago. I left my best friend without a word too. “It’s been a long time, Zadie. I’m real sorry I never returned your calls. I just … I needed a clean break.”
She gives me a wistful smile. “Broke a lot of hearts when you left, Lemon Winchester.”
I glance at the diner patrons still eyeing me warily as they pretend not to listen in our conversation. “I’m startin’ to see that.”
“I get it. What happened to you and Colt was just awful.”
I give her a tight smile, but I have no words. What happened between me and Colt was awful. Maybe we would have gotten through it or maybe we wouldn’t have, but now we’ll never know. I took that away from us. I broke us into a hundred thousand tiny little pieces, and it seems like me coming back made us shatter into a million more.
“I always thought wild horses couldn’t tear you two apart.”
“Yeah, well, now we can’t stand to be in the same room as one another.” I sigh and shake my head. “Enough about me. What have you been doing since high school?”
“Oh, nothin’ much. Just bought myself a diner, is all.”
My eyes grow as round as saucers. “The Buttermilk?”
“Yes, ma’am. I figured it was time to pay them back for all of those milkshakes and fries we ran out on without paying for as kids.”
I laugh. “Oh my God. I’d forgotten all about that.”
“Well Betty hadn’t. She almost wouldn’t sell me the damn place.”
I chuckle and turn to glance at the corner booth we always occupied in our teens. Irene Bennett glares back, and leans in to whisper to Wilma Withington over their coffee and pie. Looking over the rest of the diner’s patrons—several sets of eyes dart to their food or out the window abruptly. Some things never change. I was the talk of the town as a wild seventeen-year-old, and now that I’m a grown woman who has made something of herself, people are still damn talking.
I roll my eyes and turn back to Zadie before picking up my menu. “So, what’s good here?”
“Girl, you know everything is good here. You’ve been away too long.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lemon
Eighteen years old
I pace the floor of my tiny bedroom and stare at the object in my hand. Positive. I squeeze my eyes tightly closed and sit on my bed.
“Lemonade?” Wyatt bursts into my room. “Mama says …” He frowns, staring at the expression on my face and then his eyes slide to the pregnancy test in my hands.
“Oh, fuck!” For a minute he just stands there and stares, and then I start to cry and he closes my bedroom door and comes to sit by me on the bed. “What’s it say?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“Holy shit.”
“I’ve barely finished high school. I got plans for college.”
Wyatt frowns and pulls away. “What?”
“I got a scholarship for art school in New York.”
Wyatt shakes his head. “You’re leavin’? Since when? Do Mama and Daddy know about this?”
I shake my head. “No one does. I didn’t even know how to tell Colt.”
“But … you’re not leaving now, right? I mean, you can’t move to New York now that you’re pregnant.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know, Wyatt. I don’t know what the hell to do.”
“Lemonade?” Colt calls from the stairs, and Wyatt jumps to his feet.
“Shit. What do you want me to tell him?”
I wipe the tears from my cheeks and stash the pregnancy test under my pillow. “Nothing. He’s gotta find out sometime, right?”
“Wait, you’re gonna tell him with Mama and Daddy on the front porch?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not stupid, Wyatt.”
“You’re righ—”
“Lemon?” Colt calls from the other side of the door and opens it wide. His smile dissolves instantly. “Darlin’, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Let’s just go.”
“Lemon?”
“Bye, Wyatt.” I jump up off the bed and grab Colt’s hand, leading him down the stairs. “Come on, before Daddy changes his mind about letting us go to the fair.”
We head out to Colt’s truck and I pull him toward the vehicle before Daddy can stop us for another lecture. As if he can read my mind, my father calls, “Not a minute after ten.”
“Eleven,” I counter.
“Lemon,” he warns.
“Please, Daddy?”
“Fine. Colt, you have her back at eleven on the dot.”
“Yes, sir.”
We pile into the cab of the truck but I don’t smother him in kisses the way I normally would, and worry etches itself into the muscles around Colt’s mouth. “Lemon, you gotta tell me what’s going on.”
“I will. I just … I wanna have fun tonight. I just want to eat too much funnel cake and ride the Ferris wheel.”
“I don’t know if I can have fun when you’ve clearly been crying your eyes out all afternoon.”
“I’m okay. Would you please just get me out of here before someone else comes to stall us?”
Colt frowns. “Yeah, sure.”
He starts the engine and gives my folks a wave as he peels away from the house and floors it. We don’t talk much on the drive. I couldn’t even hold a conversation right now. The only thing going through my head is that little plus sign on the pregnancy test. How am I gonna explain this to Daddy? I’ve just celebrated my eighteenth birthday and I’m pregnant right out of high school. What will everyone say?
I chew my lip. My thoughts send me spiraling. Colt places his palm faceup on the bench seat of his truck—an invitation. I slip my hand in his and interlace our fingers. How does he know without saying a damn word just how to make me feel better? How do I tell him he’s going to be a daddy at twenty-two years old?
We go to the county fair, but we don’t stay long. I can feel the tension in Colt when he pulls me close and I’m a giant ball of anxious energy too. The sights and scents of the fair are making me dizzy and nauseous.
“You wanna get out of here?” I whisper in his ear. “Go somewhere quiet?”
“Yeah, I’d like that.” He takes my hand and leads me out of the fair to his truck.
We drive to the town reservoir, a place we often hang out, and when we’re alone at the top, all the way above our little town with its lights twinkling in the summer breeze, he grabs my hand. “Are you finally gonna tell me what’s going on with you?”
“I don’t know how to say this …”
“Just say it.” He draws my hand to his lips and presses a tender kiss to it. “Whatever it is, everything will be okay. Just tell me, Lemonade.”
I take a deep breath and blurt, “I’m pregnant.”
All the blood drains from Colt’s face and I start crying again as he pulls his hand free of mine and drives them both into his hair. He stares as if he’s looking right through me and shakes his head in disbelief. “How? We used protection.”
I shrug and a sob escapes me. “Apparently not enough.”
“Your daddy’s gonna kill me,” he whispers. I cry,
huge ugly sobs that wrack my whole body and Colt pulls me close. “Hey, don’t cry. It’s okay.”
“How? How is this okay? I’m barely eighteen, Colt. You’re twenty-two. We’re both just kids as it is.”
“I don’t know, but we’ll get through it.”
“It’s a baby, Colt. It’s not a rough patch with no light at the end of the tunnel. I’m carrying a human being inside me. My whole life is ruined.”
“No. No it’s not. I love you, Lemon, and I’m here for whatever you want. Whatever decision you make. I ain’t ever leaving you. I ain’t ever gonna stop lovin’ you.”
“You don’t know that.”
He cups my cheeks. “It’s the only thing I know.”
“I’m scared, Colt.”
“I know, but whatever happens, you have me. You’ll always have me.”
When we pull up to the house, Daddy is waitin’ on the front porch. He’s always waitin’ up when Colt takes me on a date, but I know by the bottle of whiskey beside his rocking chair and the stoic look on his face that he knows.
“Oh, God,” I murmur. I’m gonna kill Wyatt.
Colt shuts off the engine and looks at me. “Lemon?”
“He knows, Colt.”
“What? How?”
“Why don’t you come on out here, son?” Daddy calls from the porch.
I glance at the lights on in every room in the second story of the house. Lights that should all be off, being a Friday night. My brothers are home, and I know they had plans to meet girls at the carnival. I grip Colt’s hand as he turns to open the door with his free one.
“Everyone knows.”
He swallows and gives my hand a squeeze, but I can feel how he’s shaking.
“Let’s just go,” I blurt. “Just you and me. We’ll take your truck and we’ll just leave, make a life somewhere new.”
He gives me a sad smile. “As much as I love that idea, we can’t. If I don’t look your daddy in the eye and promise to take care of you and our baby for the rest of our lives, then I don’t deserve you, Lemonade.”
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