Her mother called earlier in the day to wish her a Merry Christmas. She said she’d forgotten to get Kailynn’s gift in the mail soon enough, so it would not arrive until next week. Kailynn hung up without letting it get to her. She was glad she made sure her mother received the small jewelry box she sent her in time for Christmas.
Finally, Jack got up and left the room. He came back and set something down on the coffee table. No one noticed at first except Kailynn. She was curious about the small, black box, and glanced up at Jack. He noticed her big eyes and gave her a little shrug and a smile. She finally couldn’t take it so she nudged Erin, using her eyes to direct Erin’s attention to the box.
Erin’s eyes grew huge as saucers. Kailynn might have laughed if her shock wasn’t so tragic. She glanced around. Jack got up and came next to Erin, nudging her leg with his knee. “Why don’t you open it?”
Silence enveloped the room. Erin visibly swallowed, grabbed the box with trembling fingers, and opened it. Kailynn gasped for Erin, who could only gawk. She’d been rendered speechless. Jack took Erin’s hand and she stared at him, appearing almost horrified. Christmas music softly echoed in the background.
“What are you doing?”
“Asking you to marry me,” Jack said, smiling up at her. With his gaze glued on Erin, he got down on one knee before her, and asked, in a more formal voice, “Will you marry me, Erin Poletti?”
Kailynn temporarily wondered if she’d say yes, and clenched her fists, worried for Jack’s sake. Erin was hard to predict. She had such strange views of life and sometimes didn’t react like most people. Kailynn prayed Jack had read this moment right, and that Erin was ready for it.
“Are you sure?”
Kailynn’s heart ached for Erin’s soft, unsure question. Only she would ask the man who so obviously adored her, if he might be wrong, or accidentally asking her that question. God, she was so clueless. Kailynn looked up and found Ian staring at her, not at the little drama between Erin and his big brother. His gaze made her hot and she felt that weird shudder traveling down her spine. Was it desire? Or lust? Or just the need to feel wanted that only Ian could create in her?
Jack didn’t laugh at Erin’s question, or when he saw her scared, ashen face. His tone was so gentle, kind, and steady, it made Kailynn’s heart ache. She knew now what Erin and she shared, and it wasn’t just the Rydells they had in common. No, it was their complete lack of faith in themselves. Ian and Jack just had to persuade them by using different methods.
“I’m sure. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life. That’s why I’m doing it in front my whole family. My brothers. My children. You are the woman I want to share all that with. I want you to realize that all of them want the same woman for me too,” Jack replied.
Everyone nodded, and seventeen-year-old Ben leaned forward and nudged Erin’s shoulder. “You should answer Dad, Erin.”
Erin looked over at Charlie as his mouth widened into a big, nine-year-old grin. “You too, Charlie?” Her cheery tone failed to disguise her disbelief.
“Dad told me last week. I kept it to myself this whole time. He said he’d take away my Santa toys if I didn’t keep quiet. Not that there’s a Santa, of course, but I want those toys all the same, and now I get them. Sure, you should marry him, that is, if you wanna.”
Jack grinned at his son and reached over, lifting Erin’s chin and raising her eyes to his. “What do you say, Erin, do you wanna?”
She drew in a breath before nodding in the affirmative. She almost seemed too choked up to speak. Jack swept her up in his arms and held her snugly against him as he stood up. She clung to his neck, and Kailynn had to turn away when tears filled her eyes. They so obviously loved each other, it was almost painful to watch. It soon became embarrassing and Kailynn felt like they were infringing on an intimate moment that was full of private love.
But then, Jack suddenly let out a “Whoop!”, as he spun Erin around. Erin finally smiled and laughed freely.
Shane stood up. “We need a damn toast to that.” With a happy grin, he went off to the kitchen before coming back with champagne and a handful of glasses. The sentiments were shared by all and a jovial, fun, crazy-happy atmosphere was refreshing for all of them. It was just so cool. After all the pain and heartache that recently surrounded the Rydells, especially Jack, a new sense of hope, new possibilities and rebirth were emerging. They all toasted and congratulated the blissful couple as they hugged and laughed. As for Kailynn, she was startled when Ian suddenly put his arms around her, and turned her around to kiss her, tongue and all. The taste of alcohol on his breath nearly made her dizzy.
Caleb noticed and yelled for them to “Get a fucking a room,” while Shane made cat calls at them. She heard her dad’s voice cursing Ian, and demanding that he take his hands off his damn daughter. Strangely, Ian didn’t stop, but kept kissing her until she felt boneless. She was bent back over his arm and thrilled, to say the least. He grinned at her when he finally stopped and lifted her closer to him, whispering simply, “Merry Christmas, Kailynn.”
She melted inside and out. It was because of his tender tone. It was no banal greeting of the season, and she could see the glitter of emotion and heat in his eyes. She was ninety-nine percent sure his Merry Christmas was Ian-code for I love you.
Much later, after he made love to her in the quiet solitude of his bedroom, he gave her a beautiful necklace with a heart-shaped diamond pendant on it. He waited until she was naked before putting it around her neck and telling her how perfect she looked. The strange thing was, while naked and standing before him, she glimpsed her gift in the mirror’s reflection, and this time, didn’t balk at seeing herself. She didn’t shy away from Ian, either, or attempt to cover herself. She wasn’t perfect, but maybe she wasn’t so bad after all.
****
Kailynn packed and got her school supplies together. Soon, she was ready to go. How then, did she and Ian avoid discussing it? She finally steeled her resolve and cornered him just after New Year’s. He was working inside, for once, replacing some window caulking.
“Will you even acknowledge that I’m leaving?”
He set the caulking gun down and wiped his hand on a rag hanging from his front pocket. Shane was sitting in the living room, and Kailynn crossed her arms over her chest.
“Yeah. Maybe we should go upstairs.”
She didn’t care where they talked. She was getting worked up. Annoyed. He started this whole thing; first, by having sex with her; then, by making her want to keep doing it; and then, he threw out this whole “go complete yourself” shit, and what? Nothing. He said nothing more to her after that.
She stomped up the stairs before him. “You do realize I’ll be two hundred and fifty miles away, don’t you?”
“Of course, I realize that.”
“And what? You’re just going to wave goodbye to me? What? What do you foresee? And why don’t you bring it up to me?”
He kept his arms crossed over his chest and his expression blank. Once again, he had erected that infuriating wall of his. He stared so hard and long, her heart started to feel like it was falling down into her gut. Shit. He didn’t talk to her because he must’ve had nothing good to say. She started to feel sick inside and kicked her foot against the bed. “Why? Why did you even start this? You’re not planning to do it, are you? You’re not planning to wait here, the ever faithful boyfriend, for me, are you?”
“Do you want me to? That wasn’t the plan, was it? Leaving half a foot in the door here? That’s what will happen. You’ll spend half your time wondering when you can call. Or when I’m going to call. And the thing is: so will I. All I’m going to want to do is come and see you. And bring you home with me. How could that work with what you want?”
“It can’t. I wanted to leave here for good and never look back,” she yelled as she started pacing the room. “I thought maybe I might come back and visit on holidays, or to see my dad. But that’s it. Never again would I come back to live in River
’s End. But then… this all happened. You happened. Why? Why did you have to do this to me? You just made me fucking sad to leave here. Here! River’s End. The bane of my existence.”
His eyes tracked her back and forth, but he didn’t stop her. Or deny her. She shook her head. “You see, this won’t work. We’ll be apart more than we’ll be together. I have four years to go. This isn’t like summer camp.”
“I know what this is.”
“As you stand there, all Ian Eff-ing Rydell, I have to ask, do you care? Do you care this happened? Or that it hurts? Or that I’m leaving you. Do you even care?”
His jaw clenched and the muscle under his ear twitched. “I care.”
She started to cry after a bitter laugh. He was so damn distant when he chose to be. “I didn’t want anything to tie me down here.”
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t have started this. Or told me to go. You should have just left me alone. Either way, you did this, so it’s your fault. You put me in this impossible situation I never wanted to be in. I don’t want to come back to River’s End. But then,” her voice cracked, “I don’t want to be away from you.”
He stepped forward and extended a hand towards her. She stepped back, shaking her head. “No. You always do that. You don’t say what you think or feel, but you touch me and I forget everything. I’ll forget I wasn’t planning to end up Lynnie Hayes, waitress and housekeeper in River’s End. I can’t touch you. I can’t stay. Or I’ll end up becoming her.” She inhaled sharply. “It’s your fault if I end up like that. I would be staying here just to be your girlfriend.”
Her nasty proclamation hung between them and he dropped his hand. “You should go, Lynnie.” His voice cracked.
She stepped back. He so rarely called her Lynnie when they were alone. She shook her head and let the tears fall as she grabbed the doorknob. Jerking the door open, she literally ran from him. There! She broke up with the man she loved because loving him, meant staying there and hating everything about herself and her life. In a decade, she would have become her mother, bitter and mean, walking away from the man she once loved and the children she half-assed tried to raise with little or no interest, much less love.
She was really doing herself and Ian a huge service by ending it. By facing reality now and not saying they loved each other. Because all that love meant to her in River’s End was the end of every dream she ever had.
Chapter Sixteen
KAILYNN LEFT RIVER’S END on a Tuesday. Ian was out in Shane’s shop, helping him for the day to catch up on some orders he ignored when he took off before Christmas. Shane glanced up when Caleb walked in, and Caleb stopped right in front of Ian.
“She’s gone. Jordan just pulled out with her. He wanted to drive her. Why didn’t you?”
“We broke up.”
“Why? You couldn’t trust yourself away from her? You couldn’t be faithful?”
“No. She doesn’t want to come back here. She doesn’t want a boyfriend from this small Podunk, nothing town. She would like all this to become a distant memory that she’ll talk about someday as the place she got away from.”
“Why would you give her money to do that?”
“Because she’d never have been happy otherwise.”
“You love her, don’t you? In your odd, fucking, say-nothing, Ian way, you’re in love with my sister, huh? And you did that shit where you released her to set her free, or whatever.”
Ian didn’t answer, so Caleb stepped forward and patted Ian’s back. “Thank you. It was the right thing to do.”
Ian knew that, but he didn’t have to like it, so he didn’t answer Caleb. Or Shane. Or Jack. Or Erin. He didn’t want to talk about Kailynn, or how he felt. How the hell did they think he felt? Certainly, not good. All he could think about was Kailynn. Being with her, watching her, seeing her smile, touching her body, inhaling her scent, feeling her hair, hearing her laugh and her breathy sighs and moans. He was obsessed with Kailynn. However, since he didn’t feel the need to share his longing with others, they just assumed he didn’t care. It was the opposite; all of the feelings were being harbored for the one girl, who hoped to never return. She fully rejected the life he lived and would always choose to live.
After a month, Jack and Ian began preparing the sites for the new cabins. Jack asked, “Why did you do it? I have to ask; why did you arrange for Kailynn’s departure?”
“What would you do if Erin hated living here? If, after Chance abandoned her, she only tolerated it because she felt trapped and stuck, would you have insisted she stay here? Or do you worry she would have done what your mother did to Dad?”
Jack’s mother left him and his dad when Jack wasn’t even two years old. They never heard from her again. She despised the ranch and left without a backwards glance.
Jack’s jaw tightened and he nodded. “I—damn. I don’t know. You think it was that bad for Lynnie here?”
“Yeah. I know it was.” With that, he walked away. It was hard to be around Jack right now. Where Ian was the most unhappy he’d been in a decade, Jack was cheerful, smiling and whistling all the time and generally lighthearted. Erin had finally, after all that time, moved into the house. She now occupied his room with him. They were engaged and he felt excited by the future. It was something Ian might never feel again. Ian never needed anyone. Especially a woman. Except for one. There was only one woman whom he would have chosen to be with and marry. But she was gone now, so he was done. He needed to get back to his former life, the one where he never talked, or bonded and shared his feelings. He was back to doing what he wanted and accounting to no one. Ever.
****
Kailynn found school so odd. She was old to be a freshman, and started quite late in the year, yet she was warmly welcomed. Her roommates were all rather pleasant. Two juniors and one sophomore, they respected her even though she was so new, and very clueless. The city seemed huge and scary. She was literally frightened to leave her apartment or explore it. She stayed within a tight perimeter, the campus and immediate surrounding neighborhood for the first few months. The city was so enormous. Mammoth. It appeared to sprawl in every direction. Who knew what might be lurking in it?
Kailynn had never been in a place where she didn’t know almost every face she ran into, since the total number of faces in River’s End was quite small. The sheer volume of humanity she observed at school was shocking. She’d never been to a real city before, and was beyond embarrassed by how naive she felt. She spent days simply staring up at the vertical heights of skyscrapers that towered over her. She even took a tour in the Sky View Observatory, rising to the seventy-third floor of the Columbia Tower, the largest skyscraper in Seattle. It dwarfed the tallest mountains at River’s End… Well, except for the one she and Ian hiked up to from the horse camp.
Her mind kept drifting back to Ian. She missed him. No, she longed for him. Her body ached for him. All she wanted to do was talk to him. The culture shock between River’s End and Seattle seemed just too great for her to handle alone. She knew no one in Seattle. And not one soul knew her. Everyone knew her in River’s End, which she thought she hated; but this huge city magnified her sense of loss, and maybe she didn’t hate it as much as she thought she did. She was in awe and so out of her comfort zone. She reverted back to being untalkative, and often scowling. Her lack of self-confidence caused her invisible walls to rise again, making her unreceptive to new people and new places. She seemed nervous all the time. Every day, as she stepped out of her small, cramped, dumpy apartment, she felt like a helium balloon, suddenly let loose in the world. She both hated and loved it.
Her eyes had never seen so many new sights. It was feast for her senses and a lot to take in. The endless parade of people and noises and scenes. There was never a single moment to be bored.
Her first class was the History of Medieval Europe, and she entered the room while her stomach churned like ants were crawling around in it. She found a seat in the back, quietly slipping into the lec
ture hall, and out of it without uttering a word. She continued that for almost a month, until finally, out of desperation and a desire not to waste her most cherished opportunity, she attempted to make a friend.
It wasn’t very hard. Trisha, one of her roommates, had been trying to be her friend since the quarter started. She was funny, irreverent, and outgoing. Being from Shoreline, which was only twenty minutes away from campus, she knew a lot of people at the school and in Seattle. She took Kailynn, who came from nowhere, and knew no one, under her proverbial wing. Trisha was endlessly amused by Kailynn’s descriptions of the cowboy aspects of River’s End. That’s what broke the ice between Trisha and her; and Trisha eventually dragged her out to a few college parties. After that, and presumably only because of the alcohol, Kailynn managed to relax and make some more friends. She started to meet more people on and off campus as she tagged along with Trisha and her clique. They soon became her friends, and during mid-quarter, Kailynn finally got the hang of studying and balancing it with her newfound social engagements. Her mid-term grades were low Cs. She had to really dig in and study harder in order to raise them to mostly Bs before the quarter’s end; but she finally managed to do it.
Parties and drinking soon became the norm for Kailynn. She loosened up in ways she never did back home. There was no one to judge her, or check on her, or ignore her, or be disappointed by her, or comment about her behavior. She found it very liberating to be anonymous in a crowd. All the inhibitions that so hindered her from relaxing soon fell away. She was different there and she blossomed. She joined in and talked and giggled. She got involved in funny, practical jokes and stupid antics. She tried a beer bong and smoked weed. She lived for the first time in her life like she was young and wild and free. Unlike everything she remembered from home.
All of that helped ease the pit in her stomach and the hole in her heart over missing Ian. She was so mad at him. If he had never become her boyfriend, she wouldn’t have suffered any regrets about leaving River’s End. She would not have endured so much confusion and conflict. She would have had no regrets. She struggled to get over him, and could not seem to let him go. She picked up the phone to call or text him a dozen times a day, but never did. In the back of her mind, she knew if she indulged her urges and he reciprocated, she might have considered ditching the whole school gig and going home.
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