by L. J. Stock
“Thanks, but I got this.” I smiled up at her and tipped my head to the door where stomped footsteps were becoming louder by the second. “Escape while you can.”
Leaning forward, Megan kissed my cheek before unfolding herself from the bed and hopping to her feet, grabbing the mugs as she went. Holly was at the door when she passed through it. Megan brushed her free hand through Holly’s hair once in affection before heading down the small hall. My eyes caught Holly’s as she stood in the frame of the door, her hands on her hips and face twisted in disappointment. Holly wasn’t going to give me an inch, and I deserved that.
“We’re leaving?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest and glaring at me. “What happened?”
Patting the bed in front of me, I tipped my head in invitation. Holly rolled her eyes and stomped toward me. When she reached the mattress, she climbed on and sat on her knees, arms returning to their folded position, her eyes still holding the unsympathetic glare.
I had a choice. Tell her the truth now, let her have the journey to think things through and talk it out, or wait until I got home and talk to her after hours of silence and stubborn glares of frustration in my direction.
Rocking forward, I cupped her cheeks in my hands and was encouraged when she didn’t shake me off in protest. She was my daughter, after all. I knew when I’d really screwed up, and though I was toeing the line now, she was still giving me the benefit of the doubt. Something I assumed was due to the sadness she could probably read in my expression, no matter how hard I tried to mask it. She knew me too well.
“We just got here, Mom. I have a riding lesson today.”
Rubbing a thumb under her red-rimmed but dry eyes, I sighed. “We have to cancel, but we can head into the mountains and ride there. We just can’t be here.”
“Why not? Everyone we love is here. Garrett is here,” she said, her look of hope shining through as she brought up his name. She was taking a shot in the dark that he wasn’t the problem, and I could see that from the slight cringe on her features.
“I know…”
“If you know then why are we leaving?”
I took a deep breath. It was now or never.
“Something happened last night, baby. I saw your daddy’s ex-girlfriend, and things didn’t… uh, go well.”
Holly pulled my swollen hand from her face and held it in the two of hers as she studied it. She hadn’t missed the redness of my skin when she’d sat. She’d just chosen to ignore it. Smart girl. Though I wasn’t surprised. She had always been intuitive and patient in ways people twice her age couldn’t be.
“Why’d you fight?”
I took in a breath and looked down at our hands before peering up at her again. There was so much to explain. She was only fourteen, but she deserved the truth now, and I was the only one who could deliver that.
“I told you everything I could about your daddy and grandma, baby, but there are some things I never told you. I was with your dad and Aunt Megan when I found out I was pregnant, but I never told Dustin that I was pregnant…”
I told her everything. How I’d kept the pregnancy from Dustin so he would go to school, my decision to tell Dustin about her when he got home from school that Thanksgiving. I told her about Libby’s lies and accusations when he came home for Thanksgiving, why she was so determined to rip our family apart and why she hated me. I told Holly about her Uncle Garrett and how I’d seen him then in comparison to the man I knew now, and I told her about both of her grandfathers. I told her how my dad had shot Dustin that night when he’d discovered I was pregnant, and the lies I’d told to the Hill men to keep her safe. I told her everything, including Garrett and who he was and the relationship we’d recently had and why I hadn’t made the connection sooner. Everything I’d hidden for the last fourteen years poured from me, and I bore my soul to the one person in the world who deserved to hear my confessions.
I was crying and had been for most of the time I’d been talking, but it was only at the end that Holly’s facade cracked and her tears came. She fell into my arms and sobbed like her whole world was falling down around her. I supposed it was, and it was all my fault.
“I’m so sorry, Holly. I was always going to tell you. I just wanted you to be old enough to understand.”
“Momma, you were trying to protect me when I didn’t need protecting. I’m not a kid.”
“I know that,” I said gently, my hands running through her hair in a soothing repetition. “You’ve always been so curious about your dad, and I wanted you to know him and everything about him so badly, but I had no way of knowing how his brother felt or how much he’d changed. I was protecting us both because losing you wasn’t an option for me.”
“Does he know I exist now?”
“No,” I admitted, swiping a tear from under my eye. “I wanted to talk to you first. I know it’s a horrible thing to do, but Suzanne made me promise. Then, last night when I figured it all out, I knew you had to know before he did. I’ll tell him, but only when you’re ready.”
Holly sagged in my arms and pushed away slowly, her eyes meeting mine for the first time. The look of understanding was more than I could have possibly hoped for. I’d lied to her, omitting a large part of her life from her. She should hate me, be upset and angry that I’d hidden it and her for so long. Especially when I couldn’t have been more proud to call her my daughter. It had been too much to even hope that she would have any level of understanding about what I’d done or why I’d done it. Yet, there it was, sitting in the moment of truth and she was thanking me with the eyes that so closely resembled Dustin’s.
“Thank you, Mom.”
“For what, baby?”
“Doing what you thought was best. For keeping me when you were really young and scared. For not being like your daddy and being bitter that I lived when Daddy died.”
Intuitive.
That was the only word that bashed around my skull as I looked at her. Lifting both of my hands, I pushed her hair back from her face and sucked in a deep breath as I leaned my forehead against hers. Love flooded every vein and pore I owned as I breathed in her familiar scent. My daughter was everything to me. She was the reason I fought so hard every single day to get shit right because she mattered. She always had.
“You have brought me more joy than I could ever put into words, baby girl. You are my sunshine, my reason for breathing, and the only thing in my life I can’t live without. I’m not perfect, I’ve made huge mistakes, but you’re the only thing I did right. Please, don’t ever doubt that.”
“I don’t, Momma.”
“That’s my girl.”
She gave me a watery smile, her head lifting at the pop of gravel from under the tires of an oncoming vehicle. It was coming too fast and my gaze followed hers. Dropping my hands from her pink cheeks, I clambered from my place on the bed and rushed to the window, skidding to a halt and pulling the sheer material aside so I could peer out.
“Shit.”
My heart dropped the moment I saw who was coming, my mouth drying up until I was swallowing compulsively. Nothing good would come from this today, I was sure of that, and from the look I got when I met Holly’s eyes, she understood that, too. She didn’t need to see who was coming. My reaction had been enough.
I watched as she rolled to her butt, her eyes flicking to the window and back to me again. She was resolved to stay put for now.
“Go. I’ll stay right here.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Garrett’s truck ground to a halt at the same moment I reached the bottom of the barn’s apartment stairs. The gravel jumped out of the way as his big wheels scored two lines into the normally perfectly level and well-kept driveway. The scream of the screen door being pushed aside on the main house had my eyes flickering to it, and noting Megan and Robert—the latter holding a baseball bat—standing close together on the porch. I knew they would stay there unless I beckoned them or things got too much for me to handle, and I appreciated that. Th
ey’d always had my back. I realized that now more than ever.
Garrett was out of the truck faster than I could have imagined, his feet hitting the ground before I could so much as take a step forward. His hair was disheveled, and, like me, he wore the same clothes he had been the last time we’d seen one another at the cemetery, but his eyes were what captured and held my attention. Filled with pain and rimmed red, they looked wild and unfettered, the desperation emanating from him.
“You can’t go.” He was already marching toward me, so I stopped and waited for him to get to me, crossing my arms over my chest as I raised my eyebrows in challenge. We’d ended everything so amicably that his demanding tone felt all kinds of wrong.
“Garrett?”
“Please, let me finish.”
I nodded once, my eyes flickering to Megan who shrugged. That one gesture said I don’t know what the hell’s going on but hear him out.
“Dusty was my brother. I wasn’t always a good brother like I said, but I loved him. When shit was good, it was damn good, and looking back at those times I realize more than ever, he was my best friend. It would have always been that way once we got past all that other shit siblings go through if he’d lived.”
A tinge of sadness and guilt surged in my gut as I offered him another nod in agreement. I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I was willing to let him get everything out if that made him feel better. God knew there was one very important detail sat upstairs that I wanted to wax lyrical about so there were no secrets left between us, but I couldn’t do that. I’d wanted that decision to be Holly’s.
“My head has been messed up since Libby told me who you are and my heart’s been fucked up since you left me in that cemetery with Dustin.” He lifted both of his hands and scrubbed his face. When his fingers found the scruffy beard at his cheeks, he scratched once and met my eyes. “We have something between us, Kay. You can’t deny that any more than I can. I’m glad I didn’t know who you were before now because I finally got to see why Dusty loved you so damn much.”
“You don’t really know me well enough…”
“I’ve known you longer than it took you to fall in love with my brother, even if I did fall in love with you before you left town that first time.” He looked at me earnestly before dropping his hands to his sides and pressing them against his thighs. “I know this is weird, but Dusty’s been gone for almost fifteen years, and I honestly think he’d be okay with us being together.”
I barked out a laugh and wiped away the tears I hadn’t known I’d been shedding from my cheeks. I didn’t need to dig deep to know that I loved Garrett. I’d known for a while, too, even if I’d been trying to deny and ignore my feelings when they were at their strongest. I even agreed to some extent that Dustin would have been okay with our being together because, in some weird twisted way, it felt like he’d pushed the two of us to meet. I’d got the flat on that stretch of highway where he and I had first met, and not a lot of traffic flowed. Then along came Garrett…
At the right time, and in right place.
“I agree. I think he would have been okay with us,” I said, taking three steps forward and closing the distance. My heart lurched as I reached out and cupped both of his cheeks with my hands, his sun-kissed skin too soft under my palms. I smiled up at him sadly, the ache in my soul echoing the growing disappointment in his eyes.
“But…” he started for me.
“But, I can’t stay here. I can’t be in this town while Libby’s here. I’m not going to go toe-to-toe with her every time I go to the damn store.”
“She’ll leave soon. She always does.”
“Maybe, maybe not. There’s a large part of me that says she will never go while she knows that you and I are happy, even while I can’t be arrogant enough to think she’d change her life just to fuck with me. I want to believe that she’d not be that petty, that I’m not that important…”
“But she blames you for the direction her life went in. Your name is a curse in her mouth,” he said, looking down at me. “You’re not wrong, Kay, but you’re not alone here, either. You can’t change your life to accommodate her because then she wins.”
“I know that.” He was right of course, but this had been only part of the whole truth, and I was running out of ways to validate my reason to go without bringing his attention to Holly… whom he knew existed, but hadn’t figured out the timeline on. I was worried that if I brought her up, he would do the mental math. That was a shitty thing to do, and I knew it. I hated myself more and more and was currently stuck in a day that felt like it would never end.
“But you’re still not going to stay.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?” he asked sadly.
“Because of me,” Holly said from the top of the stairs. She was standing just outside of the apartment door; her hands on the wood railing and eyes filled with unshed tears. She looked older standing there with the pain expression painted on her perfect complexion. She looked wiser; beyond her fourteen years... she looked like a damn teenager.
I could only imagine what it had cost her to come out here and kamikaze her way into her uncle’s life, but I could also see the hint of relief and hope in her beautiful blue eyes, too. Standing in the morning sun like she was, the features that had also belonged to Dustin stood out more than ever and, after meeting her eyes to make sure she was really okay, I looked back at Garrett who was standing open-mouthed, gaping at her like she was the sun.
“That’s Holly,” I finally said, dropping my hands and hating the feeling that I was abandoning him.
“She’s—”
“Dustin’s,” I confirmed, biting my lip in anticipation.
The air around us stilled and grew heavier with every second that ticked by. Garrett was staring openly at Holly, and a quick gaze at her showed she was in the same state of shock he seemed to be in. It took me a moment to realize she’d forced herself out of the apartment for both of us. She wanted to get to know Garrett, her fascination was there right alongside her fear, but she also seemed to understand what she’d been witnessing.
An odd sense of overwhelming pride and unconditional love crashed over me like a cresting wave and made me tumble around in the aftermath. Holly was my greatest accomplishment in life, and she was also my greatest source of pride. She was growing up to be someone I admired utterly. She was strong, compassionate, funny, and intuitive. She was selfless and kind, warm and caring. She may be my daughter, but damn it, I wanted to be her when I finally grew up.
Turning my gaze back to Garrett, I watched the emotions roll over his features. Shock, amazement, grief, wonder, hurt, love, love, and then, just for me, betrayal. Even though I’d been expecting that agony, it still hurt to see the pain of the lies I’d told him shining back at me. Opening and closing his mouth, he looked back up at Holly again.
“I didn’t know,” he said, voice hoarse with emotional agony. “If I’d known…”
I felt like an intruder in my own life as I looked at them. If it was possible to look both elated and broken, that was how Garrett looked. And Holly… she looked confused and unsure, but also happy and giddy at having another member of her family. How could I have made such a huge mistake? Sure, I hadn’t known this was Rett Hill, Dustin’s brother, but looking between the two of them now, I was an idiot to have not figured it out. There were similarities I hadn’t seen before. Tiny things that linked them together in the same way she and I looked alike.
Reaching a hand out in Holly’s direction, I gave her a tiny nod in invitation to join us. She was still standing on the small porch at the top of the stairs—a safe zone for her at the moment. This was a commitment without being too committed. I didn’t want to push her, but I didn’t want her to think she couldn’t come any closer. To my surprise, she bound down the stairs without much thought and skipped to a stop next to me, suddenly seeming shy being this close to her uncle, who now towered over her.
“Hi,” she squeaked, raising one h
and in a wave and shuffling, finally looking like her fourteen years again.
Taking control of the situation because Garrett seemed lost in his own mind, I put my arm around Holly’s shoulder and took a deep breath, forcing a smile to my lips. “Garrett, this is your niece, Holly Dee Quinten. Holly, this is your, um, Uncle Garrett.”
The word felt so strange on my lips, and it obviously sounded weird to him, too. There was a fragile crack in the frozen state of his face as the side of his mouth twitched as though he wanted to smile but had forgotten how. He looked so handsome, so utterly inhibited by his own cautiousness that my heart lurched for the billionth time.
“Damn,” he finally said, his hand lifting to grip the beard at his chin. “You look just like your daddy.”
“I do?” Holly asked, pushing up to her toes and dropping again.
Unsure, Garrett reached to her, his index finger hooking under her chin and lifting her head so he could get a better look at her. Holly followed his direction and smiled nervously as he studied her. “You have his eyes. Even the color is perfect, and you have the Hill chin.”
“This old thing?” she asked, her voice shaky. “I grew it myself.”
Garrett’s bark of laughter startled her, but her grin shone through once she’d established he was amused by her comment. I dropped a kiss on the top of her head and watched Garrett’s eyes finally rise to meet mine.
“Holly,” he said gently like he was afraid to address her in his normal tone. “I would love for us to take a walk together and talk if that’s okay with you and your mom?”
Holly nodded her agreement, but turned her head and searched my face for the answers to the questions she was forming already. Was it okay? Was I okay with it? Would my feelings be hurt at being left out? Was there anything she couldn’t say? My responding smile and nod said I was fine and happy for her to get to know her uncle. There was nothing she had to hide, and my kiss on her forehead said for her to just be herself. I had no doubt he would fall in love with her as quickly as everyone else whose lives she’d touched.