“Not embarrassed. Just shocked by the interruption.” We’d been in our own little bubble as Scotia opened up about her late-husband, and Savannah’s disruption brought me back to where we were—in Maura’s office kissing.
“You said I was no one to you.”
“I never said that, darlin’. Don’t put words in my mouth.” And for that fact, let’s not talk anymore. “Come here.”
Scotia scoots closer to me. I tuck my arm under her, pulling her into my shoulder and pressing a kiss to her forehead, lingering a moment in the quiet of the cold night. Being here like this, under the stars, breathing in the scent of this woman beside me, calms me a bit. I hadn’t realized how unnerved I’d been with Henny’s return or how unsettled I was that Scotia thought drinks was something other than just drinks.
Somehow telling her about my past with Henny and what happened last night has me rethinking Scotia rushing off. Might she stick? I’m afraid to admit how much I like her snuggled into me. If it weren’t so cold, I’d be angling to have my hands on her skin. Touching her brings me comfort, like connecting skin-to-skin assures me she’s real, she wants me, and she isn’t going anywhere. She’s anchoring me when I hadn’t realized how adrift I’ve been.
I don’t know what it would take to keep a woman like Scotia in my life. I’d already tried to give everything to someone else who rejected all I offered. If Scotia doesn’t need my money, and she doesn’t want my status, why would she be with a guy like me?
Chapter 21
Moonlight Bus Trips
[Scotia]
I’ve kind of had someone else on my mind lately.
Could he mean it? Has he been thinking of me as much as I’ve been thinking of him?
In the dark of night and the quiet that surrounds us, the world around me just feels so big. The air is cold, but snuggled into Chet, I’m warm. Touching him calms me, like he doesn’t want to let me go and he won’t give up on me without a fight. He hasn’t lost faith in me and being with him makes me want to be better, do better. I’ve been lonelier than I’d like to admit, and I’ve been admitting some hard truths to myself lately. I’m achingly empty inside and longing for my heart to be filled.
I shiver.
With Karl gone and Darlene off saving the world, plus my sisters all falling in love, I’ve never felt more alone. It’s one reason I took the volunteer work at Harper House. I wanted to feel connected to others, even if they were children.
Slowly, I connect the dots of Chet’s story. If Harper House is really Chet’s home, and he built a house for the woman of his dreams, that means . . . the house was intended to be theirs—his and the woman he went on a date with.
Oh, Chet. From what he’s told me, he worked hard to better his circumstances, be a self-made man, and earn what he has, and that woman squandered his devotion for someone else.
I can’t imagine it.
Then I realize I can.
At seventeen, I might have done the same thing. I married Karl and was pregnant within a year. With his last name came money and status, family and security. Then again, if a man had loved me with the passion Chet displayed to his former lover, my decisions might have been different.
Money or love? The answer should seem simple, but not when you’ve come from nothing.
Chet suddenly shifts, and I assume cuddle time is over. We’ve each been quietly in our own thoughts for a while.
“Everything alright?” I ask.
He sits upward next to me and reaches forward for the beers. He cracks one and offers it to me. I sit up as well, keeping the blanket over my legs. It isn’t cold so much as crisp with a definite chill in the air. I’m warm enough in most places, minus my cheeks and hands.
Chet opens the second beer and taps the neck of it against my bottle. He chuckles to himself, as if a funny thought occurred to him, and then lifts the brew to his lips. I watch as he swallows, taking a long pull. I take a small, quick drink of mine. I’m not necessarily a fan of the stuff, but this one has a fruiter taste to it, like a hard cider, not a bitter beer.
“Tell me three things,” he states, and I’m reminded of our first encounter.
“I understand what you mean about a poor upbringing.”
“Darlin’,” he groans, turning his gaze to me. He sits with one leg stretched forward and one bent. One arm leans to support him while the other rests on his raised knee, hand holding his beer. “Don’t mock me.”
“I’m not. My upbringing was with very strict parents. The church, according to Willard and Winifred Winters.”
His brows lift as if I’m kidding him.
“I grew up in Cedar Gap. People just assume I’m from Green Valley. I was bussed into the valley for high school.”
“Cedar Gap?” The question in his voice asks everything. It’s a small community no longer on a map.
“My parents wanted a place where they could practice the righteousness of their beliefs. Where else to begin the work of God than in a mountain-top armpit?” I’m not mocking my parents’ work. “For my entire upbringing, I believed in their idea of God and my place in His plan.”
You are special, my father would say to me, and I truly believed him. Extraordinary in more ways than all others because of my hair. When kids taunted me that I wore the mark of the devil, my father assured me I’d been touched by an angel.
The weight of Chet’s gaze presses against my cheek as though I’m some religious nut. In the name of faith in a higher being, I should turn the other cheek to his glare. Instead, I face him.
“When you’re raised with a sense of entitlement, like you truly are better than others, you tend to believe it, and I did. I drank the proverbial Kool-Aid.” My parents were not whacks. It wasn’t a cult. They just had a strong belief system which included themselves at the center and their purpose as the right course in life—the hand of God in their interpretation.
“Their opinions of others included a sense of being better than average.”
“So . . . hypocritical,” Chet interjects
“Hypocritical?” I question. I don’t care for the censure in his tone.
“Imitating some god doesn’t include casting out others. Putting others down. It draws a line between right and wrong.” I ponder his comment, knowing in my heart he isn’t wrong. Anyone who believes that a supreme being made all things equal should treat all things as equals. I have never lived by that rule, and I swallow the confession.
Instead, I defend myself. “There is a right and wrong.”
“Then it’s wrong of you to think you’re better than others,” he states like he’s laying down a new commandment. Thou shall not believe in one’s self.
Suddenly, I’m not certain how telling him about my upbringing has turned into a sermon on my behavior. I stay quiet and glance up at the stars again.
If there’s a heaven, God must exist, right?
And that God will judge who enters.
Will you enter, Scotia? Have you always done right by others? It sounds like something my daddy would have asked. The dichotomy is real—being raised that you’re one of the chosen ones, and then being damned for acting like one. I might have misinterpreted Daddy’s lessons.
“I’ve sidetracked us,” Chet mutters. “Tell me more.”
This certainly isn’t the romantic three things perhaps he thought I’d mention. I shrug, not certain I should continue, but I do. “We didn’t have much, but we believed we had more than most. As I grew older, I saw it wasn’t true. I noticed more of what was out there . . .” I wave a hand to the invisible there. “And I wanted it. I didn’t want to be the poor girl bussed into the valley but the queen of the mountain.” My voice rises in false triumph and then dies back.
“I met Karl while he was in college. It’s a simple tale . . . we fell in love. Well, our kind of love. We got married so I could follow him to medical school. Then I learned the truth.”
The painful moment of walking in on my husband kissing another man during what was sup
posed to be a study session will forever be burned into my brain. Was the hurt that he was kissing someone of his same sex? After years of coming to terms with Karl’s sexual orientation, I’d realized it was the betrayal of my heart. Karl had embodied everything I’d ever dreamed of having—the man, the money, the home, the future—but I would never have his heart.
“Why did you stay with him?”
“He begged, and I wanted to be needed. Leaving him would ruin him, and I didn’t have any other options. I wasn’t college-educated. I’d taken classes but didn’t have a formal degree.” I crane my neck to give him a frustrated glance. “Karl really was one of my best friends, one of my only true friends, so we just worked it out.”
I sigh because working it out hadn’t turned out how I’d hoped. There’d been moments of great difficulty—pretending all was well while I was shattering inside—and the best way to mask my own unhappiness was to tear down the happiness of others. If she was prettier than me, I found fault. If she had more wealth, I found error. At every turn, I tried to make others feel beneath me because I felt so low myself. And by rejecting others first, I didn’t risk being hurt by their rejection.
“I could make a million excuses for myself,” I begin. “Everyone wants to be needed. Everyone wants to be loved. Even those professing they don’t need love. And everyone wants to feel important to someone else. My best defense is I had ambition and whether you agree with my end goals or not, nothing is wrong with being determined. You’ve lived the same life.”
Chet’s quiet for a moment.
“We’ve done the same thing, Chet Chester Chesterfield Big Poppy. Maybe for different external purposes, but there’s no difference in the internal drive between us.”
“There’s every bit of difference, darlin’. I did it for love. You did it for some misconception of status.”
“Didn’t you have the same misconception? If you had money, if you had status, if you were worldly, you’d get the girl?” Punching him in the stomach with the reality of his actions and thoughts does not make me feel good. “I did it for love. A different kind of love.”
While unrequited in a romantic sense, I stuck to my marriage out of loyalty and commitment. I stand by the fact that as difficult as it was to play house, and pretend I was a happy wife with a good life, I did it for friendship . . . and our daughter.
I could never admit to our child who her father was. He was a god in her eyes. She knew nothing of his affairs until his death, and even then, she did not know it was with a man. Her father was simply killed coming out of a random hotel littered with condoms, proof of sexual exploits with someone other than his wife.
Chet finishes the rest of his beer while I simply hold mine in my hand.
“Why all the names?” I ask. It’s something I’ve been curious about.
“I’m Chester Popielarski Chesterfield. My middle name was my mother’s maiden name. Davis found out and started calling me Big Poppy. When I bought The Fugitive, the nickname felt strangely appropriate and separated me from my other businesses. Only special people call me Chet.”
I look at him as he explains his various layers. “You let me call you Chet.”
“You’re one of the special ones.” My insides flip-flop at his response. After a long pause, he asks, “What did you mean when you said you wanted someone to belong to you?”
I swallow around revealing another hard truth. Unable to face him, I squint off in the distance as I answer. “I never had Karl. He was my friend and partner, but he didn’t belong to me. He didn’t want me like I want to be wanted. I had half of him, but I want a whole man, a whole heart.”
Chet’s gaze is on me, but I can’t bring myself to look at him. Even in the dark, I feel like he can see every inch of me inside and out. I told him near Halloween I wanted a second chance at making a first impression on him. I have no idea if he’s impressed or continues to be appalled by me.
“Going to drink that?” I glance down at the beer in my hand and shake my head. He takes the bottle from me and sets it on the corner of the platform along with his empty one. His seated position shifts so he’s leaning toward me, and he grabs the white strip in my hair, twirling the strands around his finger. He spirals his finger down to the edge and starts again. The show of affection is strange, yet I find the touch soothing.
After doing it a second time, he tucks his fingers into my scarf, working his hand to cup my neck. His touch is soft for a big man. I’ve never felt the way I feel when his hands are on me. Not even in those early days with Karl when I thought I loved him did it feel like this. Probably because our relationship had always been a façade.
“Every time I think I have you figured out? I don’t,” Chet says. For some reason, I smile at how mysterious that makes me sound.
“I’m really an open book,” I state.
“You are many things, Scotia Simmons, and not one of them is what I first thought.”
“Oh yeah? And what did you think when you met me? Tell me three things,” I tease. Am I flirting? Is this how it’s supposed to happen?
“I thought, ‘She’s drunk.’.”
My mouth falls open, and then I burst out laughing, shaking my head. “I was, wasn’t I?”
“But I also thought, ‘She’s so beautiful . . . and sad.’ There was something about the way you looked at me, like you really wanted me. ‘You. Me. A bed.’. Never been propositioned quite like that before.”
“Worst come-on ever,” I mock of myself.
“I liked your directness, but a vulnerability existed underneath your proposition. Of course, by the time we got to your room, I learned that look in your eye was the need to vomit.”
“Oh, God.” I lower my head. “Not one of my finer moments.”
“You asked me to stay. That would be my third thing.”
“I did?” My head pops up, and I search for his eyes, which are hard to distinguish against the dark night. Is he teasing me? I don’t recall asking this of him.
“You gave me the saddest look I’d ever seen,” he whispers in the quiet.
“So you stayed because you felt sorry for me.” I’m disgusted with myself, and my tone expresses it.
“You were real, Scotia, and I couldn’t walk out.” His deep voice softens.
“You held me that night,” I remind him, recalling how I woke with his arm over me.
“I could say a hundred things like I didn’t want you to choke on your own vomit or die in your sleep, but the truth is, I held you, because you seemed like you needed to be held. You needed a hug.”
Butter on biscuits, that was sweet.
“I need to return the favor sometime,” I admit as I’ve found myself in too many compromising positions with this man. After what he’s told me about his past, I ask, “Who holds you when you need it?”
He doesn’t move. His hand stills on the side of my neck. I’m not certain he’s breathing, and the truth hits me. No one. He’s done everything on his own over the years to either prove something or take responsibility. Building the house. Taking on the boys. Opening his home to others. He’s done none of it for him, and that’s the difference between us.
He needs a hug as well.
“Let me be the one to hold you, Chet.” The plea in my voice sounds almost as pathetic as that of the woman who suggested he stay with her. There’s so much honesty in my asking. I want to be needed by him. I want him to belong to me, but I want to belong to him.
I scoot forward and slip my arms around his neck, cradling him to me. One set of fingers comb through his hair while my other hand slides down to his broad shoulder blade, tucking him against me as best I can. I press a kiss to his thick hair and breathe him in.
Is it too late to want love like this in life? I certainly hope not.
Warm lips touch my throat after a minute. Soft suction and the wet tip of his tongue brush along my neck. He loosens my scarf, and I tip my head back to allow him better access to my skin. My arms still circle him as best they c
an, but he’s reclaiming control. His mouth opens, and he nibbles at my jaw. He bites my chin, and I gasp. The drop of my jaw offers him an invitation, and his lips cover mine. His tongue thrusts forward. The kiss is equal parts hesitation and hunger.
Our bodies shift, pressing closer as our mouths speak of missed desires and ancient hurts. The moment feels so sad that my closed eyes prickle with tears, but I can’t bring myself to stop kissing him. It seems wrong to give him my kisses in the depths of our unrequited memories, but I don’t know what else to offer him.
Then the kiss alters. It’s no longer an attempt to put a bandage on the past but an acceptance of the present. This is not one-sided. This is equal, eager, and desperate. He wants me as much as I want him.
His hands slowly roam, outlining my body but not straying outside some invisible line. He doesn’t cross to the achy swell of my breasts or dip to the thumping pulse between my thighs. He coasts his thick palm over my hip and around my waist, along my back and into my hair. He holds me close as though I’m precious while his mouth never leaves mine.
With the same exploration, my fingers comb through his hair and curl around his nape. One hand slides to his chest and feels his heart racing even through layers of clothing. His mouth against mine speaks a thousand words, none of which I can interpret other than this is real. He wants me for now. We aren’t going any farther than where we are—making out under the stars—and fully dressed, I’d never felt more naked and raw in my entire life.
I don’t know how long we’ve kissed, but eventually, I shiver, and it isn’t from the passion of kissing this incredible kisser. It’s getting cold.
“Let’s head inside,” Chet offers as his lips slowly pull back from mine. I nod, accepting his invitation. I hadn’t really intended to stay the night, although I’m grateful for the hint I might. I don’t know why I felt the need to see him, which is a lie I tell myself. I could have called him. Driving nearly an hour down a treacherous road in the dark was not one of my smartest decisions, but I just wanted to be near him.
Love in a Pickle: A Silver Fox Small Town Romance (Green Valley Library Book 9) Page 19