by Lily Cahill
Still, she hated that someone else was trying to sway her. She mustered every bit of control she had, trying to make her words as polite as possible. “I’m sorry, ma’am. But I don’t intend to marry for stability. If I marry at all, I intend to marry for love.” She straightened her shoulders, hoping that a steel spine would keep her voice from quavering. “I’m perfectly capable of providing for myself. And I’d prefer to make my own personal connections.”
“Very well,” Mrs. Briggs said.
“But I will consider what you had to say. I don’t want—” Cora nearly choked on the words. “I would never want to hold him back.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that,” Mrs. Briggs said, placing her cup and saucer on the table and standing.
Cora stood up too. She couldn’t wait to leave. If she didn’t want to save face so badly, she would have run out of the house that very instant. Instead, she followed Mrs. Briggs to the front door.
“Thank you for the tea,” she said, and turned to leave.
“One last thing, Cora. There are several ladies coming over for bridge later. I’m sure the cake you prepared is spectacular. I’d be happy to let them know that you are the one who provided it.”
Cora didn’t know if she was making the offer as yet another bribe, but she didn’t want to leave things unclear with Mrs. Briggs.
“Thank you, but that’s not necessary,” she said. Every practical bone in her body screamed at her to take the offer, but she just couldn’t do it. How could she ever look Clayton in the eye again if she did?
No. She didn’t need any favors, especially ones with strings attached. Not from a woman who was asking her to break her own heart. It cost her, but Cora walked away from the gorgeous house with her head held high.
Somehow, Cora managed to make it to the end of the drive before the tears came. She raced down the lane, but knew she couldn’t walk through town like this. She took a path that cut through Highledge and straight down the mountain to the river. It wasn’t a path many people took since most residents of Highledge owned cars and drove everywhere instead of walked. She knew she could be alone there.
She collapsed on the bank, wiping her face dry as the water rushed past. She wasn’t going to cry anymore, she thought, even as tears streamed down her face.
The raging river sparkled in the hot afternoon sun, and Cora wanted to wash her face in it. But the river was dangerous this time of year. Even one step might drag her away on the rapids.
Then she remembered it didn’t matter. She didn’t have to step into the river. She could make the river come to her. A bitter laugh forced itself through her tears. It was funny how a boy like Clayton could make her almost forget about something so unreal in her life. Sometimes it felt like the two things were equally impossible—her power and him. They were part of the same dream.
She rose to her knees and looked around to make sure no one was there. The path that led down to the bank was seldom traveled, and with the trees in full summer bloom no one would see her from the road. It was safe.
She drew the water to her—a glistening bubble of it—and dipped her hands in to splash her face. The water was so cold it made her gasp, but it was refreshing and instantly cleared her head.
She was a fool to have imagined it might work between her and Clayton. What had she been thinking? Her feelings for him weren’t the only thing that mattered. And she knew she did feel something for him now. It wasn’t just infatuation, or lust, or even the heady pride of being picked by someone as popular and impossibly handsome as Clayton Briggs. It was something more.
She called more water out of the river with a flick of her hand, and this time made it dance while she considered her feelings. The water became a spinning flower—the petals splitting off and splashing back into the river one by one.
He loves me.
He loves me not.
He loves me.
He loves me not.
He loves me.
Clayton wasn’t just Clayton Briggs—not just a name she’d heard her whole life. He was a real person. He was kind and brave and smart. He had ambition and ideas and charm. There was life behind his eyes—God, those eyes—a spark that shone on everyone he met.
She felt like a different person with Clayton—like the person she could be instead of the person she was. When he was around, it didn’t feel like life was an impossible set of circumstances. It felt like something she could solve, something she could conquer. And he saw something in her that no one else had. It had lit her up like a firefly, had made her feel like anything was possible.
She made a new flower out of the water. More like a rose this time, fuller and more complex. Cora marveled at her power. Each time she used it, her command of water grew. She plucked the petals again.
He loves me.
He loves me not.
He loves me.
He loves me not.
He loves me.
He loves me not.
Mrs. Briggs had been right. She hadn’t been cruel, or trying to hurt her. She’d been truthful. Cora could be a lot of things. She could have a successful life, she could achieve all that she’d dreamed. She’d make a wonderful wife someday. She knew she had plenty to offer a man. But she could never, ever be what Clayton needed. And she could never forgive herself if she was the reason he didn’t achieve all he wanted in his life.
She made another flower, this one like the dahlias he had brought her on their date the other night. She hadn’t been able to keep them, because Butch or Hank surely would have asked where she got such expensive blooms. But she couldn’t bear to throw them away. Instead, she had picked the loveliest bloom and pressed it between the pages of the family Bible. That was one place the men in her house were sure not to look.
This time, she couldn’t lie to herself. Instead, she told herself a different story as the flower spun in her palm, each petal twisting off one by one.
He loves me not.
He loves me not.
He loves me not.
He loves me not.
He loves me not.
She had to end it, and she had to end it soon. She could feel herself pulled closer to him with every passing moment. It would only hurt more the longer she let it go on.
So she had to do it. For her and for him.
All that was left of her flower was the shiny center—the now empty receptacle of all that beauty. She let the dancing water fall back into the river and race away over the rocks.
He loves me not.
She would do it tonight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Clayton
Clayton parked at the end of Cora’s street, his convertible purring beneath him. He had already driven through town, looked at the lake. But she wasn’t there. He wished he could just go straight to her door and knock, but that was out of the question. His family might have discovered them already, but there was still hers to think of, and he’d never convince her to take their relationship out in the open by banging down her front door.
So instead of approaching from the front, he followed a path near the river until he spotted the back of her house, then walked through a vast wild field to get closer.
The house was old but clean. Cora’s pride in it was clear. Unlike many of the other houses on the street, its paint wasn’t peeling off. It had been scraped and whitewashed. The wash was fading, yes, but even that set it apart from the dilapidated homes around it.
He approached quietly, listening for anyone else at home. There seemed to be a radio playing somewhere. He followed the noise to the north side of the house and peered into a window. The sight made him pull away quickly. Dammit. There was a poker game going on in the kitchen. Three men surrounded the table. He hadn’t let himself look long enough to recognize faces, but he didn’t notice Cora in there. He moved on to the south side of the house, hoping to find her alone.
He chanced peering into one of the back windows, but was disappointed again. It was someone’s bedroom. A lar
ge man was asleep on his stomach, his face buried from view. The dingy bedsheets tangled with dirty laundry and the rest of the furniture littered with empty beer bottles and trash. The sight made him shudder. Who was it? Her father? Her brother? He had never really considered what it must be like to live under the same roof as one of them.
He circled around to the front. The lawn was neat and free of weeds. The porch was drooping on one side, but swept clean. He looked into the largest front window. This one showed a small, empty living room. Here he could see Cora’s touch. Nothing looked new, but everything was neat and tidy. He could see the care she must take to keep it this way, especially considering she shared a house with someone who was content to sleep in a garbage heap.
Then his eye caught on the sofa. There was a spring—an actual spring—shooting out from one of the seats. His gaze drifted to other things too: a broken plane of glass sealed over with flimsy cardboard, a faded magazine cutout of a sailboat tacked to the wall, a book wedged under a coffee table with a busted leg, threadbare cushions and sheets hanging on the walls where curtains should be. The sight sent a pang through his heart. All of the items would have been thrown away in his home, but here they were set out proudly in a place meant to accept company—the best of what they had. Was this really how she was forced to live?
The reality of her world, of her true circumstances, came crashing down on him. He had known she was poor, but hadn’t really realized what that meant. No wonder she’d found his lifestyle excessive. She must have thought him a complete ass. His mind snapped to her insistence on giving him the coins for her dinner, and he suddenly realized what that sacrifice had actually meant. He kicked himself for not putting five dollars back in her purse, twenty, a hundred; for ever agreeing to her ridiculous request not to give her any presents. The necklace sitting in his breast pocket now felt so small, so completely inadequate. How could he let her live a life like this when he had so much? He was even more determined to bring them out into the open, to make his parents understand, to take her away from all of this forever.
A noise startled him out of his thoughts. The door opened and Butch stood before him, wide and tall and leering.
“What the hell do you want?”
Dammit.
“Is Cora home?” Clayton asked, trying to be as polite as possible.
Clayton was very familiar with Butch. The two of them would have been in the same graduating class if Butch hadn’t dropped out in the middle of their sophomore year. The years with him in school before then had been enough, as far as Clayton was concerned. The whole building seemed to breathe easier the moment he was gone.
“Yeah. I heard something about that.” Butch spit on the wooden planks at his feet, so close Clayton had to force himself not to flinch away from it. “Bet you got yourself some big ideas where she’s concerned.”
Clayton relaxed a bit. Butch was just being protective. He could respect that. He hadn’t wanted to do this without her permission, but now that he was here, it was as good a time as any.
“I have nothing but the best intentions toward your sister. I know our families haven’t always gotten along, but Cora is an incredible woman. I intend to treat her with the respect she deserves.”
Instead of putting Butch at ease, Clayton’s words seemed to make him more angry.
“Friggin’ idiot,” he spat. “I didn’t know she had her hooks into you that deep. Guess she’s more of a Murphy than I thought.”
Clayton bristled. Cora was nothing like her family and if it was up to him he’d show this brute exactly how different they were. But he didn’t want to start trouble.
“Could you just tell her I’m here, please?”
“I ain’t your errand boy,” Butch said.
“Do you mind if I come inside and find her then?”
“Yeah, I mind,” Butch said. “This is my house. You don’t own everything in town, you know.”
“Look, I don’t want any trouble, okay? I just want to speak to Cora.”
“Well, she don’t want to speak to you.”
“She said that?” He wanted to clock this guy. He fantasized about letting his fist drive into Butch’s meaty face.
“You got a problem out here, Butch?” The voice belonged to one of Butch’s cronies. A ruddy-faced guy named Ralph—also in their school year—who Clayton had always seen as particularly useless.
“What’s going on?” Another guy walked up. His name was Danny, and while Clayton had never had a beef with him personally, anyone who hung out with Butch couldn’t exactly be trusted.
“Look, I just want to talk to Cora.”
“Cora’s not here,” Danny said.
“And she wouldn’t want to talk to you if she was,” Ralph said. “She’s spoken for. And not by no Briggs, either.”
“I’ll come back later.”
“No, you won’t,” Butch said. “You don’t come back to this house, understand? And you sure as hell don’t talk to my sister no more.”
“Who Cora speaks to is entirely up to her,” Clayton said.
Butch was in his face in a flash. It was actually remarkable that a man with his bulk could move so quickly.
“I’m the man of this house,” Butch said. “And if I say my sister don’t talk to you, then my sister don’t talk to you.”
Clayton glared at him, a thousand ugly phrases on his tongue.
“Shouldn’t we let Cora decide that?”
That’s when the punch came, but it wasn’t from Clayton’s fist. The force of Butch’s blow hit him in the jaw and slammed him against the post holding up the porch awning.
Clayton lunged back, landing a blow on Butch’s chin. But almost as soon as he had, Ralph and Danny were on him too. Danny was pulling Clayton away, off the porch, while Ralph landed a weak punch to Clayton’s gut.
“Back off, Ralph,” Butch said. “This one’s mine.”
Clayton spit and blood splattered the porch.
“And now you’re making a mess. Cora’s gonna have a good time cleaning that up later.”
Ralph chuckled like a fawning parasite while Clayton struggled in Danny’s hold. The thought of Cora forced to her hands and knees, cleaning his blood, had rage spinning inside him.
“Don’t you dare involve her in this.”
All the humor left Butch’s face.
“I told you to get the hell off my property, asshole,” Butch said.
“Come on, man—” Danny said to Butch. “I thought we were going cruising to pick up chicks? If you sweet talk me, maybe I’ll even buy you a beer with all that dough I just won off you.”
But Butch wasn’t listening.
“Didn’t I, boys?” Butch asked Danny and Ralph. “Didn’t I tell him to go?”
“You did,” Ralph said, yanking one of Clayton’s arms away from Danny and whirling him to face Butch full on. “But rich boy didn’t listen. Too much money in his ears.”
Danny shook his head and walked back up to the porch. But Ralph still had a tight grip on him.
“You think just cause you have money, you can boss everybody around, don’t you?” Butch asked.
“Too weak to fight me on your own?” Clayton asked.
“Let him go,” Butch growled to Ralph. Ralph obeyed, releasing his grip and joining Danny on the porch.
Clayton raised his fists. Butch was big, but this wasn’t Clayton’s first fight. The men circled each other, glaring, each biding their time, waiting for the other to make the first critical move.
“Leave him alone!”
He heard her scream like it was coming down a long hallway.
It was Cora, running toward them. She barely looked at Clayton, instead going straight for her brother.
“I said let him go,” she said. She pounded on Butch’s bicep, but by comparison she looked like a gnat. She turned to Danny. “Danny? Come on. Make him stop.”
“Butch—” Danny said.
“No!” Butch yelled. “He thinks he can come here, boss me around?
He thinks he can do whatever he wants ‘cause he’s rich. You ain’t better than us, Briggs.”
Cora’s face looked frantic—on the edge of something. She tossed Clayton a desperate look. Did she want him to stay or go? Whatever she was considering, he didn’t want to be the cause of her distress.
“I don’t want any trouble,” Clayton said. “I’m going.”
“Damn right you are,” Ralph said, but Butch was still fuming, pacing off his rage.
“But I’m taking her with me,” Clayton said.
“The hell you are,” Butch said. “She’s been putting on airs all week. This shit has gone on long enough.”
“She can do what she likes,” Clayton said. “She’s not yours to command.”
Butch yanked Cora back by her arm. “You’re not going anywhere, especially not with this asshole. You’re staying home where you belong.”
“Let her go,” Clayton demanded. “Let her go or so help me God I will have the police here in ten minutes.”
Butch stopped, looked Clayton right in the eye. “You think she’d last that long?”
Clayton snapped.
Maybe it was the words. Maybe it was the sight of Butch holding her like that, his thick fingers pressing into her flesh.
He felt the pull of something—so strong it was like it was calling his name. He hadn’t wanted to fight, but now he couldn’t stop himself. The desire to decimate Butch was too intense.
Clayton charged forward, closing the space between them, and hit Butch square in the jaw.
With that one blow, Clayton saw Butch’s eyes flutter back in his head, saw Butch stumble toward Danny, who caught him before he hit the ground.
Clayton had wanted to hit him, but he hadn’t realized he’d hit him so hard.
That’s when he recognized the heat gathered in his palm.
No.
He hadn’t. He couldn’t have. Did he?
Clayton whipped his hand behind his back before anyone could see, before their heads even snapped back from Butch’s limp body to look at him. He hadn’t even glanced at the orb. But it felt larger than any other he’d ever made. Different too. Wrong.