Preston's Honor

by Mia Sheridan

  I was tempted to simply stand out there all night staring at the stars and thinking my own happy thoughts, but I didn’t. I let myself inside quietly. My mama was sound asleep in her chair in front of the TV that was still on. I flicked it off and grabbed a blanket from her bed, going to spread it over her when she stirred slightly. A piece of paper had been in her hand, and with the movement, it fluttered to the floor.

  I picked it up and looked at it with interest. A letter postmarked from Texas forwarded from our old address to our current one. Confused and deeply curious, I hesitated only a moment before I opened it as quietly as possible and read the short note written in Spanish and signed from Florencia. “Florencia,” I whispered, causing my mama to stir and open her eyes.

  She blinked at me sleepily, her gaze moving to the letter in my hand and then to the open drawer of the small table next to her where I noticed more letters addressed to my mama in the same looped cursive.

  I looked back at my mama in confusion. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a sister in Texas, Mama? I have an aunt?” It had only ever been my mama and me. I’d always longed for family, just to know something about the people I’d come from, but once I’d understood that I was a product of rape, I never brought it up—not even to ask about my mama’s side. I just didn’t want to bring up the subject, knowing where it might lead. Maybe I was ashamed of my own existence, much like mama.

  She sighed. “Yes. I wrote to her only once when you were a baby. She still lived in Mexico then and I let her know I was alive. That was all.”

  “I’m . . . I’m glad to know we have family—and that they’re here in the United States, too. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  She waved her hand as if it had nothing to do with me anyway and my heart sunk. “She has written me several times, but I have never written her back.” I had already deduced that much from my aunt’s letter. My aunt—Florencia—had also said that their mother passed away a few months before. I wanted to pepper my mama with so many questions, but she turned her head and closed her eyes again. As I had so many times over the years, I kept the questions inside, and simply covered her with the blanket.

  Once inside the bathroom, I got in the shower, the soreness as I washed bringing to mind Preston and the joy in my heart. Everything else floated away. For the first time in my life I didn’t let my mama’s remoteness bother me. With Preston’s love I could face anything. Anything at all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Preston

  I spent the entirety of the next day alternating between the shame of my actions, the blissful joy of having made love to Lia despite how it’d happened, and the weight of knowing I had to tell my brother. Cole had asked Annalia to save herself for him, but he had been far from celibate in college. He hadn’t dated anyone seriously, but his bed had rarely been empty. And he hadn’t seemed to have any guilt about it. Maybe he envisioned them becoming more serious now, but that wasn’t going to happen. And anyway, he’d be leaving at some point, perhaps somewhere far away. I hoped fervently he’d be okay with what I was going to tell him, but it wasn’t a conversation I was looking forward to.

  Despite the hard physical labor of farm work, my mind insisted on turning the situation over again and again. On one hand I felt guilty and dishonest, and on another I felt completely justified in my actions. Lia and I both wanted each other. And we’d both held back from telling the other the truth of that desire. For years, it seemed. We’d talk about all of that later today when there was nothing standing in the way of us being together, especially ourselves.

  I sighed, thinking of that long-ago race and wondering if that’s where everything had gone wrong, suspecting it probably was. But I could hardly wrap my mind around everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. I needed to sit with Lia and untangle it all slowly. All those years when I’d thought about Lia, the word that had come to mind was mine, and I’d denied it, tried to push it away. It suddenly seemed like a stupid, worthless endeavor. We’d wasted too much time.

  “What are you scowling about?”

  I jerked my head up at the sound of Cole’s voice. He was approaching me where I’d been washing my hands off under the spout on the side of the house. I turned off the water and used the hem of my shirt to dry them off. “I didn’t realize I was.”

  “Didn’t I always tell you that your face would eventually stick that way?” He sat down on the back stairs next to the water faucet I’d been using. “I think it’s finally happened. You’re going to have to wear that grimace forever.” He moved his face into a mockery of a frown and I couldn’t help chuckling softly.

  Cole pointed his finger at me. “Ah! I’ve cured you.”

  I used the still-damp hem of my T-shirt to wipe at my sweaty face. I needed a shower badly. I took a few steps and leaned against the stair railing. Cole was staring out to the fields behind me. He looked tired, probably still hung over. “Doesn’t look good,” he said.

  I sighed. “No.” We’d have to talk about the details of the crops, the soil, the financial outlook for this year and next once I’d gathered all the information I could—I’d probably have a good picture by the end of the week—but right now, there was a topic that was more pressing: Lia.

  As if his mind had followed some path to Lia as well, he said, “Remember that little creek we used to go to with Lia?”

  “Yeah. It’s dried up,” I said, thinking he might be wondering if we could use the water somehow.

  He squinted up at me and then looked back to the crops. “I know I said I’d give it some time, but . . . I’m not going to stay, Preston. I feel bad about that because I know you’ll need the help.”

  I stared at him for a moment and then blew out a breath. “I knew that was a possibility. It’s okay. I understand.” And frankly, though it would make running the farm harder, it was going to make the whole thing with Lia a lot easier.

  He nodded. “I’m going to ask Lia to come with me.”

  I froze. “What?” What the hell? I hadn’t considered this. Why hadn’t I considered this? Denial? Wishful thinking?

  Cole turned slightly, leaning his back against the railing so he could look directly at me. “She’s always wanted to get out of here. And how is that ever going to happen? She works at IHOP for fuck’s sake. Do you think she’ll ever manage to save up enough to go to college? To do anything more than wait on people for the rest of her life? I don’t know, I just . . . hanging out with her last night felt so simple, so . . . easy. It’s always felt easy with Lia.”

  Easy? For a second the description confused me. Loving Annalia was many things for me, but easy had never been one of them. Wild, breath-stealing, joyful, heart-wrenching even, but easy? No.

  “You’re not even an actual couple, Cole. Christ, you slept with as many girls, if not more, as I did in college. Why the hell would she go with you?”

  He watched me for a moment. “We’ve never really given it a try. Things just haven’t aligned right until now. But we’ve always been attracted to each other. That’s as good a place to start as any. And I want to get her out of here, to give her a chance at a real life, to make some of her dreams come true.” He paused, looking behind me for a moment. “With my degree, I can get a good job, rent an apartment for us, she can take classes during the day. I’m betting it will work out with us, but hell, even if it doesn’t, she’ll be a hundred times better off than she is now.”

  For a moment I almost agreed with him. For a moment I thought that if anyone deserved easy, it was Lia. For a moment I could see the logic—and the rightness—of what he was thinking, but then a vision of what had happened between us last night came into my mind bringing with it the reminder of how much time we’d already lost. Now that I knew Lia had feelings for me, I’d be damned if I was going to let her go. If Cole had told me before last night about this plan of his, things might have been different, but last night had happened and I couldn’t pretend it hadn’t. I wouldn’t.

  “You can�
��t. You can’t take her with you.”

  Cole’s expression was confused. “Well, not against her will. Jesus. I’m going to ask her. But she’s not going to say no.”

  “She is, though. She is going to say no.”

  Cole’s brows furrowed and he shook his head. “What? How do you know?”

  “Because we were . . .” I ran a hand through my hair, letting out a breath. “We were together last night. She has feelings for me.”

  For a frozen second, Cole just stared at me as if he didn’t comprehend what I’d just said. “Together . . . what? You mean . . .” His face flushed and he surged to his feet. “What. The. Fuck?” he gritted out. He shook his head, his face screwing up into surprised confusion. “Last night? She was sick last—” He grabbed the hair at the top of his head, chuckling softly, but with no amusement in the sound whatsoever. “You lied to me. Jesus Christ, what’d you do? Fuck her in your truck on some back road?”

  Rage and shame engulfed me, rage that he’d spoken about her in such crude terms, shame because I’d treated her crudely. It’d actually been even worse than Cole knew—I hadn’t taken her virginity in my truck. No, I’d taken her virginity on a cold, hard tabletop, my pants around my ankles, and her skirt pushed up to her waist. I grimaced. She hadn’t seemed upset about the manner in which we’d had sex, but why would she? She had nothing else to compare it to. “No,” I said, unwilling to give him the details, not because I was ashamed—though I was—but because what Lia and I had done was private. It was between her and me.

  “You motherfucker,” he said. “Did you even use a condom?”

  My stomach dropped. In the midst of all my swirling emotions, I hadn’t even thought about that. No, I hadn’t used a condom. He must have known the answer by the look on my face because he swore viciously. He stared at me for a moment with daggers in his eyes before saying, “You must really care about her to want to give her a disease.”

  “Fuck off, Cole. I’ve always used protection.” Only not last night. It’d been the one time I hadn’t even considered a condom. Of course, I hadn’t considered much. I’d been out of my mind with lust and love and the burning desire that had built up for so many years. And then today, I’d been so immersed in my own thoughts to even consider that we’d had unprotected sex. Jesus. I was a selfish asshole. I was the asshole Cole had been trying to save her from all those years before when he’d asked her not to give herself to anyone while he was gone.

  “So getting her pregnant at nineteen so she can be trapped here forever in this two-bit town working days at IHOP and spending her nights caring for a squalling kid who’ll repeat the process all over again was your plan?”

  He jumped down the steps to stand right in front of me and it shocked me. I’d never seen Cole so enraged over . . . anything. “Oh wait, wait, maybe it’s your plan to marry her so she can live here on this dusty, godforsaken farm serving your needs for the rest of her life. It worked out real well for Mom and Dad. I actually can’t decide which option sounds better. Lia must be thrilled with all the choices suddenly opening up to her.”

  I felt sick and confused by the things he was yelling at me. “It’s not like that,” I gritted out. But maybe he was right. Maybe giving in to my lust for Lia had been the most selfish thing I possibly could have done to her. He was right—she’d always wanted to leave this town. And strapping her with a baby would be a sure guarantee that I’d squashed that dream. My guts twisted with remorse at the sudden vision of Lia and her dream-filled eyes.

  Oh God, please don’t let her be pregnant.

  Please, please don’t let her be pregnant.

  Cole’s fist slammed into my face. I let out a loud grunt at the shock of it, rage exploding in my blood at the sucker punch. I reeled back a few steps but caught myself, massaging my jaw and then working it to make sure there was no real damage. “I’ll give you that one, Cole, because I wasn’t honest with you. I broke our oath. I broke my word,” I said, my voice filled with the anger I felt, “but hit me again, and I’ll hit you back.”

  “Fuck you, brother,” he spat out before his fist connected with my jaw again. I reeled back and then I threw my own punch, connecting with his cheekbone. He grunted and threw himself at me, and we scrabbled on the ground for a few minutes, sweating and yelling, fighting for dominance the way we’d done when we were boys.

  I felt hands on my arms and someone was pulling me backward and when things cleared around me, I saw someone pulling Cole away, too. We simultaneously shook the hands off us, facing each other from a few feet away in a standoff. The men who’d separated us were two of the farmhands we’d been able to keep on the payroll and they were saying words about calming down and no way to solve problems. I tuned them out, not knowing if Cole was going to come at me again and preparing for it if he did. His right eye was red and already swollen shut and there was some blood dripping from his lip. I felt the sick punch of shame to my gut as if it was a second attacker. I wanted to start this whole conversation over, to do it better, to make him understand what I felt in my heart, but I’d fucked it up and now it was too late. We were staring at each other as the adversaries I never wanted to be.

  I let out a harsh breath, stepping back as I nodded to the men. “We’re okay.” They glanced at both of us and nodded, turning away and walking back toward the fields where they’d been working the bone-dry, ravaged earth.

  Running a hand through my damp hair, I took a second to calm my still-ragged breathing. “Jesus, Cole. I love Lia. You’ve got this all wrong. I loved her that day we ran the race for her. It wasn’t just because I thought she was pretty, or because I was sort of interested. It was never as casual as that. I’ve always loved her—as long as I can remember. I’m sorry I never told you.”

  Cole stared at me from his one-sided gaze. “The day we ran the race?”

  “Yes. I shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t just a contest to me. I loved her and I gave her up for the honor between us, the honor I tried so hard to hold on to despite my feelings. It’s tortured me for years, Cole. Please try to understand.”

  He shook his head slightly as if he wasn’t computing what I was saying. He stared at me again for one silent moment, a myriad of emotions moving over his face, too quickly for me to discern. He took his head in his hands as if it hurt before he whirled around, striding away.

  I suddenly felt as stripped as the land, standing alone under the blazing sun, as the sound of that damn rusted motorcycle sputtered to a start.

  I caught sight of Cole as he rode out of our yard, his head turned strangely and I realized it was because he could only see out of one eye. “Fucking idiot,” I mumbled, feeling a stab of anxiety in my chest. It rumbled loudly down the dirt road in front of our house, dust flying up in its wake, until I couldn’t hear it anymore.

  It was the last time I saw my brother alive.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Present Day

  Annalia

  It still seemed surreal that I was really back in Linmoor, that I’d gone to Benny’s diner the night before and had seen Preston for the first time in six months. It seemed surreal that I’d ever left. As if the last year and nine months had never even happened. As if I’d woken the morning after Preston made love to me, gone to work, and Preston had been waiting there afterward as we’d planned and we’d walked off hand in hand to begin our forever.

  Oh God, if only. If only . . .

  But it hadn’t happened that way. I’d waited for him on the bench outside IHOP, the time going slowly by, the dusk sweeping in and scattering a handful of stars into the sky, my heart thumping with worry and insecurity and fear.

  And then . . . oh, then the sinking horror. The news that a man had been killed on the highway not too far from where I was. And the ambulances that had screamed in the distance earlier suddenly made sense.

  When I’d heard it was a motorcycle accident, the driver riding some small rusted thing that didn’t stand a chance against the truck that came up too
quickly on its right side, my blood had frozen solid in my veins and I’d known.

  Cole.

  I pulled myself from the past, from that terrible, gut-wrenching day, stepping from my car parked in the Sawyers’ driveway and walking slowly up the two stairs to their front porch. You can come out on Sunday morning, he’d said. Nine o’clock. So here I was.

  I raised my hand to knock on the farmhouse door for the second time in the space of two days, my heart racing with nerves and anticipation just as it had the last time. Then, Mrs. Sawyer had answered. Her expression had hardened, and her hand fluttered to her chest as if she’d opened the door to find a demon returned from the dead and back to haunt her—which was probably pretty accurate as far as what she was thinking. This time, the door opened to reveal Preston, and I let out a controlled breath, pulling myself straighter. “Good morning.”

  He nodded, his expression blank, and opened the door wider, moving back so I could enter.

  I stepped through the wide doorway, glancing around as Preston shut the door behind me. Everything looked the same as it had the day I left. It made me ache because I loved this house. I loved the high ceilings and the wide-planked pine flooring. I loved the curved staircase and the view of something lovely through each window. I loved the sounds the old house made as it settled around me at night—the tiny creaks and the soft groans as if it was telling the tales of all those who had lived and loved here before.

  Once, I’d walked slowly through every room of this house, my eyes finding each beautiful detail and taking it all inside: the pretty glass doorknobs, the elegant chair rails, the charming built-ins. The quiet grace of the old house had spoken to my soul and I had hardly been able to believe it was my home.