by Sienna Ciles
His warmth made this worse. Tears pricked my eyes, then wormed past the barrier at which I tried to hold them. Finally, I exploded. I told Harry everything, from the way I felt about Joshua to why it couldn’t be, and how I’d lost Cassidy her job.
He listened in total silence. By the time I’d finished, we’d already parked outside my apartment, and my tears had dried. My throat hurt like hell, but it’d felt amazing to get everything out there in the open.
“Now,” Harry said, and scratched again, “I’m not one to give the best advice, in fact, my wife thinks I should keep my big trap shut most of the time. I feel I should tell you that you’ve gotta do what’s right for you, girl. You’ve got to follow your heart and your soul, because following anything else ain’t gonna make you happy. Trust me, I know.”
I swallowed. If only I knew what my heart and soul truly wanted.
“And as for that Faith Stone,” he said, and grunted something unintelligible. Harry inhaled, then looked over at me. “Don’t you worry about her. Women like that always end up digging their own graves. You mark my words. She’s going to fall short because of how she treated you and Cassie. She will. And don’t you go thinking that what happened to Cassie was your fault. It wasn’t. If I know Faith, this was a long time coming. A long time planned. The woman’s evil.”
“T-thanks,” I managed. “For everything.” He was like a grandfatherly angel come down from above to lift me quite literally out of the mud.
“You go on up there and get warm. If you need anything else, you give me a call.” He took a card out of his top pocket and handed it over. “Be safe now, hear?”
“Thanks, Harry.” I let myself out of the truck and darted for the metal grating that led up to my apartment. Harry’s pep talk had worked wonders – I wasn’t on the verge of a breakdown anymore, but I had a lot of questions to consider.
And the answers were still elusive.
Chapter 20
Joshua
“Good thing I wasn’t staying over at your place last night, I hear,” Roger said and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “It’s that Eve woman, isn’t it? She’s gorgeous.”
I stared at the beer bottle between my palms without seeing it.
“Joshua?” Roger tapped me on the shoulder. “Dude, are you okay? You’ve been exceptionally quiet all night. I figured you wanted to have a good time when you said guy’s night out, even if it is in this one-horse town.”
Still, I didn’t answer, just thumbed the bottle, pressed beads of condensation to its side. She doesn’t love me. I shut my eyes for a second and blocked that thought out. Erased it. Eve had been upset. No woman could make love like that without feeling something.
This time, Roger cuffed me on the shoulder. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Trouble with Eve. No big deal,” I replied. I wasn’t about to spill my guts about my fucking feelings to Roger. We were both supposed to be men’s men. He’d probably look at me like I’d sprouted an extra head.
Some things just weren’t talked about. Heartbreak was one of them. Roger had been through hell with that and he’d only ever broken down once in front of me. Still, there was a difference between losing a wife and losing… what? What had Eve been?
The woman of my dreams. Mushy rhetoric. My father would’ve scoffed at me for thinking that.
Roger dragged a stool back and plopped down in front of the bar. He jostled me with the motion, then knocked on the wood for another round from the bartender. “Eve, eh? Well, I don’t know what to tell you, man. I can’t help you if you don’t give me the details.”
“It’s not something I care to discuss,” I said, and lifted the bottle to my lips. It was my third. I finished it and reached for the fourth, which the bartender had just placed in front of me.
“Easy,” Roger said. “Wouldn’t want you to go get drunk. I don’t have any plans to be the designated driver.”
I grunted and shifted my empty bottle to one side. I didn’t plan on drinking my sorrows away. I wasn’t a complete idiot. A few beers to dull the pain was more than enough, and yeah, this was real pain. The kind I’d never experienced before. Not in any circumstance.
I’d broken my arm after climbing a tree on the edge of my father’s land to see the horizon. I’d been in two car accidents, both after I’d taken up the idiotic idea that I’d make a great racer. I’d been electrocuted – totally my own stupidity to blame there – after touching an electrified fence during a rain storm on my own property.
All of it paled in comparison to this pain.
“I have news, in case you were wondering,” Roger said.
“News?”
“Yeah, you know, that interesting information people like to hear on occasion? News. Christ, what’s the matter with you?” Roger guffawed and slapped me on the back again.
A bit of my beer spilled but I ignored it. “What’s the news?”
“Two bits, nothing huge. Just that I’m thinking of moving some of my business into this area. In fact, I thought of buying a farm or a ranch and joining you in your endeavor.”
“What?!” I paused halfway to drinking, and stared at my buddy. We’d gone to Harvard together and traveled in the same business circles thereafter. Roger was the furthest from a farmer it was possible to get.
“What? It’s not like I’ve decided to sprout an extra pair of testicles or something,” he said. “I’d have help, obviously. People who could teach me how to use the land and what it was best for. I figured you’d want to help me, too.”
“Of course,” I said. “Are you kidding me? You out under the sun in your Armani suit? I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Fuck you,” he said, and drew the ‘you’ out, a grin lighting his face. “I’m not that much of a city slicker.”
“And the pope isn’t that much of a Catholic.”
“You’re a card. I’m serious, though. It’s something I thought about before, but dismissed. Every time I visit you, I see how content you are, and this time…”
“This time what?” I asked.
Roger licked his lips and turned his attention to his beer bottle. “This time I have more than one reason to stay.”
“And what’s that?”
“I think I’m in love.” Roger raised a palm to forestall my questions or mockery. “Perhaps, it isn’t love, perhaps it’s an obsession. Let’s call it that. Either way, I owe it to myself to see how it turns out because I haven’t felt this way since –” He buried the last of his sentence in the bottle.
Since his ex had cheated on him and left him in the dirt. I got it. I did. “That’s fantastic. Who is it?”
“Cassidy,” he replied. “The redhead. Friend of Eve’s.”
“No way.” Another pang of my heart at the mention of her name. “You’re in love with her?”
“I don’t know what it is yet, but yeah, she’s on my mind. A lot.” Roger cleared his throat and looked around the bar. “I half expected her to be here tonight.”
“She won’t be here tonight,” I said and told him about the incident at the restaurant. I kept it short, sour, and to the point.
“Fuck,” Roger said. “That’s not good. Is she okay?”
“I have no idea. Eve hasn’t spoken to me since this afternoon. She won’t answer her phone and neither will Cassidy.”
Roger grumbled under his breath, then spun around on the stool and rested his elbows on the countertop. “I don’t like it. And I don’t like – shit.”
“I should hope you don’t like shit,” I replied. “But that might be a problem if you plan on keeping cattle. They shit a lot. And you’ll step in it a lot.”
“No, dumbass,” Roger said and tugged on the underside of my sleeve. “I mean shit. Shit as in, oh, shit, here comes the devil of the damn hour.”
I turned as well, and my insides burned with anger. Faith.
She swayed – clearly, she’d been drinking before she’d arrived – and made a beeline directly for
me, one of her cronies, another young woman with hair piled on top of her head in pale yellow ringlets, followed her, fiddling on her cell phone and chewing gum.
“There you are,” Faith said and halted in front of me. “I’d hoped I’d find you here.”
“What do you want?” I didn’t keep the snarl from my tone. I wanted her away from me, out of here, out of my life. I couldn’t believe I’d ever dated this woman. I hadn’t loved her, but for a time I’d thought I had. She was rotten to the core.
Faith blinked at me. “I come in peace,” she said, still swaying. “Look, I know I upset you today, but it’s only because I love you.”
“Love,” I snorted. “You don’t know what that means.” I spun on the chair, but she caught my arm and stopped me from moving. “We’re done talking.”
“No,” she said. “Please, Josh, just hear me out. I – everything I’ve done is because of the way I feel about you. If you’d just give me another chance. A chance to prove that we belong together, I know we could be happy.”
She repulsed me. “No. Never. You’re a toxic human being.”
“Photo op!” the yellow-blond friend screeched and lifted the cellphone.
Faith crooned and leaned in. Before I could stop her, she smooched me on the cheek, and the camera’s flash went off.
I freed myself from Faith and scrubbed my cheek. “What the fuck?” I grunted. “Don’t do that again.”
“I can’t help myself around you, Joshy,” she said. “I know you’re upset with me, but you’ll see that everything I’ve done is for us. You’ll understand one day, when we’re happily married.”
I took her by the elbow and stared into her eyes. “Listen to me, Faith. Listen.” I shook her gently. “This is the last time I’m going to say it. I will never love you. I never have and I never will. Now, leave me alone.”
She pulled herself free and stumbled back, adjusting her sparkly top. She tossed her head. “You’ll see. You’ll see we’re meant to be together.” It was as if she had a head made of wood.
What couldn’t she understand? She revolted me. Her attempts to get into my bed and my life had done nothing but push me away. Even if she hadn’t broken up with me in college for the shallowest reason possible, I still wouldn’t have wanted her after all of this.
Finally, Faith and her gal pal wandered off together, tittering over the phone.
“Christ, she’s obnoxious,” Roger said. “I don’t know how you deal with her. I was seconds away from telling her to fuck off.”
“I don’t deal with her. She butts in whenever she can,” I replied. “I swear to god, she’s the root of every problem I have right now.”
“You need to deal with her.”
“I wish I knew how,” I replied. “I have some dirt on her, but it feels gross to blackmail anyone, even though she’s vile.” If I’d had a way to get rid of her without actually hurting her, I would’ve done it ages ago. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You need to tell her father what she’s been doing,” Roger said. “She’s the one who’s in his pocket, right?”
“Still living at home,” I agreed.
“So? Tell him what she’s done. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t approve.”
No, Lee-Roy Stone wouldn’t approve of his daughter running one of his investments into the ground. He’d always wanted us to get together, especially now that I had money to support his dearest daughter, but if he found out what she’d done to get closer to me, he would be disgusted.
“He’d never believe me,” I replied. “I threatened Faith earlier, but she’s got to know that her father wouldn’t believe me before he believed her. Otherwise, she’d never have come over here.” I glugged back more beer. The whole situation was fucking hopeless.
“Hmm.”
“What?” I looked over at my buddy. “What is it?”
“I know someone who could convince Lee-Roy Stone.”
I stared at Roger for a good two minutes, silent.
“You’ve got to talk to him about all of this, Joshua. If you do, you might be able to make things right.”
“No,” I grunted, and it physically hurt to say the word. On one hand, talking could mean getting Eve back and keeping her forever, on the other, it meant… talking. Feeling. “No,” I repeated. “I won’t do it.”
“You’re as stubborn as an ox,” Roger replied, and sighed.
“What do you know about oxen, city slicker?”
“Don’t try to change the subject.” Roger nudged me again. “Listen, bro, you’ve got to do what it takes. I can tell this thing with Eve is getting to you, even if you don’t want to talk about it. I’m not going to get all weak and sentimental on you here, but you’ve got to do what it takes to get her back. If she’s the one you really want.”
She was. More than anything. She’d been mine and I couldn’t imagine losing her after all of this. After making love to her in my own bed. I’d have to sell the house to avoid thinking about her again. “She is,” I said.
“Then you need to speak with your father,” Roger replied, as if the matter was settled. “Before it’s too late and Eve leaves Hope Creek.”
He was right. Fuck it, I hated the fact that he was right, but he was. I had to speak to my dad. And it wouldn’t be easy because, once again, it would be revealing another of my failures and disappointing him again.
The fact that I’d never married Faith frustrated my father. He didn’t understand what’d happened, but he’d never asked. Why would he, when we hardly spoke about anything but weather, crops, and food as it was?
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
Chapter 21
Eve
I sat on the sofa in the same spot I’d been since I’d changed out of my muddy dress and into a pair of clean PJs – not the ones I’d had on last night with Joshua. God, it hurt to think about him. It hurt especially because I’d let him down this afternoon.
I’d said things I couldn’t take back. So many hurtful, false things.
I scraped my fingers through my still damp hair and stared at the boxes that surrounded me. Half of them were unpacked, the other half still sealed though it’d been six months. There weren’t all that many of them.
Just enough to carry a few picture frames from happier times with my mother and grandmother, books I’d loved and couldn’t bear to leave behind, and a couple kitchen items I’d never bothered to unpack.
I’d eaten TV dinners most night – sacrilege, since I was a chef – but each day I’d been too tired to bother making something tasty for myself. Tired and demotivated.
What did any of this matter if I’d leave anyway?
“I can’t leave yet,” I whispered. Cassidy. I had to make sure she was okay, because I’d drawn her into my crap, even though I hadn’t meant to.
I lifted my phone and blinked at the text message notification. I swiped and a tiny prick of relief resulted. It was from Cas!
Hey! My neighbor tells me you tried to break in while I was away with afternoon. Do you want to come visit?
The text didn’t seem depressed or even angry.
On my way. I texted back.
It was a five-minute drive in my beat-up truck, and I avoided the main road and Cowboys n’ Cuts, simply because I couldn’t bear the shame of thinking about my behavior that afternoon. I pulled up in front of Cassie’s house and smiled – all the lights were on, casting slanted squares of light on the patchy front lawn.
I got out of the truck – the storm had finally passed – and shuffled to the front door, still in my PJs with a pair of slippers for warmth. I knocked once.
“Coming,” Cassidy called, softly. Footsteps and then the door creaked open and there she was, eyes a little puffy but with a watery grin for the world to see.
“Oh, my god, it’s good to see you,” I said. “I was worried sick.”
Cassidy clucked like a mother hen and ushered me into the front hall. She shut the door, then placed a hand on my back and guided
me through the house to the living room.
Charlie sat on the sofa, her eyes round and focused on the cartoons on the TV, with a blanket draped over her head. She looked like she was playing a make-believe game – a nun in a colorful robe.
“Is she okay?” I whispered.
“Now, yes,” Cassidy replied, and her tone gave me more questions than answers. “Charlie, say hello to Aunty Eve.”
“Hello, Aunty Eve,” the five-year-old said, and waved. The wave evoked a sneeze, and Charlie blocked it with her hand.
“Kleenex, darling,” Cassie said.
Charlie grappled with an already crumpled tissue and dabbed the end of her button nose. “Better, Mommy,” she said. “May I have some hot chocolate.”
“Yes, but only because you’re sick,” Cassidy replied. “Don’t get any wise ideas, young lady.” Cassie led me into her tiny kitchen, still smiling. “She doesn’t usually stay up this late, but I figured the TV would take her mind off the pain.”
“The pain?”
“She’s got body aches all over,” Cassidy said. “I had to rush her to the doctor in Heather’s Forge today, because she was just so lethargic when I got home.”
So, that was why Cassidy hadn’t been home when I’d called. “But she’s fine now?”
“Much better now that she’s got some meds. She’ll be all right in a few days. Back at school again,” Cassidy said, and fished the hot chocolate out of one of her cupboards. “Ugh, I don’t suppose that makes a difference now that I no longer have a job. I can stay home with her all day.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, and guilt rocked through me afresh. “I didn’t think Faith was that crazy.”
“Sheesh, relax,” Cassidy said, and rose onto her tiptoes to grab the sugar. “Faith is out of her mind, and it’s not your fault she fired me. She was determined to drive that place into the ground, just to spite you.”
“But then it is my fault.”
“No,” Cassie said, firmly. “It’s her fault. You can’t blame the victim of a mugging for getting mugged. I stuck up for you and what I believe in, and she fired me. That’s fine. I’ll find another job.”