by Amy Vastine
“I don’t want you to go. I didn’t come here to talk to Addison. I came to talk to you.”
Faith swallowed hard. She wasn’t sure how to read the easy smile he was wearing or the way he didn’t seem anxious being near Addison’s grave. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
Dean pulled one flower out of the bunch and placed it on Addison’s headstone. “She’d be jealous as all get-out if I didn’t give her at least one, right?”
He held the rest of them out for Faith, whose stomach was doing a few backflips. She took the flowers as her eyebrows pinched together. “What are these for?”
“I have this mountain of regret that I don’t know what to do with. The way I treated you before I left here, the way I’ve acted since I’ve been back... There’s a million things I wish I’d done differently.”
Faith shook her head. “You have a right to your feelings. I don’t blame you for being mad at me for what I did, for setting Addison off even all these years later.”
“I’m not angry with you. I have never really been angry with you. I can see now that it was my way of coping with my own feelings of guilt. Blaming you was a lot easier than taking responsibility.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” He didn’t force Faith to fall in love with him. He had told her not to say anything to Addison.
“It wasn’t your fault, either.”
“It wasn’t all my fault, but I got the ball rolling.” She’d still give just about anything to go back.
“It wasn’t your fault or my fault. Addison would have gone to that party and gotten in that car no matter what.”
Faith let out a weary breath. Couldn’t he say he forgave her and let them both move on? Why did she have to work so hard to convince him that he was justified in being mad in the first place?
“If I hadn’t told her about me and you, she would have chilled out at home. We didn’t go to parties alone. And if there hadn’t been a me and you, Addison and I would have been together. I would have talked her out of going to the lake or I would have gone with her. Had we gone together, we would’ve had a ride or called you. Either way you look at it, I was the reason she was there.”
“If you hadn’t been with me, Addison would have snuck off to the party without you.”
He was making no sense. “How do you know that?”
“Because we weren’t the only ones having a secret love affair.”
* * *
“DID YOU HAVE something to drink so you could make it through mass?” Faith’s furrowed brow and arms folded across her chest made it clear she was not ready to accept what he was telling her.
Dean let out a laugh. She was so stubborn. A week ago the woman was letting the whole town take advantage of her. She would have done or accepted anything anyone said because she didn’t want to upset a single person’s apple cart. Now she wanted to argue until she was blue in the face.
“My mom and I had a long talk last night...well, more like this morning.”
The wind picked up and blew Faith’s hair in her face. Dean took the opportunity to touch her. He swept the unruly strands out of the way and pressed his palm to her cheek.
“Addison was in love with Aaron. She tutored him at school...they started writing love notes to each other. My mom said they had been throwing around the word ‘marriage.’ It was way more serious than any of us knew.”
“Marriage?” Faith’s arms fell to her sides. She shook her head back and forth. “No way. I don’t believe it.”
“My mom found the notes. She probably still has them. She kept everything.”
Faith clearly couldn’t reconcile what he was saying with what she knew. He watched her face while she battled it out inside her head. “When did your mom...?”
“She confronted Addison that night and they fought about how serious the relationship was,” he told her. “Addison snuck out to that party because my mom forbade her from going. She got in the car with Aaron because she was in love with him, not because she was mad at you or me.”
Dean watched as all the pieces fell into place for her. He expected her to laugh or cry, then laugh. But the look in her eyes wasn’t anything close to humored. She was seething.
Faith turned toward the grave and bent over to pick up the flowers in the vase. She marched over to the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the tiny cemetery and tossed the flowers over it. Blue petals were caught by the wind and floated in the air, scattering across the grass. She stormed back to the grave.
Instead of talking to Dean, she knelt down in front of the headstone and spoke to Addison. “Are you kidding me? You were in love with Aaron Evans? You made me feel like the worst friend in the world for hiding my relationship and the whole time you were doing the same thing to me?”
Dean wasn’t sure what to do. He had planned on this being good news, not bad. He’d thought she’d jump right into his arms and celebrate the weight of their guilt being lifted. He’d never seen Faith so angry, so hurt.
“I’ve spent the past twelve years of my life trying to figure out what possessed you to get in that car and hating myself because the only reasonable excuse was that you were so mad at me, you weren’t in your right mind! When the truth was you were nothing but a...a...a stupid, love-struck girl?”
“Faith,” Dean said, placing a hand on her shoulder. It didn’t snap her out of her fit.
“You wanted me to choose between you and him, and when I said I couldn’t, you told me I was ridiculous for thinking he could really be in love with me. That was so unfair! You had someone. You cared about someone else. You were allowed to be in love, but I wasn’t? Why? Because he was your brother?”
Addison had done exactly what Dean had known she would do. But Faith had come with him to the concert that night. She hadn’t given in to his sister’s demands. She really had chosen him by refusing to choose. The realization made his heart swell.
“I’ve hated myself for twelve years because I thought I had chosen wrong. Now I know you had no right to ask me to choose in the first place. You were so selfish.”
The church bells began to ring and Faith stood and fixed her dress again. She didn’t say a word to Dean, who thought about wrapping his arms around her and telling her it was okay to be furious. She didn’t give him the chance, though. She slipped past him, heading for the gate, and kept walking until she was inside the church.
* * *
FAITH WAS SEATED next to Sawyer in the pew in front of Dean’s parents. Dean sat next to his mom, directly behind Faith, who sat ramrod-straight. Sawyer leaned in her direction and whispered something Dean couldn’t hear over the sound of the choir. Faith did not respond.
The choir finished their song and Pastor Kline opened with a prayer. Dean couldn’t hear a word he said because his sole focus was on the woman in front of him. He couldn’t see her face, but he could imagine the grim line of her lips and the flush of her cheeks thanks to her frustration.
Sawyer glanced back at Dean, his eyes questioning what had happened before his sister came in. Of course, he blamed Dean. Lately he was the cause of all her misery. He wanted to proclaim his innocence this time. He had come bearing good news. It was Addison who had made Faith so upset. All he could do was give Sawyer a shrug.
Halfway through the next choir song, Faith got to her feet and headed for the back of the church and the exit. Sawyer started to go after her, but Dean stood and stopped him.
“I got her.”
Sawyer didn’t look too pleased with that idea but let him go. Dean was much more aware of the stares and disapproving shakes of the head from the congregation as he left the building. When it had been his anxiety that had sent them out, he had been oblivious to what anyone else thought.
Outside, he scanned the parking lot for her and Sawyer’s pickup. She wasn’t near the truck and nowhere o
ut front. Dean walked around the side toward the path that led to the cemetery.
Faith wasn’t easy to catch. She strode with such purpose around the fence to where she had thrown the flowers. She gathered them up and returned to the gate. The wrought iron screeched as she opened it. Dean waited for her on the outside while she placed the flowers back in the vase connected to Addison’s headstone.
* * *
NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS would Faith have believed Dean had a story to tell her like the one he had told her today. Addison had been a giant hypocrite.
Sitting in church, Faith had remembered how her best friend had complained about having to tutor Aaron Evans the final couple months of school. He needed to pass math in order to graduate, and a tutor was the last resort. Given his bad attitude, Addison had believed the teachers were desperate to get him out of the school and off their list of problems, which was why they had recruited her to do it.
Leave it to Addison to have been the better liar. Faith couldn’t think of one time Addison had shown any interest in him. She probably hadn’t felt half as guilty about doing it as Faith had about Dean, either. The whole thing made Faith want to scream. When had her friendship dissolved into lies?
The longer she thought about it, the madder she got. All that time she had spent blaming herself was a waste. How could Addison have made her feel so bad about sneaking around with Dean when she was doing the same thing? Granted, Aaron wasn’t Faith’s brother, but the lies were the same.
Then it hit her. Addison had been in love with Aaron. Addison had been in love enough to talk about marrying Aaron. Why hadn’t she told Faith? Because Faith would have tried to talk her out of it. She would have tried to convince her that Aaron Evans was nothing but bad news. Faith would have done the same things Dean was afraid Addison would have done to them. And she would have been right.
“I wish we could have talked about it. I wish we could have been there for one another instead of worrying about being judged.” Faith had returned to the cemetery to make peace. The tears she’d held back in church rolled freely down her face. “I’ve hated him for so long. I don’t even know what happened to him after he got out of jail. I need some time to wrap my head around the fact that there has to be something worthwhile about him if you loved him. You didn’t love just anyone.”
This was the biggest revelation of all. Addison had been so wild and carefree. She had never taken boys very seriously. She’d had some dates here and there. She’d been to some school dances. But there was never that one big love of her life. It was one of the things that Faith had felt the worst about when Addison died—knowing she’d never experienced true love. But she had. At least that was what Dean had told Faith.
She wiped her cheeks and took a cleansing breath. “I’m so glad you know what it felt like. I’m sorry you didn’t get more time. And sorry about the flowers. I hope I didn’t ruin them.”
Dean was standing behind the gate when she made her way back to the church. He was exactly the person she needed at this moment. Her heart needed him to be close.
“You two make up?” he asked with a wary half smile on his face.
“I think so. I never could stay mad at her for very long.”
Dean’s smile widened. “She hated it when people were angry with her. Especially you. Remember that time she made me drive her over to your house so she could do the ‘I’m sorry’ cheer she made up on your front lawn?”
“At ten o’clock at night when my dad had already gone to bed? Oh, I remember. He was not pleased with her...until she did it for him, too. She really didn’t want people to be mad for long.” Faith opened the squeaky gate and closed it behind her with a clang.
Dean took her hand. “I thought you’d be relieved to hear that your fight with her wasn’t the last fight she’d been in that night. My mom has been walking around with the same kind of regret and I had no idea.”
“It is a relief and a new heartache. I wish we could have been there for each other. I want to know how they got together and what sweet things he said that melted her heart. I want to know when they had their first kiss and what she loved about him. I’ll never get to hear about that.”
“I’m sorry.” Dean pulled her closer. He smelled like soap and sunshine. Warm and safe. “I’m sorry for so many things. Especially not realizing how hard all this was for you. I’m not sure I can ever forgive myself for making you lie.”
Taking that as an okay to let go of her anxiety when it came to Dean, she leaned into him, resting her head on his chest. His heartbeat was steady and strong. The sound of it helped her calm her own.
“Hate the lie, not the liar. How different things might have been if we had all been honest.”
“I can’t imagine my sister wanting to hear about what a good kisser I was,” Dean said. A chuckle shook his chest.
Faith looked up at him. “She would have probably asked me to skip the details.”
“I would have been fine with keeping some things between you and me. I wish I could have told the world how much I loved you, but kept how I loved you for myself.”
Hearing him say he loved her, even in the past tense, sent a tingle through her whole body. Her heart began to race again. The love they had shared had been gentle and innocent. It was everything she had wanted it to be and something that could never be recreated. It was once in a lifetime. But that didn’t mean they could find something new.
Dean pulled back and his eyes almost seemed to twinkle. “I think I’ve loved you for longer than you realize. Even when I told myself I couldn’t or shouldn’t.”
“I’ve been in love with you my whole life. When your sister asked me to choose, I couldn’t imagine turning it off. It’s like your name is written on my heart. I can’t erase it, no matter how hard I try. No matter how hard you try.”
Faith once again gave in to the emotion she could no longer hold back. She threw her arms around his neck and planted a kiss on his lips. From now on, no one was ever going to tell her to hide her feelings. Dean didn’t object until the kiss was over.
“Do you think I’ll ever get a chance to kiss you first?” he asked, holding her face in his hands.
Faith planned to live and love without fear. Not only did she deserve to be happy, she owed it to Addison to enjoy every minute. Life was too short and too much time had already been wasted.
“I don’t know. When are you planning on kissing me ag—”
Dean didn’t wait for her to finish. He covered her mouth with his and made her forget that she had kissed him first. Hope bloomed inside her for the first time in forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I REMEMBER THE football game when your dad got the whole crowd to chant your name,” Dean’s dad said to Sawyer as they all sat around the Presleys’ kitchen table.
Marilee had invited the Strattons and Harriet over for brunch once church services had ended. Everyone was laughing as they ate and reminisced.
“Dad thought I’d get more playing time if he got the crowd behind me. Little did he know that coach played the kids who could actually throw, run or catch the ball. I tended not to be great at any of those.”
Dean couldn’t stop staring at Faith as she plucked a grape from the bunch in the bowl that sat in front of her. Her eyes met his as she popped it in her mouth. Her smile was enchanting.
“Your dad had a wonderful spirit.” Marilee set some warm muffins on the table, fresh from the oven.
“He did,” Sawyer agreed.
Faith took another grape and tossed it at Dean to stop his ogling. But he couldn’t be distracted. She was too adorable to not look at.
“Dean and I were cleaning up Addison’s room this morning and were cracking up at some of the pictures.” Dean’s mom didn’t notice they were fooling around. “There was the one of you guys decorating that cake in the
shape of a horseshoe for your dad’s birthday.”
“It was the ugliest cake I have ever seen,” Dean chimed in, reaching for his own grape. “Your dad must have loved you if he ate that thing. It was this weird shade of gray and the frosting looked like it had melted or something.”
Faith covered her mouth with her hand and laughed. When she caught her breath she explained. “We didn’t wait long enough for the cake to cool. Addison is the one who said we had to make it look realistic, which is why it was gray. That wasn’t my choice. I wanted it to be purple.”
“Purple?” Sawyer questioned. “What kind of horseshoe is purple?”
Faith’s smile finally reached her eyes. Dean had been waiting to see that smile. “I don’t know. I was twelve. I loved purple.”
Dean’s phone rang, somewhat pulling his attention away from the beautiful woman across from him. He checked to see who it was. Landon was calling and wouldn’t stop until Dean answered.
“Excuse me a second,” he said, getting up from the table. He answered as he stepped into the family room. “What’s up, Landon? It’s Sunday. Your day of rest.”
“I think we should sign the kid. Piper shared his first video and it’s gone viral. If we don’t sign him, someone else will. I trust you—we should act and act fast.”
Dean froze. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He’d been waiting for Landon to come around. Until this morning when he realized he was still in love with Faith and they weren’t the reason his sister died. The thought of taking Sawyer away from her made him want to throw up everything he’d had for brunch.
“Are you there? Dean, did you hear me?”
“I’m here. I haven’t had a chance to get on social media today. Let me give it a look and I’ll get back to you.”
“What?” Dean could picture Landon pacing on his back patio. “What’s the matter? I thought you wanted to sign him and were waiting for me to say yes. I’m saying yes, Dean.”