by Natalie Ann
“They knew too? I talked to Brynn today and she never said a word.”
Brynn had been acting funny on the phone when Jordyn had called her, but she didn’t think much of it. She just thought she’d caught Brynn at a bad time when she called.
“Why did you talk to Brynn today?” he asked.
“Not that it’s any of your concern, but it had to do with work. Don’t worry, she covered for you. She couldn’t get me off the phone fast enough.” Family, sticking together—it was another layer of hurt.
“I don’t know that she was covering for me, so don’t take it out on Brynn. She didn’t agree with what I did. Matter of fact, if she were here right now she’d be standing right next to you yelling at me.”
“I’m not yelling at you.”
“It sounds it to me.”
“Don’t be funny. Don’t try to joke your way out of this, Drew.”
She turned out of the doorway and walked into her office away from him. She needed to pace after he made that comment.
He followed her across the hall though. “I don’t think it’s funny and I’m not trying to make a joke out of it. Really, I’m not.” He ran his hands through his hair, then dropped his arms down to his sides. “I don’t know what to say other than I’m sorry. The last few days have eaten at me knowing what I know and that you had no clue what was going on.”
“Glad to know you have a conscience,” she said sarcastically.
He slanted his eyes, a look of anger crossing his face. She didn’t care if she crossed the line with him right now. As far as she was concerned, he was out of line.
“I’ve got a conscience. I apologized. What good would it have done if I told you two days ago where I was going? Or yesterday before I came home? It wouldn’t have done you any good. You would have worked yourself up wondering about it all. It was better coming from Ben than me. He asked if he could come with me this morning to talk to you. I would have come the minute I woke up, but I honored his request because he went out of his way for you. You have no idea what it was like to see him there, to see what he was going through talking to Trent’s mom.”
She hadn’t thought of that. She wasn’t thinking of anyone but herself right now…Drew was right in that aspect. Ben did go out of his way and she knew a little about the situation with Trent’s mom through Presley. “He didn’t have to do it.”
“You don’t get it, Jordyn. People keep their word in this world. When someone tells you they’re going to help you, they do it. Ben is the type of man who would help a stranger. But Trent was more than a stranger to him. Trent was closer to him than his own brothers. I saw what he was going through being there yesterday, and what Patty said to him and made him feel. And when it was all said and done, he was happy to find out you were Trent’s sister.”
“Why? Why would he care?” she asked, feeling the tears running down her face again.
“Because he said that even though Trent was gone, you weren’t. You were part of Trent and that meant there was part of Trent here for him. That’s not a man that walks away, Jordyn. Not everyone walks away from you.”
“You don’t know what it’s like!” she yelled at him.
“No, I don’t. I’m sorry that you’ve never had someone you could depend on in your life. I’m sorry that you’ve never had a father, or a brother, or a significant other in your life to show you that not every male is a jerk or a loser. I want to show you that, but you won’t let me in. You wouldn’t even give me a chance.”
“I was giving you a chance,” she said, then wiped her hand under her nose. “And this is what you did. You went behind my back on something that doesn’t concern you.”
“Doesn’t concern me! Are you kidding me?”
He walked away from her, out of the office, and grabbed his jacket off the hook. When he slid his feet into his boots she thought for sure he was just going to walk out the door without saying another word.
“You’ve got it all wrong, Jordyn. You know why it concerns me? Because I love you. But you won’t let yourself open up enough to let me in.” He yanked the door open and slammed it behind him.
She stood there staring at the closed door, her heart beating more frantically than when Ben told her about Tim and Trent. No one ever really loved her.
No one but her mother had ever said it to her. Now she finally heard it, and it was yelled at her in anger.
Pulling her chair out at her desk, she laid her head down, wishing she could start this day over. Go back in time and handle it better.
She wasn’t wrong to be mad at him for going to Alabama and not telling her. She was standing firm on that. But maybe she could have cut him some slack. He did apologize to her, he said he felt bad about it and she saw it on his face.
Only her anger got the best of her.
Now what? Now what should she do? She’d never been in this position before. She’d never been in a fight like this before when someone walked out. Were they done? Did he just say he loved her and break up with her at the same time?
There was no one to ask, no one but him, and she was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to talk to her right now. Maybe it was best to let them both cool off.
***
Drew drove around the city trying to fight back his frustration and a little bit of his tears. He knew he was wrong to do what he did. He told her he was sorry. What more did she want from him?
He would be damned if he was going to grovel. He understood her side of it, of course he did. That was why he felt so guilty about it all.
But why couldn’t she see his side? Why couldn’t she see he was trying to protect her from getting hurt again?
Because she was so used to no one being there for her. No one sticking up for her. No one even caring enough to go out of their way.
Without thought, he found his truck heading down the road to Brynn’s house. He wasn’t sure if she was home or not, but turned down the driveway anyway. The garage door was shut, but that didn’t mean anything. It was the dead of winter and cold out, so the door would be shut.
He parked the truck, got out and walked to the front door. He heard the music playing and knew she was home. Probably working in her office, which was off the front door.
He knocked once and turned the handle, found the door unlocked and walked in. “Brynn, hey, it’s Drew.”
“In here,” he heard yelled from the back of the house, toward the kitchen.
He stomped the snow off his boots, slipped them off, took his coat and hat off and hung them up, then made his way in to find her feeding Grace in the high chair. He looked at his watch and noticed it was just after eleven. “Kind of early for lunch, isn’t it?”
“Not for Grace. When she’s hungry, you feed her.”
At the moment Grace didn’t seem too interested in her lunch and looked more excited to see Drew. She was waving her arms in the air, sending pieces of food flying all over the floor.
“Hi, baby girl. Are you happy to see me?” At least someone was happy to see him today.
He leaned down and kissed her nose but didn’t make an attempt to take her out of the chair. He knew better and didn’t feel like getting yelled at by another woman today.
Grace pouted for a second, looking like she was going to cry, and he didn’t have it in him to make another girl cry. So he picked up her spoon and made an airplane noise with it, buzzing it overhead until she laughed and opened up for him. There, he felt better at least that he’d made her smile.
“What brings you by?” Brynn asked.
Drew shrugged and filled Grace’s spoon up with some more food.
“Things didn’t go so well with Jordyn, did they?”
“No.” There was no use asking how she guessed that. She knew him well. “I left there a few minutes ago. Ben and I stopped over and told her what we found out. When Ben left, she and I started fighting. She wasn’t happy with me for keeping it from her.”
“What did you find out?”
When he was fi
nished relaying everything to her, even his and Jordyn’s fight, he said, “I know I should have told her. I acknowledged that. Why wouldn’t she accept my apology?”
Brynn snorted and shook her head. “It’s not that easy, Drew. I warned you to be careful. You’ve only been given a glimpse into her life and how it felt for her growing up. Her whole world has changed since moving here. And I don’t just mean discovering her past or trying to discover it.”
“I know. It’s all new for me too. I didn’t think loving someone would be this hard,” he said solemnly.
“I don’t know why you thought being in love would be easy.”
“It always looked easy with Mom and Dad.”
“That’s because they wanted you to believe that. They fought too. You know they did. Just think back and you’ll remember. I do. People fight, Drew. Love and marriage and family aren’t all sunshine and roses. I don’t know why you think it is.”
Because he wanted it to be that way. And by wanting it, he thought it would be that way, but he wasn’t going to admit that to Brynn. She’d only say something sarcastic back at him. He’d been knocked down enough today.
“Now what do I do?”
“How should I know?” Brynn said, smiling at him.
“It’s not funny.”
“No, it’s not. But you need to figure this out on your own. No one can give you advice or tell you how to handle it.”
“What?” he said. “I thought you liked to tell me what to do.”
“I do, but even I know enough to stay out of the middle of your relationship. Go with your heart, Drew. If it’s the wrong choice, then work at it until you get it right. That’s my advice to you.”
What If
After Jordyn was finished crying, she tried to get some work done, but she couldn’t concentrate. Too much had happened today and there was no way she could focus. But she couldn’t just sit there staring at the wall either.
She started to play back some of what Ben had said to her. Rather than have it all floating in her head, she opened up a blank document on her screen and started to type out the things he’d said in no pattern. As she remembered them, she typed. She’d go back and organize everything later.
The minute she remembered the part about quilts and dresses she ran up to her attic. Searching through the boxes until she found the one she was looking for, she ripped the tape off and pulled it open.
There it was, on top, the quilt her mother had made her when she was a baby. She started to examine it more closely, looking at the stitching. It was too perfect. More perfect than an eighteen-year-old could make in Jordyn’s eyes. Not unless she’d been making them for years.
She tossed the quilt aside and started to pull out some of the dresses she used to wear when she was playing dress-up. All those older-style dresses that used to be her mom’s. Dresses that were too big on her as a child and would be too small as an adult. Her mother was much shorter than Jordyn was now.
Picking up the dresses one by one, she looked at the way they were made. Something she never noticed before and wouldn’t have even thought to look at, but they were definitely handmade dresses.
They were made well, but she could tell by the stitching they weren’t made in a factory. And the styles of the dresses: old-fashioned, covering the arms completely, with high necks and falling well past the knees.
She sank to the floor, clutching the dress in front of her, tears running down her cheeks again. “Mom, what happened to you?”
***
A few hours later, Drew stood on Jordyn’s front porch and raised his hand to knock. He didn’t know if he would be welcomed or not and didn’t want to just walk in. Besides, the door was probably locked again.
It didn’t take long before she pulled the door open for him, then stood back to let him in. That was at least a good sign. “Can we talk?”
“Yeah.”
He hung up his jacket, removed his boots and started walking toward the back of the house, into the kitchen, and then stopped. “I was going to get a beer. Is that okay?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” she asked, following right behind him.
“I didn’t know how welcome I would be.”
“I let you in the front door,” she said, then blushed after the words were out of her mouth. Almost like she hadn’t meant to say it but couldn’t stop herself. Maybe she’d calmed down enough and was back to her normal self.
“You did. I appreciate that.” He sat down on a stool by the counter. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t think what I was doing was wrong. At least not completely wrong.”
She looked at him for a moment, not saying a word, and he started to get nervous. She normally just blurted out anything.
After another long moment, she finally spoke, “I know. I realized that. Your heart was in the right place. It normally is. But that doesn’t change the fact that I felt betrayed.”
“Why does that make you feel betrayed?” He truly didn’t understand that comment.
She sighed heavily. “Drew, I’ve let myself feel things with you that I haven’t with anyone else. All the while, I’ve fought this internal battle to just let go and relax. It felt good. It feels good,” she amended. “But then you went and did that and I felt like you betrayed my trust. The trust I had in you, or let myself feel.”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“It doesn’t change the way I feel though.”
She had a point. “So where do we go from here?”
“Are you breaking up with me?” she asked quickly.
“Why would you ask that? Do you want to end things?”
Wow, he must have really messed up more than he thought and was trying to find a way out of this situation.
“Do you want to?” she asked instead.
“No,” he said firmly.
“Neither do I.”
He felt himself let out a breath. Okay, that was good. “I guess the next step is whether or not you’re going to forgive me for what I did.”
“Are you going to do it again?”
He paused and weighed his thoughts, then his words. “If it means shielding you from hurt, then I might.”
“At least you’re honest.”
“I’ve always been honest with you, Jordyn. If you’d asked me where I was or what I was doing either of those times I called you the other day, I would have told you.”
“Truly?”
“Yes. You didn’t and I was thankful for that. I didn’t want to tell you, but I wouldn’t have lied. I hope you believe me.” He reached for her hand and threaded their fingers together.
“I want to,” she said.
“I guess that’s better than nothing.”
She looked around the kitchen, acting unsure and shy again, and he hated that he made her feel that way. Made her feel like that insecure person she’d been when he first met her.
Drew broke the silence. “Be straightforward with me.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that it sounds like that is a trait you shared with your brother. So shoot straight with me. Tell me exactly what’s on your mind. I can take it.”
She seemed to be weighing her words, then said, “Did you mean what you said when you slammed out of my door?”
That totally wasn’t what he thought she would ask. He expected her to talk about how he needed to earn her trust back again and was prepared to work for it. “Yes.”
Her eyes filled. Great, he was going to make her cry again. She walked toward him, wrapped her arms around his chest and held on tight. Really tight, almost choking him, and then she started to bawl. Deep sobs, followed by gasps of breath and his heart was breaking. This wasn’t going well. “I love you, too.”
“Then why are you crying so hard?” When had he become so clueless?
“It’s been an emotional day,” she said a moment later, then leaned back and grabbed a paper towel to wipe her face.
“I know. I knew it would
be and I wish I could have done something, anything, to make it less for you.”
“I don’t think there’s anything you could have done. It was going to be emotional whenever I found out. I guess deep down, I’m glad you knew ahead of time and could help Ben tell me everything.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” She finished wiping her face and threw out the used paper towel. “I’ve been trying to remember everything Ben said, and wrote it all down. I think I discovered something.”
“What’s that?”
“Ben mentioned the women in that cult made quilts and sewed dresses, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Follow me upstairs,” she said, and got up and walked out of the kitchen toward her stairs. Once they were in her room, she went to the bottom of the bed and picked up what looked like an old quilt. “My mom gave me this as a baby. She said she made it. I carried this everywhere with me as a child, but never paid much attention to it really, not how well it was made. But look at it. It looks too perfect for an eighteen-year-old to make, don’t you think?”
He picked it up—it was really worn, like someone had held it all the time—and looked it over. It didn’t mean much to him. He was clueless but agreed with her. “I guess.”
“These dresses were hers too. I used to wear them to play dress-up when I was a kid. She said they were old dresses of hers that she used to wear. Looking at them, I realized they are also handmade. And don’t you think the style is a bit odd for what a teenager would have been wearing? Really long and baggy, almost covering everything up.”
He held a dress in front of him and it made him think of something his grandmother might have worn. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Drew, what if she lived in that cult? What if that’s how Tim and my mother knew each other?”
“You don’t even know if Tim was from the same area of Texas as your mother. You don’t even know for sure that your mother was from Texas, Jordyn. All you know is that the chest was from there.”