by Jill Sanders
“Luke?” she said softly.
“Yes.”
“One thing.”
“Anything,” he said, looking back down at her.
“Shower,” she said and then kissed him. “You, me. Now.”
He chuckled, then in one quick motion, picked her up and carried her to the bathroom.
He took his time slowly undressing her and took even longer running his soapy hands over her, enjoying the soft moans that escaped her lips and watching her body react to his touch.
When he slid into her, he knew he loved her too. Actually, he’d probably fallen in love with her before she had with him. He could even pinpoint the exact moment—when he’d stood up on the stage and, by just looking into her eyes, had known peace. Completely.
He wanted to show her more tenderness than he could standing up, she he pulled her from the shower, wrapped a towel around her, and carried her into the bedroom, where he took his time drying her off.
When he laid her on the bed, she sighed and closed her eyes as he ran his mouth and hands over her. He kissed her as he took her slowly until the sunlight broke into the room, showing her how he felt with his body.
Then they lay in each other’s arms and slept until he heard pounding on his front door.
Chapter Seventeen
The pounding woke her first. She shook Luke’s shoulder and swallowed a few times. She was pretty sure she could manage talking, but didn’t want to chance it until she’d had a drink of water.
Luke rolled out of bed and rubbed his hands over his face. “Who the hell could it be at this time?” He glanced over at the clock. She too was surprised to see that it was a quarter past eleven. They had slept most of the day away, curled up tight together after the most magical night in her entire life.
He pulled on his jeans and she decided she might need to get dressed as well. Then she realized her uniform was probably lying on his living room floor. She searched his drawers as he walked out to answer the front door. She found a pair of his sweats and a black T-shirt to pull on. Still barefoot, she walked into the bathroom to run his brush through her hair.
When she walked out into his living room, it was to yelling. Not his, but a woman’s. A man and woman stood just inside his doorway, their arms crossed over their chests. The woman had been yelling, but stopped dead when she stepped out of the bedroom. Instantly, Tessa wished she’d stayed in the room.
“Who the hell is this?” the woman asked.
Luke’s head spun around. Tessa could see the pain and anger in his eyes and wanted to rush to his side, but something in his eyes told her he couldn’t handle it at the moment.
She took a step back and came up hard against his bedroom door.
“Mom, Dad, this is Tessa.” He walked over and took her hand. “She was attacked last night, so she probably doesn’t have a voice right now.”
“I…” She tried to speak, but it came out raspy.
“Is she the reason you ran away?” his mother accused.
“Ran away?” Tessa asked. It came out as a chuckle. Luke was a full-grown man but his mother seemed to think of him like a child.
“Does she know about Kristen?”
Tessa felt her heart skip. Kristen? Who? She dropped her hand from his. The fact that he didn’t pull it back into his hand scared her.
“No, no one here does.” His eyes moved to the floor.
“Why would you do this to us?” His mother moved over and touched him on the shoulder.
“I… I needed a fresh start. Away from the pain and the guilt.”
“Luke?” Tessa heard herself say his name, but her head was spinning and she wasn’t sure it was her that actually spoke.
“So, you’re sleeping with some stranger that knows nothing about your fiancée?”
Tessa took a step back then. She turned and walked into the living room and without a word, pulled on her shoes. She could hear Luke arguing with his parents, but didn’t care. She no longer heard a word he said. Instead, the word fiancée played over and over in her mind.
Luke had run away from his fiancée. He’d left a woman at the altar. So? Maybe he’d needed a fresh start like he’d said. Maybe he didn’t really love the woman, Kristen. Maybe this was the life he wanted.
After pulling on her shoes, she walked back towards the front door.
“I… I’m going to go,” she said. “I called my dad to pick me up.”
“Tessa.” Luke took her shoulders in his hands. “I’m sorry about all this. I’d like to explain.”
She nodded. “Later.” Her eyes moved over to where his parents stood.
She didn’t spare them a word. She walked outside to wait for her dad, praying that he would hurry up.
***
Luke’s back teeth were grinding when he heard his front door shut. Every ounce of him wanted to rush after Tessa, but his parents stood between him and the doorway. He knew they wouldn’t allow him to leave without explaining to them first.
“Why don’t you come in?” he said, turning towards the kitchen, not really caring if they followed him into the house or not. He flipped on the coffee pot, then walked back to his room to pull on a shirt.
By the time he came back into the kitchen, his folks had made themselves at home. Well, as much as they could in a place he could clearly tell was way beneath them.
“Why are you here?” he asked. “How did you find me?”
“Well, I would think it was rather easy for anyone to find you nowadays. All they would have to do is open the web browser.” His mother sighed. “Really!” She shook her head. “How embarrassing. Do you know, Judy and Larry came over for dinner last week and sprung the whole thing on us? We looked like fools, not knowing what they were talking about.”
“You could have called. We were worried about you,” his father added.
“Robert.” His mother glared across the table at his father. “That’s not the point. You should have called. We had no idea where you had disappeared to. Or what you were doing. Everyone asked about you and we couldn’t even tell them what had happened to you.” She took a sip of the coffee he’d placed in front of her. “We showed up to your place, and it was empty. Then we found out from Carl that you’d cashed out some of your stocks.” She set the mug down a little too hard and coffee spilled onto his table.
“I bought this place with my money.” He made sure to emphasize the word.
“Lucas, why on earth would you want to live here?” His mother glanced around, clearly appalled at everything she saw. “This is some kind of joke. Right?”
“No, mother. I’m staying here. I’m fixing this place up. I’ve started a music career. I’ve signed contracts and I’m planning to go on tour… and I want to be with Tessa.”
The room was silent for a while.
“You’ve had your laugh, Lucas.” His mother stood up, followed more slowly by his father. “We’ll deal with all this mess later. Go pack your stuff and we’ll head out. I’m sure everyone will be happy that you’re back.” She turned to go, but his father’s hand on her shoulder stopped him.
“Clarissa, I’m not sure he’s going to just fall in line anymore,” his father said. “He’s a grown man. Look around. He’s made something for himself here. For his life.” His father turned his mother towards him. “Look into his eyes. He’s happy. Isn’t that what we always wanted for him?”
His mother’s blue eyes met his. Her breath hitched several times. “I… I can’t let you go. We almost lost you before and I don’t think I could bear it if you left again.”
He walked over and wrapped his arms around her frail frame. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve found my home. The place I want to be. I may go on tour, but I plan on coming back here. Being here. Always.”
“I’m not moving to some podunk town.” She stomped her foot. “I refuse to live like a… hillbilly.”
Luke laughed. “I’m not asking you to. I’m staying. You’re going home to Austin.”
“But… It
’s…”
“Only four hours away,” he added. “Not a million.”
“That’s too far.” Her hands came up and brushed the stubble on his face. “You’ve been gone too long.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You aren’t mad at me?”
“Yes, I’m livid.”
“About the accident?”
She frowned. “Why would we be mad about the accident?”
“We were fighting.” His eyes flew to the floor.
“So?” his father added in. “That doesn’t affect the truck driver that ran the red light. Or the fact that Kristen was driving and couldn’t react in time.”
“If I had…”
His mother’s hands on his face stopped him. She jerked his head up until his eyes met hers.
“There was nothing you could have done.” He watched tears roll down her face. “Nothing. We could have just as easily lost you that day. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t feel guilty for feeling glad that it was Kristen instead of you.”
His throat closed up. “I…” He shook his head. “I cheated on her. I had called off the wedding.”
“That doesn’t matter anymore.” His father walked over and put a hand on his arm. “What matters now is what you do with your life. Are you happy here?”
Luke nodded. “Very.”
“Do you love the girl?” his father asked.
“Tessa.”
“Do you love Tessa?”
“Yes,” he answered quickly.
“Then I see no reason to dwell on the past.” He turned to his wife. “Do you?”
Luke’s mother shook her head. “We never wanted that for you. We only wanted what was best for you.” She wiped a tear from her eyes. “But we had hoped your happiness would be closer to us.” She chuckled.
Luke walked over and wrapped her once more in his arms. She cried against his chest as his father shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Women,” he mouthed, causing Luke to chuckle.
“Now, if you’re done soaking our son’s shirt, maybe we can have some lunch? I’m starved, since you made me drive straight through this morning.”
He spent the rest of the day with his folks. He hadn’t had time to set up a guest room yet, so he settled them in his room after a quick change of sheets and headed into town to find Tessa.
He assumed she would be at work, but when he showed up at Mama’s, Jamella told him she’d taken the week off to recover.
He instantly began to worry about her. Why had he let her walk out the door without making sure she was okay?
When he pounded on her apartment door, April rushed from the coffee shop and yelled up to him, “She’s not there.”
“Where is she?”
“I think she’s staying with her dad.” She tilted her head. “Thank you for saving her, by the way.” The woman smiled up at him. “We’re all keeping an extra eye on her, and Savannah had Billy install a security light and camera.” She nodded to the new hardware above the stairs. “We have a monitor behind the bar now and can watch who comes and goes from there.”
“Good,” he said, before getting into his truck. If he needed to knock on every door in town, he was going to find her tonight.
His father said she’d taken a walk, so he drove around the town, slowly, trying to find her. When he spotted Savannah at Mama’s, he stopped and asked if she’d seen her.
“You might want to check the bridge on McKinney Street.”
“Why?”
“We used to meet there every day. That’s where…”—she shook her head and shivered— “she almost died.”
Those words played over and over in his head as he drove the mile and half to the cement bridge.
He pulled into the dirt before the bridge and saw her leaning against the high cement wall. She looked sad. Like her heart had been broken. He realized he was the one who had broken it.
If he wanted any chance at happiness, he would have to confess everything to her.
Chapter Eighteen
They’ve changed so much about this place, Tessa thought as she leaned against the thick cement wall.
Gone was the old covered bridge with its charm and its rotted wood planks. After her “accident,” the town had demolished that old thing, and the state had come in months later and built a sturdy cement bridge that was very practical, safe, and boring.
She sighed as she watched the water flow slowly below her. How many times had she sat, her feet dangling above the water, dreaming, crying?
She must have spent as much time on this bridge as she had in Mr. Walker’s field with Speedy.
She’d asked for the rest of the week off from Mama’s because she didn’t think she could deal with all the questions. Not to mention the hurt. Her mind was playing over the scene at Luke’s house.
She’d believed they’d made progress. Yet, she was still hiding something from him, just like he’d hidden something major from her.
So, he’d broken off an engagement. Who cares? She’d only tried to kill herself and nearly succeeded. And now it appeared that everyone in town had known about it all these years and no one had said a word to her. They had all kept her secret.
Her heart had sunk when she’d realized that her mother must have known before she’d died that she had actually jumped instead of fallen. She didn’t think she could deal with that knowledge.
She had worked up enough courage to ask her father, and he’d nodded his head as his eyes teared up.
“The investigator said the hole in the wood was too small for you to fall through.” He’d wiped his eyes on his handkerchief. “We figured you’d tell us when you wanted. Even though you’d left the note, everyone had assumed… Besides, everyone knew you’d changed… after.”
She’d nodded. “It changed me.” She’d taken his other handkerchief from him and used it.
It had. She’d changed because of the good people in Fairplay and because of Luke. She didn’t know what his plans were. She figured he’d held off from touring because of his fiancée. He’d held off from making a decision about his future because he wasn’t sure if he was going to stay in Fairplay.
It was funny, she’d come back into town pretty sure that it was just a stop and now she couldn’t imagine herself living anywhere else. Luke had acted all along like he was determined to stay in town, but held off from making that commitment, other than buying a place. She realized that all along, he’d never really committed to the town, to the people.
As she looked down over the water, she wondered how her life would change if he decided to go back to Austin, or wherever he’d come from. Back to his family. To his fiancée.
She straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath. She would be heartbroken, but not broken.
Just then she heard a truck. She held her breath when she noticed it was Luke’s and watched as he pulled over to park on the side of the road.
When he walked over to her it was almost too dark to see the emotions in his eyes.
“Isn’t this dangerous?” He glanced around. “Standing on the bridge. There’s not even a sidewalk.”
“Not really.” She turned and leaned against the railing. “There’s only half a dozen homes up that way.” She nodded up the hill. “And most of them exit the highway instead of using this bridge.”
“I worked things out with my folks. They’re no longer freaking out.”
She chuckled. “Parents are good for freaking out.” She turned back around and watched as the sun sank lower in the sky.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Kristen before.” He said. She shrugged and closed her eyes. “I felt guilty.”
“For breaking it off?”
He shook his head. “We were fighting. I’d just returned from a four-month tour overseas and she had picked me up from the airport.” He leaned on the cement. “She was driving back to my apartment.” He closed his eyes and she watched his face. “She was yelling at me since I wanted to call off the wedding. She was determined
to get married because she was pregnant.”
“Oh.” She felt her heart skip.
“Two months pregnant.”
“Oh.” Anger spread into her quickly.
“She begged me. If I didn’t claim the baby as mine, her parents would disown her. She was trying to convince me to tell everyone that it was mine. And when it came two months early, we would explain that she’d had it early.”
“What did you do?” she asked, reaching out to touch his hand.
“I don’t know what I would have done. I remember it in slow motion. She turned her head towards me. Her blue eyes focused on me, the word please escaped her lips, and a cement truck ran the light and t-boned us.”
His eyes closed and a tear slipped down his cheek. She didn’t know what to say or do. So she waited. When his eyes opened again, he looked down at the water. “I remember hitting my head and seeing a bright light. I woke the next day.” He shook his head. “A couple broken bones, some cuts, but… Kristen was gone. I never told anyone about the baby.” He turned to her. “No one ever found out.”
“Luke.” She walked to him and wrapped her arms around him.
He pulled back and looked at her. “A few days later I checked myself out of the hospital, cashed out some stock options from my family’s business, hopped in my truck, and drove until I stopped. Here.” He glanced around. “The first place that called to me. And I have no plans of ever leaving.” He wrapped his arms around her.
“I have a secret too.” She pulled away and stepped closer to the edge. “I was a pretty scary kid. I was wiry, my hair was stringy, and I had braces. Braces with a mouth guard that went around my head.” She cringed at the memory. “They put it on me when I was in third grade.”
She heard him make an “ouch” noise, but didn’t turn around.
“Needless to say, I was picked on… a lot. Which led to your basic teenage depression. My parents didn’t understand, since they were so much older. The teasing and bullying grew worse. I don’t even know where to begin. Imagine what you stopped in the alley, but add the entire football team there instead. There wasn’t anyone to stop it or to stand up for me. Sometimes, it was the cheerleaders doing the kicking and pushing.”
