by Amy Woods
He’d wanted to feel what it was like to be wanted, the way he’d wanted Katie for so long before he’d been able to admit it, even to himself. Sarah was the opposite of Katie, the best friend whose company he’d taken for granted, thinking that she would always be there, would always be a part of his life. On some level, he’d assumed they would end up together. It seemed a natural conclusion to the instant bond and happy friendship they’d shared. But the moment he’d known, the moment he’d realized he was in love with his best friend, all he had felt was...scared. Terrified that he wasn’t good enough for Katie, that somehow his father’s treatment of his mother might have rubbed off on Ryan, and he couldn’t risk not being perfect for the girl.
So when Sarah had offered him a way out, a chance to experience something different, he’d taken her up on it, and he’d lived with the consequences of a relationship built on something much weaker than true friendship and true love.
He looked over at his beautiful old friend, the girl next door who’d stolen his heart and never truly given it back. He’d always thought that she bore so much anger toward him for leaving without saying goodbye that she would never be able to listen to his reasons, but he’d been wrong, like he had been about so many things. He’d misjudged her, he knew now, as he turned to face her. Their shoulders were almost touching, and he suddenly wanted to close the gap between them, to be nearer to her. There was something about Katie Bloom that relaxed him, made his heart beat a little slower, a little calmer, all the while still driving him crazy with need. They’d only ever kissed once, but his body remembered, would never forget the way her lips felt against his, the way the softness of her mouth communicated a hunger beyond measure.
There was no judgment in her beautiful dark eyes now, no agitated heat rising into her gorgeous, olive-colored skin, but that didn’t mean what he found instead was easier to handle. Her eyes were soft and a little sad, not sparkling with desire the way they’d been then. It didn’t matter. He needed to tell her about what happened with Sarah; it was time to tell Katie the truth, regardless of the pain it might cause him to admit that he’d been wrong, that he was the one who held the majority of responsibility for ending their friendship. Even if she didn’t forgive him, he owed her that.
“I tried to love her, you know,” he said. “I tried so hard to be a good husband to her, to give her everything my father never gave my mother. But it wasn’t enough to sustain a marriage.”
A blend of sorrow and possibly jealousy washed over Katie’s features. Once, he would have given his right arm to have Katie envious of another woman, but now it only added to his shame at having hurt two.
“What do you mean?” she asked, turning her whole body toward him so that their knees almost touched. He had an urge to reach out and hold her hand, to feel the soft skin enveloped in his own.
“I never told you this,” he said, his voice coming out bumpier than he would have liked. Katie only stared at him, waiting for him to speak further. She was that way with everyone—patient, kind, empathetic. She took everyone’s cares and made them her own. It was why she was loved by so many, why he felt so blind for having not seen that he was one of them until it was too late. It was why he couldn’t understand how she could be pregnant and not have someone worrying about her every move, offering to drive to the grocery store in the middle of the night to buy any crazy thing she could possibly want.
“My father cheated on my mom. I knew about it for ages and I never told her.”
“Oh, Ryan,” Katie soothed. She didn’t offer platitudes or say anything more, but he could feel her sympathy all the same.
“She knows now, but back then I had no idea how to break the news to her. She loved my dad so much, and to this day, I don’t know if she ever had any idea until he finally came clean.”
Ryan looked into the distance, fixing his eyes on the slowly moving water of the river, watching as it flowed by, gradually eroding the bottom underneath, providing a home and sustenance to so many living things. How many summers had he and Katie spent swimming in that very water? Splashing each other and laughing as they jumped into the cool stream to escape the tickle of burning sun on their shoulders.
“He used me to do it, too. The other woman was my babysitter when Mom went to her social functions or volunteered.”
He was glad Katie didn’t ask about the woman. She still lived in Peach Leaf and, although he hated what had happened between her and his father, it wasn’t his place to tarnish her name.
Ryan closed his eyes against the sunshine, the heat warming his lids as it rose higher in the sky.
“Ryan,” Katie said, placing a long, graceful hand on his knee. He could feel the electricity of her touch through the fabric of his jeans, and it spread through his body, setting every nerve on alert in a matter of seconds.
“You were too young,” she continued, her brown eyes offering comfort and absolution. “It wasn’t your responsibility to tell your mother what was going on. You had no obligation to do so. It was your father who did.”
“I know that, I know,” he said, and he did now. “But that didn’t make it any easier.”
“Well, no,” Katie said. “I imagine that made it much worse, wanting your mom to know what was happening, but also not wanting to hurt her.”
He’d never spoken of this with anyone, had never shared this secret that, had it escaped at the time, would have wrecked multiple lives and hurt a woman he loved so much. It felt...freeing...to share it with Katie, and he knew he could have done so long ago and she would have kept it to herself, taken it to her grave. But his parents were only part of the equation. He needed to explain why he’d chosen Sarah over Katie. Understanding what happened with his mom and dad might help her comprehend his reasons.
“Eventually, he did tell Mom,” Ryan said, “and she forgave him.” His hands balled into fists at the memory. He’d been so confused and angry that his mother could so easily let go of his father’s betrayal. “I couldn’t believe she did it so easily, but that’s how Mom is.”
Katie’s eyes clouded over. “It’s because she loves him, and it’s unconditional,” Katie said, squeezing his knee with her fingers. “She might have been angrier and more hurt than you ever knew...after all, you were a child then, and she wouldn’t have wanted you to carry the burden of her sadness...but she loved him anyway. She would forgive anything.”
Ryan wanted Katie’s words to mean that she had forgiven him, but it was dangerous to read into them that way. He still needed to apologize; she couldn’t let him off that easily.
“It was only one time with Sarah before we got married,” he said, his frankness causing Katie to look away. “Only one time and she swore she was on the pill. I’d never been with anybody else...she was my first...and she said the same about me. I believed her, and I truly thought it was risk-free because it was the first time for both of us,” he said abruptly.
Katie was suddenly very interested in the grass between her sneakers. He shared her discomfort, but he had to do this anyway.
“It never once crossed my mind that she might end up pregnant.”
Katie gave him a look that said Really? and he almost laughed, thankful she had the ability to bring light to such a serious moment.
“Ryan, you don’t have to tell me this stuff. You don’t owe me—”
He placed his hand over the one she’d laid on his knee.
“I want to, though, Katie. Let me, please.”
She nodded, her expression so open and sweet that he gave in to the temptation to brush a strand of dark, silky hair away from her face. She pulled in a breath when he did so, and it took all the strength in him to keep from kissing her.
“So when Sarah told me she was carrying my kid, I thought of all that stuff with my parents...about the way I’d felt knowing my dad wasn’t the man I’d always thought he was. And I knew I couldn’t let my own son or daughter go through the same thing. Imagine if I’d let Sarah have the baby alone, and wasn’t aroun
d to watch my child grow up.” Ryan almost choked on the words. “Even if things weren’t perfect with Sarah, I believed that we could learn to love each other eventually.”
“You could have, I suppose. After all, it happens in arranged marriages all the time in other cultures, and many of them have much lower divorce rates,” Katie said, offering him a grin.
And she was right. But it never happened with Sarah.
“I tried, and she tried, but it wasn’t enough...” He wanted to tell her about their baby, but his heart was already raw from sharing so much, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it just then. “After a while, we agreed to an annulment, and there were no hard feelings. I admitted it was never going to work, and Sarah admitted that she lied about being on the pill, though I’ll never know if she meant to get pregnant.”
A few trucks rambled up the camp’s dirt road, bringing excited families, and Katie glanced at her watch.
“You were just kids, Ryan. I don’t blame you for what happened with you and Sarah.”
He could tell she wasn’t being completely truthful, but then again, neither had he. He’d left out his child—the most painful part—a part he wasn’t sure he could share yet. And he’d still left out the part about being in love with Katie back then...about the feelings he still carried around and wasn’t sure would ever dissipate entirely.
* * *
Katie squeezed his knee one last time and then pulled her hand away, making a move to get up, but Ryan grabbed her hand and drew her back down to where he sat. “I’m not finished,” he said, his eyes pleading with her to hear him out.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to—”
“Katie,” he said, reaching for her other hand, holding them both when he caught it. “I’m sorry.”
Her shoulders fell back and she blinked at him.
“I’m so sorry I left you. I never should have moved away without telling you goodbye.” He looked at their clasped hands, turning Katie’s over to stroke her palm with his thumb. “I never should have moved away at all.”
As he watched her face for an indication of what she might be feeling, pools of water welled up behind her eyes, but Katie closed her lids before they fell, pulling a hand away to swipe at her face. Ryan smiled at her when she looked up at him again, and he opened his arms, inviting her in, drawing her close to his chest, memorizing the way she felt against his body so he’d have something to hold on to when she walked away to greet the weekend guests.
Chapter Eight
Katie could have waited another minute to hear if Ryan had more to say, but the second he’d touched her hand, something strange happened inside her, something that had been building since that morning when he’d wrapped her in his arms, and now he’d done it again.
Damn that Ryan Ford.
Actually, it was herself she should be cursing, for letting him slip under her skin again, for letting him remind her why she’d missed him so much.
She’d wanted his apology for so long, but now that she had it, instead of filling the hole he’d dug in her heart in his absence, all it created was a new open space. The only thing that would fix this one was Ryan himself...all of him.
When they joined the others, Katie tried to put aside thoughts of Ryan as she went through the motions greeting campers and their parents like she did every year, but this time it was on autopilot. All she could think about was how good it felt to be held by Ryan, how astoundingly different it was than the way she’d always felt in Bradley’s arms.
Ryan’s hugs were full of emotion, full of all the things going on in his own heart; and now that she thought about it, they always had been.
Pieces came together in her mind, creating a whole picture from previously disjointed fragments of their shared past. Ryan coming over in the middle of the night, throwing pebbles at Katie’s window until she woke up and joined him in the swing on her parents’ front porch, his face always unreadable as he’d hold her hand in the darkness. She never thought much of it back then, never questioned something that was so pure, so dear, as the sensation of his little-boy hand on hers when they were just children. She adored him then and was so caught up in every moment he shared with her that, she understood now, she’d been unable to see that he was hurting.
She’d heard his parents argue on occasion, but her own parents never spoke of it. Mr. and Mrs. Ford were upstanding people, untouched by tragedy or heartache...or so she’d believed.
What Ryan had chosen to share with her that afternoon broke a little piece of her heart. It meant that even a couple she’d always admired—for their beautiful home, their gorgeous family photographs and the incredibly elaborate dinners Ryan’s mother put together and invited them to sometimes—were not perfect. Their happiness—a happiness Katie would have sworn was real—was an illusion. She’d been fooled like the rest of the town by the Fords’ smoke and mirrors.
And if the marriage of two such people, pillars of the community, admired by all, was tarnished...how could she and Ryan ever hope for a happy ending?
Katie almost gasped as the thought came, billowing in like a breath of wind as she helped set up the girls’ cabin alongside the other moms, all of them thrilled to share a weekend with their kids.
The thought was almost deceptive in its quiet arrival, in its seeming innocence: I want a happy ending.
Not just that, she admitted, letting the truth sink under her skin and soak into her bloodstream...she wanted a happy ending with Ryan Ford.
She had loved Bradley, had wanted things to work out with him. He’d been kind and thoughtful and loving when they’d first met, and she had envisioned a future with him...had given him her whole heart, only to have it smashed into pieces when she’d happily shared the news of her pregnancy.
Oh, she wanted this baby so badly.
She’d been livid when Bradley had the nerve to suggest that she shouldn’t keep it. He’d never wanted kids, he’d said, had never imagined himself as a father. They had never formally discussed it, and their year together had gone by so fast—Bradley busy building his career as a policeman, and Katie working hard at the museum, all the time believing that she’d finally have a chance at getting over Ryan, at moving on to make a full life.
She’d learned the hard way that she’d been living in a dream; she’d been made a fool of. Bradley told her that his job made it illogical and irresponsible for him to be a father. What would happen if he was injured or even killed in an accident, leaving Katie and a child behind? He hadn’t listened to reason when she tried to explain that plenty of the other police officers had families, and they were okay. Besides, Peach Leaf had a crime rate equivalent to that of a utopia; it was one of the safest places in Texas, and Bradley’s own office had the statistics to back that up. But her attempts to talk him into making a family with her were futile, and it took her way too long to see past his flimsy excuses and understand that he’d never meant for them to have one anyway.
“Katie!”
A voice rang out behind her as she tucked the edges of her sheets into the bottom bunk of a bed near the front of the cabin. Shelby had dibs on the top bunk and Katie agreed, having been tricked into a deal of reading the little girl not one but two bedtime stories that night when she knew she’d be exhausted after riding and the hayride.
She turned to see Lucy Haynes behind her and an ever-growing Shiloh alongside in her wheelchair.
“Oh, my gosh, hi!” she shouted, startling Shelby, who promptly hid behind her leg, gripping a handful of Katie’s jeans with all her might.
Lucy rushed forward and hugged Katie. “I haven’t seen you in ages,” Lucy said. “How’s the baby coming along?” She held Katie out at arm’s length and studied her belly. “You look amazing, by the way.”
“You’re sweet,” Katie answered, smiling at her friend. “You’ve been so busy with the observatory fund-raiser this year that I almost forgot what you look like.”
“Same old,” Lucy said, “emphasis on the old.”
> Katie laughed at her decidedly not old friend and reached down to hug Shiloh, who was starting to look exactly like her aunt, her red wavy hair longer and more beautiful than ever, making the two look like fairy-tale princesses.
Shiloh peeked around Katie’s leg. “Who’s this?” she asked, her voice friendly and inviting enough to coax out a shy Shelby.
“This is my friend Shelby,” Katie said, placing a gentle hand behind the little girl’s shoulder blades, urging her to step forward and say hello. She didn’t have to do much more because Shelby was instantly entranced by Shiloh’s hair.
“She looks just like a princess,” Shelby said.
Shiloh thanked her new friend profusely and the two girls went off, Shelby promising to show Shiloh around the campground.
Katie and Lucy followed them out of the cabin, running into a few other Peach Leaf women. Katie hoped Ryan was having a good time catching up with the guys, though if she were honest, she really wanted him all to herself.
“I heard Ryan Ford’s back in town,” Lucy said as they walked outside into the gorgeous afternoon.
More trucks had arrived, full of excited families ready for the hayride and a day of fun. Katie had joined the rest of the museum staff for a meeting earlier to get everything organized, but the crew had done this so many years in a row that everyone knew the drill by heart. Most of the cooking and facility upkeep would be handled by the caretaker and his staff, but the regular museum employees helped out everywhere they could and made sure everyone had a good time.
Katie saw her friends Liam and Paige Campbell setting up a face-painting booth with their son, Owen, and their adorable toddler, Winnie. Owen’s face was painted to look like a comic-book character and Katie saw Ryan stop to admire the art, winking at Katie as she and Lucy passed.
“Speak of the devil,” Lucy said, earning a soft jab in the arm.
“Hey, now,” Lucy quipped. “I know what that man did to you in high school. We were all at that graduation party, sweetheart, and the look on your face—”
