by Naomi Niles
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
KYLE
“I have no idea why the doctor ever signed off on you driving again.” Greg was being overly-dramatic as I gunned the engine of my new Dodge Charger and merged onto the freeway. His knuckles were white from gripping onto his seat.
“I’ve been driving again for over a year. It’s been two years since I was proclaimed tumor free. Was I supposed to take public transportation the rest of my life?”
I whipped over into the right lane when I saw our exit coming up. I’ll admit that I like the speed this V-8 gives me – since Callie and I broke up it’s the only real thrill I’ve gotten. “I’d vote for it,” the scaredy-cat in the passenger seat said. He changed the subject then to an even more depressing one. “I saw Callie today.”
It was almost like I’d thought her into existence. “Oh yeah? How is she?”
“She looks good, but she always does,” he said with that perverted grin of his.
“Where did you see her?”
“At the courthouse. I guess she’s interning for the law firm that handles the legal end of my business. I had some papers that had to be filed by noon and she was the one they sent to meet me.”
“Oh, that’s good.” I didn’t really want to talk about Callie. My chest hurt every time I thought about her. Not because I missed her, but because I felt so badly for hurting her. I’d never wanted to do that. Some nights when I was really lonely, I’d wonder if I should really “grow-up” and stop listening to every word my sister says. Callie and I were doing fine before Sarah put in her two cents…and now I was alone once again.
The day I sat her down and told her how I felt, I’d been as delicate as possible. I’d told her that I did love her – and that was true. I just said that I wasn’t passionately, head over heels in love and I worried that maybe I was being unfair to her. I even felt so bad once I started talking that I told her if she could “live with that” we could still get married. I’m a moron sometimes. She let me finish and when I was done, she just got up from the breakfast table and packed her stuff. I tried talking to her more and she wouldn’t say a word to me, she wouldn’t even look at me. I didn’t want her to hate me, but I guess that was being selfish, as well. Before she left, she put all of the keys to the loft and my car on the counter and took all of the credit cards we had together out of her wallet and left them as well. Then, without even glancing back at me, she walked out the door. I’d never broken up with a silent girl before. I didn’t doubt she had plenty going on internally, but somehow, I felt even worse that she didn’t unleash it on me.
“Yeah, she said she started the internship a couple of weeks ago,” Greg went on. She hadn’t actually spoken to me since that day. She did send me a detailed email listing out everything she had to do in order to cancel the wedding and told me which vendors would be keeping our deposits. I tried to reach out and ask her how she was doing, but she ignored me. My sister said she sent out little cards to the two hundred guests on our list and told them the wedding was cancelled without an explanation. She blocked me from calling her and all of her social media accounts. She was really and truly finished with me. I couldn’t say as I blamed her, either, unfortunately. I actually had a lot of respect for her for being a strong, proud woman.
Since we broke up, I’ve been out with different women, though never more than once whether I ended up with sex or not at the end of the night. As badly as I want a relationship, I finally realized there was only one person I wanted it with…and she was out of my reach.
Greg said something that I completely did not process. “What?”
“You passed the club.”
“Oh shit.” I flipped a U-turn at the corner and drove back to the club. We were meeting some friends at a place called The Round-Up Saloon. It’s a bar with a dance floor and they have live country music on the weekends. Tonight was our friend Vince’s 30th birthday. We’ve known Vince since high school. Sometimes it was hard for me to believe we’re all turning thirty. My turn will be in January. It’s September now, so I only have a few months of my twenties left. I wondered if someday I’ll be a lonely old man with nothing but regrets.
I handed off the keys to my new gun barrel gray baby and told him to be careful with her. Greg rolled his eyes at me, but then caught the eye of a cute little cowgirl and I was forgotten. He chased her inside as I followed. I stopped in the doorway and looked around. The place was packed, mostly with a younger crowd. The music was loud and the drinks were flowing. I spotted our friends and left Greg hitting on the barely-legal-to-drink cowgirl and went over to their table.
“Kyle!” Vince stood up when he saw me and shook my hand. “This is my fiancée, Becca,” he said, indicating a pretty blonde sitting next to him. “You know Ray and Bobby. That’s Sue on the end.” Sue was a super-skinny brunette. From the looks of it, she was with Bobby, a super-skinny brunette himself. Bobby is six foot nine. I guess he’d have to eat all day long every day to put any weight on a frame that size. I said hello to them all and took a seat. “So how have you been, man?” They were all looking at me with those eyes that said they heard about the cancelled wedding. I don’t know what Callie told people, but when they ask me I just tell them it was a mutual decision. No one really believes that – especially since the invitations had already gone out.
“I’m great,” I told him, honestly. I was healthy. I had a great job. I was not quite thirty yet. “How does it feel to be the big 3-0?”
“I’m better than I’ve ever been.” His girlfriend snorted. They got into a little lovers nudging match and ended with a lip lock. PDAs are not really my thing…maybe because I didn’t have anyone I felt that way about.
“Yeah…while you two do that, I’m going to the bar to get a drink. Anyone need anything?”
They all said they were good and I got up and made my way through the crowd on the way to the bar. I ran into Greg on his way to the table. He had his arm around the young cowgirl. “Hey, buddy, this is Starla. Starla, this is, Kyle. Starla and I met the last time I came here.”
“Nice to meet you, Starla. I’ll see you in a bit I’m going to get a drink.” I finished my trek up to the bar and ordered a whiskey and coke. While I waited for it, I looked around the place again. My eyes landed on the backside of a pair of jeans. It was a very nice backside that belonged to a very curvy woman with long, dark hair. Something about her seemed familiar…or I was just drawn to that ass… I wasn’t sure which. The bartender handed me my drink and I looked back over. The girl was walking out to the dance floor with an older cowboy. They stopped when they found a spot and when she turned around to put her arms up around his neck, I nearly dropped my drink.
I was looking at Amber. She was two years older, but nothing else had really changed, and she was still drop-dead gorgeous. I had to remind myself to breathe as I watched the old cowboy dance her around the floor. I’d met a lot of beautiful women in my lifetime, but none of them provoked the kinds of feelings inside of me that she did. Even after all this time, all I wanted to do was touch her.
I looked over where she’d been standing before she went out to dance. There was a high top table there and an older lady with short blonde hair and one with long black hair were sitting there. She must be out with her friends, or maybe her sisters. I didn’t see her cowboy lurking around anywhere.
I told myself to stop watching her, but there were too many people between us for her to notice me staring. I just wanted a second to memorize her face again, just in case this was the last time I got to see her. Her soft brown hair fell in waves around her delicate face and her dark eyelashes were so long they actually touched the tops of her cheekbones when she blinked. Those green eyes were what really killed me though, they were like clear pools and when she traps you in them, it’s almost impossible to look away. My palms itched to trace those delicious curves of hers and my mouth watered at the memory of how she tasted…
“What are you doing?” Greg was next to me again. The soun
d of his voice startled me, and I jumped.
“Shit! You almost gave me a damned heart attack. Why are you sneaking up on people?”
He laughed. It’s so loud in here there was no way I would have heard him if he hadn’t walked right up on me. “What are you looking at?” his eyes scanned the dance floor. I saw the look on his face as soon as they fell on Amber. “Is that the hot therapist?” He didn’t wait for me to answer before he said, “Is that old guy her husband?”
“No…at least, it’s not the guy she was engaged to – Dylan.” I couldn’t help but curl my lip as I said his name.
“Good,” Greg said with a grin.
“Why is that so good?”
He shrugged. “I was just picturing that old man knocking you on your ass, that would have been embarrassing.”
I laughed. Sadly, the day Dylan knocked me on my ass, I had been still so weak from the radiation that the old man may not have had much trouble doing it himself. I wasn’t going to admit that to Greg. He thinks he’s so damned funny. “Fuck you.”
Laughing, too, he said, “Vince and the guys want to move down the street to the Beat Box.”
I looked back at Amber. I know the look on my face had to be longing because my chest was filled with it. Two years…how could I just walk away and not talk to her? “Right now?”
“Yeah, but I’ll tell them we’ll join them in an hour, how’s that?”
I smiled. Greg’s not the asshole he likes to pretend he is…at least, when he’s not sleeping with my girlfriend. “Great, thanks.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
AMBER
“Don’t think that just because I’m dancing with you, it means I’ve forgiven you for showing up in town without my nephew.”
My brother-in-law Will laughed. Will is married to my oldest sister Patty and they’ve been married for fifteen years. For most of my life, Will has been a part of our family and as far as I can tell, he and my sister are still madly in love. He’s truly like an older brother to me now, too. “You’ll have to be mad at the teenager about that, not me, little missy. He’s the one who has such a busy schedule that he can’t find time to go visiting with Mom and Dad.”
“What is it that he blew off his favorite aunt for?”
“There was a rodeo dance this weekend and there’s some little filly he’s had his eye on all year. She’s a barrel racer and she was the rodeo queen last year…”
“The rodeo queen! Don’t they have to be sixteen?”
He shrugged. “What can I say? My boy likes them older women.”
“Does my sister know you’re encouraging her sweet little fourteen-year-old boy to go after a sixteen-year-old woman?”
He laughed. “I ain’t so sure he’s as “sweet” or as “little” as you and his mama would like him to be anymore. He’ll be fifteen next month.”
“He’s still a little boy,” I told him, indignantly. It’s hard to see my nephew as a teenager and my little Nona as already going into the fourth grade. I’m going to be a terribly over-protective mother…if I ever get that chance.
“He did ask us to tell you that he loves you and he’s proud of you.”
“That means a lot,” I said, honestly. I am so glad that my family is mostly all here to share what I am doing. I wish that Dylan’s family felt the same way. I invited them tonight and I didn’t even get a reply. Sometimes, I think they somehow blame me for what happened, but I can’t wrap my head around that. I can’t wrap my head around losing a child, either, so I have to give them a break, at least, in that respect.
The song ended, and Will kissed the top of my head and led me back over to the table where my sisters Patty and Rachel were sitting. Marlene and my cousin Belinda and her husband were supposed to be here anytime. They’d all been at the opening of my new non-profit rehab treatment center today and we’d gone out to dinner to celebrate. Afterwards, Will suggested that we go out. Marlene and Belinda had gone by Marlene’s house on the way to drop off Mom. She was going to stay with the kids. Daddy hadn’t been at the opening, but he’d called me earlier and told me how proud he was of me.
“My turn!” Patty said before Will sat down. She grabbed him and pulled him back out to the dance floor. Rachel and I watched them go.
“Do you ever think we’ll find a love that will last like that?” she said, dreamily. Poor Rachel has been married and divorced twice. She has never had kids and she has worse taste in men than me. Sometimes I look at Rachel and worry that the same destiny awaits me. Rachel realized what she’d just said and suddenly turned to me and with the sympathy on her face that I’d had to bear for almost a year now she said, “I’m sorry, honey.”
I smiled and reached for her hand. Squeezing it, I said, “Don’t apologize. You know that as much as I loved Dylan, our relationship was nothing like that. It was always volatile and as much as I hate to admit it, I kind of doubt that we would have ever made it that long.”
She squeezed my hand back. Rachel had disliked Dylan as much as the rest of my family, but they’d all been so supportive anyways. Dylan and I got married at the pond on the ranch before we’d gone off to travel the rodeo circuit just like I’d dreamt we would since I was a kid. My family had all been there for the wedding and again for the sendoff.
I had wished they were with me that day more than once. I had to sit alone and watch as my husband was trampled and gored to death – but Dylan had made that decision on his own against my wishes and they had rushed to me right afterwards. The only thing I could do now about any of it is to either hold that against him and be miserable about something I can’t change, or try and make his life count for something. I pictured him that day again and I shuddered as the horrible memories flooded my consciousness.
“I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Rachel said.
I smiled again. It was the only way I could keep from crying when I thought about it. “I don’t mind people bringing him up. He had a lot of issues, but he had a lot of good in him, too, and he doesn’t deserve to be forgotten. That’s what this whole night has been about…remembering him.”
“Excuse me?” The sound of a deep male voice interrupted us. We both looked up and there was a really nice looking cowboy about Rachel’s age standing next to the table. “I was just wondering if you might like to dance?” He was looking at Rachel with a pair of sexy blue eyes and I watched my forty-year-old sister blush like a schoolgirl.
“I’d love to,” she said. She looked at me as if to say, “Score!” I tried not to laugh as I watched them go, smiling after her. Another song was starting and Patty and Will stayed on the dance floor. I picked up my drink and realized I needed a new one. I started to turn around and flag the waitress when I realized she was right there already with a fresh drink in her hand.
“I was just going to ask you for one of those. You must be psychic.”
She laughed. She actually looked dead on her feet. “I wish,” she said. “I’d be winning the lottery, instead of working here and having every dirty old cowboy’s hands in the county on my ass all day.” She sat the drink down and said, “But I can’t take credit for this. It’s from the gentleman over in the corner.”
“Oh, I really don’t want someone to buy me a drink…” I really wasn’t in the mood to get hit on tonight and have to shoot some poor guy down.
“He’s really cute and polite. He said to tell you it’s an apology drink.”
I laughed nervously. I wanted to turn around and see who this guy was that thought he owed me an apology. He must have me mixed up with someone else. “I think he might have the wrong woman…”
She smiled. “He seemed really sure. He said he’d like me to come back and tell him if you accept his apology. He says his name is Kyle, and he is very sorry for the spectacle he made of himself the last time he saw you.”
Suddenly, my senses were all on high alert and I felt like my heart actually stopped beating for a few seconds. I turned around slowly and when my eyes landed on
his hazel ones, he smiled and lifted his glass. I was like hot, liquid adrenaline had been infused into my bloodstream. My whole being began to tingle. For an entire year after that day in the restaurant, I put everything I had into being Dylan’s wife – and I had been happy, for the most part, until the end. I spent the second year mourning Dylan’s death and wishing that he’d had an easier life. Throughout it all, I had never stopped dreaming about Kyle and that feeling of something huge pressing down on me each time I pictured his face never went away. I have no idea what this was, but even after all this time, it consumed me.
With a shaky hand I picked up my own glass and raised it in his direction. He smiled and anything left solid inside of me melted. I’d just come from dedicating my new clinic in my dead husband’s name and I couldn’t help but question the appropriateness of my feelings. I’d been in therapy since Dylan died and my therapist kept telling me that I spend too much time questioning my feelings. You can change how you react to things, but not how you feel about them.
My heart loves Kyle. No amount of pretending otherwise would change that, apparently.
*******
“Oh, look, she got a fresh drink and didn’t order one for us,” Patty told Will when they got back. Rachel was back, too, with her new cowboy friend, and it was obvious that she was smitten with him. Before I could say anything, I heard Marlene’s voice.
“Amber, isn’t that Kyle over there?”
“Who’s Kyle?” Belinda asked.
“That’s him?” Rachel said, looking in the direction that my not so subtle sister Marlene had pointed in. “He’s hot, Amber.”
“Who is Kyle?” Belinda asked again.
“Does he walk now?” Patty asked.
“Yes, he’s been walking for a long time,” Marlene answered her.
“Who is Kyle?” Belinda said, a little louder. Both of my brothers-in-law and the cowboy looked amused. I wanted to crawl underneath the table and hide.
“He was one of Amber’s patients a couple of years ago… Do you remember when she was staying with me for a while and she and Dylan got in that car accident?”
