by Kim Law
Right. Like another one existed. But she also didn’t want to deal with stoking a fire all night long, either. After she asked Melinda to go ahead and hold the reservation while she checked around, her brain finally registered the rage tightening Cody’s body. And then she realized what had been said. And what that implied.
With three large steps, Cody loomed directly in front of her, leaving a dazed Melinda to gawk at his backside. Under his breath, he asked, “Their birthday is in December?”
Lee Ann couldn’t breathe. She nodded.
“I left at the end of April.”
Nod.
Once-warm brown eyes now burned with anger. “So you were already a month pregnant with someone else’s baby before I left town?”
If anyone had asked her a week ago if she was about to change her ways and begin lying on a regular basis, she would have sworn they were insane. She valued honesty. It was a priority she worked hard at every day to instill in her kids as well.
Yet now, not only had she lied to get out of the diner early not once but twice, she found herself opening her mouth to tell another one. A huge one! And it wasn’t as if this was even a lie she was likely to be able to keep up for very long. But her sense of survival saw this as an opening and screamed to her that if she could get him to believe this one tiny thing, then she might have just found a way to keep from having to let him into their lives.
She took a deep breath and stared straight into his eyes. “Yes.” She spoke quietly so no one else could hear. “I was pregnant before you left town.”
Without hesitation, Cody closed his hand around Lee Ann’s slim arm and hauled her into the room, slamming the door behind them. He was hard pressed to explain his ire over something that happened more than a decade ago, but he couldn’t control the anger flooding him. Realizing he still held Lee Ann, he released her. She moved silently across the room until the desk stood between them.
“Care to explain?”
She stuck her nose in the air. “I have nothing to explain.”
“Nothing?” he roared and stepped up to the desk, bracing his hands on the hard surface. “I’ve spent over thirteen years—”
“Lower your voice, please.” She spoke as calmly as if she were taking his order at the diner.
He didn’t wish to share their conversation with either Melinda or Joanie, so he backed off and forced himself to do as she asked. He inhaled through his nose and started again. “I’ve spent over thirteen years feeling like a dog because I slept with Stephanie, and when I come to apologize, I find out you had already done the same thing to me.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. She seemed to fight with herself about what to say, then rubbed the spot on her arm where he’d grabbed her. Finally, she spoke very softly. “I can’t take the blame for you feeling bad all that time. If you’d talked to me before you left, maybe...”
Maybe what? Maybe she would have said, “It’s okay, Cody. I changed my mind anyway and decided I didn’t want to wait until prom to give you my virginity. I gave it to some other loser.” Maybe she’d even sent Stephanie to sleep with him so she wouldn’t have to be the one to break it off. A sound as loud as a train roared through his head. He gritted his teeth as he spoke. “Maybe what?” he asked.
She gulped and stood stiff for a couple seconds, her wide eyes focused on him. Finally, her shoulders slumped with defeat. “I don’t know.”
He barked a laugh. “You don’t know? That’s all you’ve got to say?” He turned and braced his hands on the doorframe, needing to get away. She wasn’t anything like he’d always thought.
Young and innocent. That’s what he’d once believed. Sweet. Perfect. Too good for him.
When he’d been sent to Sugar Springs, she’d refused to accept him for the wild boy everyone else had known him to be. And he’d been surprised to find that for her he’d wanted to be different. Better.
After their friendship had grown over the winter months, they’d decided to pursue a real relationship and had anticipated making the ultimate commitment on prom night. But there was more to it than that. She’d grown to be his friend. His best friend. The one who’d believed in him no matter how many of the stories from his past he’d shared with her.
Then Stephanie had come home. Beautiful, worldly, and a woman on a mission to seduce. He’d learned ugly truths earlier in the day and had been hurting, apparently enough to let down his defenses. He shook his head, still shocked at what he’d done. He had no excuses. Bad news and feeling sorry for himself were no reasons to destroy the girl he’d dared dream with. The girl he’d dared love.
Even though he’d eventually turned his back on her, he’d truly thought he and Lee Ann had something special, something real. To discover she’d been no better than him was more than he could handle. Facing her, he had a hard time seeing the girl he’d once put up on a pedestal. Right now, even drawn in on herself and appearing smaller than normal, all he saw was another sister who’d mowed down anyone and everything in her plight to think only of herself.
Yet he couldn’t just walk away without giving the apology he’d come to deliver. Whether she deserved to hear it or not, he needed to say it. Once done, no reason would exist to have anything to do with her again. No matter how much he might want to.
He glared over her shoulder just to keep from looking at her, and his gaze landed on the calendar hanging on the wall. The pages hadn’t been ripped off in three months. Tension eased from his shoulders. Joanie was still the same.
He swiped his hand across his face, then stared up at the ceiling. “I can’t do it.” Shifting his gaze, he eyed Lee Ann and thought he caught her eyes glistening before she focused on the floor. “I need to apologize, Lee Ann. I need to clear my own conscience, but you wouldn’t believe how much finding this out hurts, even after all this time.”
Her eyelids fluttered up, and he’d been right. Tears. She chewed on her top lip before speaking so softly he could barely hear her. “You seriously think I can’t understand how much it hurts?” Her bottom lip trembled. “You slept with my sister.”
“But you—”
“No.” She sliced her hand through the air. “What I did or didn’t do doesn’t matter right now. No matter what else happened, we were in love, Cody. At least I was. At the time I thought we were leaving together as soon as we graduated. And I fully expected”—her voice broke but she managed to hang on, her entire body taut—“I thought we would be together forever. And you slept with my sister.”
Fury webbed through him. How dare she pretend she’d loved...
A tiny tear bubbled up in the corner of her eye, stopping him cold. She tilted her chin up a fraction as if trying to keep it from falling. He didn’t understand. Not how she’d slept with someone else, nor even why he had, but he recognized the anguish in her eyes. It was his pain echoed back at him. No matter what else, his actions that day had truly crushed her.
Lowering his gaze, he took a deep breath. He was a dog. Whatever Lee Ann’s reasons for doing what she did, he’d still been the lowest form of scum that day. He lifted his head and cleared all expression from his face. “You’re right. Of course you understand. And I owe you an explanation.”
She shrugged, touched a finger to the corner of her eye, and moved from behind the desk. “You don’t have to explain,” she said. “I know Stephanie seduced you. She told me that a couple days before she died.”
He slumped as the fight whooshed out of his body. “Stephanie’s dead?”
She gaped at him as she and Joanie had done earlier in the other room, and he felt as if he was missing something important.
“You didn’t know she was sick?” she asked.
“How would I? I left.” Then he frowned at her as a thought struck. Did she think he and her half sister had continued some sort of relationship after that day? “I never talked to her again, Lee Ann. I swear. Hell, I didn’t talk to her before or after. It was just that one afternoon. I couldn’t possibly have known she wa
s sick.” He paused, not really interested in Stephanie, yet it felt strangely as if Lee Ann needed to talk about this. “When did she die?”
Blue eyes watched him guardedly as if waiting for him to expose a huge secret he’d been hiding. “Almost eight months after you left. She developed cancer.”
Damn. “And they couldn’t do anything?”
She licked her lips and shook her head. “They found it too late.”
He took an automatic step forward, raising his hand to reach out to her, but she shifted backward until the back door stopped her.
“I’m so sorry.” He dropped his arm to his side. Her mother hadn’t been the best at nurturing or handling details, so he had no doubt Lee Ann had been forced to handle everything herself. “I know you two weren’t close, but I’m sorry you had to go through that alone.”
“It was a long time ago.” Her voice came out strained. The threat of tears had disappeared, though.
She continued to stare at him, the oddest look crossing her face as if seeing him differently from how she had when he’d first walked into the building. He had no idea what caused the change but appreciated how the sharp edges seemed to soften.
Her anger took a turn south, too. “She admitted she’d come to town to seduce you. To hurt me.”
Stephanie had been five years older than Lee Ann, living in Nashville, and working to break into the country-music scene. The two sisters had been about as opposite as two people could get. Stephanie was tall, blonde, and more classically beautiful, while Lee Ann had girl-next-door good looks and charm. Stephanie also hadn’t been nearly as smart or popular as Lee Ann, from what he’d heard. She’d spent most of her high school years dating the football team instead of studying for exams. He’d always guessed he’d been played to get back at Lee Ann somehow, but he had never known for sure.
He should finish his apology and get out of there before he succumbed to the lost look now filling Lee Ann’s eyes. He’d never been able to turn away from that easily.
He didn’t want to tell her everything he’d found out from his foster parents that day—it didn’t matter to this conversation—but he had to explain his actions somehow. “I’d gotten upsetting news earlier in the day and I came looking for you.” He shrugged. “You were out on a photo assignment for the school paper, and I decided to wait. I needed to talk to you. Instead, I let her take advantage of my anger, drank the lemonade she offered—spiked, of course—and completely shut down my mind.”
He shook his head. “I apologize, Lee Ann. I never meant to hurt you in any way, and certainly not like that.”
She held up a hand and her head tilted a fraction. “You had a bad day?” Her tone screamed incredulity. “This is your excuse? You had a bad day so you forgot how to say no to my sister?”
“Well...” Yeah, that sounded rough, but how else was he supposed to explain it? Plus, it was true. He’d just found out things that had impacted way more than that one day. “The details aren’t worth getting into, but...”
He could see that didn’t soothe her any more than his first attempt at an explanation did. Out of ideas of what else he could possibly tell her, he explained it with a shrug. “It was not one of my finer moments.”
A choked-off sound was her only reply.
When she said nothing else, he finally got his words going again, needing to finish and get out of there. “The fact is I wasn’t the right person for you anyway. You could do better.”
He glanced briefly at her flat stomach and imagined her swollen with another man’s child. Children. The thought made him sick, especially when he knew that in the end she hadn’t done better. She was still exactly where she’d been all those years ago, only now with children. Whoever the scumbag was that had gotten her pregnant, he clearly hadn’t been there for her, either.
With his explanation out, he pressed his lips together and waited. He’d run dry on anything else to say.
“Fine.” She didn’t make eye contact. “I understand. Really. I do.”
Only he got the feeling she didn’t.
“It wasn’t the first time Steph had gone after a guy I liked, anyway.”
He hadn’t realized that. He propped his hip against the desk and tried to look relaxed, hoping that would ease the stiffness from her shoulders as well.
“I knew I was worthless.” He lifted his hands, palms up. “But that was bad, even for me. I’m still not sure how I could have hurt the one person who truly cared for me.”
Or that he’d cared for.
“I’m sorry, Lee.” And he really was. He had been since the moment it had happened. “No one deserves to be treated the way I did you. I don’t expect forgiveness, but I do hope you can accept my apology.”
She stood, stiff to the point it looked painful. Finally, he saw just a bit of the fight slip out of her, and he began to breathe again.
“You never were as bad as you imagined.” Her voice edged back from glacier cold and began to soothe his raw heart. It wasn’t an acceptance of his apology, but it might be the best he was going to get.
With a twist to his mouth, he tipped his head back and let out a long sigh. It was possible he was imagining it, but an air filled the room that reminded him of so many of their conversations in the past. Just the two of them talking about nothing or everything. Just being.
“You always believed the best in me,” he said.
He heaved himself onto the desk until he straddled the corner, his feet dangling above the floor. Lee Ann no longer hugged the door, but she still stood several feet from him. Even though he hurt from what he’d learned about her, he found he wanted her closer. And that made no sense.
He’d arrived in town with the intention only to apologize, but every time during these past few days that he’d caught a glimpse of her or heard her light voice, his heart had twisted and he’d wanted more. Grasping the corner of the desk between his legs, he rested his weight on his arms and took in the hair spiking out in every direction and the bright orange toes. She’d deserved so much better. Still did.
“I think I got scared I would let you down,” he said quietly. “That you would eventually see the real me.”
Without seeming aware of it, she narrowed the distance between them until she stood only a foot away. He held his breath for fear she would realize she stood within touching distance. “I did see the real you. The day I found you trying to put a splint on that poor dog’s leg.”
He shifted his weight on one arm so that he leaned slightly toward her, and breathed in her fresh scent. She smelled like a flower garden. Lowering his lids, he pictured the afternoon she’d mentioned. He’d always loved animals and had come upon a dog that had tangled up with some other animal. The angry dog hadn’t worried him, but he’d feared being seen brought to tears because he couldn’t lessen the animal’s pain. Lee Ann had come upon him and never mentioned the fragile state he seemed to be in.
“I knew the moment I saw you risking a serious mauling from a very ticked-off and hurt dog that you were a good guy.”
She’d always thought the best of him. Too bad she’d been wrong. Maybe deep down she’d known, and that’s why she’d cheated.
He reached out and touched a finger to the back of her hand. He needed to know. Pressure built in his chest. “Who did you sleep with, Lee? And why didn’t he do the right thing and marry you?”
His words returned her from the past, and she not only jerked her hand out of his reach but stepped back and crossed her arms over her chest. She focused on something on the other side of the room. “It’s not worth discussing.”
He studied her stiff posture. “Is he still around? In their lives?”
If he was, Cody feared he would break the guy’s nose for having once touched his girl.
“No.” She followed the short word with a quick shake of her head. “He left before they were born. They don’t even know who he is.”
Heat crept up his neck as anger threatened to resurface. This time not for the decei
t but for the man who’d deserted her. It shouldn’t hurt this much.
She brought her gaze back to his, and he watched her chest rise with a deep breath. “I apologize, too. I...” She looked away. “I’m sorry, I can’t explain it. But I do apologize for any hurt I’ve caused.”
Not good enough, but he recognized it was all he would get. He probably didn’t deserve more anyway. Sliding off the desk, he stepped in front of her. She had her secrets, he had his. He could live with that.
Before she could get away, he wrapped his arms around her and held her stiff body close. She barely came to his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “For everything.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “And for what it’s worth, I did love you. As much as I possibly could.”
Lee Ann smoothed the tablecloth over her dining room table, positioned the fall-colored centerpiece in the middle, then stepped back and surveyed her work. It was perfect for Thanksgiving. She pulled her granny’s silverware from storage and began wiping it down. She’d had a customer unexpectedly cancel a photography appointment this afternoon. Since there were only two more days until she’d have a full house sitting around her table, she decided to make use of the time and begin preparations.
It was better than thinking about the fact she’d blatantly lied to Cody the day before, and that she knew she had to make it right.
He hadn’t come into the diner that morning, and though she wanted to believe that was because he’d simply decided to eat at home, she was also aware he’d been in each morning until today. He hadn’t come in because he was furious with her.
And it was only going to get worse.
She straightened in her seat and stretched out her spine until the joints popped. Tension had found a new home since Cody had come back to town, and she’d done nothing but add to it.
