Never is a Promise

by Winter Renshaw

  “What’s Cybil up to these days?” Dakota asked. She and Mama never hit it off that well, though it was nothing personal. Mama was too protective of her only son, and Dakota was too damn sensitive. All she ever wanted was for everyone to like her, and she never believed me when I told her most people didn’t even like themselves.

  “She’s living in Louisville with Calista,” I said, referring to my oldest sister. “Calista’s married to some corporate attorney now and has a bunch of kids. They keep her and Mama busy.”

  “How’s Ivy?” Dakota asked, tilting her head to the side as a two-second sweet smile claimed her mouth. Ivy always made everyone smile. “She and Addison sort of lost touch over the years.”

  “Ivy,” I drew in a hard breath. “She’s hanging in there.” I glanced down at the worn toe of my boot. “She lost her husband in Iraq last year.”

  Dakota’s face fell as she covered her heart with her hand, taking a step back.

  “She’s a single mom now. Two kids. Miles and Gracie,” I said, scooping up a pitchfork full of stale, rotted hay and depositing it into a wheelbarrow just outside the barn. “They still live here in town. They come over quite a lot.”

  Whether we liked it or not, we had a history that spanned most our lives. Our past was interwoven and tangled. Messy and complicated. She could act like she didn’t give a damn all she wanted, but I knew better.

  “How’s Addison?”

  “She’s getting married in a couple weeks,” Dakota said.

  “You approve?” I cocked my head her way, lifting an eyebrow. Back in the day, Addison never did anything without Dakota’s consent. And Dakota governed over Addison’s life choices like the mother hen she was always forced to be on account of their own mother’s detached style.

  “She’s a big girl. She can do what she wants.” Coco stepped carefully toward a rusting gate and took a seat on one of the paint-peeled bars. “I like him. He’s good for her. His dad’s a realtor here in Darlington if you ever need one.”

  “Thanks for the recommendation, but I’ll be living out the rest of my days right here on this ranch.” I scooped up the last of the hay and leaned the pitchfork against the wall of the barn, dusting my hands across the thighs of my jeans before heading back outside.

  “Where are we going?” She followed behind, watching carefully where she stepped the way she used to do. Old habits died hard.

  “Inside for a glass of iced tea,” I said, striding toward the house. For every step I took, she took two. I’d forgotten how small she was compared to me.

  I pulled the screen door open and held it for her, reaching down to greet old Ruby, who was sunbathing on the front porch. “Hey, girl.”

  She licked my hand, her vibrant golden coat fading into a blast of white around her muzzle, like someone had blown a handful of dandelion seeds in her face.

  “Is this…” Dakota stared hard at the aging puddle of golden retriever sitting by the front door. “This isn’t Ruby, is it?”

  “It is.” I ruffled the top of Ruby’s head, and she smiled the way a senile dog might, pulling herself up and gimping after me as she followed us to the kitchen.

  “How old is she now?” Dakota leaned down to pet Ruby, gently running her fingers through her soft fur.

  “Eleven? Twelve, maybe?” I’d stopped counting the year her face turned white. I pulled two glasses from the cupboard and dropped a handful of ice in each.

  Dakota couldn’t stop staring at Ruby. “I remember when you first got her. We picked her out together down at the Janssen’s farm.” Her voice faded out like a distant memory. “She fit in the palms of your hands.”

  Ruby slowly lowered herself down, her fluffy tail wagging and sweeping the kitchen floor. She was going blind and probably couldn’t see Dakota, but she seemed grateful for the attention anyway.

  I poured our tea and took a seat at the head of the table.

  “We good on catching up?” she asked.

  “My, my,” I took a sip of tea. “Someone’s trying to rush things. Don’t you know we do things a little slower out here? Or have you forgotten.”

  She cracked a smile, but only for a moment. It faded fast as she settled back in her seat. “I’m only here a week, and we have lots to cover.” She sat the recorder in the middle of the table between us. “So, let’s just start from the beginning.”

  Her light mood faded, taking Dakota with her, and judging by the newly hardened expression on her face, Coco the broadcast journalist had apparently stepped in to take over.

  “The beginning as in…”

  “Take me back to that first contract you signed,” she said, our eyes locking.

  I lifted a single shoulder. “You were there. You could probably tell the story better than I could.”

  She clicked off the recorder, her fingers fumbling in haste. “Beau, you need to leave me out of this. This is about you. Not me. Not us.”

  “Impossible. You’re a part of this whether you like it or not.”

  I reached across the table and clicked the recorder back on.

  14 years ago

  My stomach churned as Beau took my hand, leading me into the big white farmhouse the Mason family called home a couple weeks later.

  Please like me.

  “Mama,” he called out toward the kitchen. “I want you to meet someone.”

  He gave my hand a squeeze and pulled me to where a middle-aged woman with mousy brown hair and a permanent scowl stood stirring a pot on the stove. She wiped her hands and spun around, her face falling the second she saw me.

  My stomach dropped clear to the floor, and my free hand flew to my long hair, spinning a strand around my finger out of nervousness. Beau nudged me, and I immediately extended my right hand. “I’m Dakota Andrews, Mrs. Mason. Very lovely to meet you.”

  She shook my hand, eyeing me, studying me. “Will you be joining us for dinner?”

  Her question was more along the lines of “I need to know so I know how much food to cook” as opposed to “We’d love to have you join us for dinner.”

  I glanced over at Beau, lifting my eyebrows. We’d gone on a few dates but things had been picking up in intensity lately, and he’d been dying to bring me around the house so his parents knew who he was running off and spending time with after chores each afternoon.

  He squeezed my hand again and nodded. “She sure is.”

  I endured a long dinner, fielding pointed questions from his judging mother, stares from his PMSing older sister, Calista, and teasing from his lighthearted father. Beau, his father, and his younger sister, Ivy, warmed up to me, but it was as if the judgmental stares and disapproving looks from the other two overrode everything good about that dinner.

  “May I help you clean up?” I offered as everyone began piling the dishes together after finishing up their strawberry shortcake desserts.

  “No, Dakota,” his mom said with a bit of bark in her tone. She spoke to me as if I were a burden, as if she resented the fact that I just popped in and took a seat at their family table. “You’re company. Company don’t clean up in our house.”

  I smiled, blinking away my overly sensitive tears as Beau led me outside. I’d tried to be on my best behavior. I tried to present myself in a good light. I tried to be the kind of person I’d want my son to be with, but it all seemed for naught.

  “She hates me,” I whined as soon as we were a good distance from the house. The sounds of clinking dishes and running water floated from the open kitchen window.

  “Aw, that’s not true,” Beau said when we rounded the barn. He pulled me into him. “No one could possibly hate you. You’re sweet perfection, Kota.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Did you see how they looked at me? Your mom and Calista.”

  “They don’t much like anyone. Sometimes I don’t even think they like themselves.” He grabbed my hands and deposited them on his shoulders before leaning in and kissing me.

  I pulled away, dissatisfied with his excuse. After just a couple
weeks with that boy, I already knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. It was important that his family liked me. I was going to be with him a lot. I was going to have to see them a lot. I didn’t want to be filled to the brim with dread every time I’d have to go to his house.

  The look his older sister gave me reminded me of the way some of the snottier girls at school looked at me. Maybe my hair was due for a cut or was too thin, or maybe I didn’t do my eyeliner perfectly, or maybe I wore too much blush. My clothes weren’t name brand, but I thought I’d honed a style all my own. It always seemed the more I tried to fit in, the more I stood out, and never in a good way. I guessed the same rule applied when trying to fit into Beau’s family.

  “It’s one dinner,” he said, dragging his lips across mine. “There will be hundreds more, maybe even thousands.”

  My heart fluttered and sputtered before skipping a beat as I mentally did the math.

  Thousands?

  “Besides,” he said. “I’ve never cared what other people think anyway. If I want to be with you, there isn’t any man or woman on God’s green earth who can change my mind.”

  I was going to have a lot of explaining to do once I got home. Harrison was going to wonder why I never told him about my history with Beau, and I wasn’t going to have a good enough answer for him. Or at least an answer that didn’t dig so deep into my past I’d need a shovel and a whole host of mining equipment to get to it.

  “You want me to be vague?” Beau asked, covering the microphone of the recorder with his hand as we sat at his kitchen table. “I can be vague.”

  I leaned back in my chair, watching as his entire demeanor shifted. He had a way of being magnetic yet detached. Warm yet mysterious. Words unspoken hid behind his stare, and the weight of them nearly drowned me.

  “I was in love with this girl. I wrote some songs about her. I performed them at the county fair. Someone discovered me. I signed a recording contract. Got bought out by one of the Big Three a year after that.” He rested his hands behind his head, leaning back in his creaky wooden chair.

  I mouthed thank you from across the table, ignoring his brief delivery and facetious tone for the sake of getting some halfway useable quotes on record.

  “Tell me what it was like for you,” I said, forcing myself to look at him as a musician and not my ex. “On the road all those years. Touring. Performing. Recording.”

  Beau leaned back in his chair and scratched the underside of his chin as his eyes found their way into mine. “Lonely.”

  My heart fluttered. How could a man with the entire world at his fingertips have been lonely? “But surely you were surrounded with people.”

  “You’re going to try to tell me how I feel? Like you had any idea. You were off in the big city married to some asshole, completely abandoning the life you had back home. Forgetting the promises you made.”

  Heat crept from my neck, burning my cheeks as my thoughts jumbled in my head. So many things I wanted to say to him right then, but everything lodged itself in my throat before I could make sense of any of them. All it was going to take was one tempered moment of me telling him off, and I’d lose the interview and my promotion.

  I grabbed the recorder and clicked it off, choosing my words carefully. “You better be damn careful about what you’re accusing me of, Beaumont Mason. You don’t know half of what my life’s been like ever since you left. That’s right, you left. You broke your promises.”

  “I promised never to love anyone the way I loved you.” He stood up, pulling off his hat and raking his hand over his hair. “I never broke that promise, Kota. Never. But you? You didn’t wait for me. You married some asshole in New York.”

  Harrison was a lot of things: impossibly driven, ruthlessly ambitious, plated in 24-karat determination. But he wasn’t an asshole. And I resented the fact that he’d ever assume I’d marry one. I had standards, damn him. “Don’t talk about my ex-husband that way. You don’t know him.”

  “Any man who marries you and cashes out is an asshole, Dakota.”

  “It was mutual.” I lifted my chin high. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Should’ve waited for me.” He stood up, dropping his empty glass by the sink before he hunched above the window.

  I would’ve waited for him. Ten years ago, I’d have waited a lifetime for him. Eighteen-year-old me would have dropped every goal and ambition and hopeless dream and spent my days wrapped up in his loving arms in the world we’d have created together if he’d given me the chance.

  His boots scuffed against the wood floor of the kitchen as he headed toward the door with Ruby gimping behind him.

  “Where you going?” I called out.

  “Outside.”

  My phone buzzed in my bag, and I pulled it out the second Beau stepped out.

  “Harrison,” I answered. “Hi.”

  “How’s it going?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

  “You don’t have to micromanage me.” I rolled my eyes, laughing inaudibly.

  “Are we getting anywhere? I heard the guy hates being interviewed.”

  “You’ve got that right.” I stood up and walked to the kitchen window, watching Beau as he fetched keys from his jeans pocket and hoisted Ruby into the back of his blue Ford pick up. “Let me call you back.”

  I flew outside, trotting toward his truck. “Where are you going now?”

  “Into town. You coming or not?”

  My face pinched. Why would I have stayed? I climbed in next to him, running my hand along the woven, multi-colored upholstery of the bench seat as I slid across it. The truck was exactly like the 1984 Ford he drove back in high school. “This the same truck that you…?”

  “Yes and no,” he said, starting it up. The engine rumbled, causing the seat to vibrate. His hand gripped the gearshift as his boots pressed against the clutch and brake. His eyes glanced toward the rearview mirror, probably to make sure Ruby was settled, and he began to back us up and out of the drive. “Ivy totaled Old Blue her senior year of high school. This is New Old Blue.”

  I cranked the window open as the sun beat through the hot glass. Clean country air breezed through the wisps of hair that tickled the sides of my face and melted away a small portion of the tension that lingered between us from just a while ago. It felt exactly the way it used to, and it almost made me forget all the reasons Beau made my blood boil.

  His words worked their way back to the forefront of my mind, and I found myself getting worked up over his accusation. He had it all wrong. But I didn’t know how to tell him exactly why without jeopardizing the interview.

  * * *

  We pulled into a Ford dealership on the outskirts of Darlington, and the second Beau slammed his truck into park, a lanky man with oiled hair the color of midnight and a coffee-stained smile ran out to greet him.

  “Mr. Mason, good to see you. We have everything ready to go,” the man said, ushering Beau toward the office. I stayed in the truck.

  I drew my knees up against my chest, resting my heels on the seat the way I used to when we were younger. The wind from the rolled window ruffled my hair once more, and I watched the cars stop and go at the intersection down the road. It was just an ordinary day for local Darlingtons. I ran my finger across the dusty dash and examined it before wiping it across my thigh. Some things never changed.

  His words replayed in my head…I promised never to love anyone the way I loved you. I never broke that promise…

  Minutes later, Beau slid back into the truck, sliding a small stack of paperwork across the heat vents of the dash.

  “Trading in New Old Blue?” I asked.

  “Never.” He pulled his seatbelt over his lap and clicked it into place. “Got Ivy a car.”

  “That’s very generous of you. I bet she’ll be thrilled.”

  “She doesn’t want it.” He pulled out of the parking lot. “She doesn’t like asking for help, but she needs something reliable. Can’t have her car breaking down left
and right with Miles and Gracie in the back.”

  I tried to imagine Ivy as a mom, and all I could imagine was a wild-haired girl with a mile-wide grin who fed her children ice cream for breakfast and let them stay up late and watch scary movies. There was no doubt in my mind that sweet little Ivy was a fun mom.

  “I should probably go see my mom tonight,” I said, “since I’m in town and all.”

  “How is Tammy Lynn these days?” He glanced into the rearview mirror, checking on Ruby again.

  “She’s…Tammy Lynn.” I didn’t care to elaborate.

  Beau turned west and headed back down the highway toward his ranch.

  “Should we continue the interview when we get back?” I asked. “We got a little off track earlier…”

  “Kinda like to get a few things out of the way first,” he said, his right hand white-knuckling his leather-wrapped steering wheel as his left elbow rested on the window ledge. His entire demeanor had changed without warning, as if someone had flipped a switch.

  “Such as?”

  “You and I have some old business to sort out,” he said, causing my stomach to drop. “Let’s get ourselves right before we continue with our little interview.”

  “You’re holding me hostage again, Beau. I don’t appreciate it.” I turned to face the window, watching field after field of lush greenery pass by.

  Does he know?

  “Yeah, I’m not holding you hostage,” he said, peering over the dash. “Just want to talk with you is all.”

  “I didn’t come here to talk about you and me.” I leaned against the passenger door, as if the cab of the truck had suddenly shrunk and we were too close for comfort. “What’s done is done, Beau. Nothing can change that.”

  “I’m a man of my word,” he breathed. “I just wanted to make it clear to you that I kept my word after all these years. Even if you didn’t. I did.”

  My lips parted to fight back, but I rested my battle weapon in favor of not losing my cool and blowing the interview. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to honor the promises we made to one another when we were kids.”