Small-Town Bachelor

by Jill Kemerer

  “Of Dale and me talking?”

  “I don’t know.” Jake lowered his chin. “It’s more than that. You’re more than a big brother to me. But for some reason, we’ve never been real close. What does Dale have that I don’t?”

  Reed drew in a sharp breath. How have I missed the obvious? Jake isn’t jealous of Dale getting close to me. He’s jealous of me getting close to someone other than him.

  “I’m sorry.” Reed sighed. “I haven’t been around, haven’t been here for you and I’m sorry for that. It’s never been you—I mean it.”

  Uncertainty shone in his eyes.

  “Seriously, Jake, my mom’s death messed me up. I lost my world—and I didn’t want my new world. But I always wanted you. I’ve always been proud of you.”

  Jake’s throat worked as he nodded. “I never cared about superheroes, Reed. You were it for me. I want you around. Do me a favor. Stick it out here a couple more nights. Everyone will calm down, change their attitudes. You’ll see.”

  “I can’t, Jake. It’s more complicated than that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m in love with Claire.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “We have to talk.” Claire marched up the ramp to Granddad’s deck, ignoring Jake’s and Reed’s shocked expressions. Her nerves jangled more than the rows of silver bracelets Libby usually wore. “Jake, could you give us a minute?”

  “I’ll give you more than a minute. I’ll give you all night. See ya, Reed. Call me tomorrow.”

  “Wait, Jake!” Reed fumbled to lift his crutches. Jake bounded down the ramp, and seconds later, an engine roared, followed by the crunch of tires on the short gravel drive.

  “I almost didn’t come here.” She lifted her chin, trying to hold on to the bravado she’d worked up on the way over.

  “I don’t blame you.” He attempted to stand.

  “No, don’t get up. Stay there.” She sat in Jake’s empty chair. Now what? She’d come over, but she didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m sorry, Claire.” The sincerity in his expression lowered her anger a notch, but she held on, determined not to slink away before she made her point. He faced her, carefully setting his right foot on the deck. Shadows from the porch lights flitted about. “I should have told you. I planned on telling you. I didn’t know how. Or when. Dale blurted it out before I could stop him.”

  “But why?” The hurt of being the last to know sprinted back. “We aren’t exactly strangers, Reed. All you would have had to do is pick up the phone. Call me. Hey, a text would have been better than hearing it from my brothers.” She tried, oh how she tried, to keep the accusation out of her tone, but it hung there, aimed, firing.

  “I didn’t want them to know!” Reed clenched his jaw and rotated his neck toward the lake. “I didn’t want anyone to know. I was kicking an idea around, and out of the blue, your dad wants to join me. I was as shocked as anyone.”

  “Well, that makes me feel so much better. You didn’t want anyone to know—including me. Fantastic.” She wanted to stalk home, but there was more on the line here than her pride. A lot more.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “Dad might be high energy, but he’s not impulsive. He wouldn’t jump into something that wasn’t well thought out, so don’t try to convince me you haven’t been thinking about this for a while.”

  Furrows grew deep between his eyebrows. “It’s not like that. It’s not.”

  “What is it, then? You obviously have been thinking about moving here, but you don’t want me to know about it. And since you won’t discuss it with me, I’m thinking I’m what’s holding you back.”

  “How can you say that?” He seared her with stricken eyes. “It’s not you. It’s me.”

  She clamped her mouth shut and glared at him. Had he really given her such a lame line? It’s not you. It’s me? She should beat him over the head with his crutch. “Real original, Reed. I think everything’s been said.” She rose.

  “Sit.” He pointed to her chair, his face hard.

  If her heart wasn’t collapsing into a shriveled pile, she might have come up with a clever comeback and found the energy to stomp out of there.

  Reed’s jaw tightened. “I’m thirty-three years old and I’ve never had a serious relationship with a woman. Ever.”

  She scooted back in her chair. This didn’t sound promising.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t sit home on Saturday nights. I have no problem dating, but not long-term.”

  Was he trying to let her down gently with this speech? What exactly was he saying? He preferred short-term to long-term? A date-of-the-week rather than something real? She didn’t care how cute he was or how amazing he kissed, she would never settle for less again.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Coming here for the wedding was another two days to knock off my to-do list. I love Jake, want to see him happy, but I had no intention of hanging around. So when I had to stay, I tried to protect myself and get it over with.”

  “Protect yourself from what?” Her words slipped out.

  “From getting hurt. Getting close to anyone. I mess things up with everyone I care for. After Dad and Barbara married, I moved on with life as best I could, and by high school, I finally felt good again. I spent more time at my best friend’s house than my own. We had all kinds of plans for when we got out of school. Collin always said we were a team.”

  A team. She dreaded whatever he was about to say.

  “I should have known better,” he said. “Nothing lasts. Three months before we graduated, Collin got caught with marijuana. He got expelled.”

  “Oh, no.” Claire brought her hand to her chest. “And there went your plans.”

  He nodded, a bitter movement. “And my best friend. Collin put all the blame on me. Told his parents the drugs were mine. That I set him up to keep from getting in trouble.”

  “They believed him?”

  “Yeah. The principal searched my locker but didn’t find any evidence. Didn’t matter. Collin’s parents told me to stay away from him. I never talked to him again. Dad, Barbara and Jake moved to Lake Endwell a few months later.”

  So much of what Reed had told her over the past month made sense. Why he feared getting close. Why he avoided families. He’d been the scapegoat of his mom’s family and his best friend’s parents.

  “No questions?” Reed blinked. “No ‘did you set him up? Did you smoke pot with him?’”

  “No.” The tension in her shoulders eased. “You’re loyal. You do what you say you’re going to. I don’t know if you smoked with him, but I do know you didn’t set him up.”

  “What if I told you I did?”

  A heavy silence fell.

  “Then I’d say you made a mistake and God forgave you. But I don’t believe you did.”

  “I didn’t. I would never deliberately hurt someone close to me.” He stood, held his hand out and when she placed hers in it, he wrapped his arms around her, crushing her to his chest. “I just—I needed to know what you would say.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Your faith in me—I can’t tell you what it means.”

  She clung to him, the rapid beat of his heart loud in her ears, and she breathed in his cologne, holding on tightly. Anything to prolong the moment.

  “I know you’re afraid of losing another family,” she said. “If you moved here, it wouldn’t be like that.”

  “It already is. Even Dad and Barbara—I’ve been the thorn in our family since they got married. I ruin relationships.”

  “Your dad and Barbara are happy together. How could you think you ruined anything?”

  Reed averted his eyes. “I create the tension. I’m the one who makes everyone uncomfortable when we’re together.” />
  “Families are full of tension—it’s just how they are.”

  “You saw what happened at your brothers’ house. I’m not going to be a wedge, driving your brothers and dad apart. They’ll resent me—they already do—and you will too.”

  “They’ll get over it,” Claire said.

  “They won’t have to. I’m leaving.”

  Claire’s soul sank.

  His gaze bored into hers, burning, reaching, begging. “I care about you, Claire. You...you make me want to stay.”

  She wrung her hands.

  “I love you.” He touched her cheek.

  Her lungs locked—she couldn’t exhale. He loved her?

  But he still planned on leaving?

  “I love you too.” Claire drew her shoulders back. “But I don’t know what you want, and I’m not sure of you. I can’t be the Tuesday girl again.”

  “You’re not a—”

  She put her finger to his lips. “My entire adult life, I’ve waited for life to treat me fairly. I thought if I worked hard enough, my bosses would reward me. If I was the perfect girlfriend and waited patiently at home, my Prince Charming would snatch me up. Well, guess what? I was wrong. I never demanded anything, but this time I’m going to. I’m demanding something, okay?” She hitched her chin, looked him in the eyes and took a deep breath. “You say you love me, but I will never be content with being the last to know about your life. I want to be the first to know everything. Your fears. Your dreams. Your plans.”

  “You’re the person I want to tell everything to.” Reed’s eyes pleaded with her. “I reach for my phone ten times a day. I want to tell you everything.”

  “Then why don’t you?” She scrunched her forehead, trying to understand.

  “What if I move here and start a construction firm and it fails? Or what if your dad becomes my superintendent and your brothers hate me forever? What if this—this attraction, this thing we have between us—goes away in three months? I’ve spent the last twenty years in awkward silence with my dad. I don’t want to go through that with you too. I can’t move here, Claire. There’s too much for me to lose.”

  She held her breath, her insides ready to burst. She got it. He loved her, but his fears prevented him from living in Lake Endwell. He thought he was protecting her by staying away. What could she say to change his mind?

  “I love you too, Reed.” She took both his hands in hers. “I love you, and we can work this out.”

  His eyes blazed. “I still have to go. It doesn’t change anything. I’ve messed up enough lives. I’m not messing up yours.”

  “You have it backward.” Hope and fear braided through her body. “They were the ones who ruined yours.” She closed the gap between them, threading her arms around his waist.

  He tipped her chin up. And he kissed her. Slow, long, he stole her breath, and she sank into him, giving him whatever he needed, trying to convey how much she cared.

  With a raggedy breath, she broke off the kiss. “Don’t go, Reed.”

  * * *

  “I love you,” Reed whispered, his hands at the back of her neck, fingers in her hair. “I love you more than anything.”

  His heart plummeted. This dark-haired beauty with the mesmerizing eyes and passionate heart had unknowingly sealed the door on his decision. He couldn’t stay. He would hurt her—somehow he would cause her pain. And it was preventable. Claire meant too much to him.

  “I have to go. You know it. I know it. I can’t stay.”

  Her face paled. “What happens to us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There’s nothing I can say to convince you, is there?”

  Regret burned inside him. “No.”

  “I’m not enough to make you stay,” she said, under her breath. Then she lifted a too-bright smile, so full of regret it sliced his heart open. “Say no more.”

  She turned and walked away. As her figure retreated into the darkness, Reed fought not to follow her. What good would it do? She was enough for him—hadn’t he just told her he loved her? He was leaving for her sake. For his sake.

  He frowned.

  For whose sake?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Reed shoved four fries in his mouth as Dad merged onto the highway the next day. Other than a few sentences of small talk, the ride to the airport had been silent. Big surprise. Dad took a long drink from a large Coke and exhaled.

  “That good, huh?” Reed couldn’t resist asking.

  “Fountain pop tastes the best.”

  Reed took another bite of his burger. Should he tackle the fifty-foot-tall elephant or not? It had been in the room with them for so many years. Maybe he should let it stand.

  But the deep green of the trees against the bright blue sky, so similar to the view he’d enjoyed from Claire’s family cottage, triggered the peace Reed had found and lost this summer.

  It was time.

  Time to settle the gnawing uncertainty that ate at him in his father’s presence. Time to try.

  “What’s wrong with us?” Reed kept his tone light.

  Dad’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

  “I—” Reed continued. “I wish we could work this out. I want to have a normal conversation with you. One where we can talk without the awkward thing we have going.”

  The muscle in Dad’s cheek flickered, as if twenty years had bottled up, ready to explode. Maybe they had.

  “It was my fault.” Dad’s words marched out. “You know it. I know it. I look at you and I know I failed.”

  Reed almost dropped his half-eaten burger. “What are you talking about?” A round of explanations came to mind. All negative. His stomach dipped. Maybe he shouldn’t have eaten a bunch of greasy fries right before this conversation. Maybe he shouldn’t have initiated it either.

  “You want to talk about it?” Dad asked. “Now? After all this time?”

  “Yes.” No. Maybe. What exactly were they talking about?

  “It was my fault your mother died. End of story.”

  “Um, whoa, what?” Reed’s incredulous tone was too loud. He lowered his voice. “If that’s the end, you’re going to have to share the beginning and the middle, because I don’t know any of it.”

  He shot Reed a sad glance. “You do. I wish I could have been a better dad, but how do you look at your own son and know you destroyed his life? I thought Barbara was what you needed. She made me feel good. I thought you’d feel the same. But I messed up again. Thinking of myself.”

  “Back up—way up,” Reed said. “You didn’t ruin my life. Why would you think that?”

  Surprise lifted his eyebrows. “You sound like you mean it.”

  “I do mean it. I was the problem. I couldn’t figure out how to fit in anymore.”

  “I should have done things differently,” Dad said. “I didn’t have a clue. I was lost, wading around, grabbing for answers and coming up empty.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell me what happened. With Mom.”

  Dad trained his eyes on the road. “I should have stopped her. That night, and before. She didn’t start drinking until you were out of diapers. Must have been around three or four. She’d have a glass of wine at dinner. A vodka tonic in the afternoon. It was the third miscarriage that did it. She didn’t hide the bottles anymore.”

  Three babies? Reed’s mind reeled. He had assumed his mom was depressed. She was never happy or even hot-tempered like his friends’ moms. She was just kind of there. A pat on his head when he got home from school and a slurred “sweet boy” on the good days. On the bad ones, he wouldn’t see her, just the back of her bedroom door.

  “Your grandmother told me I had to remove all the liquor from the house, and I did. But Meredith snuc
k it in. We fought a lot. I guess I hoped she’d snap out of it. I knew all her secret stashes, tossed everything out. She still found booze. When her family decided to confront her, I didn’t think it would help.”

  Empathy for Dad poured over him. “I never knew you were dealing with all that.”

  “Well,” Dad said, “I tried to protect you.”

  “Did they do it? Confront her?”

  The most lost look Reed had ever seen crumpled his dad’s face. Reed longed to reach over and put his hand on Dad’s shoulder, tell him it was all right, but he didn’t dare. Not before he heard it all.

  “They came over to our house,” Dad said. “They were waiting in the living room for her, like a surprise party but without anything to celebrate, you know. I told them she would know something was up when she saw the cars. She’d been shopping with a girlfriend all day—at least that’s what she told me.”

  How had he not realized Dad grappled with so much guilt? No wonder they’d been unable to string more than five sentences of conversation together since the funeral.

  “I should have told them no.” Dad pressed the heel of his hand into the steering wheel. “Should have made her go to AA. Should have taken my stupid head out of the sand long enough to know it wasn’t working. I should have done a lot of things. She stumbled through the front door, stopped, took them all in. Aunts, uncles, siblings and finally your grandmother. Meredith’s glazed-over eyes and swaying posture told me what I should have known—she’d lied about shopping. Any fool could see she’d been drinking all day.”

  “What’d she do?”

  “She left. Without a word.” Dad shrugged, his jaw revealing anger rather than guilt. “I was furious. I knew she was in no shape to drive, but I’d had it. The lying, the hiding, the empty bottles everywhere. I wanted her to leave. I didn’t want to deal with it—with her—anymore.”

  “Is that the night she died?”

  He nodded, his knuckles white against the wheel. “I’m sorry, Reed. I should have gone after her. Stopped her. Maybe you’d still have a mother if I had been a better husband.”