by Katie Lane
“Boone!”
Chapter Eleven
Eleven years earlier . . .
“You just need a little more hairspray and that should do it.”
Another toxic cloud of hairspray surrounded Emma, and she coughed and waved her hand in front of her face. “Enough, Mom! My hair is going to look like a Halloween wig.”
“Stop being so dramatic, Emma Lou,” her mother said. “You don’t want your up-do to fall out while you and Boone are dancing. I’ve seen how that boy dances. He loves to whip you around like a toy top.”
Emma giggled. Boone did love to spin her around until she was dizzy. Of course, she was always dizzy around Boone.
“Now come on.” Her mother set down the can of hairspray. “Let’s get that prom dress on. Boone and the Murphys should be here any second for pictures and we don’t want to keep them waiting.”
Once Emma had her dress and high heels on, her mother stood back and gave her the onceover. Gina Johansen was a perfectionist and always found some flaw or another. But tonight, she surprised her daughter.
“You look perfect, Baby Girl,” she said with a soft smile. She turned Emma toward the full-length mirror on the closet door. “See for yourself.”
Her reflection had Emma releasing her breath in a sigh of relief. All the hours she’d spent shopping in Austin for just the right dress for tonight had been worth it. The ice blue gown with the shimmery sequins did look perfect. So did her hair that her mother had spent the last two hours pinning up on her head and the diamond stud earrings Gina had loaned her.
There was just one thing missing.
Emma walked to her vanity and opened the little satin heart box her grandmother had given her for her sixteenth birthday and pulled out the chain with the ring dangling from it.
“Now, Emma,” her mother said. “You are not going to ruin your outfit with that ugly, cheap ring Boone gave you when you were kids.”
She slipped the chain over her head. “It’s not ugly and it’s not cheap.”
At least, it wasn’t cheap to her. The ring was the most precious thing she owned. Not because of its quality, but because of what it represented. Boone had given her the ring with the big plastic pink stone when they were ten years old. Late one night, he had tapped on her window and woken her up. When she’d opened the window, he’d grabbed her hand and shoved the ring on her finger.
“One day, I’m gonna marry you, Em. You just hide and watch.” Then he’d run off into the night while she stood there looking down at the ring on her middle finger and smiling with a happy heart.
“I’ll love you forever, Boone Murphy,” she’d yelled back.
She had worn the ring until it had turned her finger green. Then she had put it on a chain and worn it around her neck. When the stone fell out during one of her softball games in eighth grade and she’d almost lost it, she’d glued it back with superglue and then started tucking the ring safely into the left cup of her bra—right next to her heart. Which is exactly where she tucked it now.
Her mother only sighed and rolled her eyes. “Let’s go show your father his little princess.”
When her father saw her, he got tears in his eyes. Michael Johansen had always been a crier. “You look so beautiful, Peanut,” he said before he pulled her into his arms.
“Now stop, Mikey,” her mother chastised. “You’re going to mess up her hair.” The doorbell rang, and Gina hurried to answer it.
Emma couldn’t help feeling a little nervous. Her father must’ve read her emotions because he pulled her closer and kissed the side of her head. “He’s going to think you look stunning.”
And Boone did look stunned when he walked into the room. But not in a good way. He acted lost, like he didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.
“Where are your manners, Boone?” DeeDee said. “Tell Emma how beautiful she looks.”
“You look beautiful.” His voice was almost robotic as he held out a box with her corsage.
Beautiful didn’t cover how Boone looked in the black rental tuxedo. He looked hotter than a movie star with his dark blond hair combed back from his handsome face. She wanted to throw her arms around him and claim him as hers and hers alone. Instead, she only smiled and used her eyes to send him all the love in her heart.
But Boone wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at her father. And not just staring, but glaring. Before she could figure out what was going on, her mother grabbed her and Boone and pulled them out to the backyard.
“Natural lighting will be better for the pictures.”
Her mom had always considered herself a professional photographer. She posed Emma and Boone like they were in a magazine photo shoot as she and Dean snapped picture after picture.
“Boone, honey,” DeeDee said. “Where is that bright smile of yours? You look like you’ve eaten a bushel of lemons.”
Boone did look unhappy. Emma kept her smile plastered on and whispered under her breath. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he grumbled. “I just hate this damn monkey suit.”
Since her own feet were aching from her high heels and her strapless bra felt too tight, she believed him . . . until they got to the school and he parked and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. Boone had never been a drinker. He didn’t even drink beer at the parties they’d attended.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “Where did you get that?”
“From my dad’s liquor cabinet. And what do you think I’m doing? I’m getting drunk. That’s what people do on prom night.” He unscrewed the cap and held up the bottle. “Here’s to the end of our innocence.” He took a deep drink.
She heaved a sigh. So that was it. He was starting to freak out about becoming an adult. She tried to tease him into a better humor. “I think we lost our innocence the other night, Boone.” He stared back at her and spoke in a voice so low she could barely hear him.
“You’re right. I did. But you didn’t lose yours. I’m not going to let you lose it, Em.” Before she could figure out what he was talking about, he took another deep pull from the bottle and screwed on the cap. “Come on.” He slipped the bottle into the inside pocket of his jacket and opened his door. “If this is our last night of youth, let’s party until the cows come home.”
They did party. They danced and laughed and joked with their friends. But there was a fakeness to Boone’s happiness that scared Emma. It was like the forced smile he’d finally pinned on for the prom pictures. As the night progressed, his behavior became even stranger and she assumed he was slipping whiskey into his punch. Especially when he came swaggering up while she was talking to Kenny Stapleton.
“This looks like a cozy little conversation.”
“Kenny and I were just talking about college,” she said. “He’s going to Texas Tech too.”
Boone sneered. “Isn’t that just perfect? I bet you two will have time for a lot more cozy conversations. Or are conversations all you’ve been having?”
The implication took her completely by surprised. “Boone! What is the matter with you?” She looked at Kenny. “I’m sorry, Kenny. Boone has had a little too much to drink.”
Kenny laughed. “No worries. I’ll see you later, Emma.”
When Kenny was gone, Emma grabbed Boone’s hand and pulled him out the side door of the gym. As soon as the door slammed closed behind them, she lit into him.
“What has gotten into you, Boone Murphy? How dare you make that kind of accusation? You know that there’s only one boy I’ve been with. And that’s you. I haven’t even kissed another boy.”
He leaned against the wall and pulled out the bottle of whiskey to take a drink. Surprisingly, there wasn’t that much gone from the bottle. “Well, maybe you should have.”
“What?”
He lowered the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Maybe you should’ve kissed someone else. Maybe we both should’ve.” He waved the bottle and whiskey splashed out. “People don’t mate for life, Em. It jus
t doesn’t happen. Sooner or later, we’ll both want to try someone else . . . and in the process break each other’s hearts.”
She shook her head. “That’s just the alcohol talking, Boone. I get it. It’s scary to leave childhood behind and become an adult. But I love you and you love me. And that isn’t going to change when we go to college. We’ll talk every day and we’ll see each other whenever we can. When we graduate, we’ll come back here and get married and live happily ever after just like our parents did. They mated for life, Boone. We can too.”
She wasn’t prepared for his explosion. She stumbled back with fear as he came away from the wall.
“No! I don’t want to be like our parents! I don’t want to live in a cute little cookie-cutter life that’s fake as hell. I don’t want to have to pretend like I love someone when I’m really lusting after someone else.”
Pretending? Boone had been pretending? She couldn’t help the tears that leaked from her eyes. “But . . . I thought . . . I mean, we had a plan.”
“You and your fuckin’ plans, Emma. Everything in your life has to be planned out and wrapped up in a neat little package. Well, life doesn’t work like that. Sometimes the wrapping paper gets ripped off and plans get torn apart with it. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anyone. I don’t even want to stay in this piss-ant little town a second longer. I hate it! I fuckin’ hate it!”
He threw the bottle at the wall and it shattered into a million pieces. Then he turned and ran into the night, leaving Emma’s heart feeling like the shards of glass that littered the ground.
This had to be a nightmare. That was it. It was just a nightmare she would wake up from and laugh about with Boone later when they attended the real prom. But it turned out that the nightmare was reality. Boone left only days later. And Emma learned the hard way that love wasn’t forever.
But hate was.
Chapter Twelve
Luckily, an evergreen bush broke Boone’s fall and he only ended up with a badly sprained ankle and multiple scratches. Raynelle Coffman and her son had heard Emma screaming and come running. While her son called 911, Raynelle called Luanne to let her know that Emma Johansen had tried to kill Boone Murphy by pushing him off the roof.
The gossip spread like wildfire.
The following day, a steady stream of women toting casserole dishes arrived at Boone’s house trying to get the juicy details of what he’d done to turn Emma into a murderer. Since he wasn’t talking, the women of the Simple Book Club came up with their own reasons.
“Did you mention anything about her weight?” Luanne asked as she none-too-gently adjusted his bandaged foot on a stack of pillows. “I could kill Bud when he pinches my love handles and calls me his cute little chunky monkey.”
Before he could answer, Raynelle jumped in. “Unlike you and me, Lulu, Emma doesn’t have any love handles. That girl is as skinny as a stick.” She handed Boone a tall glass of sweet tea. “I bet you told her she looks tired. That’s one of the worst things a man can stay to a woman. It’s the same thing as telling a woman she looks like hell.”
Evie McCord nodded in agreement as she set a plate of tuna casserole on the table next to the couch where Boone lay. Romeo was sitting at attention, waiting for his tuna. She patted the dog’s head before she spoke. “My favorite male compliment-slash-insult is ‘You’re a lot smarter than you look.’ As if you don’t look smart.”
“I got just the opposite,” Devlin Lancaster said. “Men meeting me for the first time would always say ‘I didn’t think a scientist would be so good-looking.’”
“Men have no sense whatsoever about how to compliment a woman,” Reba Sterling said as if Boone wasn’t sitting right there. “I hate when they refer to me as a full-figured woman. Like I’m some kind of overfilled balloon.”
Penny Cassidy spread a blanket over his lap and handed him a napkin. “Or call you a ‘little bit of a thing’ like you’re some kind of tiny kitten that needs taking care of?”
“Try being a female sheriff,” Dixie Leigh said. “I run into men all the time who talk to me like I’m a weakling who can’t handle my job.”
As all the women nodded in agreement, Boone felt like he should apologize for every guy who had tried to give a woman a compliment and screwed up badly. But the women of the Simple Book Club never gave him a chance. They just went on and on about what would cause a woman to push a man off the roof of a house until he finally fell asleep from the painkillers the doctor had given him.
When he woke, all the ladies were gone—thank God—and it was dark. His ankle throbbed, and he took another pain pill and washed it down with his watery tea before he grabbed his crutches and made his way to the bathroom. He’d used crutches before when he’d torn his Achilles tendon sliding into home plate his junior year of high school so he didn’t have any problem maneuvering around with them. After he relieved himself, he balanced on one leg in front of the sink to wash his hands.
He looked like hell. There were scratches on his face and his hair stuck straight up and he needed a shave in a bad way. But more than his appearance, his insides felt battered and bruised.
Emma had pushed him off a roof.
He knew it was an accident. He didn’t believe for a second that she had been trying to kill him. But her reaction to a simple kiss had finally made him realize the truth.
He was never going to get Emma back.
Never.
What he’d done to her on prom night was unfixable. It had taken being pushed off a roof for him to finally realize that Emma’s love was gone. He had snuffed it out with hateful words and his self-imposed exile from Simple. If he had grown up faster and come back sooner, maybe she would’ve forgiven him. But seven years of separation had hardened her heart. And if her heart hadn’t softened toward him by now, it wasn’t going to. It was time to accept defeat and do what everyone kept telling him to do.
He needed to move on.
He now knew what he had to do to accomplish that.
He had to let Emma go.
From the other room, he could hear Romeo whining to be let out. He shut off the bathroom light and crutched his way into the family room. The house was much too large for a single man. He had rented it for one reason—to be close to Emma. As he balanced on one crutch and opened the sliding glass door for Romeo, he glanced at the house behind him. All the lights were out. Obviously, pushing a man off a roof hadn’t affected her sleep.
What an idiot he was.
No matter how many arguments she started and hateful things she said to him, he’d thought it was all an act to hide her true feelings. No matter how many dates she went on with other men, he’d always believed she was doing it just to make him jealous.
Like he had tried to do.
Boone flirted with every woman in Simple, but only when Emma was around to see. He’d even brought a few of those women home and kissed them on the couch that he’d positioned strategically in front of the sliding glass doors. All in the hopes that Emma would see him kissing another woman and get jealous enough to declare her love. Now he realized he’d just been a fool vying for the attention of a woman who had gotten over him years ago.
Suddenly, he felt like he wanted to throw up. He probably should’ve eaten something with the pain pill. Leaving the door open for Romeo, he turned and headed to the kitchen. The refrigerator was crammed with all kinds of plastic containers. He didn’t realize that some weren’t microwave safe until after he heated the chicken and broccoli casserole and burned his fingers taking it out. He dropped the container and it bounced off the stove and landed on the floor, splattering scalding hot cream sauce on his bare feet.
“Shit!” He dropped his crutches and hopped around on one foot. He was still hopping when Emma rushed in. She didn’t look like she’d been sleeping. She was dressed in shorts and a tank top and her hair was pulled up on her head with one of those elastic scrunchie things that women loved.
> “Are you okay?” she asked. “Did you burn yourself?”
He stopped hopping. “Were you spying on me?”
“It’s hard not to notice a man jumping around his kitchen. Especially a man who should be in bed.” She came around the counter and looked down at the floor. “What a shame. Reba makes the best chicken and broccoli casserole.” She stepped over the mess and grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser on the counter.
Boone jerked the towels from her hands. “Thanks, but I don’t need your help.”
Emma’s face paled and he felt instantly contrite. He shouldn’t be angry—not when he only had himself to blame for what happened. He should have gotten the hint a long time ago and left her alone. Instead, he’d followed her around like a stalker. In all actuality, she had done him a favor by shoving him off the roof. If she had done anything less, he would still be chasing after her like an abused dog waiting for a scrap of attention.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
She shook her head. “You have every right to be mad.” Sadness filled her eyes. “I didn’t mean to shove you off the roof, Boone. I swear it was an accident.”
He sighed. “I know, Em. Now go home. I made this mess. I can clean it up.” He wasn’t just talking about the mess on the floor. He’d made a mess of his life. He needed to clean that up too.
“You can’t clean it up with a hurt ankle.” She took the paper towels from him and picked up his crutches. “Now go lie down, Boone. I got this.”
He started to argue, but then another wave of nausea hit him. Since he didn’t want to add to the mess on the floor, he took the crutches from her and headed back to the couch. He had just sat down when Romeo came in from outside. The dog must’ve smelled the chicken because he raced straight for the kitchen.
“Don’t you dare track through here, you mangy mutt,” Emma scolded. Romeo started to howl, and she yelled above the din. “Where’s his food?”
