Kissing Lessons (Kissing Creek)

by Stefanie London

  Her blood ran cold.

  Ronan had been looking into options for her finishing high school and going back to college…after everything she’d told him about her situation. He understood why she stayed in Kissing Creek. Why she’d made sacrifices and why she couldn’t simply disappear off to Boston for something as frivolous as getting her high school diploma.

  This wasn’t a simple internet search. This was research.

  Of course it was. That’s what Ronan did best. He found something that interested him, and he studied it. Instead of wanting to be happy, like most people, Ronan made it his job. Instead of trying to figure out why people behaved the way they did, Ronan made it his life’s mission. Instead of accepting that Audrey had chosen to sacrifice something for the greater good of her family, he pursued the issue behind her back.

  Did he see it as a fault? Was she a project? A fixer-upper?

  How could a respected professor with a pedigree like his be confident enough to show off a girlfriend who hadn’t even finished high school?

  Her mind flicked back to the meet and greet and how he’d cut in with a lie to stop her from confessing her lack of education to that nosy professor. Her stomach rocked. Was he ashamed of her? From the moment they’d met, he’d made her feel like she was special. Important. And yet there was this piece of evidence, this red flag, showing her that maybe he didn’t think she was enough.

  That maybe he viewed her education status as a flaw. Something to correct. Something that needed to be addressed in order for their relationship to work.

  The water shut off in the bathroom and Audrey dropped the pages back into the box as if they were burning her. It was ridiculous to think that she and Ronan had a future. Despite their chemistry and compatibility, their lives were very different. Ronan followed his own path. Hell, he’d left his grandmother and sister behind to follow an opportunity to the other side of the world.

  And Audrey…well, she was stuck here. More importantly, she would never “unstick” herself at the expense of her brother and sisters.

  Letting herself play house with Ronan was dangerous, because it would only make it hurt more when he left. And he would leave. He said he didn’t know what was next, but it was obvious he wanted a life bigger and more exciting than the one she had laid out in front of her. Why would he put everything on hold and miss out on opportunities to stay in Kissing Creek?

  Shaking her head and refusing to indulge the tears threatening to fall, she slung her bag over one shoulder and headed for the front door. Her hand wrapped around the handle as Ronan walked out of the bathroom.

  “Audrey?” He had a white towel around his waist. “Where are you going?”

  For a moment, Audrey couldn’t respond. Her throat was tighter than a pair of non-stretch jeans after a Thanksgiving turkey. She released the doorknob and sucked in a deep breath.

  “This isn’t working for me,” she said evenly. “I have to go.”

  Confusion splashed across his face like red paint. “A few minutes ago, you were smiling about us going to breakfast. What happened?”

  Audrey’s eyes betrayed her by darting over to the kitchen table and the box of Ronan’s notebooks and research materials. Knowing that even after she’d poured her heart out to him, confessed things about her family she’d never told another living soul…that he still didn’t respect her decision enough not to try to “fix” her.

  Or worse, “complete” her.

  Wasn’t she enough as she was? Couldn’t she ever be enough with what she had? Why did it feel like everybody questioned her decisions? Her dad wanted a say in everything she did; her aunt kept trying to convince Audrey to move in with her; Nicole pushed her to visit her mother’s grave.

  “I need to make my own choices,” she said, pressing her palm against the doorframe. But that’s when she realized he couldn’t hear the swirling tornado of thoughts in her head.

  “We don’t have to go to breakfast if you don’t want to,” Ronan said, bewildered.

  “I saw the research, Ronan, about the high school diploma. And don’t insult me by trying to pretend it’s for someone else.”

  Ronan scrubbed a hand over his face. “I looked into it for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…” He threw his hands up, and for a moment Audrey was concerned they were going to have a wardrobe malfunction in the middle of their breakup.

  Breakup. You already know it’s happening.

  “Because you deserve it,” he finished.

  “So?”

  “So…” He let out a huff. “You should have it.”

  “How nice it must be to get things simply because you deserve them,” she said, shaking her head. “My life doesn’t work like that.”

  “That’s because you lock yourself away in a bubble.” He let out a breath. “You cut yourself off from exploring opportunities.”

  “I know what I can and can’t have.”

  “Audrey.” Ronan came forward, his hands up. “Let’s take a minute to talk this through.”

  “I don’t have time for this. I don’t have time for someone who thinks he can swoop in and solve my problems like I haven’t thought a hundred million times about how I could change things to have everything I want.” Her lips pulled into a flat line.

  “But you can have what you want. What’s to stop you from finishing your diploma and then enrolling in a course here? You could stay in town, be close to your brother and sisters—”

  “I’d still need money for all this. Not to mention time. It’s one thing to take a casual night class where the grades don’t mean a damn thing and entirely another to have even more pressure heaped on me when they do count.” Her heart pounded in her chest, the vibrations rattling all the way through her body and setting her on edge. “How can I work enough to feed my brother and sisters and get a degree at the same time?”

  “There are options.”

  “Theoretical options,” she argued. “But not real ones. Not ones that work in practice.”

  He shook his head. “You’re frightened.”

  “I’m not frightened. I simply know my limitations.”

  “No, you’re frightened. You’re frightened of the future because it’s not defined by the clear boundaries you have now. You’re worried that if you aim for something and miss, then you’ll have wasted the opportunity, whereas sacrificing it all is safer because there’s no risk.”

  “How dare you tell me how I feel.” Audrey balled her hands into fists. “And how dare you psychoanalyze me, Ronan. I’m not your test subject.”

  “No, you’re not.” He raked a hand through his hair, sending a fine mist of water into the air around him. “You’re a person who deserves more than being a servant in her own house. You’re not Cinderella.”

  “No, because Cinderella had to rely on other people to save her, and I am not doing that.”

  “Is it so wrong that I want more for you? That I think you’re holding yourself back from achieving great things?” He came forward again, but she held her hand up, halting him. Touching him now would be a mistake.

  Well, more of a mistake than she’d already made by thinking her relationship with Ronan wouldn’t go down in flames. Because the fire had already started, and there was no putting it out.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ronan wasn’t sure what to do—yes, he knew that Audrey thought it wasn’t possible for her to have it all. She’d created this divide between her and her dreams that didn’t allow for looking to the future or even considering what she could achieve. She didn’t believe that it was possible to care for her family and start working toward her dreams at the same time.

  Audrey was at her best and brightest when she was learning. When she was sharing knowledge. Last night, when she’d gone over his chapter, pointing things out and giving him insights that he hadn’t seen comi
ng…damn. She was magnificent.

  Corny as it sounded, he was as much attracted to her brain as he was to her body.

  But the second he even tried to talk about how things might be different, it was like a power switch flipped. The light in her eyes dimmed, and she became wooden. Remote.

  She flat-out refused to even consider other options.

  “I can’t ignore the reality of my situation,” she said, her olive-green eyes locked intently on him. She wasn’t shying away from this argument, but she wasn’t budging, either. “And it’s not your job to save me.”

  “I don’t want to save you. But I do want you to see yourself as worthy and deserving, because you absolutely are.”

  For a moment, she didn’t reply. He could see the thoughts swirling around in her head, her eyes flicking in a way that told him her brain was racing a million miles a minute.

  “Talk to me, Audrey.” He sighed. “I’ve clearly overstepped, and I’m sorry. But I can’t apologize for wanting you to have everything life has to offer.”

  “So it has nothing to do with how you feel about dating someone uneducated?”

  She may as well have slapped him across the face for how much those words stung. He could practically feel the burning imprint on his cheek. After all the nights they’d shared, the vulnerable stories that had passed between them, the fact that Ronan finally let someone in…

  “I can’t believe you asked me that,” he said, his voice rough with hurt. Five minutes ago, he would have said that Audrey knew him better than anyone. But the fact that she could even ask such an insulting thing made Ronan question everything.

  Maybe she didn’t know him at all.

  “What about the meet and greet?” Her lip trembled, but she drew her shoulders back as if reinforcing her inner strength.

  “That I invited you?”

  “No, that you lied to your colleague so I wouldn’t have to admit that I hadn’t finished high school.”

  “God, Audrey. I already said I was sorry for that.” He threw his hands up in the air. “You looked uncomfortable, and I know that guy can be a real pain in the ass.”

  “You basically hauled me out of there.” She shook her head. “And then I find out you’ve been requesting GED paperwork and making appointments on my behalf, after we’d already discussed why it’s not a good time for me now.”

  “You put everyone else ahead of you. When is it your time?”

  “When my brother and sisters are safe and have a future.”

  “And then what? You’ll magically slot back into life as though you hadn’t been on hiatus for more than a decade?”

  He wanted to snatch the words back the second they left his mouth. The fear that flashed across Audrey’s face made his gut churn, but it also reinforced his concerns. She was scared of the future. And she was avoiding it.

  She sighed. “If you’re ashamed of my lack of—”

  “Stop.” He held up his hand, fury burning a path through him. “Don’t even finish that sentence, because it’s the most insulting thing you could possibly say to me.”

  Audrey folded her arms across her chest. “It’s a fair assumption. You’re the one who wrote a whole damn chapter of your book on motivation—so if I, the person you supposedly care about, am not able to go back to school, what’s motivating you to force the issue?”

  “I looked into a few things so we could discuss it. That’s not forcing the issue.”

  “You spoke to someone else about it. About me.” That’s when he saw the armor crack more fully—the shimmer in her eyes, the tautness in her full lips. “Behind my back.”

  “It was a hypothetical conversation. I called an old friend, and I didn’t give them your name or anything,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me first?”

  “Because you would have told me not to do it.”

  “Exactly!” She tipped her eyes skyward. “So why did you do it anyway?”

  “Because I thought if you could see how things might be…then maybe you’d consider not letting the next five years blow by you.”

  “How things might be?” She bobbed her head slowly. “You mean like leaving my family behind.”

  Of course Ronan hadn’t said those words, but he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t allowed himself the little fantasy of him and Audrey somewhere else, in a big city, doing great things. Chasing their dreams together. Yeah, he’d thought about that…a lot.

  More than he should have for a relationship that only recently had a label attached to it.

  “I’ll take that silence as your confirmation,” she said.

  “I don’t expect you to follow me. But have I thought about where this relationship might go beyond my contract? Yeah. I have. I’ve thought about you and me and what a life might look like.”

  Just saying those words was like taking a steak knife and carving his chest open. For a kid who’d grown up on a steady diet of rejection from his own parents, he avoided being vulnerable wherever possible. It was easier to chase success with unemotional things—like school and work—because that, he could control. But Audrey had snuck into his life and under his skin and deep, deep into his heart.

  “What a life might look like so long as it isn’t here, you mean?” There was something raw in her words, like a trace of hope that he might give her the answer she wanted.

  “My job is going to take me to different places,” Ronan said. “You knew that from the start.”

  “Then why do you care what I do with my life?” she asked. True to form, Audrey wasn’t yelling or getting angry. She had too much of a wall around her for that—too much of a tight fist around her emotions to let them run away with her. For a woman who could be so passionate, seeing her like this was like seeing a poor imitation of a work of art. The thing that made the original so special was totally erased.

  “Because I care about you,” he said. “Haven’t I made that clear?”

  “If you cared, you’d let me do what I need to do instead of tempting me with things I can’t have. It’s cruel!” She sucked in a ragged breath. “Kissing Creek is my home, my family is the thing that’s most important to me in this world, and I am doing everything I can to be the kind of woman who would make my mother proud.”

  Her conviction was like an old tree root—it went down so deep it could hold anything in place. Even a brilliant, shining beacon of a woman like her.

  “If that’s not enough for you, I’m sorry. I don’t see the point of dragging this out toward its inevitable conclusion.” She yanked the door open and walked out onto the landing, letting it swing shut behind her. The noise triggered something in him, like a chain yanked deep in his brain, dragging to the surface a memory he’d long tried to keep buried.

  He could practically feel the cold floorboards beneath his bare feet and the warmth of the blanket clutched in his hand. Voices had woken him, the sound of muted anger and hushed pleas and simmering resentment coaxing him from his bed. He’d crept on small feet down the stairs in time to see the front door slam, and the only remaining part of his mother was the lingering of patchouli perfume like a scented ghost.

  He remembered watching his grandmother stand there, head bowed, shoulders slumped. It was so foreign to see her in such a position that Ronan had actually gasped, making the older woman’s eyes swing toward him. His mother had left…again. Without saying goodbye, without offering her children a say in it, without seeing if they wanted to come with her.

  He’d grown up on the toxic ideal that “boys don’t cry,” and he remembered the flood of shame at how his cheeks were suddenly wet and hot. He remembered the tremble in his lower lip and the flickering question in his mind: What did I do wrong? Most of all, he remembered how his little heart had hardened that day, like scar tissue knitting over a wound. Every time she left, another scar was created, until there were more scars than
soft tissue. Until he was certain that the only person who could be trusted was himself.

  Why the hell would people ever put themselves in a position to be staring at a closed door, abandoned and unloved? Discarded.

  Because having her in your life is worth it.

  The little whisper was so soft he almost didn’t hear it. It was more like the expelling of breath than spoken word. Ronan couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d felt so happy, so content. When he actually looked forward to the end of the workday, because there was something else waiting for him. On the nights when Audrey would be coming over, he’d almost itch with anticipation—seeing her was the highlight of his day. Being with her gave him joy and reason.

  It dawned on him…people were at the heart of motivation and happiness. Not things, not achievements, not accolades.

  Relationships.

  The very thing he’d used his work and success to avoid was at the heart of what he was studying. It was like coming full circle. He’d been training not to let himself get close to people, but in order for him to be happy now, he had to put himself on the line.

  Without thinking, Ronan yanked the door open and started down the stairs, calling Audrey’s name. It wasn’t until a crisp breeze hit him in a place that cool breezes didn’t usually hit that he remembered he was still wearing only a towel. But he only had two options: miss catching Audrey or make himself vulnerable in every way possible.

  Swearing under his breath, he bounded down the stairs and prayed that none of his neighbors would come out of their apartments. He was one gust of a breeze away from a public indecency violation.

  Ronan made it down in record time. “Audrey, stop!”

  She was strides ahead of him and powering forward like the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels.

  How far are you willing to let this go?

  All the way. He didn’t even need to think about it. He would parade his bare ass down Main Street if that’s what it took to get Audrey to stop and hear him out. Because they might not see eye to eye, they might disagree, and they might do things differently, but he cared about her. A lot. So much it felt like letting her walk away now would be the biggest mistake of his life.