Chapter Nineteen
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The next morning, Keeley wandered into the kitchen and found a sticky note from Owen on the refrigerator saying he’d be back soon. She wore boy shorts and a tank top with a fuzzy robe belted over them. Definitely sexier than her sleepy sloth pjs, not that Owen had seen her in them.
Last night he’d said good night and disappeared. Later she’d heard a saw running, and a peek out the window had revealed lights on in the garage. She had the feeling he was taking desperate measures to avoid her. Fine. Whatever. She rubbed her eyes and yawned.
While construction was going on around it, the kitchen was still functional. Owen had brewed a pot of coffee and set two sturdy mugs next to it before he’d left for wherever he’d gone. Thank goodness because the machine looked way too complicated to have to figure it out in the wee hours of the morning. She checked her phone. Okay, maybe not wee hours, but eight a.m. was still early.
She opened the door of the Harvest Gold refrigerator. Contents were sparse and she immediately determined there was no creamer or milk to be found. And there wasn’t much by way of breakfast food.
There were bottles of condiments in the door and lunchmeat in a bin, but no bread. A single apple looked lonely on a shelf next to a half dozen bottles of water. A peek in the cupboards revealed peanut butter and a bag of chili-flavored Fritos. Owen had lunch food for when he worked at the house, but that was it .
She had her phone out and was contemplating texting him when the outside door opened with a gust of fresh air. Owen carried a couple grocery bags in one hand and a white paper bag with the Three Sisters Bakery logo in the other.
Good grief, what was it about this man that made her want to grab that face and kiss him long and hot until they were both breathless?
Sure, he wore faded blue jeans ripped at one knee that fit his butt just right. Scarred work boots and a heavy canvas jacket enhanced the manly-man image. Add in the tousled hair, deep blue eyes that sharpened when he looked at her, and lips she really wanted to kiss, and it was no wonder she was a goner.
He must’ve caught something of where her mind had gone because in a swift motion he set the bags on the floor and moved toward her, grabbing her by the elbows and lifting her until they were eye to eye.
“ You look at me like that, princess, and I have a hard time reminding myself why we’re not going there.” Even as he said it, he was backing her up against the wall. Her robe fell open and his gaze raking over her body felt like a line of fire burning her from the inside out.
“ I have no idea why we’re not going there. That’s on you,” she murmured. Her hands gripped his unbuttoned jacket and pulled him to her. “Kiss me or I’m going to go crazy.”
He closed his eyes and breathed deep. Even in her caffeine-deprived state she recognized his internal struggle. But then a groan rumbled from deep in his throat and his lips slanted over hers. And consumed her.
His mouth took her deep, his tongue deeper still, her fingers diving into the lush thickness of his hair. His hand cupped her rear through the tiny shorts and pulled her into him until they met, heat to heat. The kiss spun out, gentling as he moved his mouth to nibble on the sensitive skin below her ear.
When he released her, he stepped back and sucked in a lungful of air. “Goddammit, Keeley.” He brought up his hands to bracket her face. “I need to tell you, to explain why I can’t do this. Why we can’t get into a relationship.”
She was going to point out that they certainly were in a relationship of some sort, but the torment in his eyes had her swallowing the words. “Okay,” she managed.
He stepped back and using both hands, jammed his fingers through his hair. His expression held a mountain of pain.
“ I was married, and I had a little boy.”
Surprise held her silent even as a dozen questions bounced around her brain.
“ They’re dead. I’m responsible for that. I should’ve told you earlier before this whole thing started.”
He snagged the bags from the floor and set them on the counter. Without looking at her, he pulled out a container of creamer and set it next to the coffeemaker.
“ You bought creamer. My favorite brand.”
“ I pay attention.”
“ Thank you.”
When he continued unpacking the groceries, she leaned against the counter, head tilted as she watched him. “Have you ever talked about this?”
He shook his head.
“ Tell me what happened.”
“ Let’s get breakfast first. We can talk after.”
She nodded. Peering into the bakery bag, she asked, “What’d you get?”
“ Bagels.”
He set bananas and strawberries on the counter along with a loaf of bread and a tub of cream cheese. Then, after using a serrated knife to slice the bagels, he stuck them in an ancient toaster oven.
She rinsed the berries, sliced them and a banana into small bowls she’d found in the cupboard, all the while telling herself not to get used to the cozy domestic scene she and Owen made. He believed whatever had happened with his family made him unworthy or undeserving of having a family in the future.
Owen laid a piece of plywood over a couple sawhorses and placed folding chairs on either side. In minutes, they were sitting at the makeshift table with an excellent breakfast.
Keeley slathered cream cheese over her toasted cinnamon raisin bagel and took a bite. Chewing slowly, she wondered what’d happened to Owen’s family.
He sat across from her looking a little lost. She wished she could help ease his pain but wasn’t sure he’d let her past his defenses. So she asked him questions about the remodel and how he planned to furnish the house, thinking maybe a simple conversation would help him feel more comfortable.
***
Eating toasted bagels and drinking coffee while Keeley chatted openly, Owen felt some of his tension ease. He figured that was her goal, and was grateful for the reprieve it gave him.
His entire adult life he’d followed a hard-and-fast rule that no one needed to know his shit. But it was different with Keeley. It didn’t matter they had no future together, he wanted her to know him. To understand him in a way no one else did. It wouldn’t change anything, it couldn’t, but maybe by knowing, she’d get why he couldn’t be with her, and she wouldn’t hate him.
“ I don’t like talking about what happened. Other than my mom and stepdad, I never shared it. But if anyone has a right to know, it’s you.” They’d finished their meal and he rose to his feet, face set in serious lines.
“ Let’s go out to the porch. No swing, but I have a couple chairs out there.”
“ Okay.” Mug in hand, she followed him out the door. They sat side by side in camp chairs, a chilly wind gusting .
She pulled her robe tighter around her. He rose and ducked back in the house, coming back with a fleece blanket he dropped over her legs.
Sitting again, he stared into the distance where Sisters lay nestled in a forested bowl.
He fucking hated it but prepared to bare his soul.
“ After high school, I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do with my life. I’d taken auto shop classes and got a job as a mechanic changing oil, brake fluid, replacing filters, because that’s all they’d let an eighteen-year-old kid do. I figured I’d do that until I could work out a better plan. I was seeing this girl. Her name was Gloria. I was young and dumb. We both were, and she got pregnant.”
“ Oh Owen.”
“ Yeah. We weren’t in love. At best you could say we were in lust. But my mom had gotten pregnant, and that dude hadn’t stuck around. Mom kept contact with his family, but there was nothing they could do to get him to take responsibility.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t going to be that guy. I wanted to do the right thing. I bought her a ring, we got married, and I joined the Marines.
“ Joining the military was the only way I could see to provide for my family. I’d get regular pay, medical benefits, and housing.”
“ That’s honorable.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Mom was okay with it. We’d been living in Fullerton in Southern California. She’d married Eddie, my stepdad, and he wanted to move to Phoenix with my stepsister, but I didn’t want to go with them. If I joined the military, I’d have base housing for me and my family.
“ Add to that, I was a wild kid and Mom thought I needed the discipline I’d get in the military. She wasn’t wrong. My grandparents lived here in Sisters. They wanted me to go to college, but I wasn’t ready for that.”
Keeley’s expression turned somber. “What did Gloria think? ”
“ Mixed bag there. She liked being engaged, liked going to parties with a fiancé who was a Marine. She wanted to keep doing what we’d been doing.
“ We got married at a courthouse, and a week later I’m in boot camp at MCRD, San Diego.” His gaze followed the flight of a crow skimming the treetops.
“ Gloria was working as a receptionist for an insurance company and living with her parents. I didn’t see her until Family Day, which is the day before graduation from boot camp. She already had a baby bump and had ultrasound pictures of him. That made the baby more real.”
He caught Keeley’s gaze with his own. “The idea of being a dad scared the crap out of me, but I was excited too. I’d get to be the kind of dad I’d never had.”
He studied her. “You were pregnant once.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I was scared and excited too. But I’d had a better role model with my mom.” She brought the blanket around her shoulders. “What happened after boot camp?”
“ I reported to Camp Pendleton. Gloria hated base housing. Complained our place was too small. She said I wasn’t spending enough time with her, and living on base was too far from Fullerton for her to visit her friends and family as often as she wanted.”
He paused. “I was committed to the military and working my ass off. Any time I had free I tried to do what she wanted. I painted a room for the nursery and tried to make sure she’d have everything she needed for the baby before I deployed because I knew that was coming. She still wasn’t happy.”
“ She sounds young.”
“ Actually, she was a few months older than me, but it doesn’t matter. We were both young.”
He shrugged. “The thing was, I felt like I was growing up. I’d accepted my responsibilities, I was being trained for military service, I was providing for my wife. But she still wanted to do what she’d always done .
“ She’d go home for long weekends. Then I found out she was partying. She said she wasn’t drinking, but I don’t know what she was doing.
“ One weekend I thought I’d surprise her and showed up at her parents’ house. She was at a party. I tracked her down and found her making out with some asshole. She was seven months pregnant and letting a guy put his hands up her skirt at a party. I lost my shit and beat the guy bloody.”
Talking about it brought the memories flooding back, but something about Keeley’s quiet, unwavering presence allowed him to keep the emotions in check.
She paid attention, he’d give her that. She watched him with those gray-green eyes, hanging on his every word. But he hated showing her what a failure he’d been.
“ Thing was, I wasn’t giving Gloria what she needed most. She was lonely and felt like she was stuck in our apartment on base with nothing to do. She said I didn’t understand her, that I didn’t even try to understand her. Then I got my mobilization orders. The baby was due in a couple months, and I was being sent to Afghanistan.”
“ You felt like you were abandoning her.”
“ Yeah. I did. But I got on that plane and flew to the other side of the world. Seven weeks later I got a text and a bunch of pictures of Gloria holding this tiny baby boy. She’d had her mom with her.”
“ Oh my gosh.” Keeley was so open her emotions were written all over her face. “You were a daddy. That must’ve been so hard to be away from your family. Hard on Gloria, but hard on you too. That’s an awful sacrifice we ask of our soldiers and their families.” She reached out and took his hand, her palm pressing to his. “What did you name him?”
“ She’d wanted to name him after her dad, so he was John Robert Hardesty. She called him Robby since her dad went by John.
“ We’d talk on the phone when we could, but it felt like she was always mad about something. She was exhausted and had to figure out the parenting thing by herself. She was upset because she was struggling to lose the weight she’d gained.
“ There wasn’t a fucking thing I could do for her except listen and send home a paycheck. When my deployment was over, I went back home and tried to be the husband she needed, and the father my kid needed.”
“ It must’ve been a shock to go from a war environment to home.”
He gave a humorless laugh. “The first week back I was so fucking overwhelmed. When you’re deployed, you don’t have to think about what you should be doing, because you have a mission, you have orders, and your job is to execute them.
“ Stateside, I was figuring it out as I went along and not doing a very good job of it.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Most important thing for me? I wanted to get to know my son. The kid was amazing. He was doing this army crawl thing using his elbows to scoot himself across the floor. He was the cutest damned thing with the bluest eyes.”
He shouldn’t have been surprised when he saw the sheen of tears in Keeley’s eyes.
“ Oh, that’s sweet,” she whispered.
He gave a grunt of agreement. “Gloria was trying, I could tell she was. She didn’t like how much I had to work, but I tried to make it up to her.
“ Then I’d get time off and it was like she was punishing me because she’d go visit her family and leave me with Robby. I didn’t really mind, though. I had him all to myself, and if she was gone, we weren’t fighting.”
He rubbed a hand over his beard. “Turns out that wasn’t a good solution because she was seeing someone else. I didn’t find out until later. I was sent back to Afghanistan a day after Robby’s first birthday.
“ I got back to the barracks one night and my lieutenant was there with a major. They told me there’d been an accident.” His voice went flat. “Gloria, Robby, and this guy she’d hooked up with were in a car accident. Some asshole kid street racing hit them. Fucker was going over a hundred miles an hour and he tore the car in half.” He gazed into the distance. “There were no survivors.”
Tears streamed down Keeley’s cheeks. “Oh god, Owen. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how much that must’ve hurt.”
The wall he’d built around his heart wobbled like it’d taken another hit.
This was why he didn’t talk about this.
He rose abruptly. She rose too, dropping the blanket and moving into him, wrapping her arms around his waist.
He stood rigid, arms at his side. She didn’t seem to care and held him tighter like she could inject some of her sunshine right into him.
Maybe she could, because he felt warmer in a way the coffee couldn’t hit.
He couldn’t help but bring his arms around her shoulders, holding her to his chest, his cheek resting on the top of her head.
Never in his life had he felt something that was a balm to his soul, but Keeley hugging him was exactly that.
“ I’m okay. It’s been long enough it no longer feels like I’ve been ripped apart with no way to put the pieces back together,” he murmured into her hair.
She tipped up her head so she could look in his eyes. “I know what you mean. When I lost my pregnancy, I felt so raw. I also felt betrayed by my boyfriend, who was such an asshole.”
Owen’s mouth tilted up at one corner. “That’s a pretty strong swear word, Miz Montaigne.”
“ I reserve my swear words for those who truly deserve it. Gives them more impact that way.”
“ True statement. Fucker abandoned you when you needed him most.”
“ He did, which also made me question my judgment. Why hadn’t I seen that in him?” She shrugged. “Mom made me get therapy, and that helped. The pain from that time never goes all the way away, but I can deal with it now. ”
“ Moms are like that. My mom also pushed me into therapy. It helped.”
She beamed at him and in that moment, wild horses couldn’t have stopped him from kissing her. He bent his head and their lips met in a kiss that lit a fire in his veins at the same time it soothed the jagged edges of his heart.
Then realization set in.
He’d convinced himself he could have a platonic relationship with Keeley, and kissing her was not something people in platonic relationships did.
“ I’m sorry.” He gripped her shoulders and took a step back. “Listen, Keeley, you need to know I’ll never get married again or have kids. No matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t enough for my wife, and the result was she died, and my boy died. I let them down.
“ That street racer was responsible for their deaths. I know that. But Gloria wouldn’t have hooked up with the guy she was with if we’d had a better relationship.” He released her and stepped back, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“ Gloria made the choice to be with him. She could also have made the choice to honor her vows.” Owen was shaking his head before she even finished speaking, and Keeley felt she had to make him understand. “From what you told me, Owen, you tried to make it work. She didn’t.”
“ Doesn’t matter. I’ll never put myself in a position where the people I love most can be taken from me. I could never go through that again and survive.”
It looked like a shadow dropped over her features. “I see. It’s better not to love at all.” She drew in a shaky breath. “You have a deep well of compassion inside you, Owen. It’s hard to see you closing yourself off from living a full life.”
“ I haven’t closed myself off from a full life. It’s a different life than what I once had. That’s all.”
“ A full life means being open to other people, to feelings, to strong emotions. ”
He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t think you can change my mind because I won’t.”
“ Where does this leave us? Are we buddies? Pals?”
He closed his eyes. “Damn.” When he opened his eyes again, she thought she’d never seen him look so sad. “I want to be your friend, but that’s all I can be.”
“ It’s absolutely your right to build this wall between us, but put this into your calculation. I love you, Owen.” He jerked like he’d been shocked by a live wire. “I’ve had strong feelings for you for a while. I thought they’d go away, but no such luck.”
He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again.
Squaring her shoulders, she went on. “My feelings are my own and not your responsibility. I’m not sure if I can handle being friends. We’ll have to see.”
***
After a quiet shift at Easy Money where she tried to minimize contact with Owen, Keeley lay in his beautiful bed between his soft cotton sheets and stared into the darkness. She’d fallen in love with a man whose heart had been shattered. Because of that, he’d closed himself off to whatever had been building between them. She was an optimist by nature, but how could she get past Owen’s steadfast refusal to ever love again? Was it possible to grieve for something that never was?