Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
C hevy felt like he was going to puke. He knew having Leni Gibbs back in his life was too good to be true.
“What in the Sam hell just happened?” Ford asked, the expression on his face showing the shock that Chevy felt.
“I think what happened is that Leni just broke up with me.”
“What? Why? And what the hell does she have against Jolene?”
Chevy scrubbed his hand over his face, suddenly weary to his bones. “You remember how I pushed her away that summer when she got into MIT? Broke up with her? Told her I didn’t love her anymore?”
Ford winced. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, I was having a hard time getting her to believe me, so I told her I’d fallen in love with someone else. Someone who needed me more and deserved all my attention. And I told her it was Jolene.”
“Ah. And I’m assuming that from Leni’s reaction, you failed to mention that Jolene was a horse. Or I guess, at the time, a foal.”
Chevy nodded. “Yep.”
Ford shook his head. “Wow. You are a total dumbass.”
“Yep.”
“So, what the hell are you doing standing here? Why aren’t you going after her?”
“Did you see how mad she was? She probably won’t ever talk to me again.”
“She won’t if you don’t go after her.”
“Don’t you think I should at least let her cool off?”
“No. I do not,” Ford said. “Not if you want to have any chance of saving this relationship.”
“Right.” He looked at Jolene.
“I’ll finish brushing her and put her away,” Ford said.
Chevy patted his pockets. Shit. His truck keys were in the house. “Thanks brother.”
“Just go.”
Leni had cried the whole way back to her house—big gulping sobs—in between screaming in frustration and then dissolving into tears again.
For ten years, she’d believed that Chevy had found someone else to love—someone better than her. And all this time, that someone had been a damn horse.
She pulled into the driveway and turned off the car. Grabbing a handful of napkins from the center console, she wiped the tears from her face and the snot from her nose. Not that it would do any good. Her sister would still know she’d been crying.
How could she not? One glance in the rearview mirror showed her puffy swollen eyes and red cheeks.
She tossed the napkins to the floor of her car, got out, and slammed the door. Hurrying up the porch steps, she almost collided with Duke as he was coming out of the house.
“Whoa there, darlin’,” he said, wrapping her in his arms. “What’s happened?”
“Your grandson happened,” she wailed as the tears started to fall again.
“Aw hell,” he muttered as he hugged her tight. “Just let it out.”
Her shoulders shook as she sobbed into his.
“You wanna talk about it,” Duke asked when she’d finally cried herself out. He pulled what she hoped was a clean handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her as she sank onto the top porch step. “Lorna’s not here. I just ran into her as I was coming up to drop off a pan of homemade macaroni and cheese. She told me Elizabeth was picking her and the kids up, and they were going to lunch and to do some shopping before heading to the library to see Maisie for story hour. She said they were going to be gone most of the afternoon and asked me to put the mac and cheese in the fridge. I’m sorry you just missed her.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “But I’m a good listener if you want to share your troubles.”
Her shoulders drooped. “Even if my troubles are the fault of your stupid grandson?”
He nodded. “Especially then.”
She wiped her nose with the handkerchief then balled it into her fist as she told him what happened. “I’ve harbored the worst feelings to this horrible boyfriend-stealing Jolene, and all this time, she was just a horse.”
“To be fair, she’s a pretty good horse. And she’s probably what saved Chevy that first year after you left.”
“Saved him from what?”
“From dying of a broken heart. Gosh, he was a mess that summer.” He tipped her chin up to look at him. “That boy loved you. Still does, I believe. Loved you so much that he let you go.”
She huffed. “Loved me so much that he had to fake a relationship with a horse just to get away from me.”
“He wasn’t trying to get away from you, honey.” Duke’s tone softened. “He was trying to let you get away from him . You have to understand. Those boys, all three of them, were deserted not just by their no-good fathers, but their own mother, too. She’s my daughter, and I’ll always love her, but I’m still disappointed in the way she so callously abandoned her sons. She did something to each of them—broke them in a way only a mother could. But know this—Chevy didn’t break up with you. He let you go.”
“Why? I loved him. I would have stayed with him forever.”
“But that’s exactly why. He couldn’t let you do that. From the way he tells it, you didn’t listen when he told you to go to that fancy college and leave him behind, so he had to take drastic measures. And apparently Jolene was the measure he landed on.”
The roar of an engine had them both looking up as Chevy’s truck came barreling down the street and screeched to a halt in front of the house. He was out of the door and crossing the lawn before the engine barely had time to stop.
“Gramps,” Chevy said, apparently not losing all his senses as he nodded his head to his grandfather.
“About time you got here, son,” Duke told him, dropping a hand on his grandson’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “I’ll git out of here and let you two talk.” He gave Leni a one-armed hug, leaning in to whisper, “Remember what I said.”
She and Chevy didn’t say anything as they watched Duke amble toward his pickup and drive away.
Then she turned to Chevy. “I’m so mad at you. I’m not sure I’m ready to hear anything you have to say.” She left him standing on the porch and walked into the house.
He followed her inside and shut the door behind him. “Then you need to get ready, because I have plenty to tell you.”
She started to open the door again, but he reached over her head to push it shut, fencing her in between him and the back of the door. “Please Leni, just listen to me,” he pleaded as he looked down at her.
She was caged between him and the door, but not in a scary way. He would never hurt her. She didn’t feel threatened, but being this close to him, the scent of him surrounding her, already had her defenses faltering. She crossed her arms over her chest and jutted out a hip to show her defiance. “I’m listening.”
He leaned his head down, slowly, deliberately, until his forehead touched hers. “First of all, I’m sorry, Leni. I’m so damn sorry. I never meant to hurt you.” He let out a breath. “Well, I guess that’s not true. I did mean to hurt you. I wanted you to hate me.”
“Why?”
“Because you had to hate me if I was ever gonna get you to leave.”
“You bastard. You pushed me away, broke my heart and ruined me for any other man, and for ten years, you made me believe that you met someone else, and that she was better than I was. That I wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, or sweet enough for a guy like you.”
“Good lord, Leni, you were too good, too pretty, too everything for a guy like me.”
“So, what then? You just didn’t love me enough to stay with me?”
He sighed. “I loved you too much. If I had my way, I would have stayed with you forever. But that wouldn’t have been fair to you.”
“You think it was fair to tell me you didn’t love me anymore and that you’d found someone else who needed you more?”
“No, of course not. Although, to be honest, Jolene really did need me. Her mama died giving birth to her, and I bottle-fed her for months.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you really trying to argue that I should be feeling sorry for that horse right now?”
He huffed out a small laugh. “No. I’m not trying to argue at all. I’m trying to tell you that I was an idiot. And I’m sorry. I was a kid, a teenage boy, who was in love with the smartest girl in the school, the smartest person he’d ever met. A girl who’d dreamed of space and building rockets and was so damn brilliant that she was offered a scholarship to one of the best schools in the nation and had a chance to leave me and this small town and make those dreams of hers come true. I knew, even then, that I never deserved you. I got to love you, for a little while, and I loved you with everything I had, but I always knew that I wasn’t the kind of guy who got to have someone like you. I wasn’t the kind of guy worth giving up a stick of gum for, let alone lifelong dreams that you had a real shot of turning into a reality. And I sure as hell wasn’t gonna let you give up everything for me.”
“So, you broke up with me for your horse?” Her tone was still annoyed, but his words had touched her heart.
“No, I broke up with you for you . So you could have all those things you always dreamed of.”
She reached up to touch his cheek. He was so sweet, so damn handsome. How could he ever think he didn’t deserve to be loved? “Oh Chevy, how could you ever think you weren’t worth staying for?”
His voice was quiet as he answered, “Because nobody has ever stayed for me before.”
His words hit her straight in the heart.
She knew the feeling. That was why it was so hard for her to trust a man. Not one of them had ever stuck around—not her father and not the first boy she gave her heart to. Which was why she had chosen to never give it away again.
He let out a heavy breath as he scrubbed a hand over his cheek. “It’s just a hell of a lot easier to push people away before they have a chance to walk out on you.”
“But you didn’t even give me the choice, or the chance, to stay.”
“I know. Because you might have stayed. For a while. You might have given it all up and stayed here. With me. But eventually, you would have regretted that decision, resented me, and left anyway. So, it was easier to push you away, to make you think I didn’t love you anymore, to make you leave.” He closed his eyes and pulled in a breath. “I take that back. It wasn’t easier . Pushing you away was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
He reached up to cup her cheek in his palm. “But I would do it again. In a heartbeat. I would sacrifice everything, if it meant giving you a chance to make your dreams come true.”
“That’s so unfair.”
“Is it? Why? You left. You went to that fancy school. You’re doing the things you always dreamed of. That makes it worth it.”
Her sister, Duke, and now Chevy himself, were all telling her that the reason he broke up with her was for her. To give her a chance to follow her dreams. How could she hate him for that?
“I hate that something I did made you cry,” he said, rubbing her cheek with his thumb. “I should have told you about Jolene sooner. I’m sorry that it made you so upset.”
Finding out that Jolene was a horse was a blow, but her reaction to it, the soul-wracking sobs, was about more than just Chevy’s deception all those years ago.
She peered up at him, at the blue eyes she’d looked into so many times. “I think I was upset about more than just the horse. This whole thing, being back here with you again, has brought up a lot of feelings, and I think some of that came out in my reaction. What happened with us changed me, and I’ve spent a decade building this fortress around my heart…brick by brick…keeping people at a distance. Especially men. And then I came back here and in less than a week, I’m back in your life, and in your bed, and those bricks felt like they were starting to crumble. But then I found out this big thing that I’ve believed for so long, that has formed parts of my identity, was just this weird false lie, and all those walls shot up again. I didn’t know what to do with all those feelings. Except let them out in anger and tears.”
“Sometimes it helps to get it out instead of keeping all that bottled up inside. But I feel awful bad that some stupid idea I had when I was practically a kid changed how you felt about yourself. That was never my intention. I wanted you to fly, to go into the world and realize how amazing and smart you were and to be so successful and happy that you never looked back.”
She offered him a rueful smile. “I did do some of that.”
“I’m glad. And I’m really glad you came back to Woodland Hills and that you gave me a chance to show you how much I still care about you. I don’t want those walls up between us anymore.”
“I’ve spent years protecting myself with them. You can’t just tear the whole thing down with one amazing afternoon at a cabin.”
His face broke into a slow smile, and he tilted his head, offering her a huge heaping helping of that Chevy Lassiter charm. “We could always go back up and try to see if a second amazing afternoon at a cabin would work any better…”
The rest of her anger slipped away as a smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “You’re an idiot.”
“Yeah, I am. I’m an idiot for ever letting you believe you weren’t enough.” His teasing charm was gone as his gaze bore into her with a new intensity. “I have never stopped thinking about you. I still can’t believe I get to hold you again.” He took a step forward, pushing her back against the door as he leaned in to brush his lips against her neck. His warm breath on her skin sent a shiver down her spine, and she swallowed. “To touch you again…” he continued as he ran his fingers lightly up her arm, across her shoulder and up the side of her jaw. He lifted her chin and grazed the edge of his thumb over her bottom lip. “…to kiss you again.”
She sucked in a breath, heat and yearning surging through her body as he moved his mouth closer to hers, the scruff on his cheeks scraping the edge of hers, then his lips skimmed over hers, just the barest touch, enough to make them tingle with anticipation seconds before he captured her mouth in a hungry kiss.
The kiss was deep and demanding, and she tilted her head as she invited him deeper.
Her arms went around his neck, and a soft whimper escaped her as she kissed him back, hard, with a fierce passion as she lost herself in the essence of him.
His body was pressed against hers, and she could feel how much he wanted her. His hand was in her hair, and he cupped the back of her neck, holding her in place as he feasted on her lips. His kisses shifted from her mouth to her neck to that spot just below her ear.
His voice was husky as he spoke into her ear. “If your family wasn’t here, I swear I’d take you against this door right now.”