Chapter 29
29
[Cort]
E ating lunch with Vale, or eating Vale for lunch, becomes my new obsession.
With her working in Rogue River, I meet her as often as I can on her lunch break.
Thankfully, I’m not on top of roofs as much as I used to be, but in more of a supervisory position for our jobsites and can slip home at my leisure.
I’ve even given Vale a key, so she doesn’t have to wait for me, if I’m running late.
In many ways, I’m happy Vale and I take things slow in a sense.
These past few weeks, I’ve felt like a teenager again, getting away with sneaking around and meeting up with my girl.
We make out a lot and get off by hand jobs and oral play, but I’m eager to put my dirty talk to further practice, as Vale said, and have sex with her.
Only one afternoon reminds me why that shouldn’t happen .
“Stone isn’t able to watch Hudson for me after all. I can’t get away on Friday or Saturday,” she mentions after we’ve had lunch one day.
Vale and I haven’t had a more formal date at my house in weeks.
One where we aren’t on the clock, and I can take more time with her.
The reminder of Stone is a damper on my desire.
“And Sundays are always out because of Sylver Sunday.”
“Sylver what?” I chuckle without humor, instantly sour that I’ll be missing out on another date, spending another weekend without her.
“Every Sunday. Stone set the tradition back when he took over the family.” Vale isn’t looking at me as she straightens her Reflexology polo over her black leggings.
She doesn’t need to clarify for me what took over the family means.
At twenty-two, my best friend was about to graduate from college.
He had a deal signed with a professional football team out west and was on his way to success.
More money than his family had ever seen running their small-town, family-owned seed and soil business, which his brother Clay was frantically trying to keep afloat despite their dad having gambling debts and bar tabs all over the county.
Stone planned to take care of his siblings, financially, from a distance.
But when old man Sylver killed himself, Stone didn’t feel like he had any other choice but to return home and become guardian to his younger siblings, especially Knox, Ford, Sebastian, and Vale who were all under eighteen at the time.
“Sylver Sunday,” Vale continues.
“Enya started calling it that when she started coming around. Every Sunday, Stone insisted on a family meal. Like a weekly check-in. It was a time for him to write up the family schedule on a calendar and get a read on where everyone was at. Homework. School functions. Basic needs.” Vale fluffs up her long locks and then swipes them back, collecting them in one hand and using a hairband from her opposite wrist to secure her hair in a ponytail.
The hair style makes her look young and reminds me how much younger she is than me.
Twelve years.
At twelve years old, Stone became guardian of Vale in a different way.
Violet Sylver died giving birth to Vale, and Stone felt responsible to care for his only sister because his father was failing at parenthood.
I tried to help as best I could.
He was my best friend.
His mother had been a good friend to my mom.
Our families were meshed in so many ways.
I often brought Stone home with me.
I brought the Sylvers meals.
My mom taught Stone how to change diapers, wash a baby, and feed her with a bottle.
Instead of abandoning my friend who had taken on this incredible responsibility, I learned along with him.
He had been a good kid who turned into a great man.
And I’d shit all over that friendship in a moment of weakness.
“Anyway,” Vale continues, swiping a finger underneath her eyes, seeking stray mascara while I simply stare at her.
We’ve moved many of our make out sessions and lunch time shenanigans to my bedroom, preserving the kitchen for actual meals.
But on occasion, we’ve christened other locations in my house.
On the living room floor.
On an island stool. On the deck.
“Stone kept up the tradition even as we aged. Even as people moved out. Of course, for the longest time, it was just him and Clay, plus me and Hudson.”
My mouth opens to ask about Judd, their brother who lined up in age with Tate but never became friends with him.
Judd works for Sylver Seed & Soil, alongside Clay who still oversees the family business.
He turned their simple farm supply store into a small empire, not only selling farm necessities but also fashionable garden gifts and housewares along with pet products.
While I’ve only been in the place a handful of times, having felt guilty for even crossing their property, I was so fucking proud of the family for breaking through barriers and rising up from the ashes of the loss of their parents.
One from a medical condition.
The other from mental illness.
“Judd hadn’t attended until recently,” she clarifies, as if reading my thoughts.
While I’ve been quietly watching her pull herself back together, she’s filled the silence.
“But as each brother started dating and falling in love”—she rolls her eyes— “the family gathering has grown enough we needed to add a second picnic table out back.”
The reminder of an original picnic table fills my head.
The one where Stone and I often sat, me trying to sympathize with the shit life kept throwing at him.
The loss of his mom.
The care of his sister.
The slow trickle of abuse from his dad.
In college, Stone worried things had gone from bad to worse, but he didn’t know what he could do about it.
He needed to pass classes and graduate.
He was driven and his vision was to cross the goal line, collect a large check, and help them all.
With me as his best friend at his side, and a girl he loved in his corner, I had no doubt Stone would achieve all he dreamed of accomplishing.
I wasn’t jealous. I was right beside him, only I was fucking every girl who came my way, while reaching for my own golden ticket to a professional football future.
Then everything went to hell.
“So Sundays, I’m home. Making side dishes and covering cleanup while drinking as much wine as I can swallow.” Vale smiles like Sunday is the best day of the week despite all the hustling, and suddenly, I am envious of the Sylvers.
Of family time gathering their favorite people.
Of them spending time with Vale.
Even spending time with Hudson, who I’ve grown closer to through coaching, but wish I could know even better.
The truth is that I can never be part of their world.
“Stone’s a good man,” I blurt, releasing twenty-plus years of my opinion.
“A better man than me.”
Vale straightens and stares at me.
Her hair now in place.
Her makeup no longer smudged.
Her clothes righted.
“Why would you say that?”
“Because I fucking slept with Bailey.” It’s the same confession I shouted at my best friend in his front yard, needing his forgiveness when I didn’t have a right to ask for it.
His world was literally crumbling around him, and I piled another heap of debris on the rubbish of his life.
Vale stares at me, knowing my hard truth.
My shameful and inexcusable decision to sleep with my best friend’s girl.
Bailey and I were both grieving.
We were losing Stone to something neither of us could comprehend.
Taking on the responsibility of six younger siblings when we were hardly out of childhood ourselves.
He was so much more mature than me.
More responsible. More level-headed.
A better person, like I said.
“It happened. You both made a choice. Good or bad. Right or wrong,” Vale says, as if it’s that simple.
“Sometimes we act irrationally through our grief.”
She speaks like she understands.
Like she’s not here to judge me even if she isn’t happy with my indiscretion.
Grief makes strange bedfellows.
Like Bailey Cummins coming to my room, both of us devastated and leaning on each other, which led to us to being naked in my bed.
And then to add broken bricks to the already crumbled building, she was pregnant.
One time. They teach you that shit in sex education as a kid.
I had not believed it.
Condoms. The pill. No way through that kind of protection.
But Bailey had been sick the week before we were together and taking prescription antibiotics.
She claimed her and Stone hadn’t had sex in a month.
She was lonely and sad and none of it was an excuse for what we did, where we ended up or what the future flipped on us.
“I married her,” I remind Vale.
“She’s the mother of my kid.”
Josh.
The reason I wouldn’t ever change any of it.
Despite my deep remorse over imploding a life-long friendship, severing family ties, and marrying Bailey, I could never ever regret my son.
Never .
Josh was an entirely different kind of mess I couldn’t tackle with Vale right now.
Not while we were discussing the destruction with Stone.
“And you divorced her because something was never right between the two of you.” Vale glares at me, strong in her conviction, although we’ve never discussed the reason behind my failed marriage.
“And you brought Josh here. To Rogue River. To home and family.” Vale points at the floor, like coming back here was some kind of atonement for what I’d done, and not me tucking my tail and hanging my head for the wrong I’d done.
Sterling Falls had been our initial destination, but I couldn’t live in the same town as Stone, as the Sylver family, so I selected the next one over and raised my son here.
“You came back for—” She falters and clamps her mouth shut.
As much as I want to know what else she thinks I came back for, I’m equally afraid of some misplaced misconception she might have about me.
I’m not a worthy person.
A crush , she’d admitted the night of the concert.
She has blinders on, not seeing me for the villain I am in her family’s history .
“I don’t think we should keep doing this.” I stand taller, shocking myself as well as Vale with the sudden decision, even as my stomach pitches and my chest squeezes.
“Don’t say that.” She steps toward me, but I step back, needing to keep some distance before I do something stupid, like pull her to me and beg her to never leave me.
Beg for forgiveness I shouldn’t ask from her.
Put her in a position where she feels she must choose me or them, and it will never be me.
She should never pick me.
“I have to go,” I lie, glancing at the clock on my stove, like I have some pending appointment when I simply need to get out of my house, away from all the memories that cover every corner here.
Away from her.
Vale has been like a new roof over an old worn one, once neglected, weathered and battered.
She was shelter and protection and a revival I hadn’t known I’d longed for.
But now, I need to move on. For her own good.