Chapter Nine
Bella
“Where are you?” my friend Pepper whispers as I disarm the alarm and sneak out of the house I was trying to sneak into two days ago.
The wind blows cool and unexpectedly across the lake, raising goosebumps on my arms. “I’m on my way to get my bike.”
“Your bike?” she says, pausing abruptly. “You’re going to have to be way clearer. It’s almost midnight, so why are you getting your bike?”
“I’m at the lake. I just left Clint’s lake house. We had sex, and then he said all these really nice things, took me back to the lake, we had cocoa, and we painted. Well, I painted, and he just watched me.”
“Like… a weirdo,” her voice raises, “or like he sweetly watched you? Also… you had sex with him?”
“I know,” I whisper, though my excitement is seeping through with every syllable.
“It was great, like the best experience of my life. He just took me… like he needed my body, and yeah, the sweet kind of watching. The kind where he just wanted to be in my space, watching me do something that I love.” I shift the phone on my shoulder as I creep down the porch steps, needing my hands for the railings.
“He thinks I’m asleep next to him right now.
That’s why I’m being so quiet. If he knew I was sneaking out, I don’t know what he’d do. ”
“Wait,” she stumbles over her words as though she’s trying to wrap her head around everything, “so you’re running away from him? You just said the sex was amazing, and he’s so sweet. This doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. Are you okay? I’m worried about you.”
“Yes!” I shout, angry with myself. “I’m going home. He’s everything, Pepper. For a girl like me… he’s everything. When I do the weird things I do, he just smiles. When I need help, he just helps me. And the way he looks at me—” My pussy throbs so hard that I can’t finish that thought.
“So, then what’s the problem. Clearly you have a good thing going. You can’t run out in the middle of the night and expect everything to be fine the next morning.”
That’s… a fair point.
“I just checked the tracker. My sister is at my mom’s house. They’ve both been texting me all night. They’re worried and I need to tell them where I was before they send out a search party.”
Pepper swallows so hard I hear the gulp slide down over the sound of the wind. “Jeez, girl. I’d give anything for Nathan to take me like that. I mean, we have sex, but, I don’t know, tonight was awful.”
“What happened?”
“Oh,” she sighs, “another fight. Afterwards I talked to my family about possibly waiting another six months, and then they hit me with so many questions I wasn’t prepared to answer that I pulled my comment back immediately. So, now… I’m trying to figure my life out.”
“Figure life out how?” I ask, jumping on the bike I left leaned against a mossy coated pine two days ago.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Right now, I’m wondering if the circus has any openings. I’ve always liked beards. Maybe I should grow one. Do people still pay to see bearded women?”
I chuckle as another cool breeze blows my hair back away from my face, with it a woodsy scent that reminds me of Clint.
Every part of me wants to turn around and cuddle back into the warmth of his enormous frame.
“You shouldn’t have to run. You’re not asking permission. You’re telling them the truth.”
The second I say the words, I know I should take my own advice. No one else runs my life. I do. If I have feelings for Clint, I should tell the truth. I don’t need to run.
“I know,” Pepper sighs. “I just… I don’t know what I’m thinking anymore. I’ll figure it out, though. You… you need to take your own advice.”
“I was just thinking that.”
“Your sister will get over it. They broke up years ago, and you didn’t plan for this. Plus, she put you in this position. Had she left well enough alone or done it herself, you wouldn’t have even been involved.”
“None of that’s going to matter when she’s lecturing me,” I groan, pedaling toward my mom’s house. “I’ll be fine. Thanks for answering. I know it’s late and you’ve got a lot going on.”
“Oh, I’m never sleeping again anyway. You can call me anytime. Your life is way more interesting than mine these days.”
“That trip to Vegas still stands,” I say, turning the corner toward the old road that leads to my mom’s farmhouse. We don’t own a farm, but we have the land and the house for it.
“Yeah? Maybe I’ll go total cliché and do the runaway bride thing. Maybe there’s a craps table that needs a drunken slut to throw herself at anyone willing to show her some attention.” She can’t help but laugh at her own joke.
It’s nice to hear. It’s been a while.
“Honestly, though, I bet I’d gamble my savings away, be kicked out for vomiting all the free drinks, and spend the rest of the night handing out flyers for some alien based peepshow before anyone even realizes I’m gone.” Her voice perks as she says, “That sounds fun, right?”
“I’m here if you need to talk,” I say, squeezing my cell between my shoulder and the lobe of my ear as I pedal and squint into the dark night.
“Same. Love you!”
“Love you too,” I echo, tucking the phone back into my purse, my bike wobbling as I try to maintain control.
I feel so bad for Pepper. I need to make time to get over there and talk some sense into her sooner rather than later.
I can’t imagine how clouded her head must be.
She and Nathan have always had a rough relationship, but they always made up, so I assumed they were having growing pains like a lot of couples do. I had no idea it had gotten this bad.
Right now, though, I have to deal with my own problems, and given the fact that it’s nearly one in the morning and my sister’s car is still parked in my mother’s driveway, I think the problems are about to get bigger.
For some reason, the women in my family don’t believe in privacy. To them, my business is their business. The sad thing is that I know it doesn’t work in reverse. I’ve tried a time or two before, and it’s clear that I’m on a need-to-know level of clearance.
They’re both sitting at the dining room table when I step into the old farmhouse my mom inherited from my grandma.
If my upbringing weren’t so tarnished with defining events, I may have wanted a house just like it.
The sun-washed siding. The tall, narrow windows.
The wrap-around porch that creaks under your foot.
The place is imperfectly perfect and sitting out on ten open acres.
I could have twelve gardens out here, each of them themed to a season.
My little fall garden for gourds and carrots.
Winter for rosemary and garlic. Summer for tomatoes and basil.
Oh, and I could even do a spring garden with yarrow and snap peas.
Maybe Clint and I will have space like this someday and our kids will be able to help with the harvesting.
God, I’m really getting ahead of myself.
I need to focus on what’s happening in the next ten minutes, not what’s happening in fantasyland. The second I walk in that door, I’m about to get an earful.
Inside Mom’s old farmhouse, the space is equally nostalgic.
Heck, it’s my grandma’s dining room table still sat in the center of the kitchen, her glass-shaded pendant hanging low over the table.
The green has faded, and the edges rubbed to bare steel, but it only adds to the charm of the place… or the dread, given the situation.
“Oh my God!” my mother exclaims from the end of the table. “We thought you were dead!”
“Dead? Why would I be dead?” I’m not sure why, but it’s a relief that they thought I was dead. I’d have figured news would’ve gotten back to my sister by now about what happened at the bar earlier, and I don’t know what lies I could’ve conjured to make sense of that one.
My stomach churns. I need to repent my sins.
It’s that or I need to stay absolutely quiet forever and never tell a single soul.
Clint and I would need to leave town, start over where no one knows us.
If we go far enough and never tell anyone, we can totally live off whatever the garden grows for the foreseeable future and live completely carefree.
It may be na?ve, but I have to believe that’s a possibility, right? I mean, what’s left for me here? I can’t spend the rest of my life catering to my less than grateful family, every waking moment longing for one more day with the man of my dreams.
I take in a deep breath and let it out quickly. It’s heavier than I expected and June feels it.
“Where were you?” Her tone is flat, and her arms are crossed over her chest.
Maybe she does know. Maybe she’s playing stupid.
She could be giving me the opportunity to be a good person, to confess before she blows me to smithereens and tells the whole town that their preschool teacher is a sick, little slut who calls her sister’s ex Daddy.
My stomach tightens. “Sorry. I, ugh—”
“You turned off your location,” my sister presses. “Does that mean you and Dillon had fun together?”
“No, we didn’t. He’s, ugh, not really the guy for me, but—”
“Then why’d you turn your location off? It’s Saturday night, and you’re a single woman. You shouldn’t be turning off your location. Anything could happen. We need to know where you are. Dillon is a nice guy at work, but he could be a crazy psycho after sunset.”
“Yeah, my phone must be messed up or something. I didn’t intentionally turn it off.” I wonder how many teenagers told this lie tonight. Did they all say it with the same stupid tone in their voice, because I’m embarrassed for all of us if they did.
I really need to get a handle on myself. I don’t owe anyone an answer. I’m a grown woman. If I want to be out with a grown man, that’s my choice. My life is my own and these two are going to have to accept that sooner or later.
“Your car is still at the bar.”
Shit!
“Mom and I took a drive over there when you weren’t answering your phone. Who did you leave with if not Dillon?”