His cheeks flush with a blush as he reaches up and grabs the back of his neck with a small grin.
“Yeah, time kinda flipped the script on that and the irony is not lost on me that I’m now the law chasing after high school pranksters.” His smiling hazel eyes slide past me to Chance and change to wariness. “Um, I’m good if you want to push lunch off, man.”
I answer for him with a shake of my head. “No, no! I was just leaving. It was nice to see you again, Jackson.”
I hear Chase curse behind me but I slide around the big man in front of me and out through the door before he has a chance to stop me. I dodged a bomb there but as I look down at the crumpled check in my hand I know it’s just the first of many that the Kingston boys will be throwing my way.
Rain
Maggie meets me in the park for lunch and dumps a soft-sided cooler bag next to me on the bench.
“How are you doing, hun? Did you get what you needed from the trailer?” She asks with a look of sympathy as she starts unpacking the cooler. She hands me a Tupperware dish filled with a beautiful Greek salad and a fork.
“It was hard going in there but I got his clothes. I feel so damn guilty that I never came home to visit. It kills me that he died all alone.”
She sets a metal travel mug beside me as she opens her own salad with a nod of understanding.
“He was so proud of you, Rain. Every time he came back from visiting you in the city, he would come see me and just gush about your life there. He might not have known why you left but he was proud of the life you were building.”
Tears burn at the back of my eyes and I reach for the tumbler to take a drink and then moan at how damn good the coffee inside of it is. I hold up the salad and coffee with a smile.
“You are going to spoil me with all this, Mags. Thanks for taking care of me.”
She lifts one shoulder and then glances down the street at the limited number of open businesses with an annoyed look.
“I just wish there were more options here for food and drinks. God, even a fucking clothing store of some kind would be nice. I mean, ordering online gets really old when you have to constantly ship things back because they don’t fit. I swear, I love this town but it really needs an infusion of new…everything!”
I hum my agreement as I dive into the best Greek salad I’ve ever eaten and we enjoy the silence of just being together as we finish the meal she made for us. I let my eyes wander over the buildings across from the park and settle on the Broken Spur. Rex owning a bar doesn’t surprise me at all. He’s just the rough and fiery kind of man to run one. At least he was when I knew him. I pull my eyes from his business before memories can swamp me and trail my eyes over the next three storefronts that all have paper-covered windows and for sale and lease signs in the windows. It’s so sad that more and more small businesses can’t make it anymore. The strip of businesses that used to be the heart of small towns is drying up faster and faster.
I help Maggie pack the cooler back up with our empty containers but keep a death grip on my coffee tumbler making her laugh as she heads back to work. I can’t stand the thought of going back to my hotel room so I just stay sitting on that bench nursing my coffee for the rest of the afternoon while I try and figure out what I’m going to do next.
I ignore the buzzing of my cell in my purse as it goes off again and again. Jason started trying to reach me this morning and hasn’t let up since. I have nothing to say to him. As far as I’m concerned, he is no longer a factor in my life. But that brings on bigger questions. I have no home and now I have no planned future. So what does that mean for me? What do I want to do? Where do I want to go with my life?
A sick feeling sours my stomach at the realization that at twenty-eight years old, I have no idea what I want my life to look like. I pull in a shaky breath when it hits me that I don’t even know who I am anymore or who I want to be. I don’t know how this happened. I used to be so sure of myself, confident, but now all I can see is a great blank space in front of me and I have no idea how to fill it. I let myself be overtaken by being Jason’s future wife and everything that came with being married to such a successful man that I forgot to remember to be me as an individual.
With one last look at the empty buildings across from me, I push to my feet and walk slowly back to my lonely, empty hotel room with no idea of what comes next. I push it all to the side for now and try and just focus on laying my daddy to rest and surviving the next few days here in this town.
Luke
The three of us join the decent sized crowd that has come out to the cemetery for Charlie Rawlins’ funeral service. We stick to the back but with my height I have a good view of Rain’s back as she stands alone, facing the coffin that is waiting to be lowered into the ground. I can see the small hitches in her shoulders telling me she’s crying and it makes me want to push through the people separating us and pull her into my arms to tell her how sorry I am for her loss. It doesn’t matter that it’s been ten years or that she destroyed me when she ran away. I know what it’s like to stand in her shoes and say goodbye to a parent. In my case, it was both of mine at once and I’ll never forget how alone and lost I felt…still do, to a degree.
It was Rain that clawed me out of that darkness so long ago with the help of Rex and Chase. She was such a sassy little thing back then with her blond braids, dirty knees, and determination to show me that I wasn’t all alone. I swear if it wasn’t for her and the boys, I would have disappeared into myself and just faded away. That’s why her abandoning me…us, ten years ago after so many years of her promising she would always be there for me destroyed me so badly.
I clench my fingers to force myself to stay back from her and blow out a breath. I can feel Rex and Chase shoot me concerned looks but I set my jaw and give them a jerking nod to let them know I’m good. They know how hard being here is for me. Not just because of her, but because it’s another funeral for a parent that brings up so much old damage.
I try and focus on the passages the reverend is reading but it’s just a background buzz in my ears as I study her. I finally force my eyes from her hitching back and focus on the coffin. Charlie Rawlins wasn’t just Rain’s dad, he meant something to me. He didn’t speak all that much but he showed me the kind of man he was with his kind hands.
I was eight when my parents died in a car accident. My uncle, the twins’ father, took me in but wasn’t happy about it and made sure I knew at every turn that I was unwanted and a burden. The boys and Rain tried hard to counter that but I was a lost and sad child that didn’t feel like I had a place in the world. Rain always promised that she was my family, that she’d never leave me even as a little girl.
I scrub at my eyes as a memory hits me. I had been missing my parents hard, Uncle Lannister had heard me crying and he backhanded me across the face. That was the first time I ran across the fields to Rain’s window. I threw small pebbles against it until she pushed it open. I’ll never forget the way she reached her small arm over the sill without hesitation to help me up and into her room. She was wearing a blue nightgown with white daisies all over it and she smelled like the sweetest strawberry shampoo. When she drew back the covers on her twin bed and motioned me in, the pain in my heart eased but it was when she climbed in next to me, took my hand, and squeezed it that made me fall in love with her. I knew even back then at eight years old that Rain Rawlins would be the only girl I would ever love.
I don’t know how much later it was that night but I remember waking up and immediately freezing in terror when her dad opened her door and the light from the hallway washed over us. When he walked into the room and stood over the bed my heart was racing but I glued my eyes shut and tried to keep my breathing slow and steady even though I expected him to haul me out of there and give me a beating for sneaking over and being in Rain’s room without permission. Charlie though, he just rested a work-roughened hand on my head, smoothed back my hair, and then tucked the blanket closer around both of us before leaving.
He never said a word about me being there that night or any of the other nights my demons chased me across that field to her window but it was only a few months later that Rain had a new double bed in her room.
I swallow down the grief that chokes my throat at the memories of all the times Charlie would brace that big hand on my shoulder and give a squeeze of thanks for the chores I’d do around his place. The way his eyes swam with tears when he had to tell me Rain was gone and finally the relief in them when I came back from deployment. Charlie never did say much, but he was one of the best men I’ve ever known.
The service ended while I was lost in memories and I watch as one by one, people stop and offer their condolences to Rain before leaving. Maggie and then Hetter stop by her but Rain shakes her head and they leave too until there’s only the three of us standing behind her. We should go but none of us makes a move to leave. We just stand there and watch as her head drops down and her shoulders shake as she says goodbye to her daddy. We might not want to speak to her but we also can’t bear to leave her without our support whether she wants it or not.
