“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I ran instead of staying. I ran instead of letting myself be loved.”
I looked up at the clock behind the bar. An hour had passed since I’d fled the Stonehouse. Kick was probably frantic by now. Searching. Calling everyone he knew. Tearing apart the county, trying to find me.
Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he’d finally had enough. Maybe watching me bolt from his family had shown him what everyone else already knew—that I was too broken, too damaged, too scarred to be worth the effort.
If that was true, I would survive it. I would be devastated, but I would survive. I had the baby. I had my work at Whitmore. I had a life I’d built on my own, independent of my father’s money and approval.
I shook my head and rested one hand on my stomach. “Your daddy isn’t the kind of man who gives up, and I shouldn’t be, either.”
I raised my glass, finished the ginger ale, then walked over to the bar to get my card.
What I was doing—waiting for him—was bullshit. He shouldn’t have to find me. I should find him. Tell him how sorry I was. Pray he gave me another chance. Us another chance.
“I’ll take the check now, please.”
“It’s on the house, Ms. Van Orr.”
Behind me, I heard the door open and felt the warmth of the light that had spilled in. Or maybe it wasn’t the sun’s rays at all. Maybe it was the man I felt walking up to me. His warmth.
15
KICK
Snapper drove into the parking lot, and I had the door open before the truck stopped moving.
“Go get her,” he said.
I didn’t look back. I crossed the gravel lot in four strides and pushed through the door of the bar, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.
She was standing with her back to me, one hand resting on the worn wood. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. She wore the same clothes she’d had on at the Stonehouse, but seeing her now, all I could think was how much I wanted to strip them off her, lay her down on our bed, join our bodies together, and pound my love into her so hard it would fill her up and she’d never forget it.
The door swung shut behind me, and the bartender’s eyes flicked up, then back to the card in his hand. Isabel didn’t turn around.
But I saw her shoulders shift. Saw the slight tilt of her head, the way her hand stilled on the counter.
She knew I was there.
I crossed the room in silence, weaving past the empty tables and scattered patrons who didn’t look up from their drinks. When I reached her, I didn’t say anything. I just slid my arms around her waist from behind and she rested against my chest.
She fit there like she’d been made for it. Like all those months of circling each other, of pretending we didn’t feel this, had just been the long way home.
I pressed my mouth to her ear. “Goddamn, I love you, Isabel Van Orr.”
A sound escaped her—half laugh, half sob. She still didn’t turn around. She just relaxed into me, letting me take her weight, letting me hold her up.
“Take me home, Kick.”
I tightened my arms around her, pressed a kiss to her temple, and breathed her in.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
The bartender slid her card across the counter. I reached past her to grab it, tucking it into her purse without letting go of her waist. She turned in my arms then, finally facing me, and I saw the tear tracks on her cheeks and the redness around her eyes.
“I was coming to find you,” she said. “I was going to?—”
I kissed her. Right there, in the middle of the bar, with the afternoon light slanting through the windows and the other patrons pretending not to watch. I kissed her because I’d spent the time since I found out she’d run from the Stonehouse thinking I might not get to do it again, and because, now, she was here and in my arms.
When I stepped away, her hands fisted in my jacket.
