Page 29 of Second Chance

15

Massage Therapy

[Mati]

Doing yardwork over the weekend, I hurt my back. Pulling weeds. Churning mulch. Raking leaves. It’s a process in the early fall of the mountains, and something I enjoy doing for the outdoor exertion, but it wreaks havoc on my body. I try to stay physically fit with volleyball coaching and all. I can’t encourage the girls to keep in shape if I don’t, but yardwork can be my downfall, especially with the gusto I used to yank, pull, and prod in my frustration over Denton. So, I call Hollilyn.

A little-known secret about Hollilyn Abernathy—she wanted to be a massage therapist.

“I like making people feel good,” she once told me, although this might have been more information than I needed. She even went to school for it but didn’t have the funds to continue the classes. Her dream had been to open a shop here in Blue Ridge, but we don’t have the population for a large clientele. She would have to go to another city—a bigger one—with an actual spa, but she stayed here instead. A select few know of her skill, and she comes when you call. Thank goodness.

The trouble is, her belly is getting larger, being roughly two months out from having my first grandbaby. I’m excited, but sometimes it makes me sad to think Chris will miss the birth. He loved babies, and he talked about being a grandfather although I was nowhere near ready for this next phase in our lives. Jax got Hollilyn pregnant after Chris’s death, obviously, and I worry he sought solace in Hollilyn but didn’t mean to make it a long-term relationship. Fatherhood is forever, and Jax knows better than to leave this baby. Still, I worry about his commitment to the mother. Some days I feel sorry for her instead of my own son. I don’t want him leading her on, but I also don’t have evidence he is.

“Let them be,” my son Jordan says of his twin. “Not everyone is marriage material.” Jordan married his Maggie soon after he graduated college. Hollilyn’s pregnancy has been bittersweet for Maggie as she’s been wanting—and trying—for a child, whereas Hollilyn got knocked up on the first night. Again, too much information.

When Hollilyn arrives, she tells me to lay on the floor, on my stomach. She says she’ll just kneel next to me. I feel bad having her get down to my level, but I don’t know what else to do, and the knot in my back is tight. As she begins to work her magic, I’m slipping into the comfort of her deep-rubbing fingers and the silence of the room. However, I knew it wouldn’t last long.

“So, who’s the man from the other night?”

I want to play it off, but there’s no doubt I made a small scene pushing my way through the crowd to escape the pub. I try anyway. “What man?”

“The one at the diner.” It only takes a second to remember my turnabout when I entered and saw Denton the first time. “You look like you’d seen a ghost.”

“In many ways, I had,” I mutter into the circular pillow holding my face mere inches from the floor.

“He asked quite a bit about you and the Harringtons after you left.”

I could ask Hollilyn how she heard, but the diner knows everything, and she works there.

“He lived next door to us as a kid.”

“Ah, the boy next door.” Her voice singsongs like she knows something I don’t. I remain quiet. “Jax told me about him.”

My head pulls up, forcing my back to curl, and a pinch radiates down my spine. I ignore the pain. “How does Jax know anything about Denton?”

“Said he was his dad’s best friend. Actually, all three of you were best friends. He said his dad told him they were both in love with you, but the luckier man won you over.”

Well, stick me with a hot poker and turn me over. My breath catches in my throat, and I choke as I speak. “What?”

“Jax told me one bit of advice his daddy once told him was treat women with respect but disrespect everything else if you want her bad enough.”

Strange bit of advice coming from Chris who followed the rules to a T, including holding out to have sex with me until we graduated high school and I turned eighteen. Then asking me to marry him the second I was pregnant, wanting to do right by me. He went to my father and apologized, but also begged my daddy for my hand. I don’t think Daddy would have told Chris no.

I’m still contemplating what Hollilyn has told me when she continues.

“Heard he left town shortly after you graduated high school. Followed his dream to be a rockstar. That’s what Dolores says. But Jax thinks Chris asked Denton to leave.”

“Why would he think that?” I’m completely flabbergasted by my son’s opinionated accusation.

“I can’t remember exactly.” Hollilyn pauses and my body tenses, wanting to know more. It can’t be true. Chris would never ask Denton to go. He loved him like the brother he never had. Their bond was strong. Not to mention, the three of us had plans—go to college together, and then we’d raise our families near one another. Chris felt just as betrayed as I did when Denton left. Didn’t he?

The question rattles in my brain as Hollilyn hits a sore spot. She works at the tense muscles along my spine at the moment, and my thoughts wander back to the night after Denton disappeared.

“Why would he do this? Why did he tell me I couldn’t go?”

“Maybe he didn’t want some chick cramping his style on the open road.”

I stared at Chris, disbelieving what he’d said.