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“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you have a productive… conversation?” she asked.
“Probably not the one you think I should’ve had,” I quipped.
“So, he still doesn’t know about Paris?”
I opened my eyes once I got my emotions under control, and I saw my mother shaking her head. My parents adored Flynn back in college, and my father always told me he was the one I was meant to be with. My mother thought he was the epitome of a southern gentleman, and my father knew he was the only one who wouldn’t try to tame the wild spirit that was my soul.
“He rides the buck. He don’t tame it,” my father always said.
And he was right. No matter what I did, I did with all the passion in the world and Flynn never once tried to stop that. He’d laugh and sometimes poke fun at my sincerity and passion, but he never tried to stop it or talk me out of it.
“You owe it to him to tell him, Chelsea. You broke that poor boy’s heart.” As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I know my mother was right.
“Yeah, and that’s all that seems to get brought up,” I murmured.
“Well, what else is there to say?” she asked.
“How about the fact that I hurt just as much when I walked away?”
“Then, why did you walk away?”
“Because Paris called and offered me my dream job, Mom!” I exclaimed. Why was she not able to understand that?
“And why did that require not telling Flynn?”
“Because I knew if he asked me to stay that I wouldn’t go!”
I felt my breath hitch in my throat before tears sprang to my eyes. I knew my mother meant well, but I’d never really talked about it with them. I never talked about how leaving Flynn that night really did alter me in some way, and how it altered the fashions I designed while I was working up the ranks in Paris. A little piece of him was in every design, and every fashion that went on a man I imagined on his body.
Images of his chiseled form came wafting back to my mind, and the sounds of last night began to echo off the corners of my memory before my mother’s voice broke through my musings and told me something that absolutely rooted me to the kitchen chair.
“Flynn came to look for you after you left. Showed up on our doorstep looking like a wet dog trying to figure out where you were. We had no idea what he was talking about until we found the note in your room about the job in Paris, but by the time we came back to show him the note Flynn had taken off for his car and skidded out of the driveway, and that sweet boy never did come back.”
“He… he came here?” I breathed as the blood slowly drained from my face.
“The day after graduation, yes,” she nodded.
I was stunned. Flynn had come to my house looking for me. After leaving him cold and alone in his dorm room after all of those graduation parties, he ran to my parents’ house looking for me. I felt a wave of guilt rise up in my throat, and I couldn’t stand to take another sip of my coffee. Tears ricocheted down my cheeks, and in any other moment in my life, I’d be embarrassed to cry in front of my mother. She was the epitome of emotional reserve, and I’d never even so much as heard her yell unless she was shouting across the barn at my father. But at that point, I didn’t care. I’d just left Flynn to wake up naked and cold and alone in a trailer five years after I’d done the exact same thing to him, and I felt like I was going to be sick.
“You owe him an explanation, sweetheart. If anything, to clear your own conscience.”
I didn’t know if I could tell him. How could I look at the only boy I’d ever loved and tell him I didn’t trust myself around him? How could I look at the man he had blossomed into and tell him that he’d tamed the strong, untamable woman? How in the world was I supposed to look at the man I’d now left twice to wake up alone that the reason I left him behind was because I didn’t think he could come with me if I offered. That I didn’t feel he had a place in Paris.
How in the world could I possibly tell Flynn that the reason I left the way I did was because I wasn’t strong enough to do it any other way?
I felt the bile rise to the top of my throat before I pushed my coffee mug away, and when I shoved myself away from the kitchen table and headed for the staircase I knew, deep down, I had to talk to him.
I had to tell him everything.
I knew, deep down, my mother was right.
Chapter 7: Flynn
I dragged myself back to my ranch and started feeding all the animals I had stabled up. My horses were begging for food, and I felt a pang of guilt that I left them be for so long. I had no intentions of staying overnight in that trailer, much less with some piece of ass, blast from my past. So, I decided to feed them some dessert for breakfast, give them plenty of sweetened water to drink, and went ahead and opened their stalls so they could get some fresh air in the pasture. I was supposed to be giving lessons today, but I walked on up to my home and decided to cancel everything for the day. I could tell already that my mind just wasn’t in the right place.
My mind kept flying back to last night. Sure, I’d missed her. That woman lit up my world back in college. I may not have been anywhere near a virgin when I met her, but she sure as hell made me feel like one. Everything was a new experie
