AllFreeNovel
Share Us
live with his parents again. Please, God, he hoped he hadn’t thrown them away—
Oh, thank you, Lord.
He jerked the crumpled box out from under a package of disposable razors and dumped a handful into his unstable palm. Damn, he wished he could stop shaking. But seriously, his ultimate teenage fantasy was about to come true. Ten years late or not, nerves wracked him from head to toe.
After stuffing his pockets, he concentrated on stabilizing his breathing. He lifted his gaze to the mirror above the sink and almost jumped out of his skin to find his own reflection staring back. But seriously, he did not feel as if he inhabited his own body. This did not seem real, couldn’t honestly be happening.
Jo Ellen was outside, waiting for him to—
Holy shit, she was out there, waiting! He kicked his ass into gear.
Heading out of the bathroom, he paused in the hall when he glanced at the linen closet. Wondering if the army green sleeping bag he had used when he would camp out was still on the top shelf, he opened the door and almost wept with relief and nostalgia when he saw it.
How many nights had he wrapped up in this old thing and stared at the stars, wishing he could be lying there with Jo Ellen Rawlings?
“What am I doing?” he muttered under his breath. “This is insane.” If he slept with her, he was only going to fall for her all over again, like he always did, and she was going to break his heart whenever she left.
Like she always did.
But if he didn’t go to her right now, he’d spend the rest of his life—just as he’d spent the last ten years—wondering what if.
He reached up and snagged the sleeping bag.
“Camping out in the hayloft again?”
Cooper nearly pissed himself when his mother’s voice startled him from behind. He whirled around, expecting a lecture about pre-marital sex. But then, Loren had no idea he had a woman waiting for him in the loft or how condoms lined both his pockets.
Her smile was soft even if it was filled with bitter sadness. It reminded him why he was on the outs with her in the first place, and made him wonder if he should return to the barn at all. His mother had never loved his father, and Jo Ellen didn’t love him. If he did this tonight, he’d end up like just his father, living the rest of his life in unrequited agony.
Once upon a time, he would’ve been proud to follow Thaddeus Gerhardt’s footsteps. But these days, the idea of becoming the wrinkled old mindless man he visited every week at the nursing home scared the bejesus out of him.
“It’s just like old times.” The aging skin around Loren’s eyes crinkled as she smiled. “Every full moon in the summer, out you’d troop with your sleeping bag and lantern.”
Conflicted as he always felt when he looked at her lately, wanting to return to normal around her but unable to do so, he lifted his eyebrows. “Where is that old lantern?”
A mischievous spark lit her eyes, showing him a glimpse of the woman she used to be before his father had taken ill. “It’s sitting on the kitchen table, waiting for you…fresh full of oil.”
His stomach cramped with misery. He knew her eager over-helpfulness wasn’t just some ploy to gain his good favor. Loren Gerhardt had always been this unselfishly sweet. But it made him feel awful because he knew he should thank her, yet he still couldn’t utter the words. With a terse nod, he brushed past.
“Cooper,” she started, turning with him to follow him down the hall.
He couldn’t do this now, wasn’t sure if he ever could. “I’ll see you at breakfast,” he mumbled, picking up his pace.
Chapter Fifteen
He never should’ve gone to the house.
Jo Ellen realized it the moment she watched him bang his back door shut and disappear inside, because as soon as she was left alone, reality returned…with a vengeance. The sweet song of nature around her became a warning; foolish actions ahead, foolish actions ahead. Someone will get hurt.
The thing was she’d love to start something with Cooper Gerhardt. Badly. He was kind, considerate, and easy to get along with, too handsome to keep her eyes off of. But starting anything with him would probably be the biggest mistake of her life. She had let her morals get out of hand ten years ago, and she’d paid the price. She’d lost a baby, not to mention all her self-confidence, and she hadn’t had a whole lot of confidence to begin with. She wasn’t the tough type to bounce back after getting bruised.
Was it any wonder she avoided men to this day? Since Travis, she hadn’t held a relationship for longer than a month. But she just couldn’t do it. There was too much risk; with Cooper, that risk would be too enormous to handle. If—or more aptly when—he left her, she wouldn’t be able to fault him for being a jerk like Travis had been. It’d all be on her. He was too perfect. And she wasn’t strong enough to take on that kind of blame, of knowing something was so intrinsically wrong with her she couldn’t hold a relationship the way her twin could, couldn’t be loved the way she ached to be.
It was safer to stop this right now, no matter how much Cooper made her wish for more.
Yet even as she steeled herself against further temptation, Jo Ellen’s resolve faltered when she heard him on the ladder below, climbing up. A light glowed from the hole in the hayloft floor before his head appeared, and the golden strands of his gorgeous hair glinting off the lantern beam. He grinned when he saw her.
She twisted her hands at her waist when he tugged a sleeping bag up after him. Not only had he gotten protection but he’d snagged a few creature comforts along the way…for her. Now she felt worse for what she was about to do
