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Not wanting him to know how much his words delighted her, she bumped her shoulder against his. “Are you always this much of a charmer?”
“Charmer?” His brows lifted. “What? I’m just being honest.”
She closed her eyes and sighed, too blissfully happy to respond. The comfortable silence stretched between them, and her relaxed body grew drowsy.
Totally unwilling to drop off to sleep just yet and wanting the night to last forever, she opened her eyes. “Talk to me.”
He yawned again and rubbed his scalp, tousling his hair into a sexy mess in the process. “I thought I was.”
“Well, keep talking. I don’t want to go to sleep yet. The faster I go to sleep, the faster I’ll wake up.” And for some reason, she feared the morning would diminish the magic between them.
He seemed to understand because his voice softened. “Talk about what?”
“I don’t care,” she whispered. “Anything.”
“Okay.” After a second to ponder what he wanted to say, he asked, “Who do you think would be faster in a race, the Roadrunner or Lightning McQueen off the movie Cars?”
She gave him a strange frown. “You chose that to discuss? Really?”
He sent her a shuttered shrug. “Would you rather I bring up Sunday?”
“No,” she was quick to answer; anything but Sunday. When Sunday came, she’d have to go home…to Dallas. She’d have to say goodbye…to him. “I definitely don’t want to talk about that.”
He repeated the shrug, suddenly sober. “Or maybe I could’ve brought up Travis Untermeyer.”
She shivered. “Why would you even say that name?”
For a third time, Cooper lifted one shoulder, but this move looked stiffer, more uncomfortable. “I don’t know.” He glanced away. “He was your first serious boyfriend.”
“Ten years ago,” she muttered acerbically. Yet even as she spoke, even she knew there was more to her relationship with Travis than that. She wouldn’t have agreed to talk to him at the reunion if the only thing between them was merely dating for a few years.
Cooper realized it too. He stared at her hard. “Ten years or not, you two made a child together. Even though she didn’t survive, she’ll always tie you to him.”
A breeze blew into the opened hayloft entrance and Jo Ellen briskly rubbed her hands up and down her arm, alarmed by how much the temperature had dropped with the setting of the sun. Lips trembling from the chill—and from their conversation—she studied him through the dim lamp light. “Does that bother you?”
He didn’t answer, just studied her before he evaded. “Does it bother you?”
“Of course,” she snapped. She didn’t want to be tethered to Travis in any way, especially in that way.
Again, Cooper simply watched her, not responding. It made her uneasy, made her want to demand to know what he was thinking.
“You know, I never, in all my years of growing up imagined I’d become a teenage pregnancy case. I thought that kind of thing only happened to naughty, loose girls who slept their way through the entire football team without protection. It just…it never seemed like something that would—or could—happen to me. And when it did, it still didn’t seem real. Or maybe it seemed so real I just couldn’t process it. I don’t know. I was so ashamed of what everyone would think of me. One of the reasons I wanted to go stay with my aunt in Reno my senior year was because I feared all my friends would be able to look in my eyes and know what had happened. And now…now I’m just ashamed I was ever ashamed of hiding my baby’s existence.”
Slowly, Cooper reached out and brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “You look cold.”
Opening his arm, he beckoned her close. She scurried into his embrace and he resituated them until he’d tucked her inside his arms, her back pressed to his chest as they spooned. He rested his chin on her shoulder and sighed as they studied the stars from the hayloft. “I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for you.”
Wrapped up in his arms, she was glad that’s all he said, glad he hadn’t put forth his opinion, or any kind of censor, because all she’d really needed him to do was sit there and listen to her spill her soul, then pull her into his arms afterward and hold her. He offered her unconditional acceptance where she hadn’t been able to accept herself.
Swallowing, Jo Ellen closed her eyes, feeling more at peace inside than she had in a long time.
“I’d definitely vote for the Roadrunner,” she said.
His soft chuckle warmed her. “And why’s that?”
With a shrug, she hummed out a sound of indecision. “I don’t know. I guess I just like the classic cartoon characters. They’re…traditional.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s why I’d cheer for the Roadrunner too. We must be two regular ol’ peas in a pod.”
