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“You…” He didn’t know what to say, what to think. For a split second, all he could see was bright, blinding white before her face wavered back into his vision, fringed with spotty black misery. “You still talk to him,” he stated the obvious. “He has your phone number.”
With a discreet nod, she admitted his accusations were true, since there was obviously no way to deny them. “He showed up at the last house party I hosted in Dallas. He lives there now as some kind of campaign staffer.”
Breath whooshed from his lungs. “You two are in Dallas together?”
Her lips pinched tight. “Not together,” she mumbled. “I didn’t even know he lived there. I hadn’t seen him since he broke up with me that last day I attended Tommy Creek high school.”
“But he has your cell phone number,” Coop insisted, unable to move past that fact. Though his having her number wasn’t the problem. Untermeyer still had a piece of her heart; that was the problem. Cooper flinched, knowing it was true, would probably always be true.
“I…” She took another calming breath, which only made him want to rage. “Yes,” she started in a patient manner. “I gave it to him. He said he needed to talk to me at the party I was hosting, but I was working. It was neither the time nor the place to discuss our past. So I…I thought up the first place we could meet on level ground. At the class reunion.”
He studied her a moment. When he was ten, he’d broken his arm after trying some daredevil stunt on his bicycle. He remembered the pain being so intense his body had gone numb as a defense mechanism. As he studied Jo Ellen, his arms and legs lost all sensation, the numbness claiming him completely.
“You’re getting back together with him?”
She blinked. “What? No!” The insult in her voice should’ve appeased him. It didn’t. It just made him grit his teeth because he knew she had to be lying. “I agreed to meet him once. To talk. Only to talk.”
He frowned, utterly bewildered. “To talk about what?”
Her face filled with color. At first, he thought she was too embarrassed to say. But the color turned a hot, angry hue. “Why does everyone keep asking me that? I don’t know what he wants to discuss, but I know what I want to say to him.”
“And what’s that?” Cooper pressed.
Pinching her face up tight, Jo Ellen narrowed her eyes. “That’s really none of your business.”
Another arrow of betrayal struck him dead center in the chest. He thought they had become confidants over the last few days. He knew he’d certainly told her things he’d never told anyone else, would never tell anyone else. But obviously, she didn’t trust him enough to tell him this…probably because it meant she planned on getting back together with the asshole.
Rubbing at his face furiously with both hands, he made up his mind. He wasn’t going to be his father. He wasn’t going to try loving a woman enough for the both of them. And Jo Ellen’s heart obviously still belonged to her first love.
Cranking on his key and making the engine roar to life, he silently pulled away from the nursing home. The glacial interior of the truck made him roll his window down so he could suck in some refreshing, warm outside air.
On the other side of the cab, Jo Ellen blew out a frustrated sigh. “Cooper, I…I want…I just…I need closure...with Travis. I need to look him in the eye and feel finished. As it is, I don’t…everything’s just so unresolved.”
Because she was still in love with him, no doubt.
“…And I don’t feel as if I can move on with my life and create a full, complete future with myself until I tie up all my loose ends in Tommy Creek.”
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“Loose ends,” he repeated, his eyes narrowing with sharp interest. He glared at her before returning his gaze to the road. “The night you came back, you told me I was an unresolved loose end.”
When she sucked in a guilty breath, his heart sank into his knees. Everything became suddenly, awfully clear. “Oh, I get it. These past few days between us have just been closure for you, haven’t they? Give the dumb farm boy a couple rolls in the hay and he’ll forgive you for whatever slight you think you inflicted on him ten years ago?”
Her mouth dropped open. “That’s not…How could you…Cooper, you’re not being rational.”
Rational was for people who didn’t have a broken heart.
“Well, welcome to the one irrational thing about me, princess.” The sneer in his voice was filled with all the bitterness oozing through his veins.
As he wheeled his truck into her parents’ driveway and jerked to a stop in front of their house, Jo Ellen let out a world-weary sigh. “My God, Cooper. You know I...what happened this week between us…Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re flying off the handle like this because of a stupid phone call.”
Wrapping his fingers tight around the steering wheel, Cooper stared straight ahead out the windshield. A stupid phone call, huh? Is that all this argument was to her?
“You asked me before if your history with him bothered me. Well…” he glanced at her, making sure he kept his features blank. “It does.”
Or rather, it was Untermeyer’s present with her that bothered him. He could deal with what had happened in the past but the past didn’t seem to be over for her.
Drawing in a deep breath as he watched her, Jo Ellen wrinkled her eyebrows with irritation and worry. She blinked a few times, and then choked out. “Wow. You really didn’t like him, did you?”
