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Jo Ellen’s smile faltered. Her loose ends with Travis were tied, yes. And the outcome there was better than she’d ever imagined. Door definitely closed.
But her outcome with Cooper didn’t feel so satisfying and freeing. She wanted him back.
“Yeah.” She leaned down to kiss the top of still-snoozing Brand’s head. “I think I’ve had enough of this reunion though.”
Emma Leigh’s eyes filled with sympathetic knowledge. “Are you going to go see him now?”
This time, there was no question who he was. “No. I…I’m going home.” And she didn’t mean back to her parents’ place.
She belonged in Dallas. There, at least her work depended on her. Although love definitely wasn’t her forte, she could focus on her job.
As she climbed into her car, unbidden tears rushed to her eyes. She had no idea why she had to start crying now. It was as if her body knew she had needed to hold herself together until she got through the reunion, but now that it was over, the strain was more than she could take. Squinting through the wet blur, she drove back to her parents’ house and packed her bags.
She refused to wait around until Sunday to leave Tommy Creek. If Cooper didn’t love her, then there was nothing here for her.
She’d taken the risk she’d been so afraid to take, and she’d failed. She’d gotten her heart broken and lost an amazing man. But strangely enough, she didn’t regret it. She knew she was better off having spent a week in his arms than never having been with him at all. Instead of crushing her, he’d healed everything Travis had broken.
As she drove out of town, she couldn’t help but pass his farm. Shades firmly planted on her face and her packed
bags securely stowed in her trunk, she gripped her shaking fingers tighter around the steering wheel when she caught sight of his combine slowly trudging across one of his cornfields. Memories of climbing inside the cab with him rocked through her.
She pulled to the side of the road and simply watched him harvest his crops. He was such a hard-working farmer, such an honorable man to fill his father’s spot in order to look after his lonely mother.
Someday, he’d make some lucky woman a devoted husband and become a dedicated, dependable father to her children.
Jo Ellen’s chest hurt just thinking about it, because that woman wouldn’t be her.
She broke into tears all over again. Unable to bear watching him work a moment longer, she sniffed, wiped at her wet eyes and put her car into gear. She cried the entire way back to Dallas.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A month later
Rio’s bar and grill wasn’t very crowded when Cooper pushed his way inside. He’d finally finished the corn harvest this evening.
The year before, Thad had been starting to decline and Coop had done most of the work himself, asking his dad for advice and guidance more often than not. But this year, he’d mucked through without even that.
He’d stood in the middle of the last freshly picked field and waited for that unfailing moment of achievement to fill him. He always experienced it when he finished a long project. He liked looking out over everything he’d accomplished and attaining some satisfaction, a sense of completion.
But today, he’d only felt regret, regret his father hadn’t been around to share any of the glory, regret Jo Ellen was gone and couldn’t celebrate the end of his harvest with him, regret he had no one but a lonely, heart-broken mother left to live with.
After returning home, he’d spent a quiet hour with Loren at the supper table. She made his favorite dessert, chocolate chip cookies. But the fresh pastries had only tasted stale in his mouth. After thanking her for the meal and pressing a quick kiss to her temple, he left her in the living room, watching 48 Hours Mystery.
He wanted to get so rip-roaring drunk he forgot about everything depressing in his life, drunk enough he couldn’t picture Jo Ellen’s face in his mind whenever he put his head to a pillow tonight. He just wanted to see the blissful, blank darkness on the insides of his eyelids.
Ignoring the rowdy dart game going on over by the abandoned pool table in full progress when he entered, Coop headed straight to the bar.
“Double bourbon and coke,” he ordered.
As soon as Rio placed the glass in front of him, Coop commenced to chug. One after another.
Above the bar, the television played 48 Hours Mystery, and he experienced a niggle of guilt, wondering if he should’ve stayed home with Mama. She was probably lonely as all get out, just like him. He’d been so busy picking corn, leaving the house each morning before daybreak and stumbling in around midnight, she hadn’t even had him to talk to these past few weeks.
But the edgy restlessness inside him drew him out of the house. He just needed a drink. So that’s what he ordered again and again as soon as his previous glass ran dry. He wasn’t sure how many times he re-ordered, but poor Rio had long lost hope of trying to shoot the shit with him. He obviously recognized how much Cooper wanted solitude.
The evening waned on, and his Evan Williams finally started to go to his head, fogging his thoughts into pleasant fuzz. Just a couple more and he’d find that happy, numb void where he could escape from even himself.
“Yo, Coop,” a female voice called across the room. “We’re starting a new game over here. You want in?”
