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“What about your aunt? She didn’t try to get you to stay?”
He’d hardly asked any questions the entire time I’d dumped it all on him. But this one . . . it still hurt. A lot.
“She blamed me for him leaving. He’d convinced her he was something he wasn’t.” I sighed. “I guess he’d convinced me of that too. I—I thought about if we might be something more. But I never really let myself believe that he was interested in anything like that.”
I was only human. One who never had a boyfriend. Not once had I ever felt incomplete because of it. I was always busy focusing on work or school or just trying to get by. Being invisible.
I’d learned my lesson the hard way about what attention could get me.
Teague turned my face so he could look at me.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said with conviction. “I know you know that. You don’t need me to tell you. But I wanted you to hear it from someone who cares a whole lot about you.”
The sincerity etched in every line of his features would have been enough to weaken my knees had I been standing. I felt the power of his words. I felt so many things I’d never experienced before. They were a tumbled torrent inside of me.
I didn’t know how to explain any of it except that I was grateful he’d come into my life, even if it hadn’t been easy from the beginning.
How did I properly thank him for being there? For sticking it out through the chaos. How did I tell him how much it meant to me that he’d listened?
Somehow I’d found the words to share part of my past, yet those two simple ones were stuck in my throat.
Since they wouldn’t come, I did the only thing I knew how. The dogs had taught me how to show affection since they couldn’t speak.
I crawled beside him, turned on my side, wrapped my arm over his middle, and tucked my head against his chest. His heart thumped under my ear.
Teague held me tightly and kissed the top of my head before his breathing evened out.
He understood our way of showing we cared after all.
Chapter Twenty
Teague
“Areyou going to open that envelope this century?”
I paused midway down the stairs, curious how Pepper would answer.
She didn’t say anything right away.
“How long are you going to stand there pretending like you’re not snooping?” Miss Adeline’s aged face peered around the corner.
Did the woman have sonic hearing?
“You weren’t as quiet as you thought,” she said.
“You’ll have to teach me how to sneak up on someone.” I jogged down the rest of the steps.
Pepper was surrounded by dogs as she threw balls and stuffed owls and alligators from the bin of toys beside her. They raced to retrieve. Soon the box was empty and no one wanted to give up what they’d fetched. Apparently tug-of-war was the game they wanted to play.
She obliged even though she didn’t have enough hands. Her easy and natural way with the dogs amazed me yet again. This was what she was meant to be doing.
“I need to go to the Elliotts’ to check on our other friends,” she said to one of them who refused to give up an alligator.
“Keep procrastinating,” Miss Adeline muttered.
“How do you know I haven’t opened it already?” Pepper asked, the question loaded with accusation.
“Because it’s still sitting on the dresser unopened.”
