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“I love that boy. If you think I would do anything to hurt him—”
“I know you love him, you big dummy. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Then—”
“There are a lot of ways to hurt people, Jake. What happens when you leave Macon to go home and go back out on the road? Where will Lennon be then?”
I sigh, finally getting to the root of the problem. I just have no idea how to fix it.
“Is it Lennon you are worried about here, Katie, or you?”
“Jake…” she murmurs unable to deny it.
“Why don’t we just admit the truth here?”
“What’s that?” she whispers so quietly that I can barely hear her.
“I fucked up all those years ago. I hurt you and there’s no trust anymore. You don’t trust me enough to give me another chance.”
She swallows but she doesn’t deny anything I just said. “I’m sorry,” she says instead.
“I am too, sunshine.” I get down on my knees in front of her and put my hands gently on her thighs. It startles her but she doesn’t push my hands away. When I look into her eyes, the fear I see on her face is painful. “Listen, I do have to go back on the road at least this coming year, Katie.”
“I know that. Being a cowboy is who you are. I’ve always known that, Jake. I even knew that when we were planning our future together. I was always competing with a part of you that I couldn’t touch, a part of you that loved something bigger and more seductive than I could ever hope to replace.”
“You talk about it like it was another woman,” I grumble, my lips moving into a smile that is full of pain and not joy.
“It would have been easier if it were. I know in my heart that you would never cheat on me and allow another woman to come between what we had. I didn’t have to worry about that. It wasjust the bright lights and thousands of people yelling out your name I couldn’t compete with.”
“I guess that’s something,” I breathe out, my lungs burning. “There’s something I never understood. Why did it always have to be all or nothing with you? Why, if you trusted me enough to never cheat on you, you couldn’t hold on to what we had and go on the road with me? You could have done it part-time. We could have made it work, Katie. I loved you enough to make it work.”
“I couldn’t leave Mom, Jake. You and Barb have taken over for me. What I do now for her, I was mostly doing back then. She wasn’t quite as weak, but she’s been in that chair for a lot of years. She took me in, loved me, kept me out of the foster system or worse. I couldn’t leave her.”
“I guess I never knew you did all of that even back then. She was still walking…”
“She was for short distances, but she had to have a cane and she couldn’t stand in the shower and support her weight. I didn’t have the money for a motorized wheelchair either and her insurance wouldn’t pay for it back then. She needed me.”
“I really was stupid and blind, wasn’t I?”
“We were both young, kids really,” she compromises.
“Katie? If Hazel had been able to take care of herself back then. Would you have gone on the road with me?”
“There was Lennon to consider,” she answers, and I nod. There’s a bitterness that threatens to well up inside of me. No matter how you look at it, I guess Katie and I were doomed back then. “But I would have gone, Jake. I would have fought like hell because I loved you and I missed you every single day.”
“You won’t believe me, Katie, but I missed you, too.”
“I know. At least you did. When you began dating the beauty queen that’s when I knew it was time to let go—”
“Jesus, Katie. You were dating Jeff—”
“I wasn’t, not really. That’s why we broke up. He wanted more and I just wasn’t ready. I knew I couldn’t love him the way he wanted. He kept pushing and I knew I was hurting him. That’s when I told him I wanted him to move on and find someone who could love him and didn’t have half a heart. That’s when I told him I was going to tell you the truth about Lennon and lay the past to rest. I knew I had to. It was the only way.”
“And that’s when my brother supposedly told me about Lennon.”
“Jake—”
I hold up my hand. “I’m not going to argue with you anymore, Katie.”
