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“Goodbye, Duke. This time, it’s for forever.”
ChapterNine
Scarlet shutthe door on a possible future and locked him out. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do,” Scarlet said in a hoarse whisper. “I trust you as much as I trust my mother, and without trust, you have nothing.” His emotions bubbled to the surface, and he feared he’d lose his mind at the realization that this was it. The end of his lifelong dream of being a good man. Good enough to marry Scarlet, have children, and grow old together on the farm where he would provide a great living.
He struggled between wanting to pull her into his arms and never wanting to see her again. “And you’re as disturbed as my old man.” The words slipped from his lips. Anger, something he’d spent his life overcoming since that night ten years ago, seeped out of his atrophied heart.
The refrigerator in the back hummed. Strange thing to think about while his heart was being ripped from his chest and stomped into squishy pieces.
Scarlet didn’t say another word; she ran upstairs, leaving him in the café alone. He rubbed his chest, refusing to allow the sob welling up inside him to escape. Men didn’t cry. Not over a girl. Isn’t that what his father taught him with a switch and angry words when he was thirteen?
“That’s the funny thing about childhood best friends who fall in love. They know how to hurt each other in an epic way no one else can. But they can also love like no other couple.” Aunt Laura’s words were no longer welcome.
Duke faced the window and swiped his face, refusing to show his weakness in front of her. “You can stop using me to get Scarlet to stay. I failed.”
“No, you just broke her down, and now she realizes how much she can’t bear to be without you.”
Soft sobs leaked through the ceiling from Scarlet’s upstairs bedroom. The sound a replica of his mother’s cries. A theme song for any woman living with a Trenton man.
He grabbed his papers. “You’re delusional.”
“Really? Then why did she run with tears streaming down her face? Why is she upstairs crying, shaking, longing for you?”
Laura placed a hand on his shoulder. “Because son, she’s in love with you so much it hurts. You’re the one person she could give her heart to, and that’s what scares her.”
“We’re all scared. But you’re wrong. I messed up by not telling her the truth back then. She’s right, I abandoned her the way her mother did.” His voice cracked under the realization that he had harmed her in a way that couldn’t be undone. “I’ve proven myself unworthy of her love, so let it go. She deserves happiness, and although we disagree with a man who sends a marriage proposal via text, he’s a man who won’t fail her. One that doesn’t hurt her.” He wrenched open the door receiving a blast of cold air chilling him to his core.
“Duke, don’t do this. Stay. You’ve proven yourself worthy time and time again. You are a better man. The best Trenton that ever lived.” Aunt Laura blocked his exit. “You have never touched a sip of alcohol. I know about that bottle on your shelf. It’s not a symbol of your failure but of your success. You could’ve drowned your sorrows when you thought you lost her, but you didn’t. Doesn’t that prove something to you?”
“I’ve spent a decade pining after Scarlet. But I did the one thing I tried so many years not to do. I hurt her. The way my father would hurt my mother. She’s upstairs crying now because of my actions. I always said I should never be in a real relationship because I have too much of my old man in me, and now I know it for sure. And not even some legendary book will change that. I’m not worthy of her, so, because I love her, I’m going to let her go. And Laura, you have to let this go and let me move on with my life. I can’t take another minute of living with the torture. I know that I’m the one who caused all this pain. If I can’t have her, then I want her happy but far away.”
“Duke. No.” Laura pleaded.
“This will not and will never be fixed. I’ll make sure of that because I’ll never hurt Scarlet again. That dream flew away with the blizzard of our lives.”
He slid past Laura and closed the door, walked to his truck, started it, and drove away. Away from the pain. Away from the sorrow. Away from the woman he loved.
* * *
Soft knocks at Scarlet’s bedroom door made her pace and pack faster. The squeal of the hinges warned of Aunt Laura’s next assault, but it wouldn’t work. “Save your breath. I know you’re going to tell me how he made a mistake. That he did what he did to protect me. As you would say, it’s hogwash.”
“I think you should leave.” Aunt Laura’s voice sounded foreign and strange.
Scarlet pushed her clothes down into submission so she could close her suitcase. “What is this? Reverse psychology?”
“No. I think it’s time for you to go. I thought you two belonged together, but I was wrong,” Aunt Laura’s cold and distant tone chilled Scarlet.
No warm hand touched her back or kind words. She wouldn’t fall into the trap. “Right. Sure. You’re not going to try to convince me that he left me that night to protect me unlike my mother who abandoned me for her own happiness. That he didn’t leave me physically and he never left. He’s been waiting for me here all these years.”
“No.”
The single word drew Scarlet to face Aunt Laura, wanting to discover her next play, but all she found was a sorrowful, defeated, downcast expression. “You should go.”
She held the bookAll Creatures Great and Smallin her hand. “Surprised you don’t have theOnce Upon a Christmas Kissready to remind me about how I have no power over this. That I’ll end up with Duke no matter what because some legend says so.”
“I didn’t put that book in the free library that Duke built for you with his own two hands and heart.”
