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I can’t spend my life tiptoeing around Cole Cutler’s eggshell of an ego. We’re over. That’s been made clear—in court and out. It’s time I take my life back and start living again.
With more than four hours until I need to be at dinner, I wrap up some chores.
This goofy smile on my face might be the answer I’m looking for. I head out back and return to chopping the wood I’m going to need to store for winter. It’s backbreaking work, but I can’t afford the wood delivery service anymore. At least I no longer have to work out at the gym. The chores around here are enough to keep me in shape. And Jason seems to really like my body . . . perhaps more than before, which surprises me. I haven’t felt attractive . . . well, since Jason used to appreciate me—emotionally and physically.
After the wood’s chopped, I inspect the coop. I can easily fix this, but that Jason wants to help is so sweet, and I like him hanging around enough to let him take on this job. I hop on the ATV and drive around the fields to the two active ones. Paul oversees the plots with Billy, but he also lives on the acreage that bumps against the fields in a two-bedroom cottage my dad built when I was little. I used to dream of living in that little white house with its gingerbread trim and door.
Lorraine, his wife, takes care of the house, keeping it in shape despite time wanting to wear it down. She brings me food too often, but she knows how I love her cooking. She also says I’m too skinny. I’ll happily take her pralines to help “widen my hips to bear children,” as she puts it. They’re too delicious to pass up.
She’s watering the flowers out front when I drive up. “Hi, Delilah.”
“Hi, how are you today?”
“It’s a beautiful day,” she replies with a motherly smile on her face. “I saw a truck leaving the property earlier.”
Her mothering instincts go beyond a smile. I’ve known her since I was eight, so we’ve been through a lot of changes together through the years. I don’t have to say much. She’s happy to fill the air with her wisdom and observations, which have been comforting since I lost my mom and dad. “Your old boyfriend, the one I liked, used to drive a truck just like that.”
I take over the task. As the water sprinkles across the flower bed, I keep my tone level, careful not to give more away than I have a right to. “He still does.”
I don’t have to see her face to hear the joy in her voice. “It was a good visit?”
Looking at her, I see her hands clasped together in front of her chest.
“You don’t have to pretend. Tell me what you know.”
“Paul said the truck stayed overnight.”
I giggle, the usual burdens feeling lighter, almost effervescent today. “It did. Along with Jason.”
“Jason,” she says in such a dreamy way. “I always did like how he treated you.”
“Even in the end?”
“The end? Hmm. You weren’t one to reason with back then.”
I’ve yet to process what Jason said last night. I felt like a fool. No, more than that, I felt heartsick at what I must have put him through. How could he come back here and want to reconnect with me? He must have hated me, especially when he saw me with Cole at Red River.
Why? Why hadn’t I gone back to him and given him a chance to speak? He wasn’t a selfish man. He never had been. My assumptions were based on an insecurity that I placed on myself, not from his actions. Cole is to blame for his part; he was devious. But I fell for it. Naïve. My heart hurts thinking about what I did. God, how I hurt Jason. But here he is, despite the pain he’s felt, potentially offering us a second chance. He’s so much stronger than I ever was.
I set the empty can down and move to sit on her steps. Resting my arms on my knees, I stare ahead at the field that meets the end of her yard. When I glance over at her, I say, “He wasn’t going to break up with me. That’s what he told me.”
“I could have told you that, too.”
Softly laughing, I reply, “You probably did. I just wasn’t able to hear you through the noise in my head.”
“But you hear him now?”
“I’m not sure.”
She sits next to me, wrapping me in a loving embrace. “Sometimes it’s not the loudest voice we hear, but the soft whisper our heart feels. Back then, the sting of perceived betrayal clouded your judgment and clogged your ears. Someone took advantage of that pain and twisted it for his own needs.”
