As she curled against one side, and the dog against his other, with the kitten’s purr tickling his skin, Owen’s chest shifted with longing.
“What did my father say to make you go?”
His contentment fled. He’d known this conversation was coming.
“The truth,” he said. “You deserved better.”
“There’s no one better for me than you.”
“I saw what it would have been like.”
“You’re clairvoyant?”
“Huh?”
“You see the future?”
“It was pretty clear.” He began to play with her hair. “You would have gone to college; I’d have stayed here. I would have visited you one weekend a month if I could get off work at the café, or the gas station, or the grocery store.”
Which would have been the extent of his options back then. Still might be.
“You’d have come home to see me too at first. Things would have been fine. Then the visits would have become fewer and farther apart.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“If you’d spent all your free time with me—whether it was there or here—you would have missed out on all the things you could have done, the people you could have met, the experiences you should have had.”
Just like in the Marines, the training was important, but the camaraderie was even more so. What Owen had gone through with his fellow Marines had made him who he was.
“You’d have been giving all that up for me,” Owen continued. “You deserved better, and your father was right to make sure you got it any way that he could.”
“What way?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You fought for your mother. You fought for this country. You never would have left without fighting for me, unless there was a damn good reason. What did he say? Do?”
Owen didn’t answer. He wasn’t going to tattle at this late date. In the end, he didn’t have to. Becca was smart; she figured it out. He was surprised it had taken her this long. Of course, until today, she hadn’t realized her father was capable of great, big, life altering lies.
“He threatened you with something.” Her brilliant mind clicked along so quickly, so loudly, he could practically hear it. “Theft? No. Anyone who knew you knew better.”
“Tell it to Emerson.”
“Kid stuff.”
“I still stole his beer.”
“Owen,” she said, exasperated.
“I was underage. Not only is stealing illegal, but so was drinking it.”
She caught her breath, and he wished he’d kept his big mouth shut. “You were eighteen. I wasn’t.” She shifted so she could see his face. “So were a lot of people who dated senior year. It wasn’t like I was fifteen. I don’t think that counts.”
“It doesn’t. Didn’t.” He thought about denying it but why? It was over, done with. Like a lot of things. “Your father made the threat sound good. I was a kid. I didn’t want you to go through that.”
“You think my father would have put me through that? You don’t know my father.”
“I realized that pretty quickly, but I was mortified that he’d caught us. Caught me, touching you.”
“You loved me.”
“The one thing he asked of me was that I leave you alone. But I couldn’t.”
“He what?”
Reggie woofed, low and startled, and Grenade made a surprised kitten-cat sound.
“Shh,” Owen said, to the dog, the cat, the woman.
“You agreed to that?” She sounded pretty mad.
He could relate. He’d been angry for a long time. He’d been angry right up until he’d seen her again and realized that she’d become all that she’d dreamed of becoming.
And that she’d done so without him should have made him madder, or at least sadder. But, instead, it had made him glad. Or at least as happy as he got these days with his own life such a mess.
“I didn’t think it would be that hard,” he said.
“Gee, thanks.”
“You were my friend. Your family was my family.” Or as close to a family as he’d ever had. “But I was wrong.”
About so many things.
“I wasn’t your friend? They weren’t your family?” If possible, she sounded angrier.
“You became more than my friend, and because of that they couldn’t be my family. I have no one to blame but myself. I wasn’t honorable. I didn’t keep my word.”
“It was more honorable to break my heart?”
“If I’d stayed, you would have wound up hating me.”
He would have wound up hating himself. And who needed that?
“I hated you anyway,” she said, but her voice had gone thick; her body had relaxed against him. It was after midnight, and neither one of them had slept since … who knew?
Owen pressed his lips to her hair, matched his breathing to hers, and for the first time in their lifetime they slept together.
*
I heard a distant beelike buzz, swatted at it, but the brr-brr continued.
My phone.
My eyes opened. I blinked at the expanse of male chest.
Owen.