To try to make friends outside Kennedy’s, he’d stopped by the Apple Valley Fire Department a couple of times to see the guys, and went out for a beer with Scott Hayes. Scott had come down to Versailles to help Cain attach an especially sweet antique bike to bolted cables and extend it from the showroom ceiling. It made him shake his head to imagine that he’d end up friends with Mary-Louise Walker’s husband, but he guessed that weirder things than that happened in real life.
As he readied Wolfram’s Motorcycles for his grand opening next week and furnished his townhouse little by little, his thoughts always returned to Ginger, and lately his mind had concentrated greatly on the fateful day he’d found her in bed with Woodman, three years ago.
But instead of letting his anger blind him, he tried to really examine what had happened that day. The way she’d poured her heart out to him. How he’d rejected her, not because he didn’t want her—he had wanted her desperately—but because he couldn’t take her away from Woodman when he felt she was integral to his cousin’s wellness. Nor could he betray his cousin by sneaking around with Ginger behind his back after Woodman had made his feelings so clear. But Cain recalled the devastated look on her face when she said, I know you love me, Cain. I can see it. I can feel it. I know it’s true. And it made him ache.
It was true. She was right. He had loved her so much at the time, it was killing him, and yet he’d let her walk away from him. No. Not just let her walk away. He’d called her disgusting names and insulted her. He’d pushed her away with all his might. And not just away. Into Woodman’s arms.
Finding her with Woodman had hurt Cain, but for the first time in years, he questioned whether he had a right to that hurt. He’d taken her tender, beautiful feelings and smashed them to smithereens. It didn’t really matter that hours later he’d had a change of heart and decided to apologize to her. The damage had already been done. There was every chance he had broken her heart that day, which was the very thing that had made her run to Woodman for comfort. Seen in a certain light, Cain was responsible for the fact that Woodman and Ginger had ended up together.
He sighed, crossing the concrete floor to retrieve the wrench he’d thrown, when his cell phone buzzed in his pocket. Swiping the screen, he looked at the incoming number but didn’t recognize it.
“Hello?”
“C-Cain?”
“Ginger?” he said. She was crying, and the hairs on his arm stood up as a shot of adrenaline made him freeze where he stood. “Princess, are you okay?”
“He’s g-gone.”
Cain’s eyes closed slowly as his heart ached for her. It had finally happened. She’d finally broken.
“He is, baby,” he said tenderly. “He’s gone. I’m so sorry.”
“C-Cain,” she sobbed. “C-can you . . . can you c-come? C-come to me?”
“Where are you?”
He threw the wrench into his toolbox, locked the showroom door, and grabbed his helmet from the back of his bike. Shrugging into his leather jacket, he straddled the motorcycle and twisted the key in the ignition.
“W-Woodman’s place.”
Woodman’s place? Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Be strong, lionhearted l’il gal. Be strong for me.
“I’m leavin’ right now,” he said, his voice raspy and urgent. “You stay put, darlin’. I’m on my way.”
Chapter 28
All the sadness.
It was like all the sadness in the world had suddenly engulfed her, swept her out to sea, and marooned her in a place of utter despair. Everywhere she turned in the sweet little house, Woodman was there: laughing as he showed her around for the first time, sitting across from her on the empty living room floor as they ate pizza on a moving box, pulling her hand up the stairs to his bedroom, exercising his leg in front of the TV, waiting for her with dinner when she’d had a bad day at work, kneeling before her—backlit by their first Christmas tree—when he asked her to be his wife.
Finally she lowered herself to the stairs and hunched over, weeping. She could barely catch her breath and couldn’t remember a time when she’d ever felt such intense and debilitating sorrow. And yet, through the bleak darkness, there was one unlikely point of light: Cain. Cain would come. Cain would come now. He would hold her and help her and remember with her. He would mourn with her—just as hard and just as deep as she. Because Cain, above all others, had known and loved Woodman as Ginger had.
As she recalled the poignancy of Woodman’s proposal, a year ago today, she pulled the engagement ring from her finger for the first time. She clutched it in her palm until the prongs drew blood as a slide show of Woodman—of the Woodman she’d loved deeply her whole life—played through her mind:
At six years old, holding her chubby three-year-old hand and leading her around a paddock to “say hey to the horsies.”
At eight years old, screaming for her mother when Ginger’s heart seized. He’d saved her life that day and was waiting on the front porch of the manor house when she came home, two weeks later.