And when he thought the ache of remembering her sweet words—her sweet, sweet lies—would break him, he’d torture himself just a little more and remember her eyes when she left him that afternoon—the broken fucking way they’d looked, and how it had practically ripped his heart out of his chest to watch her walk away.
. . . it doesn’t matter anymore. This is the last time you will ever reject and humiliate me. I promise you. The last time.
And boy, had she made good on her word.
The last one to get rejected hadn’t been her. Between the two of them, it had been him.
She’d never know how hard he had to fight himself from reaching for her again that afternoon, how much his body ached and heart throbbed for her, how fucking much he wanted to run after her after she’d left him. She’d never know that he showed up hours later at her fucking cottage to try to work things out, to try to give them the chance she’d begged for. And she’d never, ever know how much he’d loved her—and that the loss of that love felt like a massive earthquake in the foundation of his being, with tremors that had rocked his world for years after. The fault had left a crack zigzagging down his broken heart like a gaping void in the earth, too jagged and deep to ever be filled, too shattered to ever be solid again.
There were so many Gingers who lived in his mind: the little girl he’d known as a child, the twelve-year-old sass-mouth who’d refused to jump on her birthday, the gorgeous fifteen-year-old to whom he’d given a first kiss, and the stunning eighteen-year-old woman who had made him feel more whole, more welcome in her presence than he’d ever felt in his entire life. It hurt to think about her playfulness when he’d been washing her gran’s old truck. It was like a knife to his heart to remember their rides and walks, talking about everything and nothing as they wandered through meadows and munched on freshly picked apples. And the old barn? Well. If he had his way, he’d burn it to the ground and incinerate all the memories it held. Because it hurt too fucking much to remember, and sometimes Cain feared that it always would.
It had taken a sizable amount of courage to decide to return to Kentucky, but Cain prided himself that he wasn’t a hotheaded teenager anymore, he was a grown man. And he finally realized that coming home to Kentucky was a choice he could make independently of his memories of Ginger. Furthermore, fuck her. Coming home was about him—about seeing his mom and dad, and cousin, who’d asked Cain to be his best man. And most importantly, it was about Cain taking control of his future and finally putting down some roots. It pissed him off that bitter thoughts of Ginger had poisoned the well of his better memories. After three long years away, he was sick of her being the thing that stood in the way of his return home—it gave her control over his life that she didn’t fucking deserve.
So he’d eventually decided to take it back.
Woodman had written to him two months ago, asking Cain to come home and be his best man when Cain’s contract was up in October. His initial reaction was “Hell, no!” But despite Cain’s painful personal history with Woodman’s two-faced bride-to-be, every time he sat down to write back to his cousin, he found he couldn’t say no. And he finally realized it was because, although Cain liked travel and had enjoyed seeing much of the world, as his final days in the Navy came to an end, he found himself—almost shockingly—longing for home.
After six years in the military and very little in the way of expenses, Cain had managed to save almost $30,000 in a U.S. bank account, and during a few days of liberty over the summer he’d flown into Lexington without alerting his family and spent two days with a commercial real estate broker. Looking in Lexington, Frankfort, and every little town in between, he’d finally found what he was seeking in Versailles, located about fifty minutes away from Apple Valley, just south of the I-64 corridor that connected Lexington and Frankfort.
It was a four-thousand-square-foot brick structure that included a large carport, a double-bayed garage, a drive-through showroom with finished, but stylishly rustic wood paneling, and a small office with a full bath. The lease was $1,800 per month, locked in for a full year, and Cain’s small collection of three additional motorcycles would be arriving on a transport next week to populate the showroom. He planned to modernize the building to his liking, then open the garage to service and sell motorcycles starting in January.