Kiss My Boots (Coming Home #2)

“I couldn’t fight for you, then, Quinn!” I roar, slamming my fist against the desk. “My father threatened to essentially ruin your family if I didn’t go to Emory as planned. If I so much as wrote you a fuckin’ postcard he was prepared to rip everything your family had built up apart. And, Quinn, he could have done it.”

“I don’t understand,” she gasps. “How could he have done that!?”

Fuck, it kills me not to be able to touch her. The anger is long gone, and the unsteady panic settles in the more I explain.

“One of his banks owned the loan your father had taken out on not only your family land, but also the auto shop. The type of loan he had, though, included a stipulation that the lender could demand repayment, in full, at any time. Your father had some money troubles about the same time I started spendin’ my summers in Pine Oak. I’m not sure when he crossed paths with my father, but he did. The loan ensured he could keep providin’ for y’all as he always had, but also gave him the liberty to get out of those troubles.”

“The shop’s paid off,” she mumbles. “It’s been paid off.”

“It was collateral, from what I could tell. I tried everything I could, but my father’s a shark. He knew what he was doin’.”

“And by the time it didn’t matter because my father was dead, you had already moved on,” she says under her breath.

“It wasn’t just you and your family that he was holdin’ over my head. He had the same threat going for my gram and paw. Paw didn’t do handouts, but when Gram got sick, they lost a lot of money because of her medical treatments. Insurance not coverin’ shit. He took a loan out against their house and this office. A loan my father knew would probably never get repaid, but he laughed in my face, sayin’ he would demand it all back and push them into the streets if I didn’t bend to his will. My mother had his back, even with the threat against her own fuckin’ parents.”

“What’s different now?” she asks, her voice wavering. “What’s different!” she screams when I don’t answer right away, jumping up from her seat to pace.

I track her movements with my eyes, keeping my distance while I continue speaking. “Paw’s gone. He was a proud man, Quinn, and I would have gladly paid off his loan years ago, but he refused. When he died, my father cut his losses and put the house on the market. Paw had already paid back the loan on the office and it fell to me in his will. I bought the house the second I found out they had listed it.”

“And . . . my father’s gone . . .” she adds, stopping midstride to look over her shoulder at me.

“And your brother knows his shit. He paid your father’s debts off slowly over the years that he’s been runnin’ things.”

“But because of your grandfather, even with that loan paid off, you stayed away.” She utters my unspoken words, turning to face me completely, wetness pooling in her eyes.

“By the time you weren’t being threatened directly, I had convinced myself it was too late. It had been years, Quinn. Years that I had been forced to stay away, cut off contact, all of it. I never stopped wantin’ what was stolen from us, but as the years went by, my bitterness grew. I finished school, started my career, and went through the motions of my life. I didn’t do serious anything. Committin’ to my career only. Until the day I never thought would come cut the ties that held me back.”

“And what? We’re supposed to just pick up where we left off?”

“No, Quinn. You take the truth you finally know and you decide if we pick up where we are now. Get to know the adults we’ve become. Find out if there’s still a place for what we felt as teens or if we only have a friendship now.”

“We don’t even know each other anymore,” she argues, her claim weak, fingers twisting the front of her Davis Auto Works tank top.

A sad smile curls my lips up slightly. “Then I guess you need to decide if you want to change that or not, Quinn. Gotta let your heart talk to your mind. You know it all now. The next move is up to you.”

“And you? You’ve spent all this time away and you’re just ready to give it a go? Just like that, you’ve given up a life in another state, a career, and you’re just ready . . . like that? You make it sound like you had no ties to where you came from at all, Tate.”

I get up, walk over to where she’s standing, and cup her face between my hands. My palms tingle in awareness from the touch of her alone. “I finished my time at the hospital I was workin’ at. I enjoyed things there, but it wasn’t even a question. I have friends back there, and me leavin’ isn’t gonna change that. I won’t lie to you, Quinn, I never thought you would ever be standin’ in front of me again. I might not have done serious, but sometimes the loneliness got the best of me.”

She shakes her head. “You don’t owe me explanations of your behavior for the last nine years, Tate. Not when it comes to . . . that.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve spent that time keepin’ things from you, Quinn. I’ve got nothin’ but clarity when it comes to my heart communicatin’ with my mind. I feel like a selfish bastard for hurtin’ you, but even more so because in spite of it all I want to hold you tight and never fuckin’ let you go, even if you don’t want me to.”

“I think . . .” she starts, but pauses to swallow thickly. “I think I need to go.”

I force my hands to release the gentle hold I had on her face, my fingers trailing down her cheeks. She doesn’t look away from my eyes until I give her a small nod, closing her eyes tightly while her breathing speeds up. I would give just about anything to be in her head right now. Finally, she lifts her lids and turns to leave.

“I’ll walk you out,” I tell her, my voice low.

She doesn’t speak again. The short walk down the hall, past the patient rooms, and to the front door passes in thoughtful silence, both of our minds busy thinking, I’m sure. I stand in the threshold and watch her walk to her haphazardly parked truck before jumping slightly on her heels to pull her short body up into the cab, firing the engine up a moment later and reversing. Then she turns to look at me, something I can’t place in her expression making me hold my breath while she lets the window down.

“You’re only a selfish bastard if you don’t fight for it now,” she yells over the rumble of her truck’s powerful engine.

By the time I remember to breathe again, all that’s left is her taillights in the distance and the meaning of her words hanging like a thick promise in the air.

She wants me to fight.





10


QUINN


“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Marvin Gaye

- -

I call Leighton the second I speed away from Tate.

I might have hightailed it over to his office ready to raise some of the hell my brothers claim I’m famous for, having spent the better part of Monday and Tuesday taking out my frustrations on the F1, stuck so deep in my thoughts my anger had built up to something all-consuming. But I left with my head spinning, and with the most distressing thing of all—a sliver of hope that maybe Tate and I weren’t quite over, had never really been over.