“I know you want answers, son, and I don’t blame ya one bit. But you need to think about what this could do to the people you care about. The people you kept breathin’ during those five years and the people you made it home to,” he tells me softly. “I’m gonna say this one more time, some things are best left alone. I’m also gonna say, there’s a woman livin’ in the guest house a few hundred yards away who could use a little more happy in her life and a lot less livin’ in the past that’s filled with nothin’ but heartache.”
The traces of anger still flowing through my veins that Paul sat on this information for all these years slowly fade away as soon as he brings up Shelby. I think about the kind of life she’s been living the last few years, thinking I never loved her, getting into her accident and having all of her dreams ripped from her hands, on top of being stuck under her mother’s thumb. As much as I want to know the truth, I know it won’t set me free. It will only bring up a whole shitload of more problems, not just for me, but Shelby as well. I can’t do that to her. Not now. Not after I’ve seen how broken she is and want nothing more than to take away all of her pain and make her happy again.
“I’m working on giving her a little more happy,” I finally tell him with a sigh, realizing I’m not going to get the answers from Paul that I’m looking for.
“Well, work on it a little harder for shit’s sake,” Paul tells me, dropping the soft, concerned voice and going right back to being his crotchety old self. “I always liked that girl. She had so much sweet in her it’s a wonder that pain in the ass mother of hers actually birthed her. Girl don’t smile much anymore when I see her around the grounds. Don’t laugh none either. It’s not right, sweet girl like that with nothin’ to smile about.”
He raises his eyebrow pointedly.
“Now is when you should tell him how you made her smile when you diddled her a few feet away from where we’re standing the other night,” Rylan says under his breath with a laugh.
I growl at him and Paul lets out a long, suffering sigh as he jingles some things around in his pocket before pulling out a key attached to a rabbit’s foot keychain. Grabbing it from him, I give him a questioning look. He takes the half-chewed toothpick out of his mouth and points it at me again.
“No sense in you picking that damn lock again. Maybe with that thing, you can come up with a way to make her smile again.”
“How did you—”
Paul lets out a gravelly laugh. “I’ve known about that room since the day her daddy had it built for her.”
He takes a step toward me and lowers his voice.
“Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on around here that I don’t know about. I see everything and I hear everything. At my age, I’ve learned when to pick my battles and when to realize I might have jumped the gun about certain things in anger, without thinking about the repercussions. Life’s too short to fight a war you can’t win, son, no matter how wrong it is or how angry you are. Pick one you can win. She’s one you can win if you do it right, and nothing else will matter after that.”
Saying everything and nothing all at once, Paul gave me what I needed in a roundabout way. I give him a nod of understanding as he slaps me on the back, turns, and walks away, shouting at the top of his lungs for one of the stable hands to “Get your head out of your ass and feed the damn horses!”
Smiling to myself, I watch him go until he disappears around the corner.
“What the fuck did that even mean? I’m more confused now than I was when we got here,” Rylan complains.
I stare down at the key in my hand, rubbing the rabbit’s foot for good luck as I turn around and smile at my friend.
“Don’t worry, I got what I came here for,” I tell him, pocketing the key and heading back down the hallway to the barn door.
“So, what are you going to do now?” he asks, running to catch up with me.
“I’m going make the pretty girl who lives in the guest house remember how to smile and laugh again.”
Rylan throws his hands up in the air and shouts a “Hallelujah” to the sky when we get outside.
“What’s the plan? Woo her with flowers, hire a hit man to take out her mother, tell her I’m single and available?” Rylan asks when we get inside my truck.
“No, no, and no. The first part of the plan is getting a new cell phone, then plugging in my old one and hoping all of my contact information is still in it,” I inform him as I pull out of the drive and head toward town.
“That doesn’t sound like anything that will end in smiles, or sex. I’m living vicariously through you, so I’m gonna need you to come up with another plan.”
I give him the middle finger and turn on the radio. Raising the volume, I roll down the windows and take a deep breath of warm Southern air, knowing exactly what I need to do to get Shelby to smile again.
Chapter 18
Shelby
Sitting with my back against the headboard, I stare at the shoe box at the foot of my bed, my hands shaking with the need to open the lid and read the rest of the letters piled inside. As much as I want to read them, I’ve done nothing but sit here for five days and stare at the box, afraid to see what else Eli tried to tell me six years ago. Afraid to see his words, feel his pain, and understand how hard it was for him to have no idea if he’d ever see me or speak to me again.
I can remember exactly how it felt to have those same worries, my heart clenching in fear each time I thought of him being overseas and surrounded by danger. I couldn’t imagine never hearing his low, gravelly voice whispering in my ear, feeling his rough hands running over my body, seeing the dimples in both of his cheeks when he smiled at me, or watching him run his fingers through his hair when he was frustrated. Even when my heart was broken and I believed the lies he’d told me. Even when my life was shattered and torn apart after the accident, and then again, when the news hit that he’d been killed, I still couldn’t let go of the hold he had on me. I still couldn’t move on, and I still couldn’t believe I’d never hear him, feel him, or see him again.