Chapter Eight
Kendall wasn’t a pansy. She wasn’t some country girl noob who didn’t have any experience out in the real world. Well, she was, but she also had some hard-earned life experience to draw from. Hell, before being dumped on her grandmother at the age of ten she’d been bounced around from one foster home to another. One big fat ugly disappointment after the next had been her lot until ending up in Blackberry Cove.
Soon after realizing her grandma wasn’t her fairy-tale family and that living with a bag packed and one foot out the door was probably the safest bet, she met Delilah Summerhill. Delilah split her time between her divorced parents: her mother in Blackberry Cove and her dad and his young wife and baby in Southern Oregon. And while both parents spent a great deal of time bickering about whose turn it was to keep Delilah they seemed far more interested in the fighting than they did their daughter.
Kendall and Delilah had forged strong bonds over subsidized school lunches and a healthy mix of alternative and country music. And when she’d run, she hadn’t realized how much she’d actually left behind until it had been too late.
So when she walked into Big Al’s Farm and Hardware Kendall found her eye drawn to the old diner across the street now painted a lively yellow and white with a wooden sign hanging above the door. “Delilah’s.” She felt a stab of regret and instead of pushing it away she let it cut through the years of denial. She stopped and wrapped her hand around Damian’s wrist. “I’ll meet you in there, okay?”
He nodded, obviously understanding that she had more work to do, more amends to offer. Because although she liked to live in her little hurt place where the only person she thought was really suffering was herself, she was beginning to understand that it wasn’t nearly all that simple. That even her small pebble in the pond made bigger waves than she’d wanted to believe. And that perhaps it was time to own up to her martyrdom and fix the mess she’d left behind.
Kendall took a deep breath and smoothed her hands down her dusty jeans before shoving open the glass door to Delilah’s, formerly the one and only cafe in Blackberry Cove’s downtown strip, although now it appeared Otto’s down the street was no longer just a bar but also a restaurant. She felt slightly unsettled walking into a place she’d never been welcome in when she’d lived here, since Helena had once accused her of stealing one of her dying potted plants in front of the café.
The bell rang over the door although none of the patrons seemed to pay her any attention as they continued their afternoon meals. A popular country song played over the sound system and the smells of good old-fashioned homemade country food filled the place. Delilah had transformed the place by ripping out the outdated and worn booths and replacing them with round wooden tables accented with colorfully painted mismatched chairs. Quirky art hung on the walls and one entire wall was painted in chalkboard paint and filled with menu items and funny sayings.
The diner really was Delilah’s… Everything about it was her to a T.
Kendall raised her eyes to look over the small afternoon crowd, and though it felt like every single person in the entire county was suddenly staring at her, the truth was that maybe half a dozen couples glanced her way, of which she recognized two. Unfortunately, one of those couples happened to be the former mayor of Blackberry Cove and her soon-to-be ex-father-in-law, Jonathan Sloane, sitting with his law partner, Joe McGreevy, the same attorney who had read Nana’s will to her and Damian just days before. At the time Joe’s distaste for her had been palpable. Although he’d never stepped out of line or said anything outright that could be construed as hurtful, Joe’s dislike for her had been more than apparent. In a town full of people split evenly between those who despised Kendall and those who just blatantly ignored her, the two people at the top of the “Despises Kendall” list were glaring directly at her.
Great. Well, if the look on Mr. Sloane’s face was any indication of his current feelings toward her she certainly wouldn’t be stopping by their table and saying “hi” to her father-in-law any time soon. Although Joe wore a look of near boredom, like Kendall’s appearance in the diner was dull and beyond his acknowledgment. Thankfully they were in the farthest booth away from the door and Kendall wouldn’t have to include them in her walk of shame to Delilah.
Then she remembered who the hell she was—or at least who she pretended she was—and threw back her shoulders before walking to the counter where Delilah stood delivering an order. When she stood in front of her old friend unsure about whether to hug her or just slide into the booth, her friend surprised her with a frown.
“I’m still mad at you,” was the first thing out of Delilah’s mouth.
Normally, Kendall’s go-to response would be to brush the comment off with a snarky comeback or a flippant distraction, but for some reason she seemed to be out of witty responses and casual shrugs. For some reason, she let her fake public smile drop, the one colored matte red with her favorite lip stain, and she leaned up to wrap her arms around Delilah, who happened to be significantly taller than Kendall. Delilah’s body felt stiff for a full moment before she softened and pulled her into a giant hug.
“I’m sorry, Delilah. For everything,” Kendall said simply, closing her eyes. Perhaps there’d be time to clear away the cobwebs of the lonely past. Perhaps not. Nevertheless, she wanted Delilah to know how truly sorry she was that when she’d walked away from this town she hadn’t just left Nana and Damian behind, she’d also left behind the one important friendship she’d ever cultivated…then or now. And even on her quick trips back to town when her grandma had insisted she come back for whatever non-existent reason, she hadn’t called Delilah. From shame. From regret. From misguided fear. And suddenly it made her that much wearier.
Up until now she’d carried the weight of losing Damian, her sister’s death, the plummeting to earth of her career, the passing of her grandmother, and even being stuck back in Blackberry Cove fairly well. At least to the discerning eye she still looked like she held some of her shit together. But the heaviness of it all was becoming too much. Maybe it was time to share the burden with someone else. Maybe if she’d trusted Damian, or even Delilah, all those years ago she wouldn’t be such a hot mess now.
She opened her eyes to see Mr. Sloane and his partner sitting with pinched looks, but at least they were pretending to ignore her. So there was that. They could all pretend their pasts weren’t intertwined, but their linked history in this town was undeniable. From the public humiliation of the Sloanes making it essentially illegal for Kendall to attend her senior prom with her husband to her final conversation with Mr. Sloane on the porch of the cottage she shared with Damian. To the lawyers’ rude oversight of Nana’s will. Their hatred for her had deeper roots in this town than she did. But they’d won. The Sloanes always won.
Turning away she pulled back from Delilah and slid into the closest empty booth. Her friend grabbed Kendall’s hand and squeezed it and scooted in next to her. “Tammy, can you cover me for a minute?” she yelled over her shoulder at an older red-haired waitress who nodded. “Sorry I couldn’t make it to the ceremony,” she said to Kendall.
They both laughed since Nana had made no secret of her dislike of anyone, but she’d been especially vocal about “that trollop Delilah,” though she’d never been quite clear about what exactly made Delilah a trollop, or what the hell a trollop was. Kendall just assumed Nana’s dislike was purely a reaction to her being Kendall’s friend. She’d even disliked Damian until he proved he could care for both women and the property they shared while going to school at the local college. Nana’s intense dislike of humans in general could be overlooked in lieu of their value to her. And Damian worked his ass off; therefore he had a lot of value.
“Well, you always were her favorite.” Kendall smiled and placed her other hand on Delilah’s. “Seriously though. I just had to go, Del.” She was surprised to hear the crack in her voice and was more than just a little afraid that little crack might turn into a giant fissure that would grow and finally break her apart…right here in front of half the citizens of Blackberry Cove.
“I know, sweetie. You tried to explain it in the email. And, believe it or not, I got it. Even the parts you left out.”
“Left out?” She hadn’t omitted the part where Jonathan Sloane had threatened to disown his son completely if she didn’t promptly exit his life. Although she had been too full of shame to tell her about her mom’s mental illness. Though now she was beginning to feel like maybe fear was a better description. It hadn’t been her poor mom’s fault. And maybe if she’d had the support of her own mother she might have had a better shot at life. Well, she wasn’t going to dwell on that now.
“You know, the truth part.” Delilah raised her perfectly shaped brows. “Oh you look surprised that we could be friends from the age of ten and I would know the real reason you left.”
“I…uhm…I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do, Kendall,” Delilah prompted but sat still. Waiting.
An itchy panic began to slither over her skin and rumble in her belly. “I left because I was in over my head. I left because no one wanted me here any longer. I left because I was ruining Damian’s life. I left to play music…”
Delilah slapped her free hand on to the table, drawing glances from the diners at the table across from them. “Stop it. Just stop it. So many excuses and not one of them the truth.”
Panic turned to shock, a sharp stab of anger mixed with fear. She wasn’t ready for this conversation. Not now…who knows, maybe not ever. And what did it matter? What was done was done. The past. Really nothing good would come from the truth. In fact it could make everything so much worse. The past was too broken to fix.
“Why do you insist on letting everyone think you’re a monster?”
“Why do you think I care what everyone thinks about me?” Somehow she managed to straighten her spine and angle her head in a manner she knew from endless photo shoots lent her an air of coolness, of confidence. The whole town had already thought nothing of her. Or they thought the worst. “Best let them have their little fantasies, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t think. What I believe is that you left because your evil grandma finally dug her nails into you too hard. And I think that somehow the Sloanes, or Damian’s dad at the very least, convinced you that leaving their son, the love of your life, would be better for him.”
Heat crawled up her neck and tightened around her throat. The room felt uncomfortably warm, the laughter around her forced. Even the clinking of glasses and forks on plates seemed somehow hollow and sad.
“Please don’t,” Kendall whispered. “Please…”
“Kendall. When will it stop? The martyrdom of Kendall Kelly has to end at some point. And the truth seems so much easier, so much less painful. Haven’t you both suffered enough? I mean, unless this is your thing.” Delilah smirked and took a sip of the water Tammy had set on their table.
“I told him everything.” Kendall wanted to duck her head and hide her eyes from her perceptive friend. But she didn’t. Damian and Delilah were right. She owed them, everyone, the truth about why she left. It wouldn’t change anything, couldn’t fix what she’d already ruined, but it might ease the move forward. For everyone.
“What is everything, Kendall?” Delilah asked, and pulled both of Kendall’s hands under hers.
Kendall had explained to Delilah the night she left, in her letter, how both Mr. Sloane and her grandmother had ripped her up and thrown her out. How she’d feared they were right, that she’d never be good enough for Damian, and that she’d probably follow in her mother’s footsteps. The thought of ruining his life and Damian never being a father had crushed her. She’d known he would have dismissed her fears, but she couldn’t let him make that choice. So she’d made it for him.
“First off, honey, you are still as full of shit as you always were. I mean, I love you. I do. But that man has been nothing but miserable without you. And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“How’s that music career working out?”
“Not so good. My business manager ran off with my recording advance. My record company canceled my contract and wants the money back. I’m staying just as long as it takes for Damian to buy me out and then I can pay the money back.”
“Then what? You running away again?”
“As much as I wish I could stay with Damian, it’s not meant to be. I hate this place and it hates me. I need to move on.” And it was true. No matter how much her heart ached for a life with her husband, everything she’d done and said had been true. She’d never be happy here and she couldn’t give him the life he deserved.
“Well maybe you need to stop making decisions for everyone else and stop running from yourself. You might see Blackberry Cove in a different light.” She shrugged and pulled herself from the booth. Before Kendall could process her comment, let alone respond, Delilah leaned over and kissed her on her cheek. “Let’s go out Saturday night. Have dinner at Otto’s and maybe a couple drinks and some dancing.”
It was on the tip of Kendall’s tongue to decline. She was feeling a bit overexposed right at that moment and wasn’t sure she was ready to put herself out there, in front of the entire town, for evisceration. But to her surprise she nodded. She missed her friend, missed that connection to another person with shared history. Someone she’d known for years and knew all her baggage. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll meet you there at nine this Saturday.”
Delilah smiled. “There she is. My old friend—welcome back.” Then she turned and went to the front of the diner, greeting a couple that had just walked in.
*
Damian pretended to take great interest in the various shovels in front of him. It was strictly coincidental that the display gave him a clear shot of the front door of the farm and hardware store. Or that’s what he repeatedly told himself when his gaze swung to the glass doors that Kendall finally walked through nearly forty minutes after leaving him to see Delilah.
Kendall’s long blonde and pink hair was braided and hung down her back like a beautiful woven rope. She still wore those muddy sneakers, and had changed into a clean pink T-shirt and worn but clean jeans. As she looked around the warehouse store, presumably looking for him, she was stopped by the oversolicitous son of the store owner who leaned in to her a little too closely and smiled a little too widely. Damian took a step toward them but stopped abruptly, remembering that she was no longer his and she had no intention of sticking around even if he got down on his knees and begged her to stay. And he’d never do that.
Would he? Of course not.
But why not? She obviously ran because she’d been frightened of his father and of her possible future medical issues. But weren’t those just excuses? If she’d talked to him, told him what had happened, she knew well enough he’d have dismissed her fears and assured her of his love. Too bad it was too late.
Why? Was it really too late? What if she could fall back in love with him?
And what if he could forgive her for everything? Could he ever trust her again? Or would he just walk around waiting for the other shoe to drop? He shook his head and mumbled idiot under his breath.
From across the way he watched the clerk point to him as Kendall turned, locking her gaze with his. She waved and smiled, bouncing on her toes. That big, beautiful all Kendall Kelly grin nearly brought him to his knees. Before he could stop it, an answering smile transformed his face and his legs moved him toward her. She met him halfway and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“She forgave me, Damian.” Kendall’s voice was low and breathless. Her eyes were shiny. “How could I have been so wrong?”
Impulsively he bent down and kissed her cheek. “About what, Kendall?” he asked feigning nonchalance. Did she mean him too?
She mumbled something. Something that sounded a lot like the word everything. But instead of repeating it like he wanted her to—and he was seconds away from begging her to do just that—she buried her head in his chest and squeezed his waist tightly. Maybe she wasn’t quite ready to make that kind of definitive statement. And he sure as hell wasn’t ready to hear it. So he buried his nose in her hair and kissed her behind her ear.
A throat clearing behind them forced him to look up. They were literally standing in the middle of the front of the store hugging and nearly kissing. If they had wanted to keep their new-old weird relationship or lack thereof on the down low, it wasn’t happening. Because standing behind them was Mr. Fallbrook, gossip king of Blackberry Cove.
Kendall and Damian untangled themselves and stood facing the biggest busybody in two counties. “Heard you were stuck in town until Damian here could buy you out. Didn’t hear that you two were back at it.”
“Hello, Mr. Fallbrook. How are you? How’s your grandson?” Kendall asked. The old man’s face turned red and then a frightening plum color.
“He’s just fine. Off at school. You stay away from him!”
“Why, Mr. Fallbrook, I’m a married woman. Besides I can’t help it if he followed me around like a puppy dog.”
Damian hid his chuckle behind a well-timed cough, remembering John Fallbrook and how the young teen called Kendall and asked her out nearly every day. Once going so far as ordering her an expensive bike online—using his grandfather’s credit card—and offering it as a birthday present. His heart tightened at the memory of Kendall pushing that bike back to his house, holding John’s hand as he cried his undying devotion to her. She could have been so cruel and unkind like the all the kids of Blackberry Cove had been to her.
But that wasn’t Kendall.
Kendall had softened the first break of a young teen’s heart with compassion and true friendship. Even if John had ended up turning on her, which he had eventually when he’d boasted to his friends that he’d slept with Kendall at a party she hadn’t even attended. Damian had just started dating her and decided then and there that he would be her champion, her support, her backup. She was strong, she looked after herself and those she thought needed her help, but no one except Delilah had her back. His woman hit rock bottom and still came up swinging. But when she didn’t he was always there to help her back up. And quietly punish those who hurt her.
His woman. Dammit. He really was going back down that path, wasn’t he?
Damian interrupted whatever sputtering cruelty was on the tip of the old man’s razor tongue. “Quit harassing my wife, Fallbrook. Maybe you should work on keeping your side of the street clean, buddy, before shoving your nose in ours.”
Patting Kendall’s ass and then grabbing her hand, he pushed her toward the building and lumber section at the back of the large warehouse store, leaving the cranky old man to stew in his own unhappiness.
“The wood section, Damian?” She smirked, her lips so pink and full. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
Grabbing her by the shoulders, he spun her into a hidden corner and pushed her against the wall. Her little gasp, followed by a low sigh, caught in his mouth and settled in his chest as he wrapped one hand around her jaw, spread the other across her back between her hot body and the wall, and lowered his mouth onto hers. Soft. Familiar. Oddly new. This weird neediness he had for her since seeing her sitting in the church just a few days before turned into something softer. Something bigger. Something he still wasn’t ready to name. So he put it all into the kiss.
For a minute, he let his sullenness go—letting it turn to smoke and drift away—and imagined they could be together. For more than just now. For later. Forever.
Forever.
Slowly he pulled back from her to look down into her face. Her eyes were open, staring at him with some unknown emotion. The moment was too heavy with the past and the unknown and the hurt and the desire. So thick in the air between them he feared it would suffocate them both.
“The wood is for the porch. And new floors for the main house,” he said and then he dipped his hips and ground his erection into her, smiling when her eyes dilated and her lids dropped. “And that wood is for you. Later.”
“What happened to one and done, cowboy?” she teased.
“Not enough.” And it hadn’t been. His gut was telling him it would never be enough. But he wasn’t listening to that shit. Not just yet.
She smiled and didn’t push. Thankfully. “Okay. So floors?” She moved away from his body and stood in front of the flooring chart. He moved to stand next to her.
“The upstairs floors are in pretty good shape. Some sanding and staining should bring them back to life,” he said. “But the downstairs isn’t salvageable in some areas and then the carpet in other areas is plain gross. Might as well replace it all.”
She nodded, still looking at the choices. “These are all nice.”
“But…”
“But nothing. They’re pretty. Which do you like best?”
“This way.” He steered her to the very back where piles of different planks of varying lengths and beautiful shades of brown were stacked.
Kendall brought her hands together in a quiet clap. “Reclaimed barn wood.” She smiled and looked up at him. Damian nodded. “You remembered.”
“Everything.”
“Me too,” she whispered and turned to him. “I remember everything, Damian.”