Chapter Ten
Damian said the word wife without the usual discomfort weighing down his tongue. Yes, he still wanted to punish Kendall for leaving him, for ruining his life, but he continued to hold her gaze with his own and couldn’t bring himself to provide her with more public humiliation than she’d already lived through in Blackberry Cove. Could he forgive her? Maybe. Regardless, his role as her protector from the rest of the world was ingrained bone deep, as much a part of him as his own personality.
Aw hell.
Damian was getting lost in Kendall again. When she calmed and then melted under his rough touch he felt centered. Right. The feel of his mouth on hers. Her fingers gripping his jaw. The tightness in his chest turned from uncomfortable to…to home. This is where she belonged. With him. He needed her to want him, to need him, to love him again. They were meant for each other.
They always had been.
A fork dropped, and a patron laughed somewhere, pulling him out of his Kendall-induced daydream. Obviously Otto’s was not the place to have this life-determining realization. Regretfully, he pulled back and stood next to Carissa.
“What?” Carissa shrieked. “You’re still married?” she asked again. “I thought you were divorced. When are you getting divorced?”
Delilah stood from her seat and started to move toward Carissa. “Hey, you have no…”
“I apologize, Carissa,” Damian said stepping between his…his whatever Carissa was and Delilah. “Kendall and I are still married. Not really your business—”
“You apologize? Why did you ask me out if you’re still married to her? She left you!” Carissa’s fair skin was turning a dangerous reddish purple and she was starting to make a scene. He could feel a dozen sets of eyes burning into the back of his neck. But he ignored them, just like he had for the last several years, both before and after Kendall left.
Why the hell had he asked her out?
Maybe you wanted to make Kendall jealous.
Ridiculous of course. Completely coincidental that he’d suggested dinner the day he saw Carissa in town before the memorial service. The service he knew his wayward wife would be attending.
“I’m sorry. I don’t have…” Kendall began, quietly, from her seat, suddenly looking so young and uncomfortable. “I don’t…it’s not…”
“Don’t,” he said without thinking to Kendall, but before she could argue with him, which she looked all set to do with her jaw tight and her eyes scrunched up, he turned to Carissa. “This is done. You need to go.”
Carissa was still going on about Kendall as he directed her back to her friends at the end of the bar. What was she doing here? Why were they still married? When was she leaving? Was she staying with him on the farm? Endless questions, but never bothering to wait for answers. And Damian was approaching his limit on Carissa’s prattle, and moved to the other end of the bar.
He glanced at his watch. The music would get louder and the patrons wilder the second the lights dimmed at 10:01. Kendall and Delilah had just enough time to eat dinner and get the hell out of there before Carissa went ballistic again or one of his dad’s cronies decided tonight was the night to make a big move.
He ordered a beer and stepped into the hall to call his mom, promising to call her the next day to reschedule their dinner. Then he texted Kendall, letting her know he’d be hanging out there, but staying out of her hair. Leaving Kendall on her own clearly wasn’t an option and she deserved to have a fun night out with her friend without some asshole hassling them. When he walked back into the main room from the hall Kendall looked up from her phone and waved, an open, happy smile on her face. He winked at her and made his way to back to the bar.
The bartender, Brian, a new farm employee who cared for the goats and helped out with the shipping of their goat milk products during the day, slid him a dewy bottle. He tipped his chin and asked, “Will I see you tomorrow?”
The kid blushed, probably remembering the uncomfortable conversation they’d had the month before when Brian had shown up for work with bright red eyes and smelling like a distillery. Damian had talked to him about responsibility and sent him home looking shell-shocked. Since then he’d picked up a second job working weekends at Otto’s and hadn’t been late once, let alone shown up still reeking of the night before.
“Yes, sir.” Brian looked him in the eye and stood tall. A boy becoming a man right before his very eyes.
They discussed the big order they had to fill in the next couple days and chatted about the memorial while Damian sipped his beer and glanced over at Delilah and Kendall’s table where two dude bros he’d gone to high school with had joined them. He cursed under his breath and glowered in their direction.
But what the hell did he care? He didn’t. He didn’t give a shit when she smiled at the guy sitting next to her and laughed when he leaned over and said something in her ear. He didn’t even care when her eyes shot to his as she stood up and walked toward the stage.
He certainly didn’t care when she took the shiny red guitar from Colin, Otto’s son and the current owner of the fancy new and improved Otto’s.
But he did care when Brian asked, “What’s Ms. Kelly doing up there?”
*
“Otto’s is excited to offer some evening entertainment from the one and only local girl, the punk rock cowgirl herself, Kendall Kelly!” Colin Maslow, the town’s former bad boy, said into the microphone. He’d been enthusiastically insistent when he’d recognized Kendall, rushing up to the table and hauling her into a warm hug.
Delilah had been less than pleased when Colin had wrapped her in his long, well-muscled arms before she extricated herself with a growl. Colin had responded with a laugh and turned his attention back to Kendall. Eventually his charisma and tenacity had won and she’d begrudgingly stepped onto the stage.
The polite smattering of applause his announcement elicited was anemic at best, but Kendall swallowed down her discomfort and willed herself to not look at any recognizable faces in the restaurant or any of the bemused or outright belligerent expressions peering up at her. Not Carissa and her group of friends who hadn’t stopped glaring at her since she’d walked in, and certainly not her husband who looked up at her from his spot at the bar with an intense, but inscrutable expression. This was her domain, the one place she felt in control and at ease. Or it had been once upon a time. The stage.
The lights blurred out the faces in the restaurant giving her the absurd feeling of anonymity in a room full of people. Possibly hostile people. It made it so much easier to don her punk rock cowgirl persona. On stage she was KENDALL KELLY…and she owned it. Usually. Although this was different. So, so, so very different.
She swallowed down the dust in her throat and took a sip of water from the bottle Colin handed her. Setting it down, she pulled herself to her full height and cleared her throat before tugging the guitar strap over her head. The usual rush of adrenaline that washed through her when she stepped onto any stage, making her feel both drugged and grounded, never came. Instead she just felt dry and exposed. What great luck to suddenly feel like she was chewing on boulders seconds before singing in front of her hometown crowd. She said a silent “thank you” to the universe that she’d put on her fitted leather pants and sleek high-heeled black boots. Simple. Not trashy. Nothing to draw too much attention, or even more, too much criticism.
Delilah sat at their table with her hands clasped together and a huge smile dominating her lovely face. Nothing would quell the pounding of Kendall’s heart against her ribcage, but having a friend in the room helped. How long had it been since she’d been on stage and looked over to see someone who wanted something good for her other than their commission? At least a couple months, and it had been over a month since her record fell off the lists and her tour was canceled along with her recording contract. But it felt like a lifetime. Even the man sitting across the room who had once sworn to love her until death was barely warming up to her. She could feel Damian’s eyes on her, but was too much of a coward to meet his gaze.
So she looked at Delilah. Her friend. And she leaned into the moment. No more running from the here and now. She breathed in, allowing the sizzling energy in the air to fill her lungs, the acidic boil in her belly to fuel her, and the sheer thrill of creating music be the magic that it always was. She ran her fingers down the neck of the guitar and felt out the strings, fiddling with the tuning, loving the bite of the metal pressing into her still-calloused fingertips.
“Hi. I’m sure you all are thrilled to see me back in town, right?” She laughed, at herself and at this mean little town. That was something she was pretty good at. Hell, she’d spent nine years here laughing at herself, trying to make everyone else around her feel comfortable by constantly playing the fool to her own jokes. Old habits died hard. “Colin asked me to sing a couple songs so I’m gonna do that. You go ahead and eat your dinner and drink your drinks. Don’t mind me.”
The bright dinner lights dimmed, throwing a soft glow over the room and spotlight over the stage, and she felt her smile stretch across her face like it had a million times before: wide, bright, fake. But no one else needed to know that, she thought, until she caught Damian’s enigmatic stare. And once again it was a punch to the gut the way his greenish brown eyes dug into hers, like they still owned her heart, her soul. But they didn’t because she was pretty sure he didn’t want her like she wanted him. Pretty sure she was still on her own.
Kendall wrenched her gaze away from his and closed her eyes. She wasn’t here for him. She wasn’t here in this moment on this stage to make amends. She was here for herself, wasn’t she? She was here to finally bury the past and figure out some kind of future for herself. She was here to sing because that was what she was good at even if she wasn’t good at the business of it.
Her fingers slid across the steel strings of the guitar and found their position as she began to strum the opening chords to a not-so-popular ballad from a very popular male county star, a hauntingly simple song about longing and the inevitability of loneliness after losing the love of one’s life. Kendall could feel the notes move through her hands and merge with her body’s sparking energy as her voice soared and she began to felt light and airy, like she always did when she sang. She felt transparent, yet wholly anchored for the few moments she was allowed to create art with her voice and guitar. For just a short while, she had value. She mattered and wasn’t just surviving or going through the motions or running from the press or even struggling to create new songs. For now she just made magic from air.
She sang to the chorus, not exactly hating the cracked huskiness of her voice and the way it echoed through the room. Opening her eyes she was almost surprised to see the room full of diners enjoying her music, and not actually throwing their artsy brew or avocado toast or whatever they ate in this new hipsterish rebirth of Otto’s. Some people even mouthed the words to the song as she sang and strummed, filling her with some sorely needed confidence. A salve to her blistered wound of an ego.
Smiling to herself she ended the song and Damian’s eyes slammed into hers almost like he thought the words she sang were for him when they clearly were not. Like they made him angry, which he shouldn’t be because, again, the song was just a stupid song and had nothing to do with them. Had nothing to do with her running away from the best thing she’d ever been part of. Right? No. Not right. He knew the truth, the truth she kept trying to hide from herself. He knew every damn word was about him, about them.
But she didn’t have time to debate with herself whether or not he was mad, or even why the hell he was mad because the entire crowd clapped, loudly. Well, nearly everyone except Carissa and her friends. Damian continued to stare at her, his face cranky, but he clapped…angrily, if that were possible.
Behind the farthest table, Damian’s father stood at the long wooden bar that spanned the whole width of the room, talking with Colin. Well, more like aggressively talking at Colin. Whatever, there wasn’t anything Jonathan Sloane could do to her that he hadn’t already done. She’d sing and ignore him. Hell, she hadn’t even realized he’d been there in the first place.
If only it were as easy to ignore the burn of Damian’s gaze. If only she could close her eyes and he’d disappear along with this hollow ache that seemed to run along her seams, threatening to bust her wide open. Although, truth be told, whenever she closed her eyes he was all she’d see. But this Damian, the one glaring holes in her heart, was so different than the one she’d run from years before. This Damian smiled less, keeping his full mouth in a grim line. When he had smiled earlier that day it had been done either reluctantly, a simple curl at the edge of his beautiful lips, or cruelly, a hard line slashed across his face…a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
So she sang because that was just about all she had left. This time her words, her song…one she’d written when she’d been barely a teenager. She strangled the sobs that threatened to boil up from her belly when she thought about her situation, when she caught Damian’s glare. She’d forged her path years ago and it was time to pay the piper. Her family was gone along with any remaining tie to the town. Her career had not only exploded but it had done so on a national scale. And the one man she’d ever loved was sitting at the bar watching her sing with a look she couldn’t decipher. When heat—whether from the constant anger he wore proudly on his sleeve or from the constant sexual tension between them—flickered across his face in the shadowy light of the room she closed her eyes.
And she sang. When she finally opened her eyes Damian’s spot at the bar was empty.
*
It took Damian all of two songs before he had to step out into the cool night air to breathe. From the moment Kendall had opened her gorgeous mouth and sung her first word up there on that stage, it was like the air had been sucked from his lungs, from the room.
The ache in his estranged wife’s voice still echoed through his body, ricocheting through his chest where his heart used to be and bouncing off his ribcage. From the initial licks of the guitar and first lyrics that shot at him like bullets from her mouth. He’d known she’d throw him off…her music always made him feel a little sideways. That had been a given. A foregone conclusion. What had been the real surprise was the visceral reaction to her standing up there with her eyes closed. He’d forgotten how much the music meant to her and just how much a part of her it was. It’s why he’d walked out of that hall the one time he’d followed her to LA. He hadn’t had the heart to try and take it away from her.
The door to the restaurant swung open with a whoosh as Damian pushed himself off the wall. Somehow he had to move beyond the hurricane of emotions swirling around in his head and move the fuck on. Only problem was he didn’t quite know what moving on meant anymore. Did it mean paying off Kendall and seeing her on her way? Or did it mean convincing Kendall to stay and save their marriage?
“It wasn’t bad enough she came back into town. You just had to rub our noses in it, didn’t you?” His father walked toward him wearing a suit, as usual, and his usual scowl.
The way Damian was standing, angry and pissed, struck him like a punch to the jaw. Christ, he was turning into his father despite all his attempts to be just the opposite. But it was there, plain as the glare in his eyes, that Damian was on that same path. Constant dissatisfaction with life and circumstances. That was the crux of his father. Never happy no matter what he had. Never enough.
“Did she finally run home to tell on your big mean daddy?” His father stopped in front of him. “That girl never did have any sense.”
“Don’t be an ass. Her grandmother died. Don’t pretend like you didn’t know.” Damian stepped forward, closing the distance between them, noting how much smaller his dad seemed now. When was the last time they’d had a real conversation? Probably never since a conversation with Jonathan Sloane always meant he was talking and the other participant was listening. His dad liked to educate and lecture. He wasn’t much for listening. “And Kendall is still my wife.”
His father snorted. His disdain was almost a real thing, another entity in the conversation. “She was never your wife. I could have her pulled off that stage and run her back out of town.” Damian had never understood more than superficially his family’s dislike for Kendall. Where she came from and who her family was wasn’t something she could control any more than he could. His father disliked Kendall for no real reason, simply that she was not good enough for a Sloane, for Damian. His father had resented Damian and Kendall’s instantaneous connection and the power it took away from him.
“No. You can’t. And I won’t let you. And neither will all those people in there listening to her sing. And she has always been my wife, Dad.” Because he realized then that he had never not been in love with Kendall Kelly. He just hadn’t allowed himself to think about it deeply in so long. At least not to the extent that he felt at that moment, deep in his bones.
A group of several people hustled up to the door and went in, filtering Kendall’s sweet husky voice out. What the hell was he doing out here arguing with his dad? He may as well slam his head into the wall over and over for all the good it did him. His dad didn’t listen and he wasn’t interested in trying anyhow.
Kendall would be leaving soon enough, unless they discussed an alternative scenario, which was ridiculous because she had a career to get back to and a town to ditch. And he still didn’t want to be the one who kept her from her dreams.
But what if she didn’t? What if she stayed? What if he was her dream just as she was his?
But if she did stay, could he trust her again or would he always be waiting for her to leave in the middle of the night? And could she ever be happy in Blackberry Cove, the town she blamed for just about every wrong done to her?
“There’s still a chance for you, son. Sell me the property—I can get you a great deal on it. You’re still young enough to go back to school and do something with your life,” his dad said, affecting a parental, and less aggressive stance. Well, at least, the truth was out there finally. His dad had always wanted that land.
“I heard about the resort developer’s offer. Hell, they came directly to me the first time around. I’m not selling, so you can drop the ‘good ole dad’ routine. We both know you’re full of shit,” Damian said and watched as his father’s face tightened and his eyes narrowed.
“Your mother was wrong about you. You’re not special. You’re nothing. Just another dirt farmer in a town of dirt farmers. At least your brother went and did something with his life. At least he’s a hero.”
“You’re right about that. Duncan is a hero. But he joined the Army to get as far away from you as possible. You’re also right about me, Dad. Not special at all.” Damian placed his hand on the door and tugged, stopping for a moment before looking at his father over his shoulder. “And actually, I’m a goat farmer.”
Kendall’s voice hit him dead center in the chest, stopping him mid-step in the open doorway. She stood on that stage with her eyes closed, strumming her guitar to a rapt audience. She stood proud, her long ruffled sweater framing her lean body, her voice climbing. It grew and grew and washed over him like a wave, a wave meant to wash clean the sins of the past and his fear of the future. There was only now and there was only her.
He had absolutely no clue how to move forward but he was sick of being stuck in the past, sick of slowly turning into his bitter old man, and sick of allowing his woman to wander the world without knowing how he felt about her or that she had a home with him. That he’d wait for her. Hell, he’d even leave this place for her.
The thought shook him as he stepped back into Otto’s and slid into the booth next to Delilah. She flashed him a wide smile that abruptly fell. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. And for the first time in four years he was okay. No matter what happened, he would be all right. Good even. And if he had his way, maybe Kendall would be too.