A Forever Kind of Love, page 16
She’d stayed awake half the night, running the list of pros and cons in her head, trying to picture what life would be like if she were to remain in Gauthier. The picture was different than the one she’d seen years ago, as a teenager hell-bent on getting out of this place. Now she was older, wiser. She had more resources at her disposal and could hop on a plane whenever she felt the need to get away. Small-town life no longer resembled a prison sentence.
But her life was in New York. Her work, her friends. Everything she’d worked hard for these past fifteen years. Could she just give it all up?
Maybe she didn’t have to give up anything. She could divide her time between both cities, finding sanctuary in Gauthier’s peace and quiet when the frenetic pace of the city got to be too much. Heading to New York to work or when Gauthier’s calmness had her climbing the walls.
Could she make it work?
Mya had hoped if she asked the question enough, the answer would reveal itself. But she’d asked herself over and over and was still as confused as ever. The only thing she knew for certain was that she had a flight to JFK booked for one tomorrow afternoon.
She dipped under the wooden beam sectioning off the various food booths. “How’s it going?” she asked her grandmother, who was counting dollar bills like a loan shark raking in the night’s bounty.
“I don’t think I made enough coconut pies,” Grandma answered. “It’s not even noon yet, and we’ve sold almost all of them.”
“I told you people were going to buy those up,” Mya said. “You know no one can resist your coconut pies.”
“She’s right about that.”
Mya stiffened at the deep voice only steps away. She turned and wanted to scream at how good Corey looked.
“Good morning, ladies.” He addressed all the women in the booth, but even with the sunglasses covering his eyes, Mya knew he was looking directly at her.
“Do your players have everything they need?” she asked him. “I have more prizes at Grandma’s if they start to run out.”
“The only one in danger of running out of prizes is the dunk tank, but I think the opportunity to dunk Assistant Principal Donaldson is enough of a prize for anyone. Manny’s spent about fifty bucks already. Is everything in place for the tourism board?” he asked, handing her grandmother a dollar before picking up an oatmeal cookie.
Mya knew better than to be fooled by his easygoing demeanor. “I was going to run over to Matthew Gauthier’s office just to make sure Carmen doesn’t need any help,” she answered.
“I’ll come with you,” he said, just as she knew he would.
As Mya was leaving the booth, her grandmother grabbed her hand. She looked back, and Grandma sent her a wink.
Oh, great.
Who would have thought having her grandmother hate Corey back in high school would be easier than having her like him now?
Mya left the booth and started toward Gauthier Law Firm. Corey fell in step beside her, breaking off a piece of his oatmeal cookie. He held it out to her. “Want a bite?”
“No thanks,” Mya answered.
He took the shades from his eyes and hooked them in front of his shirt. “So, are we going to talk about why you’ve been avoiding me, or should we save it for when we have more time? Although I don’t know when we’ll find more time, since I’m pretty sure you’re leaving town as soon as you can.”
Mya slowed her steps. “Corey, please.”
He stopped and encircled her wrist, halting her steps as well. “The decision was yours to make, Mya. If you’ve made it, at least grant me the courtesy of letting me know what you chose.”
She took a fortifying breath before saying, “My flight leaves at one tomorrow afternoon.”
Corey’s jaw hardened, but he didn’t let her go.
“So that’s it,” he stated.
“You knew this was temporary,” she said. “I’ve been in Gauthier nearly a month longer than I originally planned. My life is in New York, Corey. There’s a new show in the works that I’ve wanted to be a part of ever since I heard it was a possibility.”
“That’s not why you’re leaving,” he said. “You told me yourself that a lot of the work you do can be handled remotely. Stop skirting the issue, Mya.”
She yanked her wrist from his grip and crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine, you tell me why I’m going.”
“Because you’re scared,” he said. “You’re leaving because the thought of loving me scares the hell out of you, the same way it did fifteen years ago.”
She shook her head vehemently. “I was never afraid of loving you. You know I loved you, Corey. I never denied that.”
“But you left. You left because you thought loving me meant loving this town, and you were always so damn afraid of getting stuck here.” He ran an agitated hand down his face. “You criticize your mother for the way she looked down on Gauthier, but you are just like her. You’re still letting some crazy notion of being trapped here keep you away.”
He stepped up to her, his intense eyes searing a path straight to her soul. “What you don’t understand is that leaving here doesn’t make you better than anyone, Mya. It just makes you a coward.”
Every word from his mouth hit her like a blow to the chest. She wanted to lash out at him. She wanted to pummel his chest with her fists for even daring to compare her to Elizabeth Dubois.
There was only one thing that stopped her: the fact that Corey was right.
She was running. Not just from Gauthier, but from the secret she’d been hiding all these years. The truth stabbed at her conscience, taunting her. She knew she would never truly be at peace until she finally came clean to Corey about the baby.
“Mya!”
Both she and Corey spun toward the law office, where Carmen stood just inside the doorway. She pointed toward three vehicles that had just pulled into the parking spots in front of the building. It had to be the people from the tourism board.
Corey let out a frustrated curse. “Come on,” he said. “It’s showtime.”
Corey stood in the corner of the cavernous back room in Matthew Gauthier’s law practice. Earlier in the week, he, along with a dozen of the players on his team, had helped move about a hundred file boxes into a climate-controlled storage unit in Maplesville. The Washington Parish Historical Society had toured the room on Wednesday, along with a professor from Tulane University’s history department, who had quickly determined that this had indeed been a stop on the Underground Railroad. The professor was in the middle of a big research project on the Underground Railroad in Louisiana and had set up residence in Matthew’s office.
The historical society had asked that the room be closed off to visitors—even to Matthew and his staff—while they awaited confirmation from the state preservation board, but Mya had explained that an exception would have to be made for representatives from the Louisiana tourism bureau. The pitch was in full swing, and the tourism board seemed to be eating it up.
One by one, they ducked into the opening in the wall that had been discovered once the boxes had been removed. The dank crawl space was illuminated by a low-wattage light bulb on a tripod. The researchers with the historical society had cautioned against using bright lights that may cause damage to anything that was found.
“This is awe inspiring,” one of the representatives said. She held out an arm. “I have goosebumps.”
The history professor explained that small, secret rooms such as this one were common back then. He pointed out hash marks on the bricks as marking the slaves used to count down the days until the next push to the North would be made.
They moved from the law office to the other buildings on Main Street. Mya played tour guide, and the irony wasn’t lost on Corey. He could hardly stomach hearing her expound on all the wonderful attributes of Gauthier when she was itching to leave the town as soon as possible. How she didn’t manage to choke on the words was a miracle.
“Hey, Coach!”
He turned and spotted Pierre Jones jogging toward him. Corey stepped away from the touring contingent.
“What’s up?” he asked the boy when he arrived.
“It’s Andre,” Pierre said. “He’s talking crazy.”
“What do you mean by crazy?” Corey asked, anxiety instantly raising the hairs on his neck.
“He says he’s leaving. He’s got two suitcases and his drum set packed in the back of his truck.”
“Dammit,” Corey cursed. “Where is he?”
Pierre motioned for him to follow, and they took off toward the west end of Main Street. When they turned down Maurepas Drive, Corey spotted Andre’s dusty gray pickup, with its orange door and red tailgate. The mishmash of truck parts was courtesy of Corey’s father’s old junkyard.
The boy was sitting behind the wheel when he approached. Corey rapped his knuckle against the glass.
Andre’s eyes remained straight ahead.
“He told me not to tell anybody,” Pierre said from a few feet away. “He sent me to get his iPad from his girlfriend. He wasn’t even going to tell her that he was leaving.”
“Go on.” Corey gestured for Pierre to leave. “I’ll take care of this.”
Pierre looked at him as if he wasn’t sure he should leave Corey alone with a pack of rabid dogs, let alone his best friend, but he nodded and started back toward the festivities.
Corey went around the front of the truck and opened the side door—which, he remembered from the team’s constant ribbing of Andre, didn’t lock. He slid onto the seat, closed the door, and stared straight ahead.
“So, you want to talk about this?” he asked Andre.
Andre cursed. Harshly. As an authority figure, Corey should have chastised him, but it was obvious the boy’s problems warranted it.
“I’m going to kill Pierre,” Andre said.
Corey hitched a thumb toward the truck bed, which apparently contained all of the kid’s belongings. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I don’t know,” Andre said. “Anywhere but here.”
“And what’s so wrong with here?” Corey asked.
“No one wants me here.”
“Did you and Kendra get into a fight or something? Did she tell you that she doesn’t want you here? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Kendra don’t give a damn about me. And now T.J. don’t want nothing to do with me either after I wouldn’t deliver that package to that guy for him.” Andre hunched his shoulders. He sniffed and wiped at his face. “Don’t make sense for me to be here.”
“You need to stay the hell away from T.J. anyway,” Corey reminded him. “And I know your aunt isn’t the most attentive person in the world, but you’ll be out of her house soon enough.”
“She already kicked me out of her house,” Andre said.
“She what?” Corey twisted in the seat to face him.
“She does it all the time,” Andre continued. “If she brings a man home, she makes me leave. I can’t just go to my room and shut the door—I have to leave the house. I used to hang out at T.J.’s when she made me leave, but now he won’t let me come to his place.”
Corey brought his hand up and massaged the tight muscles in the back of his neck. Expelling a tired sigh, he said, “You’re coming home with me.”
Andre sniffed loudly and looked over at him.
Corey nodded. “I’m not letting you leave Gauthier. I don’t know what would have to happen legally, but you’re almost eighteen anyway.”
“In two months,” Andre interjected.
“And once you graduate in May, you’re going to college.” He clamped a hand on Andre’s shoulder. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“What about Kendra?” Andre asked.
“Don’t worry about your aunt. I’ll take care of her,” Corey said. He opened the door and slid out of the truck. Before closing it, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his key ring, then unwound his house key from the ring and handed it to Andre. “Go and put your things at my place, then get back here and enjoy the celebration.”
Corey closed the door and headed back toward the center of Main Street, his mind on one thing. He spotted Kendra Thomas walking toward the food booths.
“Kendra,” he called, “I need to speak with you. Now.”
She turned, a coy smile tipping up her lips. “Hi, Corey,” she said, running her fingers along his arm.
Corey jerked away from her caress. He had been turning down Kendra’s advances for the past twenty years, ever since she first asked him to the homecoming dance her freshman year of high school. One would think she would have gotten a clue by now.
“Do you know what it means to be a legal guardian?” Corey asked her.
Her smile instantly dimmed. “I don’t want to hear anything about Andre,” she said. “Andre is fine.”
“The hell he is,” Corey bit out. “Andre has been getting into trouble left and right, and you act as if you don’t see it. You’re supposed to be taking care of him.”
“I am taking care of him,” Kendra said. “Andre’s not starving. He’s not naked. Though God knows he eats like a damn horse and grows out of clothes faster than I can buy them.”
“Taking care of someone is more than just buying food and clothes,” Corey pointed out. “And you don’t put them out of the house when you have ‘company’ over. Your nephew should come first.”
Kendra’s pencil-thin eyebrows drew together as a sneer lifted up one corner of her mouth. “Don’t you get self-righteous with me, Corey Anderson. I didn’t ask for this. I could have let Andre go into the foster care system, but I stepped up and was there for my family. That’s more than you can say.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I was there for my dad until the day he died. Even when I moved away, I made sure he was taken care of.”
“Oh, please. You know I’m not talking about your dad.” Kendra rolled her eyes. “Don’t act all innocent. I was there when Mya chewed you out after catching you with Tamika Hillard.”
Corey winced. He wanted to strangle Kendra for throwing his long-ago mistake in his face. As if it had any bearing on the current situation with her nephew.
“Mr. Stand-up Baseball Star, who turned into a model citizen after years of running the streets with his twin brothers. You wanted to pretend you were so much better than Stefan and Shawn. Yeah, right.” Kendra snorted. “Did either of your brothers cheat on their girlfriend after she’d just lost their baby?”
Corey’s neck stiffened. “What did you say?” he asked in a soft voice.
Kendra huffed out a cynical laugh. “There’s no need to play dumb, Corey. I know all about that baby. You all tried to keep it a secret, but my mama was a nurse at the hospital back then. She took care of Mya the couple of days she was in the hospital after her miscarriage.”
Corey’s breath caught in his lungs as memories from fifteen years ago assaulted him. He remembered going to visit Mya in the hospital, sitting at her bedside and holding her hand as she recovered from a “stomach virus.” He remembered thinking that no stomach virus should be severe enough to put someone in the hospital, but what the hell did he know at the time?
He remembered her crying in his arms and, a few weeks later, telling him that she was leaving Gauthier.
A baby? Mya had been pregnant?
Just the idea of the two of them creating a tiny life together tightened his throat with enough emotion to smother him. How many times over the years had he imagined raising a family with Mya? Dozens? Hundreds? They had been closer to that reality than he’d ever realized, yet he’d had no clue.
Mya had been pregnant with his child and not bothered to tell him.
No, it was worse than that. Not only did she not bother to tell him, she’d lied about it. For fifteen years she’d been lying to him. How could she have kept something like this from him?
There was only one way to find out.
Anger blurring his sight, Corey spun on his heel and headed straight for her. He spotted the contingent of tourism officials surrounding the wooden waterwheel in the center of Heritage Park. His eyes quickly zeroed in on his target. She was as animated as a theme park tour guide, pointing out features and smiling at the visitors.
He wondered if that smile would remain when she explained why she’d lied to him for fifteen years.
Chapter 14
Mya pointed out the features of the waterwheel, the centerpiece of Heritage Park. She gave the members of the tourism board a brief overview of the history of the wheel and crossed her fingers as she gave Carmen the nod to flip the switch. The waterwheel hesitated for just a second before it jerked to life.
Applause erupted, not only from the tourism board, but from the gathering of Gauthier residents who had congregated a few yards back to watch the big wheel churn after years of being idle. Once the entire park was completely rewired, the wheel would pedal water twenty-four seven.
“If you follow me, we will now visit the Heritage Park Gazebo,” Mya said. “It dates back to 1867 and was a gift to the town from its founder, Micah Gauthier.”
Mya guided the group to the southern edge of the park where the wooden gazebo stood, shaded under the curving branches of centuries-old oak trees. The gazebo was the last stop on the guided tour before she released the tourism board to enjoy the festivities on their own.
As they walked, she searched for Corey in the crowd. He had been gone for nearly a half-hour. She wanted him by her side when she gave the final pitch for Gauthier to be considered a destination for tourists.
Once they reached the gazebo, Mya pointed out the complex design, with carvings that were so intricate they resembled wooden lace. As the guests studied the workmanship, she took the opportunity to scan the crowd once again.
“Finally,” she murmured as she spotted Corey striding across the grass toward them. But as he drew closer, Mya’s senses went on red alert. Something was wrong. His face was tense with anger, his steps swift and powerful.
Something must have happened with Andre. Mya had no idea what the boy had done to raise Corey’s ire, but it must have been really bad.
