Return to Destiny, page 4
She actually didn’t think she owed him even that small increment of time, but he sounded so reasonable asking. And she wanted to be a reasonable, mature person, too. Most people would describe her that way, after all. She supposed seeing him so unexpectedly was just giving her some sort of post-high-school PTSD. “Sure,” she said, trying to sound calm and cool about it. Though, realistically, she’d probably already blown any chance of coming off as even remotely cool.
He motioned to the patio chair next to his own, and her continued quest to turn this thing around and seem normal really left her no choice but to go sit in it.
Even if her heart beat almost painfully now. It was so, so strange to suddenly find herself so close to this boy she’d once loved who’d gone away and come back a man. His shoulders were broader; the stubble on his jaw thicker, darker. He owned this large home, probably four times the size of the house she’d grown up in as part of a family of six. The open can of beer resting on the table between them came as a surprise, as well—he’d never been a drinker as a teen, too wrapped up in sports and fitness. And he was less cute now—and more ruggedly handsome. But one thing hadn’t changed, as she’d noticed already—his eyes were still just as blue.
“I can only stay a minute,” she told him. “I really do have to get to that appointment.”
“All right,” he said. “I’m just…so surprised to see you. How are you?”
“I’m good,” she said, glancing his way, but not quite able to hold that blue gaze, so she switched hers to the golden trees across the lake. “This is a beautiful view.”
“Yeah. Autumn Lake is kind of a hidden gem,” he replied. But then he got back to the subject—her. “My mom told me you work at the school now—says it seems like you pretty much run the place.” He ended with a tired-looking but sincere sort of smile she tried not to see but still felt in her solar plexus. He’d always had a great smile, tired or not.
“Well, it keeps me busy. And I’m good at it. I like all the things I do.”
“That’s great,” he said. “It’s important to care about what you do.”
She tried not to respond—she didn’t want to advance the conversation unnecessarily. What she wanted was to go find those donkeys. But she couldn’t bear the tense silence, even for just a few seconds, so she asked, “And how are you?”
Though when he blew out a heavy breath and ran a hand back through his hair, she remembered this was actually not the safe, easy topic she’d intended. “Not at my best,” he confessed.
Argh—couldn’t he have just lied and said, “Fine”?
“In fact, pretty close to my worst if I’m keeping it real.”
I’d rather you fake it, she wanted to say. Seriously, feel free to keep the truth bottled up inside. I don’t need to know.
“I don’t know if you heard,” he said, “but I got cut.”
Nope, he was going there. “I did hear,” she told him.
“Washed up at twenty-eight.”
Yep, going there hard. But she wasn’t gonna touch that. It was none of her business to tell him how silly that sounded, and none of her concern, either. “I’m sorry your career hasn’t been what you expected,” she said, choosing her words carefully. And she’d truly never wished him failure or sadness of any kind.
“Thanks,” he said.
Well, I should go. She waited a second before saying it, though, trying to time it in a way that didn’t sound abrupt, or like the blessed escape it would be. She felt only a step or two away from having brought this thing back around to normal and cool.
But she waited a beat too long, because that’s when he leaned slightly forward to say, “Cara, I know you can’t stay, but since you’re here…I’ve spent the last ten years wanting to talk to you. Wanting to tell you how sorry I am. For the way I ended things with you. I shouldn’t have let my parents push me to do it. It was a huge mistake.”
A whoosh of adrenaline shot through her body. A mistake? He was saying he regretted it? She started to sweat and didn’t know what to think, let alone what to say. But get hold of yourself; be controlled.
How to answer? It’s all right, I got over it, we were teenagers. Yes, that sounded strong, mature, and cool as a cucumber.
“I’ve wanted to reach out to you so many times,” he went on before she could reply.
“Then why didn’t you?” she heard herself ask. Oops. Yikes. What happened to “I got over it”? Honesty had just run blindly over coolness without even stopping to look back.
“Because you told me that night you never wanted to see me again,” he replied. “I took you at your word.”
“Well, you’d just dumped me when I least expected it,” she reminded him. Oh boy, more unplanned honesty. Which suddenly bore a striking resemblance to word vomit. How had they suddenly flown into discussing one of the worst nights of her life?
“I went about it all wrong,” he said. “The timing, the place—it was awful and I know that. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was confused and my head was a mess.”
Part of her still wanted to rein this situation in, act above it all—but he was on the verge of rewriting history here, so irritation took hold instead. “It was a long time ago, but my main memory of that night is that you made yourself very clear. You didn’t strike me as confused at all. I left there knowing very certainly that I’d been dumped and you were ready to move on with your new life.”
“Would you quit calling it that?” he said, sounding as offended as if the conversation had occurred just yesterday. “I didn’t dump you.”
“Of course you did. And if I’m remembering correctly, you didn’t like that word back then, either, but that’s what breaking up with somebody is—dumping them, being done with them.” It was like the shock of seeing him had turned on an honesty faucet in her and now she couldn’t shut it off.
“I was a kid and I handled the whole thing poorly.”
She realized she was fully committed now to this whole honesty thing. It was too late to turn back anyway, no making out like she was a carefree, detached person who’d gotten over him the moment he’d whisked off to college—she was in this all the way now, for better or worse. So she told him, “We were both kids—but that doesn’t make what we had nothing. We were crazy about each other. We made each other promises. It mattered.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “I’m not trying to say it didn’t. You were everything to me then. And I guess an apology ten years later doesn’t count for much. I guess I should have reached out to you long before now. Maybe I was afraid you’d just tell me to go to hell.”
She considered his explanation only briefly before saying, “Well, if the fear of me not being nice was enough to keep you from it, it must not have felt very important.” She stopped, sighed. Maybe this was a useless conversation. After all, he kept taking the blame, and her response was to keep coming down on him anyway for even trying to explain himself. Maybe it just meant an apology didn’t matter much at this point.
Even so, she heard herself confess one more truth. “When my mother died, though, I thought maybe then I would hear from you.” Even though it happened four years after their breakup. So admitting that was baring her soul. It was telling him that years later, at the time of her greatest loss, he’d been on her mind.
It didn’t appear to catch him off guard, though. Instead, he simply replied, voice low, “I know. I wanted to reach out when I heard. I wanted to let you know I cared.”
“At one time,” she reminded him quietly, “she thought of you like a son.”
“Yeah. I remember.” He sounded sad, maybe a little ashamed. “But it still came down to thinking you wouldn’t want me there. I wouldn’t have wanted to make a hard day for you even worse.”
She drew in a breath. It had been a hard day. The hardest of hard days. Hell, it had been a hard year leading up to her mom’s death. “I can understand that,” she told him. “But for future reference, it turns out that when you lose your mother, condolences from pretty much anyone are welcome, especially from anyone who knew her and cared about her.”
Next to her, he nodded and said, “I’m sorry. I know I’ve made huge mistakes with you that I can never fix.”
He hit the nail on the head with that one, for sure.
And after that, they both stayed quiet. How had this even happened? What a horrible, awkward conversation.
She wished she hadn’t always been such an open, forthright person, but she just was. Even when she tried not to be, as she’d just proven. She’d always felt that being up front about things just made life easier, left out the ambiguity, and gave her the best chance of knowing where she stood. Maybe she’d needed that after her father died—some sense of control over the world and her life, and just keeping it real had seemed like a good step in that direction.
Though up to this moment, she’d thought it was a choice, a thing she decided to act upon or not, depending upon the situation—but everything she’d just said had spilled out of her unbidden.
So at this point she figured, what the hell, she might as well just keep on telling him the truth. “Did you know your father asked me to come talk to you?”
They’d both been staring awkwardly at the lake in front of them, but now his eyes grew wide as he lifted them back to her. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Oh my God, Cara, I’m so sorry. That was so out of line.” He shook his head again. “I love my dad, but man, the guy never knows when to stay out of my business.”
“I declined,” she informed him. “I told him I didn’t know you anymore and had nothing to say to you. But since the universe brought me here anyway, maybe I should tell you what I think.”
He looked nervous. She’d already given him an earful, after all. In fact, this was probably a fine time to shut up and leave. But he finally said, “Okay,” and that took her back to what-the-hell.
“You’re not washed up,” she informed him. “No one is washed up at twenty-eight.”
At this, however, he simply let out a cynical laugh. “Tell that to the NFL.”
“I’m not talking about the NFL. I’m talking about figuring out what comes next.”
“Cara, the only thing I know how to do is play football.” Up to now, he’d seemed…well, in a better state of mind than his father had suggested, but now she suddenly heard him sounding defeated.
“Don’t you have a college degree in something?” she pointed out.
He released another big sigh. “Communications,” he said as if it was the foulest word a person could utter. “In preparation for a job in the media after I retired from football. Problem being that you pretty much have to have had a career for anybody to want you for that. Six years in the NFL and I was on the field for just over fifteen minutes of game time total.” He gave his head a short shake. “I’m not a hot property in football or communications. I’m not a hot property anymore period.”
At hearing the same defeatist attitude she often got from high school students in trouble, waiting to be seen by Principal Turley, she approached it in the same way—tough love. Not that she loved Tyler anymore—she didn’t.
“Look, I understand it sucks to get as far as you did and then get kicked around by injuries and fate. So you have a right to take some time to lick your wounds and get over that. But as for this business of being washed up, it’s silly. Do you think I wanted to figure out how to keep going after my father died when I was twelve? Do you think I wanted to figure out what came next when you pulled the rug out from under me when I was eighteen, when I was suddenly left behind to care for my sick mother with no future prospects? Do you think I might have wanted to give up after my mom passed away when I was twenty-two and not sure how I would even make a living? Everyone has those moments when it feels like all is lost and they don’t know what to do. And then they rise up and move beyond it.
“The lucky thing for you is, you never have to work another day in your life if you don’t want to. You can take care of your family, and I suspect your dad is still only on the Destiny Police Force because he’d be bored otherwise. Or you can work—at anything you want, anywhere you want. You can do anything you please. Because you’re not washed up at twenty-eight—you’re a multi-millionaire at twenty-eight. The vast majority of people in the world, people who are out there working at jobs they do or don’t love, to pay the bills and keep a roof over their heads, would trade places with you in a heartbeat.
“So if I were you, I’d give myself a very limited amount of time to get over my disappointments—and then I’d start counting my blessings and figuring out what I can do with them to put some good into the world.”
With that, she pushed to her feet. She’d concluded a horribly unpleasant conversation about them with some pretty rude remarks about him. And she’d shown up here uninvited, even if only by accident. So it was time to be on her way, for more reasons than one. “I’m sorry if that was too blunt. And on that note, I really should go.”
He stood up, too. “Cara,” he said. “It’s okay. That you told me what you think. I actually always loved that about you. You didn’t feed me bullshit—you kept things real, always. And this is probably going to sound a little weird, all things considered, but…”
“Yeah?” she asked cautiously when he trailed off.
“Can I see you again?”
Whoa. What? She’d pretty much just told him he was a whiner, and this was what she got in return? She gave her head a brisk shake to clear it. Tyler Fleet, her first love, her only love so far, was back in town and wanted to see her again? Tyler Fleet, who’d broken her heart into pieces and never looked back. Tyler Fleet, who she’d just pretty much told off without warning.
He remained incredibly attractive to her, the chemistry between them so undeniably palpable that even now, her body felt hot and melty in his presence. But the answer was simple and clear.
“No,” she said softly. “I wish you all the best, I truly do. But what we had ended a long time ago.”
He pushed out another sigh, leaning back in his chair. “I guess I don’t blame you if you can’t forgive me.”
“This isn’t about forgiveness,” she assured him. “But as a wise woman told me just last night, it’s good to forgive, but another thing to forget. And the way things ended between us…it just changed how I saw you, how I felt about you as a person. Take care of yourself, Tyler. I know you’ll bounce back from this and figure out how to move forward again.”
And with that, she strode with great purpose back down the planked porch, feeling a little safer when she turned the corner and got out of his sight—but full relief didn’t hit until she was back in her car and retreating down the long, dusty gravel driveway.
What the hell had just happened? She feared she’d behaved like a lunatic. Being honest and real with people had generally served her well—people usually found her authentic and open and likable. But this…this was something else.
This was letting him see…too much. Even if he hadn’t minded anything she’d said. She wished she could go back in time and be the calm, cool woman she’d originally intended upon first laying eyes on him. But it was too late for that now—and at least it was over.
Well, with any luck, he’d take her advice, find some job or cause or other way to move on, and leave town again soon. Or he could stay holed up in that house forever for all she cared.
And that house. Some cabin. One more reason not to like Raybourne Fleet—he’d totally misrepresented the place Tyler had built so that she’d had no chance of realizing she was about to walk right into her past when she’d least expected it.
Now she had to somehow get her game face back on and negotiate a donkey rental. And not think about Tyler Fleet ever again. No matter how good he’d looked to her. No matter how interested in her life he’d seemed. No matter how sincere he’d sounded asking if he could see her again. Only a fool would want anything to do with a guy who’d already torn her life apart once.
Well, at least now she’d spoken her mind and gotten it all off her chest, even stuff he hadn’t asked her about. If she saw him again, God forbid, he’d definitely meet the calm, cool, collected version of Cara Collins, the woman who’d truly gotten over him a long time ago and wasn’t thrown for a loop by an unexpected encounter. But hopefully that wouldn’t even happen and he was out of her life for good this time.
Chapter Four
Tyler Fleet sat staring after his ex-girlfriend as she disappeared around the corner.
What. Was. That?
He felt like he’d been punched in the gut, repeatedly. Worse, he was pretty sure he’d deserved every bit of it.
And yet, he’d asked to see her again?
He shook his head, trying to remove the fog from his brain. He wasn’t even sure what had prompted the request given that she’d just spent the last five minutes more or less ripping him a new one. Which, again, he couldn’t fault her for.
Maybe he’d wanted to see more of her because, strange as it seemed, he found it almost refreshing to hear her speak her mind, holding nothing back. He’d spent his whole adulthood so far being fawned over by fake women overly consumed with social standing and material things, and who seemed to have no goals in life other than being in awe of the nearest available pro athlete. And sure, at first it was fun, exciting, flattering—until it had sunk in that they were after fame and money more than anything honest or real.
Maybe he’d wanted to see her again because the mere sight of her face, the sound of her voice, had taken him back to a simpler place in time, when love and football had both felt easy and fulfilling, like all he needed to make him happy. Those days seemed far, far away, but having Cara within arm’s reach had suddenly brought them closer.
Or maybe it was just because she’d somehow gotten even prettier. Her long brown hair fell around her face in stylish waves, and faded blue jeans and a cozy sweater had made her seem as down-to-earth as ever. But mostly it was her face. Warm brown eyes, cheeks pink from the light chill in the air, lips the color of faded berries.
