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“Excuse me?”
“I’m not going back to San Francisco, so I had good food there.” There’s something on his face that I can’t read.
“Does that mean you’re staying in Willowbrook?”
He shrugs. “I’m not sure. My dad asked me to come home, so here I am. But now he wants me to work the ranch or go help Coach Marks. And he wants me out of my childhood bedroom and is forcing me to build my own house. I don’t know. Maybe it was always the assumption I would return when my career was done.”
I hate that my heart is tugging for him. Leaving Willowbrook wasn’t an easy decision for him. Everyone knows that although Jude is proud, he’s somewhat resentful he had to stay and take over the ranch because ranches stay in the family around here and he’s the oldest brother. I wonder how he’d feel if Ben started on the ranch, too, after he’s built it up to what it is today.
“Is that what you want?”
He shrugs again, piling more food into his mouth.
“You’re old enough to make your own decisions.”
Maybe I’m lucky that I lost my mom young, my dad worked himself to death, and my siblings moved away. I have no family to have any expectations of me. But it’s hard at times. Feeling alone. Sure, I have Clayton and Laurel and the people in town, but one thing I loved about being with Ben was feeling like a part of the Noughton family. Something I never really had growing up. They were all very kind to me. I still get invited to parties today, but it’s not the same. Eventually, Ben will marry someone else, and she’s not going to want his high school sweetheart lingering around.
“I don’t really wanna talk about it,” he says.
“Then what do you want to talk about?” I grab another cinnamon roll because I’ll probably never go back. They wouldn’t be the same without Ben.
“How we can get back to being friends.”
I shake my head and shove a roll into my mouth so I have the excuse of chewing.
He waits patiently, eating his food and opening the orange juice he brought with him.
When I swallow, I sigh. “I’m going to be honest. I’m not sure there’s a possibility of that. I mean. Us. Friends?”
“You were my friend first.”
“Yeah, but then we were so much more.” Our eyes lock and hold for a beat, until I strip my gaze away.
“I’m sorry for what happened.”
I leave my plate and slide off the truck bed, wrapping my arms around myself and watching the sun shine over the fields.
“I’m not sure what else I can say.” His voice is low.
I hear him getting off the truck too. “It’s not that. What happened isn’t so bad that I don’t forgive you. Looking back, I was probably pretty needy.”
“No. You weren’t. Please don’t think that.”
I turn to him, and he grabs my hands. A zing of electricity bolts through my body. I assumed that his hands would be soft as if he got manicures every week, but they’re still rough with the calluses I remember.
“Leaving Willowbrook was hard. When I got to school, there were so many expectations of me. I didn’t know anyone. I was lost, so fucking lost. And I handled it like shit?—”
My chest gets tight, and I realize that maybe rehashing the past wasn’t such a good idea. “Please stop. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to go back there.”
Mostly because of my own actions. After such a short time, I slept with someone else because I was lonely and ended up pregnant, ensuring the two of us would never get back together.
“I love Clayton, and I’ll never regret that I got pregnant. I can’t apologize for that.”
“I would never ask you to.”
I strip my hands out of his. His touch is too tempting and makes me want to crawl into his arms and make the pain go away. “Good.”
“Come back and eat. We can have a lighter conversation. It doesn’t have to be so heavy. We can save that for another time.” He grabs my hand and tugs me gently to follow him.
