I glanced back and, sure enough ,Cage was standing beside his truck with his hands on his hips and his hat pushed back off his forehead, a piece of straw sticking out of his mouth. He looked like a television ad for sexy cowboys. I blew him a kiss and laughed.
He shook his head and grinned before shooting Jeremy one more pointed look. Then he turned and walked over to the barn door. “Don’t see a ring on your finger. Thought I’d see one of those when I got back.”
I glanced down at my hand. I hadn’t expected Cage to purpose to me. “Why would you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you’re pregnant with his baby,” Jeremy shot back.
Cage wasn’t like that. He hadn’t grown up thinking the way Jeremy and I had been taught. I wanted to believe one day Cage would ask me to marry him, but after the way I’d treated him and hadn’t trusted him, I doubted he would be trusting me with something that big for a while. I was okay with that. I understood.
“I just took another man’s ring off a few days ago, Jer. I don’t think he’s ready to stick his on there. He looks tough and he acts like a badass, but he is fragile. He expects people to leave him. He also doesn’t trust that I won’t leave him again. I have a lot of proving to do before Cage trusts me with something like forever.”
Jeremy frowned. “Really? You’re now taking the blame for all this? How the hell did that happen?”
Jeremy wouldn’t understand. No one had seen Cage with his guard completely down. I’d only seen it a few times myself. “I can’t blame him for his insecurities. His momma screwed him up emotionally. I knew that, and I didn’t stop feeling sorry for myself long enough to think about that.”
Jeremy shook his head, but he didn’t say anything else about it.
“I’m gonna help him find a replacement. Then I’m hitting the road.”
“Where are you going? I thought you didn’t want to go to school, that you wanted to stay here on the land?”
He nodded. “I did. I’ll be back. But right now I want to just ride. Go see other places. Not settle down anywhere, just find myself.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I wanted him to be happy, but I didn’t want to be the reason he was leaving.
“Let me go help him before he decides to come get me,” he said with a wink, then headed down to the barn.
He seemed happy. This was what he wanted to do. Maybe he’d find that girl to make him complete out there on the road. Once he opened the barn door, I turned and headed back inside.
CAGE
Jeremy walked into the barn, looking pissed. “Why don’t she have a ring on her finger, York?”
I grabbed my work gloves from the bench I’d left them on earlier. “I’m working on that. Not that it’s your damn business.”
The tension went out of his shoulders and he nodded. “Oh. Good. She don’t seem to think you are. She thinks you can’t trust her or some stupid shit. I wasn’t following her. I just knew it was dumb.”
Couldn’t trust her? What the hell was the woman thinking now?
“I just need one thing from you. I need to know where her piano went.”
Jeremy grinned. “Why?”
“I just need it. Where is it?”
“I could not tell you for being an ass.”
“And I could beat your ass,” I replied.
Jeremy laughed. “Fine. It’s in my basement. Eva thinks she donated it to a kid’s center for underprivileged children. When actually, Wilson bought them a piano for that center and he had Eva’s piano moved to my basement.”
I knew she’d gotten rid of it. I had expected it to be harder to find. “Why did he do that?”
“Because he’s her daddy and he knew she would want it back one day. Just like he knew you’d be back.”
My chest tightened. Her dad hadn’t doubted me. He should’ve hated me, but he had believed in us. Even when I didn’t. Damn.
“What are you gonna do with her piano?” he asked.