Do you take this rebel - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,46
yet another dull, throbbing headache.
“Cassie, are you okay?” her mother asked weakly.
She forced a smile and turned back to the bed where her mother was resting after her first radiation treatment. The trip to Denver was more tiring for her than the treatment itself.
“I’m fine,” Cassie fibbed.
“You’re worried about the amount of time Jake and Cole are spending together, aren’t you?”
“I’ve done everything I can to keep them apart,” she admitted. “I don’t know what else to do, short of telling Cole the truth.”
“Why not do that?” she said. “Face it, Cassie. He’s going to figure it out sooner or later. Wouldn’t it be better if the truth came from you?”
Cassie knew her mother was right, but she simply hadn’t been able to work up the courage to say the words. “I don’t know how to tell him, not after all this time.”
“Would you like me to do it?”
She shook her head. “No, I have to be the one.” She faced her mother, grateful for this opening. “There’s something I don’t understand.”
“What?”
“Why are you and Frank Davis both so eager for the truth to come out, when years ago you couldn’t wait to break us up?”
What little color there had been in her mother’s cheeks faded. “Why…” she began, but her voice faltered. “Why would you say something like that?”
“I know, Mom. Mr. Davis told me all about the letter you kept from me, the one in which Cole explained why he had to leave. He also told me about the letter you wrote to Cole telling him I didn’t want him in my life anymore.”
Tears tracked down her mother’s cheeks. She reached for Cassie’s hand. Her frail grasp was icy cold. “I’m sorry. We thought it was for the best.”
“You mean Mr. Davis thought it was best.”
“No,” her mother said sharply. “We agreed. You were both too young.”
“But I was having a baby, and you’ve already admitted that you knew it was Cole’s. Things might have been so different.”
“No,” her mother said just as adamantly. “Nothing would have been any different. Frank would never have approved of a marriage between the two of you. He would have found a way to stop it. Once I knew about the baby, I told him—in fact, I begged him—to let you and Cole work it out, but he refused. I would have gone to Cole myself, but I didn’t know where he was. Frank gave me the money for your medical expenses. He promised me more if I let things be, but I never took another dime.”
She squeezed Cassie’s hand. “Not another dime,” she repeated.
“Oh, Mom,” Cassie whispered wearily. “You should have gone ahead and taken the money. The damage was done.”
“I couldn’t. I already felt guilty enough. I could barely look you in the face. When Jake was born, I thought of all we could have done for him with that money, but by then it was too late. And that wasn’t the worst of it. When Cole came by here to visit, to ask after you, I slammed the door on him. I couldn’t bear to face him after what I’d done to keep you apart, to keep him from his own son.”
Her mother sighed. “I shudder to think what would have happened to me if he knew all of that. He certainly wouldn’t have offered to pay my medical expenses.”
“Yes he would,” Cassie reassured her. “And he does know, because I told him that much at least. I told him about the letters.”
“When?”
“A few weeks ago, right after your surgery.”
“And he never said a word,” her mother said, looking amazed. “And all this time he’s been paying for my radiation treatments and taking me to Denver.”
Cassie nodded.
“That should tell you something, then.”
“What?”
“If he can forgive me, then surely he’ll be able to forgive you.”
Cassie wanted desperately to believe that, but what she had done wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same thing at all. She had once professed to love Cole, and yet she had kept their child a secret from him…and was continuing to do so.
Despite all of Cassie’s warnings and her threats of dire punishments, she knew that Jake was still trying to come up with ways to sneak off to the Davis ranch. Maybe it was simply the lure of the forbidden. More likely it was hero worship.
So far she’d caught Jake half a dozen times on the outskirts of town, riding the bike he’d repaired. At this rate the boy was going to be grounded