“Considering how you acted that night,” he said, “I think you were probably pretty relieved.”
“No,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t relieved. I missed you, Luke.”
He remembered how he’d hit the highway with everything he owned in the world stuffed into his wreck of a Mustang, telling himself over and over that he didn’t care about Shannon, didn’t love her, didn’t want to ever see her again. And he remembered with equal clarity how hard it had been to drive with tears filling his eyes.
Shannon tilted her head, her eyes narrowing as she looked at him, as if she was searching for something deep inside him she couldn’t quite locate. “You may not believe this,” she said, “but I cared about you.”
Luke felt a swell of emotion coming from that place she was looking for. But he’d never let her find it. Never again. He intended to keep it locked away until the world turned to dust.
“Cared about me?” He made a scoffing noise. “There was only one reason you liked being around me. Because you were so repressed you could barely breathe, and you were dying to take a walk on the wild side. Being with me was your way of telling the world to fuck off.”
“So you think that was the only reason I was with you that night?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“So why were you with me?”
“I hate to burst your bubble, but I was there to get laid. And that’s all there was to it.”
He could tell he’d scored a direct hit, but she’d just have to live with it. He stood up and walked to the door.
Shannon rose from the sofa. “And all this time I thought I’d broken your heart.”
He put his hand on the doorknob and turned back. “Sweetheart, I don’t have a heart to break.”
With that he opened the door and left her apartment. He strode to his truck, trying to brush off what had happened, but all kinds of emotions took over. He was surprised Shannon had even brought up what had happened that night in the hayloft. He figured it had meant so little to her that the memory of it would be all but gone by now.
I cared about you.
He didn’t buy that. If she’d cared so much about him, she wouldn’t have acted as if she’d committed a sin by being with him. She cared far more about what her mother thought than about how he felt.
Then and now.
As he got into his truck, humiliation took over. Acceptance from people like Loucinda North had always felt like a hurdle he would never be able to clear, no matter how tall he grew or how high he learned to jump.
He started his truck and drove down Calico Court, telling himself it didn’t matter, that he’d grown past all this.
So why was it still eating away at him?
Luke thought about going back to the shelter, but just driving through the front gate would dredge up memories he didn’t want to deal with. Instead he headed for City Limits.
A few minutes later, he parked his truck in the gravel lot out front. He went inside to find the crowd sparse, with the only noise coming from the last inning of the Rangers game playing on the television over the bar.
The woman behind the bar approached him. According to one of the women he’d danced with the other night, she owned the place. She had long, curly blond hair, with intense green eyes and a body that would get any man’s attention. But she gave off a don’t mess with me vibe Luke recognized at ten paces. He had no doubt that any man who tried to get up close and personal with her had better mind his manners or he’d find himself flat on his back before he knew what hit him.
She introduced herself as Terri and asked Luke what he was drinking. He ordered a Guinness. She popped the cap and set it down in front of him.
“You’re Luke Dawson,” she said.
“That’s right. I’d ask you how you know that, but this is Rainbow Valley. Everybody knows everything.”
“You’re working for Shannon.”
Luke nodded. He’d seen Terri talking to Shannon and her friends the night he’d been there. Unfortunately, just hearing Shannon’s name made him want to drink until he forgot everything that had happened tonight, but he wasn’t sure Terri had enough beer in the place to accomplish that.
Terri looked back at the television. “I’m afraid the Rangers aren’t going