pink dress, her changeable eyes on the blue side this morning.
His mouth went dry and his hands went cold and every stupid word he’d rehearsed left his brain. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to love her. To keep her here. With him.
If he ever spoke these words out loud, she’d run for the hills. She didn’t want to be possessed. And yet he wanted to possess her.
She walked toward him in slow motion, a funny, unreadable expression on her face. What was that about? Last night she’d been so angry.
But maybe not now. The thought gave him a wild and crazy hope.
“I went looking for you at Rose Cottage.”
“What?”
“After church. I waited for almost an hour. I was worried that you might have decided to go back to your life in Columbia before the accident.”
“Uh, no. I’ve been here since early. Waiting for you.”
“You have?”
“Look—” They both spoke at the same time.
“You go first,” he said, ever the coward.
“I’m sorry about last night,” she said, and then shook her head as if she had also been rehearsing a bunch of words. She took a deep breath and blew it out, her bangs lifting adorably. She truly was exactly like the spunky girl next door.
“Let me start again,” she said. “I’m sorry for every bad thing I ever thought about you. All of it was wrong. Everything. You never judged me. You never lied about me. You never told stories about me. And I’m so ashamed that I thought those things about you. I want to apologize for all of it.”
“You don’t need—”
“Yes. I do. I confused you with someone else.”
“Who? Caleb?”
“Yes. No. Yes.” She laughed and rolled her eyes. “I lumped you in with all those boys, Caleb included. So yes. But that’s not who I confused you with.”
“No? Then who?”
“I know this is going to sound crazy. But I confused you with my father.”
The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle suddenly slid into place. Fred Blackwood had been a member of the Rutledge Raiders booster committee. And he’d been the typical high school football fanatic. And if Topher remembered correctly, her father had once played for the Raiders. “So you have a thing against football players?” he said.
She shook her head. “No. Not that. It’s just that Daddy was…I don’t know, a man’s man. He was big and strong, and everyone admired him. And he cared about what people thought. He cared too much about it, really.”
“I’m not like that, Jessica. I have always hated that hero worship. You can’t satisfy people when they start thinking you’re perfect. I took all sorts of crap from ’Bama fans when I wrecked my knee doing something other than football. For a whole year, I was the talk of the town around Tuscaloosa. I hated every minute of it.”
“Really? I didn’t know that about you. I didn’t realize that you hurt your knee doing something other than playing.”
“I tore my ACL on the ski slopes between freshman and sophomore year. I went down to South America after my father died, just to get away and to ski at Las Leñas. It was the middle of the summer, but I took a bunch of stupid risks because I was sad and hurt and angry…and alone.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He shoved his hands in his pockets feeling vulnerable. He’d never told anyone how little he cared about football. It had started out as something he did with Granddad, but it had morphed into something else. Something that had taken on a life of its own because it had given Dad so much pride and joy.
But after Dad died, it didn’t matter so much. And he’d never liked being in the spotlight. Even when he’d been playing high school ball.
“Anyway,” he continued, “the thing is, I never really cared what anyone thought of me.” He stopped, realizing that was no longer true. “Well, until recently,” he added.
“Oh?”
He hauled in a breath. “I care what you think. I care desperately.”
* * *
The poor man. Jessica didn’t really pity him in that moment—her heart was too full for that. No. She felt an overwhelming sense of remorse.
She’d kept him guessing, hadn’t she? And he wasn’t nearly as confident as he pretended. And that night they’d spent together, when they hadn’t said a word, had been mostly because she was frightened and he was unsure.
That needed to stop right now. She closed the distance between them until she stood right before him.