Page 7 of Ocotillo Kisses
Chapter Two
Britthadn’t really wanted to do this here, today. Con was already raw, and she felt more vulnerable than she expected in the house where she had run free since she was old enough to ride a bike, and then a horse, from her ranch to his. The house hadn’t changed, but everything else had.
After squeezing Mrs. McKay’s hand, Britt followed Con out onto the back porch. He reached into a cooler for a beer, then closed it without offering her one.
Okay, then. She opened the cooler and got one for herself.
A few men had also sought refuge out here, but they were at the other end of the long porch. They gave Con a nod, and kept to their own business.
The view was pretty spectacular from here, if one loved West Texas. It was spring, though already hot, but pretty much as green as the place would get, with the sotol and ocotillo plants blooming and waving above the scrub brush. The McKays and Drexlers, her mother’s family, owned the land as far as the eye could see, and that should have given her more of a sense of pride. She wondered why it didn’t.
“What do you want to say to me?” Con asked, turning to face her, twisting the top off his beer and tossing it on the stone-topped table nearby with a clatter.
What did he expect her to say? “You didn’t let me talk to you when I was in town last year. I would have liked to have said it then, not now when everything is so—” She lifted her hands to indicate how up in the air his life was.
“Didn’t want to talk to you.” His expression remained closed, uninviting.
“I know I made mistakes, but I was young. We were young.”
“We had plans.”
“And that day turned everything to hell.”
“It did.”
“You have to admit that everything changed that day.”
“Everything didn’t have to change that day. I mean, yes, we lost Claudia and...my family was changed forever. My future. No going away to A&M, no vet degree. I couldn’t leave my family, even a year later. But that didn’t mean you and I had to change. And, even if we did, we should have been able to talk about it.”
“I didn’t know how to talk to you,” she said, the words exploding out of her. “You were broken, Con, and I’d never seen you like that.” He’d always been strong and confident, and she had never seen him show any weakness.
And he had been shattered. Instead of trying to reach him, she’d retreated.
When she was older, she had been able to reason out his reactions. He had been sad, and guilty. She had felt the same guilt. She had gotten out of the bus. Claudia hadn’t.
“I didn’t know how to deal with my grief and yours,” she said. “I didn’t want to be in this house because it was so sad. And when we went to town, I felt like everyone was looking at me, and maybe blaming me for Claudia dying. I felt like maybe your dad did too. You wouldn’t have broken curfew if not for me. So you would have had your truck. We wouldn’t have been on the bus. If you hadn’t had to worry about saving me, you could have saved Claudia. I couldn’t be here anymore, Con. I had to go.”
His mouth was tight as he turned to face her, and he looked hard, bitter. Not the boy she’d loved.
“You left like a coward, not saying goodbye. You’d never been a coward before.”
She lifted a hand, knowing her behavior was indefensible, but needing to defend herself anyway. “I was eighteen. I’d never dealt with anything like that in my life. It was the hardest thing I’d dealt with—still the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with. And I should have come back. I should have apologized to you before, apologized to your father, but I was so afraid of him. And the way he went after Mrs. Driscoll, blaming her for the accident—I didn’t know what I’d do if he’d come after me.”
Con shook his head and looked down at the beer he hadn’t even sipped from. “He missed you, too. I never heard him say anything to make me believe he blamed you. Me? Sure. Ten ways from Sunday. If only I’d gotten her out of the bus. No one who got out of the bus died.” Now he did take a pull from the bottle, his jaw tight as he swallowed.
She wanted to touch his arm, say something reassuring. This was why she hadn’t wanted to do this today. She hadn’t wanted to bring up these ugly memories on a day when he was mourning the loss of his father.
The urge to touch him surprised her. They had been wild about each other thirteen years ago. Couldn’t keep their hands off each other, which was part of the reason he’d missed curfew. But the man before her was different. A stranger.
“Have you said all you wanted to say?”
Instantly her mind went blank. All the things she’d thought of telling him on her drive out to Broken Wheel from Houston, all the things she’d waited years to say, and she couldn’t think of one of them.
“I—think so.”
“You should go,” he said, motioning toward the house with his beer.
She supposed he had been generous, allowing her to stay up until now. She set her nearly-full bottle of beer down on the table and faced him. “I’m sorry, Con. I’m sorry for what happened then, and I’m sorry for the loss of your dad. I should have come before. I would have, you know. I knew he was sick, but Grandma was sure he’d pull through.”
