Ginger's Heart (a modern fairytale) (17 page)

“Don’t tell me you were at Sunday services! Did the roof cave in?”

He rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t
that
bad.”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes twinkling and her voice even but not unkind, “you were.”

“Well, I didn’t see
you
there, Miss Virginia. People in glass houses—”

“I’m Presbyterian,” she said, grinning at him.

“Welcome home, Cain,” said Ranger McHuid, half standing to offer his hand. “Looks like the service is treatin’ you well, son.”

“Thanks, Mr. McHuid. It’s been good for me, sir.” He slid his eyes to Ginger’s mother. “Nice to see you, Miz Magnolia.”

“Why, Cain. You always were a handsome devil,” she said, simpering as he shook her hand. “Sophie said you’d . . . improved.”

Uncomfortable around Miz Magnolia, he dropped her hand quickly and shifted his eyes back to Ginger. She picked up her orange juice and sipped it to cover a giggle. When she set it down, she mouthed, “Most improved!” He felt the smile crack his face and damn near started snickering before the waitress interrupted to show him and his father to their table.

He found himself looking for her on Sunday, but they must have been running in different directions because he didn’t see her. Nor on Monday, and by Monday afternoon he realized he was missing her sweet smiles and fun banter. Taking a walk up the driveway to see if she was home, he was disappointed to see her cottage dark and wondered where she was and with whom. Before his jealousy could get out of control, however, he remembered that she’d returned home late from work last Monday evening, too, when they’d said their first hellos on the darkened driveway.

She’s at work.

She’s just at work, not with . . .

Woodman.

Except she
could
be with Woodman.

His jaw tightened and his fists balled at his sides right before his eyes widened in horror. Fuck. Fuck, no. He wasn’t
jealous
of Woodman, was he? Fuck. He
was
. He was jealous of
anyone
who got to spend time with her because he wanted her to himself.

“Aw,” he groaned, “this is no fuckin’ good.”

He turned around and headed back down the driveway muttering,
Just friends, just friends, just friends
in his head like a mantra until he was safely back at the barn.

Lying in his bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, he knew it wasn’t okay to be jealous of Woodman. First of all, it was stupid since Woodman was the better man in almost every way, and second, Woodman
needed
Ginger. Cain just . . . aw, fuck it. Cain just
wanted
her.

For the rest of the week, he’d studiously avoided her, even hiding in the bathroom of the tack room apartment once when he saw her approaching the barn through the window of his father’s little kitchen. She wasn’t his, he was leaving in a week, and he had no business developing the sort of feelings that led to jealousy. No, sir. He’d avoid her until it was time for him to leave, and that was that.

***

On Thursday he rode his bike over to Belle Royale to check on Woodman. As he pulled up, he noticed an oil leak on the driveway and asked to borrow his uncle’s tools. Woodman used his crutches to get to the porch and sat on the steps in the sunshine, keeping Cain company as he tinkered on his motorcycle.

“So,” asked Cain, seated on the ground beside his bike, back to Woodman, a wrench in his hand. “You got a job? At the firehouse?”

“Sure did. Remember Gloria Kennedy?”

“Cute redhead with huge ta-tas?”

Woodman chuckled. “That’s the one. She’s havin’ a baby next month, which leaves them short a dispatcher, so she’s trainin’ me for the job.”

“That’s great,” said Cain, genuinely pleased. Woodman looked way better since last Friday. His color was better, his beard had been shaved, and he’d moved with more purpose and confidence from the back patio to the front porch. “Perfect fit for you, son. By the way, you look a hell of a lot better’n you did. How’s the physical therapy goin’?”

“It sucks,” said Woodman, “but after PT, I head to the fire department every day, and you know? It feels good, Cain. Real good. Sort of balances out the bad, you know?”

Cain’s heart, which had been in knots, expecting Woodman to say that time spent with Ginger was responsible for his improvement, relaxed, and he let go of a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

“I’m glad for you, cuz.”

“I’ve almost got the switchboard figured out now.” He shrugged. “It ain’t exactly fightin’ fires, but it feels good to be pitchin’ in.”

“Don’t tire yourself out.”

“Quit bein’ a nursemaid,” he said. “Though, speakin’ of nurses, know what else?”

Cain’s head whipped around to look at Woodman, and the sparkle in his cousin’s eye made Cain brace himself as he turned back around, his fingers curling over a hot metal pipe. “Tell me.”

“I been seein’ some of Ginger.”

Putting the metal wrench on a bolt and twisting hard, he managed an “Oh?”

“Sure have. She comes to see me every other night after work.”

Cain winced and his eyes fluttered closed. So she
was
coming here after work. “That right?”

“Yeah.” Woodman cleared his throat from the porch. “You, uh, you see her at all over at McHuid’s?”

Cain opened his eyes and shrugged, determined to keep his voice casual. “Here and there. But I’m workin’, she’s workin’.”

“Mmm,” said Woodman. “So you’ve seen her.”

“Sure.”

“She’s prettier than every girl we ever met in Europe combined,” said Woodman softly.

Yes, she is.

“Ha!” he exclaimed, his chest compressing as he heard the tenderness in Woodman’s voice. He stood up and wiped his grease-stained hands on his jeans. He needed to get out of here before Woodman saw the truth, that Cain’s feelings for Ginger were just as real, just as big, just as deep, as his.

“You don’t agree? You need glasses, brother.”

“Probably,” he said, reaching down for the wrench and turning to his cousin. “Well, I guess that does it.”

“You headed out already?” asked Woodman, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked up at Cain.

“Uh, yeah. Got a date with, uh, Mary-Louise Walker,” he said. “Almost forgot.”

Woodman’s shoulders relaxed, and his expression flicked neatly from relieved to impressed. “You hittin’ that again?”

“Every other night,” said Cain.

It was true. He was fucking Mary-Louise every chance he got, which was actually fairly despicable since every time he buried his cock inside her, he closed his eyes and pretended she was someone else.

“Lucky dog,” said Woodman, winking at Cain before leaning back so his face was flooded with sunshine. “Well, I guess you should . . .”

“Yeah,” said Cain, throwing the wrench in his uncle’s toolbox, latching it shut, and placing it on the front steps beside his cousin.

“Cain!”

“Uh-huh?” asked Cain, pivoting to face Woodman, who had one eye cracked open.

“It’s all workin’ out,” he said, measuring Cain’s expression carefully as he reminded him of his words from their car ride home. “Me and Gin. Just like you said it would.”

Cain’s smile wasn’t forced as he looked back at his cousin. He was happy for Woodman. He
was
.

Fuck it, he
wanted
to be.

“You deserve everythin’ you want, Josiah,” he said, meaning every word.

“Thanks, Cain,” he said, closing his eyes again. “I don’t care how busy you get with Mary-Louise, you come and see me before you head back to Virginia next Friday, you hear?”

Cain’s eyes widened and he blinked at his cousin. Head back. Holy smokes, he’d lost track of time. He was leaving in eight days. Just eight more days.

He straddled his bike and buckled his helmet. “You bet.”

As he sped down the driveway, Woodman’s words trailed through his head:
It’s all workin’ out. Me and Gin. Just like you said it would.

Of course it is
, he thought, clenching his jaw until it ached, his throbbing heart drowned out only by the raging motor between his thighs.

The girl he loved was making the right choice.

The cousin he loved was getting the girl of his dreams.

And Cain?

He was going back to a job he loved, in a world he understood, where Ginger and Woodman and Apple Valley would eventually lose their sharpness and color, and he’d figure out a way to bear their loss.

It was enough, right? It would be enough?

“It’s all you get! It
has
to be enough!” he shouted, his eyes burning, his voice lost in the roar of his bike rounding a hairpin curve like it was on rails.

Wincing as he sped away from the McHuid’s driveway, Cain tucked his head down and kept right on going till he reached the old distillery.

~ Ginger ~

On Saturday Cain had helped her bring some groceries inside the little cottage, and she’d run into Cain and Klaus at the Country Diner after church on Sunday, but the few times she’d stopped by the barn to see him that week, he was either off-site getting a horse shoed, or his bike was gone. No matter what time she showed up, he wasn’t around, and by Thursday she got the distinct feeling that he was actively avoiding her.

Just like insisting they be friends had been a way of keeping her at arm’s length, he was doing the same by lying low and staying busy. But after a week, Ginger had had enough. They’d left things badly enough three years ago. She wasn’t about to let their awkward conversation in her kitchen be her last glimpse of Cain for another handful of years.

So on Friday she skipped her morning classes, called in sick to work, and headed down to the barn at six o’clock in the morning, determined to sit on the goddamned bench across from the tack room and wait until Cain showed his face. Which, unfortunately for her, didn’t happen until almost nine.

When the tack room door finally opened, her eyes widened in pleasure as Cain stepped out into the barn in a pair of jeans and nothing else, rubbing a hand through his black stubbly hair, his eyes still half closed. He stumbled to the open barn doors and faced the sunshine, stretching his arms over his head and giving Ginger an excellent opportunity to check out his bare torso.

A soft mewling sound escaped her throat, and Cain whirled around, opening one eye wide, then the other, surprised to see her.

She stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Are you avoidin’ me?”

“Maybe,” he said with a sweet, sleepy smile, his voice scratchy like it had always been in high school after a night of hard drinking.

“Out partyin’ last night?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Wasn’t much of a party, princess.”

“Distillery?”

He took a deep breath and sighed, cocking his head to the side. “What do
you
know about the distillery? Nice girl like you shouldn’t hang out down there.”

“Maybe I’m not as nice as you think,” she said, feeling sassy. “Besides, I’m eighteen, Cain. Everyone in Apple Valley has hung out at the distillery at some point or other.”

He shook his head, grinning at her. “As long as you ain’t a regular.”

“I ain’t a regular,” she conceded, grinning back.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Shift got canceled,” she lied.

He took a step closer to her, and she could smell the stale booze and cigarette smoke on his skin. “What you want, Miss Virginia Laire McHuid?”

She wrinkled her nose. “First? I need you to take a shower, Mr. Cain Holden Wolfram.”

His smile just about set her panties on fire. “Yes, ma’am. And then?”

“Why, I need a
friend
to go ridin’ with me,” she said, putting on a thick Old South accent.

“And I ’spose you’re thinkin’ that friend should be me.”

“Why not?” She shrugged playfully. “You shower. I’ll saddle up Heath and Thunder. Deal?”

“I can’t turn down a proper Southern lady wantin’ to go for a ride,” he said, turning back toward the tack room and giving her a glorious view of his denim-clad ass in retreat. “Gimme ten minutes.”

“I’ll give you nine,” she said, marching toward the stalls with a lift in her step.

***

An hour later, they stopped by the Glenn River, eight miles downriver from her house and two from the distillery where Cain had partied last night.

“We should water them,” he said, reining in Thunder and dismounting with the ease of a lifelong horseman.

She reined in Heath, who nickered in protest, and grinned down at Cain who reached up for her. His hands lingered for an extra moment on her hips as she slid down the front of his body. Leaning her head back, she stared up at him, daring him to pull her closer, to kiss her, to admit that this whole friends thing was bullshit on fire. But he clenched his jaw, cleared his throat, and dropped his hands.

“Thanks,” she murmured, her voice husky in her ears as he stared down at her, his eyes flinty and dark.

Taking Heath’s reins with a grunt, he turned away from her, leading the horses to the river’s edge and leaving her to follow. She leaned down to pick up a flat stone and skipped it across the slow-moving water.

“Not bad,” said Cain.

“
You
were always the best.”

“Nah,” he said. “Woodman was better.”

“Nope,” she countered, picking up another stone. “Woodman was good, but you were better. Remember that Fourth of July when you skipped eleven times?
Eleven
times. It was a record.”

Satisfied that the horses were calm and drinking their fill, Cain leaned down and grabbed a rock of his own, skipping it over the dark water.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven . . .

“Wow!” she said, clapping lightly. “You’ve still got the touch!”

He turned to her, grinning. “You always get excited about the littlest things. What’s it like gettin’ a kick out of everythin’, Gin?”

“What’s it like gettin’ a kick out of nothin’, Cain?” she asked, her voice full of sass.

“I’m gettin’ a kick out of
you
right now, princess.”

A charge zapped between them as the words left his mouth, and her breath hitched and held for just a moment, but she looked down and picked up another rock. She was enjoying today too much to go back to Awkwardland.

She skipped her rock, which sank after three measly hops.

“Remember when you saved my American Girl doll from certain doom in this river?” she asked him.

He screwed up his face. “Wasn’t me. Must have been Woodman.”

“It was
you
!” she insisted. “Not Woodman!”

“Savin’ a dolly? Please. That has Woodman written all over it. I couldn’t have cared less if it drowned.”

“But
I
cared,” she said softly. “Which is why you saved it.”

“Fine. Have it your way,” he said, sitting down on a large rock near the water’s edge.

She sighed, squatting down to wash her hands in the clear water before looking back at him. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Let Woodman take credit for all the good things?”

He shrugged, looking away from her, out at the water. “I don’t.”

“You just did. Twice.”

He sighed, giving her a long-suffering look. “If somethin’ good happened, chances are it
was
Woodman’s doin’.”

“How do you figure?”

“He’s the better man, Gin,” said Cain, his eyes severe, his words deliberate.

She stood up slowly, turning her body completely to face him. “Do you really believe that?”
He looked away. “It’s the truth.”

“Cain. Cain, look at me.” Her words didn’t feel like enough so she beseeched him with her eyes too. “You’re just as good a man as he is.”

“Ha!” scoffed Cain, standing up. “Not in this life, princess.”

Ginger had been witness to the differences between the cousins her whole life. Woodman came from happy parents and wealth, and his life had followed a natural course toward popularity and success, while Cain had come from unhappy parents and just-enough, and his life had followed a natural course toward rebellion and apathy. Except that Cain had somehow figured out a life for himself and pursued it, and from all outward appearances, his time in the military was a good and solid choice that was making him a better man. She couldn’t bear it that he should be so hard on himself.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “Y’all are very different, you and Woodman, but I . . . I wish you could see yourself through
my
eyes.”

He looked up at her then, and the tenderness, the
gratitude
, in his eyes made a lump rise in her throat, and it occurred to her, for the first time, that while her parents were telling her how much they loved her and Woodman’s parents were telling him how much they loved him, no one was telling Cain he was loved. Klaus was too busy at McHuid’s to be bothered with his small son, and Sarah had been a deeply unhappy, distracted mother. She thought back to nine-year-old Cain, hanging out by the barn during parties he wasn’t invited to, hoping his friends might slip away with a piece of cake. Just an unwanted little boy looking in, finding his worth in everything left unsaid.

“Lionhearted l’il gal,” he said softly.

Tears filled her eyes, but she smiled tenderly at him. “
You
skipped the most stones.
You
saved my doll.
You
are good, Cain.”

“Princess,” he said, his voice reverent and low, but softly pleading. “You’re goin’ to break me if you don’t stop.”

Then he stood up and crossed to the horses. He grabbed the reins and held out Heath’s lead to her without meeting her eyes. Before she could mount up and turn Heath away from the stream, Cain and Thunder were already gone.

***

Ginger was afraid that their heart-to-heart by the river would create another awkward fallout with Cain and he would start avoiding her again, but the next morning she awoke to the sounds of whistling and water outside her upstairs window. When she slipped out of bed and looked down, she found Cain below in the driveway washing Gran’s old Ford pickup.

“Hey!” she called.

He looked up at her from under the brim of his black cowboy hat, his lips widening into a breathtaking smile as he switched the water off. “Hey, yourself, sleepyhead!”

She grinned down at him, resting her elbow on the sill and her cheek on her palm. “What’re you doin’?”

“Washin’ your gran’s truck. If you’re goin’ to use this old lady as a lawn ornament, it should always be shiny.”

“Is that right?”

“That’s right, princess,” he said, putting his hands on his hips and taking a deep breath, which swelled his chest under his damp white T-shirt.

“You hungry after all that hard work?” she asked.

“What’cha offerin’? I already seen your freezer full of frozen pizzas.”

“I’ll have you know that I make a very decent sunny-side-up egg.”

He chuckled, flashing a grin to the high autumn sun and adjusting the brim of his hat. “I don’t doubt it.”

“Then finish up and come on in.”

Before he could answer, she lowered the window and stepped back into her bedroom, clasping her hands and giggling softly at this new wonder of wonders. They’d actually managed to have a deep conversation yesterday and he hadn’t run away today.

“Cain,” she whispered, her breath hitching as her heart swelled with an old love that suddenly felt new, that felt exciting—and finally finally finally—
possible
.

She pulled her nightgown over her head and tossed it onto the hardwood floor, pulling open her bureau drawer and selecting a white lacy bra and matching panties. She’d bought them on a whim before her senior prom, but hadn’t ended up wearing them because her date—Silas Varner—had arrived drunk as a skunk to pick her up two hours early. Daddy had escorted him off the grounds of McHuid’s holding a shotgun, and that had been the unceremonious end of Ginger’s prom. Not that she’d really minded, she thought, pulling on her skinny jeans and rummaging through her closet for a soft pink V-neck T-shirt. Silas was nobody special to her.

Pulling her hair into a ponytail, she grinned at herself in the mirror before hurrying downstairs barefoot, glad to still hear the sound of the hose splashing across Gran’s windshield.

She took a frying pan from the cabinet beside the stove and set it atop the burner, then pulled a carton of eggs from her refrigerator. As she set them on the counter, she cocked her head to the side, looking out the window over the sink to steal a glimpse of Cain. Between their quick “Good morning” and now, he’d taken off his T-shirt, probably to keep it dry as he rinsed off the truck he’d lovingly scrubbed.

His collarbone winged out from the base of his throat, strong and solid. As she followed the void between the bones down the black-haired valley from his neck to the V of muscle that disappeared into his jeans, she felt her face flush with heat. Slipping her gaze higher, she tracked the ripples of his abdomen, which led to his firm pecs, and—

God damn it!

That was precisely the moment Cain looked up and caught her staring. She felt her eyes go wide as dinner plates and took a step to the side, away from the window, her heart pounding uncomfortably as she heard his bellow of laughter.

“Someone’s a peeping princess!” he yelled, spraying her kitchen window with the hose, and she reached up to place her palms against her cheeks, a soft giggle escaping as she shook her head in embarrassment.

After a moment, she remembered what she was supposed to be doing and whirled around to grab the comp’ny butter from the cupboard, slicing off a soft glop and shaking it into the hot frying pan. Four eggs followed, and when she put the carton back in the fridge, she pulled out the bread, putting two slices in the toaster and pressing the lever.