I Run to You (16 page)

They all sat up, Madeline looking at Brook as
she wiped her eyes and finger combed her mussed hair. Madeline
supplied, “Being mature, grownups, dating, it’s all more
complicated. It complicates even a preexisting friendship, because
we are sensitive. We are vulnerable. Being lovers, regardless if
you are fooling around or going all the way, attraction/want/need,
it removes certain protections we have built up. It makes us
insensible sometimes.”

Ruby intoned, “Yep. Welcome to the world of
womanhood and complicated shit.”

She laughed quietly. “You navigate through
unknown waters all the time. Guys aren’t like us, Brook. They’re
going through their own thing too, but not likely to talk as easily
or in the same way we do. They get mad, get quiet, or throw up some
roadblock. You feel sometimes like walls come down, but then doors
slam with them. In a relationship, you’re angry, hurt, happy,
confused, and crazy—and meanwhile, there’s the world and your life
going on.”

Brook nodded and looked around as the sun
dipped lower. “That sounds about where I’m headed.” Then, she said,
“I’m supposed to practice with Renee and some girls tomorrow. I
don’t know what to think about the supposed job at the rehab. I
have a feeling it’s a scratch. I love working at the Tavern, but I
feel like I’ve already started to make mistakes since I came
home.”

“You’ll make more.” Madeline snorted. “I wish
I could say everything will be all right. It will. Because for
every time we lose our balance, something rights us again. However,
there is no substitute for living, dealing with it, experiencing
what has to be. Because people are complicated.”

“I know.” Brook nodded again. “I knew that
before. I just had a stupid, selfish moment.”

They stood, dusting grass blades off and
slowly ambling back to the house. Conversation drifted, Brook
talked, and both women added their experiences, learned lessons,
but Brook knew both were right. It took more to peel away layers of
a guy like Rafe, too.

The complex things that attracted her to him,
aside from looks and humor—were the things the woman she was now,
had to deal with. Relationships meant not being selfish, seeing
only her side, and making assumptions.

At Madeline’s, they walked up the steps, just
as Mitch came out the screen door. “Dinner is on the table. I’m
going to hang down at Jude’s for a few hours.”

Brook went over and embraced him. “I love
you.”

Stepping further out, he held her tight a
moment. “You too. Anything I can do?”

When she stepped back, Brook smiled softly at
him. “You already do, Mitch. You make my mother happy. “

“That’s easy.” He grinned sexily. “I love her
beyond sanity. And she likes it.”

Brook smiled. They went inside. Mitch grabbed
his cell, and then after a kiss on Madeline’s cheek, he was
off.

“Where are the twins?” Brook asked Ruby as
they poured iced tea and sat down to Mitch’s prepared pot
roast.

“Out at the lake. Coy has a difficult thing
to do tomorrow. He wanted Levi to have a great evening. I think,
he’s worried to death about what to say, how much to say. I don’t
envy him, but we have all tried to mother Levi, and he’s very happy
and secure. But you know what gossip is. People don’t care to talk
in front of their kids—who in turn repeat it at school.”

“I don’t envy him either,” Brook admitted
sitting down as they did after dipping out a bowl full of stew,
adding corn bread. “I know all of you were worried, but I don’t
hold bad feelings for Levi. He seemed like a great kid, and he has
that something about him….

Madeline added after chewing a mouth full,
“He’s a Coburn.”

In spite of her past with Coy, brook laughed
with them at that.

It said everything.

Around nine, Brook stood on the porch, saying
goodbyes to Madeline. Ruby had left a bit before. Apparently, Coy
called and was bringing two happily exhausted kids home for her to
tuck in bed.

Brook had been standing there, when Coy’s
truck went down, it hadn’t come back up. She wanted to leave before
any chance encounter. She could not deal with anything more today.
She could sympathize with what he had to do the next day, but with
all her emotions, Rafe’s believing she still felt for him—her own
reactions to him—that were not what she wanted to feel—she was just
too damn raw to have to do anymore self-analysis tonight.

“Be careful. Stop by and see us before you go
home tomorrow.”

“I will. Renee goes in at five.” Brook told
her that Jordan O’Quinn was joining them, and what she had said,
about liking Madeline.

Madeline smiled sadly. “Despite that tough
image, there’s something about her makes me want to put my arms
around her and comfort her. She is awfully young to have that thick
armor. But I sense she could use a friend.”

“I know Renee likes her. I might see if she
wants to hang out. I understand she’s had some experience with a
band years ago, but we should watch the acts at the Tavern, maybe
cruse some of the local clubs, just to get a feel for what the
audiences and music is like.”

“I’m a whole lot excited.” Madeline laughed.
“Ruby and I still go out, but it would be great watching you guys
perform.”

“I hope it works out. I’m excited, too—but
cautious.”

When Brook walked down the steps, Madeline
called, “Be wary of Karla. I know you always give her the benefit
of the doubt. You think it’s just her trying to give you shit. She
has changed, in a bad way, Brook. Poor Jenna grieved for a couple
of years, waiting for her to turn back into the girl she thought
Karla was. It did not happen. She would have supported whatever
Karla wanted to do— But Karla still resents her. Eventually, she
wouldn’t even call or write.”

“How is Jenna?”

“Moved on, thankfully. Built a new life, with
a caring husband. He is a counselor she met in one of those support
groups. They live in Athens and Jenna is very close to Levi. They
e-mail, write, and call, and she got to see him often before
moving. I’m sure Coy wants to keep that bond.”

“He should.”

Madeline nodded. “I know you’re strong. You
can handle things. Even these unknown steps to building a life
here. But, neither of us understands Karla or where her anger and
resentment—that self-destructive streak, comes from. Add the drugs,
whatever she is on, and you get a skewed way of thinking. So
please, just be careful.”

“I will, Mom. I love you.” Brook got in the
car and started it. She backed out, tooted to Madeline’s wave.

As she passed Jude’s, her headlights struck
Coy, who stood at the front of his pickup, talking to Jude and
Mitch.

Shirtless, already darkly tanned, wearing a
pair of torn up jeans—and barefoot. The glow of her lights sparked
in his amber eyes and over his tanned, ridged, muscle. Brook had to
blow her horn because Jude and Mitch threw up a hand. Coy didn’t,
thankfully. However, even when she passed them and looked in the
rear view, she could see he had turned and was watching her tail
lights fade.

Muttering to herself, she headed home, pulled
in, and got out. The landscape lights were shimmering on the new
landscape and along the drive. She unlocked the door and went
inside. As soon as she had changed into PJ’s, she called Rafe.

“Hey?”

“Brook. You all right?”

She slid down on the pillows. “Yes. No.
Yes.”

He laughed softly. “Um. I know that
feeling.”

Brook closed her eyes. “Don’t distract me,
okay. I am going to say, I’m sorry. So very sorry, for being an
insecure idiot. And, I’ll never be sorry about what happened
between us.”

A few moments passed. It sounded like he was
pouring something into a glass. A chair scrapped. Finally, he
murmured, “I apologize for losing my shit at the restaurant too.
It’s—not entirely about who I am now, or what we were, and the
relationship we started now…”

“I know. Do you want to talk?”

“Not tonight, mi vida. “ He laughed. “I’m not
much of a drinker, and I’m down to the worm on this bottle. So it’s
not a good time.”

She moaned faintly “I hate that I upset you
that much.”

“I’m celebrating.”

“What?” She could hear the smile in his
voice. He was smashed. Any other time it would have been amusing.
She had never seen him intoxicated.

“Mmmm. You know—the part neither of us
regrets.”

“Good.”

“Luck with the jam session. I’ll call
you—soon, okay?”

“Yeah.” Brook felt depressed. “Rafe?”

“Yeah?” He sounded like he was swallowing
another drink.

“I’m here for you too. I am your friend.
There is nothing you can’t tell me. Nothing. I haven’t behaved like
the most together, mature, woman in the world. But, aside from
everything else, it would kill me to lose our friendship. It works
both ways—I mean that. I’m here.”

Brook clicked off the phone and laid it on
the bedside table. Scooting under the covers, she lay waiting for
sleep, feeling slightly better that she had put that out there for
him to think about—and hopefully remember. No matter what, she knew
how precious friends were, how rare good ones were. She and Rafe
were that, above all else.

Please, she prayed, let him remember that and
not just what an insecure idiot I can be.

~*~

At his house, Rafe picked up the glass, which
held the last of the bottle he had brought from work. He made it
outside and sat heavily down on the low, wrap around, porch,
hearing katydids and frogs, seeing a slightly blurred picture of
distant glow from the neighbor’s, streetlight.

He would pay for drinking, come morning.
Likely puke his stomach inside out. He planned to roof tomorrow and
his head would be splitting. Feet on the packed earth, he let his
torso reclined back. He was drunk. The last time he had gotten
drunk was the day he and Sunny celebrated his getting a diploma.
Since then, he had acquired a business degree.

For a boy who could scarcely read until he
was thirteen, it was a miracle. Thanks to Sunny, there had been a
few of those.

Rafe threw his free arm over his brow.

He and Brook. How could anything that started
out perfect, be unfolding so—fucked up? Well let’s see, his mind
whispered, you already thought you were not good enough for her. So
her insecurities or not, you lost your shit in the office. And, you
are with someone for the first time, where it isn’t just the
getting sex. There is a blurred line between your past protective,
caring, closeness, and your own murk with sexual attraction and
emotion.

There, nothing like tequila to knock the
truth loose.

He heard a rumble of thunder. Sitting up,
Rafe watched a few flashes of lightening streaking across the sky.
He hauled himself to his feet and went in.

The upstairs roof was going to leak.

He managed to lock up and place a pail under
the leak he was planning on fixing the next morning—but doubted the
spring shower would let him.

Rafe stripped, fell on the rumpled bed, and
didn’t remember much else.

Chapter 8

Max did not envy Coy.

He stood on his back deck, rubbing his bare
chest while he watched Jude, Mitch, Coy, and Levi, launch a boat
down at the dock. Levi was over the moon that the men were taking
him out. It had rained like a sonofabitch all night and most of the
morning.

The Coburn clan were aware that Coy and the
men were going to talk to Levi about Karla.

Until the wee hours of the night, Max could
see lights on at Coys'. He pictured him pacing, smoking—which he
gave up on and off—and trying to form what he would say. Max had no
advice. He did not know how much a boy that age needed to
understand. Given that Karla once faked a kidnapping, he wouldn’t
trust her either.

It was more the fact she lived in town now
and was making a show of herself. Personally, Max was worried too,
about her attitude toward Brook. Considering they had been best
friends growing up, he figured Madeline and his sister knew her
better. Obviously screwing Brook’s boyfriend hadn’t been enough.
She had it out for Brook.

The boat raced toward the far cove. He turned
and padded inside; looking around the rustic glass and wood
interior, wondering which project he should work on today?

The great room soared high, lots of natural
light from it being mostly windows. The loft jutted half over the
space, which was where his bed and office were. He had a dozen
things going on at once.

Crossing the great room, he went into the
kitchen, pouring coffee, and sipping while he stared out at the
undulating water. Maybe he would work on the set he was doing of
the Old Mill? He had been documenting progress on it. Talking to
locals as they came by to “checkup” on what Mitch was doing. All of
them had a tale about the place. It was where they played and
romped, courted, hid out, and in the old days, held barn dances,
later days smoked and partied.

If walls could talk…

The phone rang. Max moved to pick it up off
the island.

“Hello.”

“Hey, what’s your plans today?” It was
Jason.

“Work.”

“It’s Saturday, man.”

Knowing Jason too well by now, Max grinned
and straddled a stool, asking, “What’s on your mind?”

“I heard Renee was finally getting her all
girl band together. Thought we’d be nice and maybe run Pizza and
beer over—”

“Are you that desperate for a date?” Max
ribbed him. “Most of the chicks there will be kin to you
anyway.”

“Not all of um. They always bring friends.
“

Max snorted. “Renee’s not going to be fooled
by you showing up like that.”

“Us. That’s why you’re coming, too. Brook is
playing bass. You got an excuse to intrude.”