We spend the next few minutes laughing, then I let him get back to his evening and I go back to staring at the ceiling, wondering if Damion is right. Maybe Ford doesn’t hate me as much as I think that he does.
Though I’m not sure how he couldn’t. I literally ran from him, on our wedding day, while everyone we knew watched and I refused to ever talk to him again. I wasn’t even mature enough to talk to him about how I was feeling.
I would hate me.
FORD
Driving down the road and up to my place, I pause at the sight in front of my gate. After yesterday and the complete clusterfuck that it was, I didn’t plan on ever seeing her again, but here she is, in the flesh.
Stephanie and her fancy black sedan are next to my gate. She’s standing at the side of her car, her ass leaning against the hood as she watches my truck approach. Today, I needed to breathe and pick up supplies for the fence in town.
I chose to take my dad’s 1970 Ford F-250 4x4. I was feeling nostalgic, but right about now I’m regretting my choice.
This truck was my daddy’s who handed it down to me.
This truck is what I drove Stevie in on our first date, we lost our virginity to one another in the bed of this pickup truck. I took her to prom in it. Everything that happened in our lives, this truck was involved somehow.
I even drove this truck out to LA to see her, to see what her dream was, what she wanted for her life that didn’t include me. After I found her, saw how happy she was, I brought this truck back home.
Pulling up to the gate, I try to shake off all of the bad memories and the good. Climbing out of the truck, I make my way over to her. I’m wearing my sunglasses and an old dirty ball cap that I threw on, along with dirty jeans and a dirtier navy-blue t-shirt. I’m sure that I look absolutely nothing like the men she’s used to, and I’m not sure why I even care—I shouldn’t.
“Stevie,” I murmur as I make my way toward her.
She’s dressed in tight-fitting jeans and a silky-looking button-up blouse, her blonde hair is pulled up into a high ponytail with large framed sunglasses pointed directly at me.
“I wasn’t sure if you were home, you have this place pretty locked up,” she points out.
Jerking my chin toward the gate, I walk past her, inhaling too deeply and getting a whiff of her expensive, sexy as fuck, perfume. Reaching for the padlock, I tug on it and unwind the chain.
“Ain’t locked,” I mutter. “Mostly just to keep the animals inside.”
“Can I talk to you, not out here in the heat?” she asks, her voice sounding unsure.
Turning to look back at her from over my shoulder, I watch for a moment before I answer her. “Can’t take that car down the road,” I state.
“Why?”
Pushing the gate open, I jerk my chin toward the truck as I walk to the driver’s side. “I don’t maintain it, you’ll fuck the whole underside of the car up, probably get it stuck. Jump in, I’ll drive you down there. I gotta get this shit unloaded and the sunlight’s wastin’.”
Climbing into the pickup, I shift it into gear as I wait for her to get inside. I try not to watch her, but I fail. Shifting my gaze to the side, but I keep my head facing forward as she climbs up inside.
Used to be that she would slide toward the middle and sit right next to me, she doesn’t, and she probably never will again. I miss it, the feel of a soft body next to my own as I drive down the road. The way her hand would rest on my thigh and her head on my shoulder.
Fuck.
I don’t need to think about that shit. It was a lifetime ago, and it isn’t going to happen again, it’s a chapter closed and done.
Pulling through the gate, I shift the truck into park and jump out, closing the gate behind me and chaining it before I get back inside of the pickup, back inside where I can smell her perfume and even her goddamn shampoo.
“I can’t believe you still have this thing and that it still runs,” Stephanie says as soon as I start to drive forward.
I take the road slower than I usually would, not just for Stevie’s sake, but also because of the lumber I have in the back, at least that’s what I tell myself.
“My daddy’s truck, Stevie. I wouldn’t ever get rid of it,” I state.
She’s quiet for a moment. “How are your parents?”
I almost snort, but I decide to curb my dickheadedness for the moment. “Dad died about ten years ago, Mama followed him two months later. Guess she didn’t want to be without him, can’t say I blame her, they’d been together since they were eleven years old.”
“They were young,” she breathes.
“Forty-three years old,” I say, trying not to get choked up.
I miss my parents, for their faults, which they each had, they were good people. They gave me more love than I probably deserved at times. They loved each other, and they tried their damnedest to love their neighbors.
“How’d it happen?”
I want to deny her the knowledge, she doesn’t fucking deserve to know, but I’m not that big of a dick. Well, I am, but I don’t feel like being one today for whatever reason. Pulling the truck up to the side of the barn, I shift it into park and turn to face her, leaving my wrist on the steering wheel, my hand dangling down.
“Cancer took my dad. Mama was just brokenhearted and tired.”
Stephanie reaches out, taking my hand in hers and squeezing it gently. “I’m sorry, Ford, I really am.”
Nodding, I close my eyes for a moment, reopening them to look at her. “What’re you doin’ here, Stevie?”
“I wanted to talk to you. I, it’s been so long and there’s a lot that was left unsaid between us,” she whispers.
“Here in Gallup, what’re you doing here in Gallup?”
She licks her lips, her hand still on mine, searing my goddamn skin with her touch. Those big blue eyes that I once knew so goddamn well that I could read every fucking thought in her head, or at least I thought that I could, stare back at me.
“My father died a few months ago. I didn’t know he still owned the house here, not until the lawyer started going through his papers with me. I didn’t think that I should just sell it as is, he kept it for a reason. I figured I should go through it, make sure there wasn’t anything important inside.”
“You been in there, yet?” I ask.
She shakes her head, her hand falling from mine as she shifts her gaze to looking out the front windshield of the pickup. I lick my bottom lip, watching her, wishing she weren’t so close and yet, hoping she gets closer.
“How’d he pass?”
“Cancer,” she whispers.
“Your mama?”
“Heart attack five years ago.”
“Seems we got that in common. Only children with no parents,” I point out.
She nods, then turns to face me. Her eyes are watery, but her tears don’t fall. She blinks them away, then she gives me that beautiful fucking smile that I’ve dreamt about for seventeen years and never thought that I would see in person again. It’s just as breathtaking as I remember.
“Seems we do. What do you want to talk about? Sun’s high and I got a back fence to mend. My busy season’s approaching, I need to get that done before it’s here.”