A Fallow Heart (Tommy Creek #2)(21)

Murmuring, “Excuse me,” and dodging between gossiping huddles, Cooper picked up his pace, worried he was going to lose sight of Jo Ellen and even more afraid she’d duck into a girls’ bathroom where he couldn’t chase. Relief came when she pushed her way through an exit that led out to the back of the school.

He followed.

She wept into the building, pressing her face and hands against the warm brick siding.

Heart cracking, Coop edged closer. “Jo Ellen?” His voice broke as he said her name.

She gasped and whirled to face him. Her eyes grew big, and she mopped at her cheeks as if to hide the fact she was crying her heart out.

Compassion flooded him. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “N-nothing.”

Her body language screamed at him, telling him how much she wanted to be left alone. He fully got that. But for the life of him, he just couldn’t abandon her.

“What can I do?” he asked. She could ask for anything. He didn’t care how morally wrong or illegal it might be; he’d do it, for her.

She shook her head again and opened her mouth. No words came out.

He waited, his eyes burning as he watched her suffer.

“Cooper,” she finally said, though her voice was so hoarse, he read the words on her lips more than he heard them. “I need to know…”

Nodding, he patiently waited for her to continue, but her emotions overwhelmed her, she ended up burying her tearstained cheeks into her shaking hands.

His heart screamed for him to hold her. The demand roared through him until he actually took a step closer. She lifted her face and trembled, her eyes wide, and scared, and full of something else that looked a lot like hope. He took another step, and she just watched him. He was going to hold her. He was going to put his arms around her and tug her close, cradling her face on his shoulder until every tear in her dried up.

But before his third step came, the back door slammed opened, and Emma Leigh flew outside, breaking the spell.

“Joey,” she called, dodging past Cooper and yanking her twin into her arms. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe that bastard. Do you want me to have Coop break his arms?”

The inner beast in Cooper perked to attention. Break Pretty Boy’s arms? He’d be honored.

But… “No!” Jo Ellen wailed as she buried her face into Emma Leigh’s shoulder and began sobbing with renewed energy. “I just want…I want…I wanna go home.”

“Okay.” Em smoothed her hand over Jo Ellen’s hair. “Okay. We’ll do that right now. It’s our last day here anyway.”

“What’s going on?” Cooper cut in, increasingly afraid the answer was going to mortally wound him.

His friend glanced at him, her eyes suspiciously moist as she tucked Jo Ellen protectively close. “We have to leave. Joey and I. We’re leaving town. We’re going to Reno to stay with our aunt for the rest of the school year.”

“What?” Oxygen vacated him, leaving him dizzy and cold. “Why?”

Emma Leigh sent a quick, worried look at her twin before cringing. “Just…just because. B-because Daddy said so.”

Frowning, Coop glanced at Jo Ellen. None of this made sense. It obviously had something to do with Jo Ellen, and Emma Leigh couldn’t talk about it, not even to Cooper. But what had happened?

Guilt gnawed at him. Was this his fault? Had Mr. Rawlings discovered what he’d done to her? How he kissed her and let her touch his—

No, that couldn’t be it. No one had approached him or said anything to make him think—

“And Untermeyer, that lousy *, broke up with her,” Emma Leigh went on, making Coop perk to attention. “He said he couldn’t handle everything. He couldn’t do a long-distance relationship, couldn’t deal with our mess.”

Swallowing, Cooper tried to digest everything. Jo Ellen was leaving. But she wasn’t dating Untermeyer anymore. Hope and sadness combined and twisted inside him while worry about what exactly their mess entailed morphed into one huge ball of confusion. He didn’t want her to go anywhere. But honestly…

He could handle a long-distance relationship.

The first bell of the day rang. The twins jumped and Coop glanced back at the school before he returned his attention to Emma Leigh. “What do you need me to do?” Set and determined to skip first hour if not the entire day, he was going to help the girls in any way he could.

Emma Leigh nestled her weeping sister close and steered her in the direction of the parking lot. “I’m taking her home. I already have all my stuff gathered, but can you finish cleaning out her locker for me and turning in all her textbooks?”

He nodded, a little disappointed that was all she wanted from him. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. Get back inside before you’re late to class.”





Dusk filled the air as Cooper pulled his old rattletrap into the Rawlings’ drive that evening. In the passenger seat sat a paper plate full of his mother’s home-baked chocolate chip cookies covered with a thick layer of Saran Wrap plus Jo Ellen’s book bag filled with all her possessions from her locker.

He would’ve come straight here after school, but he’d needed time to think. There was something very fishy behind Emma Leigh’s announcement. Why would the Rawlings so suddenly decide to send both girls away during their senior year? Something big, enormous, must’ve happened to prompt this decree. Cooper concluded it had to be something to do with Untermeyer. Em had faulted him with ‘everything’ at school.