Preston's Honor(41)

As if his mind had followed some path to Lia as well, he said, “Remember that little creek we used to go to with Lia?”

“Yeah. It’s dried up,” I said, thinking he might be wondering if we could use the water somehow.

He squinted up at me and then looked back to the crops. “I know I said I’d give it some time, but . . . I’m not going to stay, Preston. I feel bad about that because I know you’ll need the help.”

I stared at him for a moment and then blew out a breath. “I knew that was a possibility. It’s okay. I understand.” And frankly, though it would make running the farm harder, it was going to make the whole thing with Lia a lot easier.

He nodded. “I’m going to ask Lia to come with me.”

I froze. “What?” What the hell? I hadn’t considered this. Why hadn’t I considered this? Denial? Wishful thinking?

Cole turned slightly, leaning his back against the railing so he could look directly at me. “She’s always wanted to get out of here. And how is that ever going to happen? She works at IHOP for fuck’s sake. Do you think she’ll ever manage to save up enough to go to college? To do anything more than wait on people for the rest of her life? I don’t know, I just . . . hanging out with her last night felt so simple, so . . . easy. It’s always felt easy with Lia.”

Easy? For a second the description confused me. Loving Annalia was many things for me, but easy had never been one of them. Wild, breath-stealing, joyful, heart-wrenching even, but easy? No.

“You’re not even an actual couple, Cole. Christ, you slept with as many girls, if not more, as I did in college. Why the hell would she go with you?”

He watched me for a moment. “We’ve never really given it a try. Things just haven’t aligned right until now. But we’ve always been attracted to each other. That’s as good a place to start as any. And I want to get her out of here, to give her a chance at a real life, to make some of her dreams come true.” He paused, looking behind me for a moment. “With my degree, I can get a good job, rent an apartment for us, she can take classes during the day. I’m betting it will work out with us, but hell, even if it doesn’t, she’ll be a hundred times better off than she is now.”

For a moment I almost agreed with him. For a moment I thought that if anyone deserved easy, it was Lia. For a moment I could see the logic—and the rightness—of what he was thinking, but then a vision of what had happened between us last night came into my mind bringing with it the reminder of how much time we’d already lost. Now that I knew Lia had feelings for me, I’d be damned if I was going to let her go. If Cole had told me before last night about this plan of his, things might have been different, but last night had happened and I couldn’t pretend it hadn’t. I wouldn’t.

“You can’t. You can’t take her with you.”

Cole’s expression was confused. “Well, not against her will. Jesus. I’m going to ask her. But she’s not going to say no.”

“She is, though. She is going to say no.”

Cole’s brows furrowed and he shook his head. “What? How do you know?”

“Because we were . . .” I ran a hand through my hair, letting out a breath. “We were together last night. She has feelings for me.”

For a frozen second, Cole just stared at me as if he didn’t comprehend what I’d just said. “Together . . . what? You mean . . .” His face flushed and he surged to his feet. “What. The. Fuck?” he gritted out. He shook his head, his face screwing up into surprised confusion. “Last night? She was sick last—” He grabbed the hair at the top of his head, chuckling softly, but with no amusement in the sound whatsoever. “You lied to me. Jesus Christ, what’d you do? Fuck her in your truck on some back road?”

Rage and shame engulfed me, rage that he’d spoken about her in such crude terms, shame because I’d treated her crudely. It’d actually been even worse than Cole knew—I hadn’t taken her virginity in my truck. No, I’d taken her virginity on a cold, hard tabletop, my pants around my ankles, and her skirt pushed up to her waist. I grimaced. She hadn’t seemed upset about the manner in which we’d had sex, but why would she? She had nothing else to compare it to. “No,” I said, unwilling to give him the details, not because I was ashamed—though I was—but because what Lia and I had done was private. It was between her and me.

“You motherfucker,” he said. “Did you even use a condom?”

My stomach dropped. In the midst of all my swirling emotions, I hadn’t even thought about that. No, I hadn’t used a condom. He must have known the answer by the look on my face because he swore viciously. He stared at me for a moment with daggers in his eyes before saying, “You must really care about her to want to give her a disease.”

“Fuck off, Cole. I’ve always used protection.” Only not last night. It’d been the one time I hadn’t even considered a condom. Of course, I hadn’t considered much. I’d been out of my mind with lust and love and the burning desire that had built up for so many years. And then today, I’d been so immersed in my own thoughts to even consider that we’d had unprotected sex. Jesus. I was a selfish asshole. I was the asshole Cole had been trying to save her from all those years before when he’d asked her not to give herself to anyone while he was gone.