Ginger's Heart (A Modern Fairytale, #3)(31)
Foremost in the changes at home was that the week after Cain left for boot camp, his mother had remarried and moved to Frankfort, almost an hour away from Apple Valley. The timing of her impromptu nuptials suggested that she’d known her new husband, Jim Johnson, for quite some time, and Cain couldn’t help wondering if Jim Johnson had been partially responsible for his parents’ divorce. Either way, he wasn’t particularly eager to meet him.
Klaus, on the other hand, from whom Cain had felt such distance throughout his adolescence, had become Cain’s most loyal correspondent, writing to him once or twice a month faithfully while Cain was serving. And it meant something to Cain. It meant a lot. Yes, his letters were filled with boring news from McHuid’s—descriptions of new foals, favorite mares, and Ranger’s exquisite taste in the latest farm equipment—but sometimes, occasionally, like a nugget of silver on a bed of sand, there was a brief mention of Ginger. And Cain just about lived for those blinding flashes of rare and unexpected beauty in his father’s otherwise humdrum letters.
Glancing over at Woodman again, to assure himself that his cousin was asleep before giving himself permission to think about her, Cain took a deep breath and pictured her face. Having known Ginger all his life, he could flip through slides of her in his mind at will: little Ginger in pigtails following him around the farm . . . the day she came home to the manor house after her heart scare, looking as goddamned plucky as ever . . . her arms spread wide every October as she stood above them in the hayloft giggling . . . her body, softening into womanhood, as he checked her out covertly . . . her lips, parted and willing, waiting for him to claim them.
She was a constant, dull ache in his heart that throbbed like an open wound whenever he heard about her. And between his father’s occasional mentions of her and the regular letters she sent to Woodman, from which he read aloud from time to time, that wound had never been able to close.
A thousand times it had occurred to Cain to write to her and apologize for standing her up the night of that homecoming dance three years ago. He had a million regrets in his life, but that cowardly f*cking move was on the top of the list. He should have had the decency to cancel. Hell, he should have had the decency not to kiss his cousin’s girl.
But in his dreams, he heard her sweet voice saying I still want that first kiss. God help him, the memory of her lips beneath his would be the last thought he grasped for on the day he died. The sweetness of her surrender to him, the trust, the f*cking fireworks behind his eyes that had blown any other kiss out of his head and left hers glowing like magnesium in his heart.
He longed to apologize to Ginger with every fiber of his being. He longed to show her the man he was trying so desperately to become since leaving home. He longed to see the softness in her eyes, feel her body pressed against his, hear her voice near his ear whispering tenderly, I’ve always known. It’s always been you.
He glanced at the lights of Cincinnati up ahead, then at Josiah sleeping peacefully beside him, hating himself for such weakness.
Cain set his jaw.
He needed to stay away from her.
Because no matter how much you longed for them, some things simply weren’t meant to be. The one person—the one conversation topic—that brought a genuine smile to his cousin’s dull, dejected eyes was Ginger, and Cain would sooner die than take that glimmer of hope away from him.
Ginger belonged to Woodman, not to Cain, and Cain intended to respect his cousin’s claim.
Earlier today, he’d asked Woodman, who’d been slumped in his seat, his expression a mask of quiet anguish as he toughed through the pain of his foot, “Excited to see Ginger?”
Josiah’s entire face had transformed at the mention of her name, softening, looking younger and more like his old self. But little by little it crumbled until he stared down at his lap despondently.
“Sure. Always,” he said softly. “But I can’t expect a girl like her to love a cripple.”
“Then we ain’t talkin’ about the same girl,” Cain said, his heart aching as he pushed all thoughts of her into Woodman’s arms. “Girl I know wouldn’t give two shits about your bad foot. In fact, with her in nursin’ school? Bet she loves it. She’ll have her own personal patient.”
“I don’t want to be her f*ckin’ patient, Cain. Don’t want to be some half man who she feels sorry for, who can’t do for her, who can’t . . . can’t . . .”
“Uh, did I miss somethin’ here? Did your balls get crushed instead of your ankle?”
“Cain—”
“No, I’m serious, son. ’Cause it seems to me you still have a workin’ pair.”
“Shut the f*ck up about my balls, huh?”
“I’m just sayin’,” he continued, ignoring the cries of his own heart, “that you can do for her.”
“Don’t talk about her like that,” said Josiah, but he wore a grudging smile, his cheeks turning pink, no doubt from thoughts of being intimate someday with Ginger.
And Cain’s own knife twisted in his heart.
“Numbnuts,” he muttered.
Woodman scoffed. “They ain’t seen the action yours have, brother, but I promise you, they ain’t numb.”
This led them down the path to one of Cain’s favorite conversations, and he gratefully left talk of Woodman and Ginger behind, the pressure in his chest easing.