Page 87 of Tempting Promises
My hand rests on his chest as I listen to his story. “What happened?”
“He was drunk, like always, and I walked in right as he slapped my mother. I swear, I’ve never felt rage like that in my life. I was home from college for winter break. Asher was in the basement and heard me roar. He got me off him as I was ramming my fist in his face.”
“As you should have!” I say, feeling my own rage. No one should ever hit their spouse. Ever. If I had ever seen someone hurt my mom or grandma, I would be no different than him.
“I felt the same, but it did a number on me. My mother packed her shit two days later and came to Sugarloaf with Brynn since she owned the farm after my grandparents passed. Mom and Howie got divorced and Brynn was never the same toward her father.”
“Again, rightfully so.”
He sighs heavily, pulling me back against him. “I feel bad for her, though. She witnessed her brother beat the shit out of her father. She understood why, she was almost ten and definitely knew what was going on.”
I try to imagine what Brynlee must’ve felt, seeing her brother and father. Knowing her mother was hit by her dad. I don’t know that I would’ve been okay after that. My father loved my mother beyond reason. There was nothing in the world he cared about more than his girlies, as he called us. I swear, my mother walked on water if you ever asked him.
“She had three amazing brothers and her mother to help her.”
“Now I’m amazing, am I?”
“You have your moments,” I say with a smile. “I still think you’re an asshole.”
Rowan chuckles. “What about you? I know you lived with your grandparents because you lost your parents.”
“I did. I was six and Aurora was eight. We hated it here.”
“What? Sugarloaf was not the beautiful metropolis you dreamed of?”
I snort. “Not even a little. We lived in a penthouse in New York City. We had our nanny, Minnie, who was fun and always made us smile. There was our butler, Victor, who never smiled but winked whenever we did something funny. Visiting here was like stepping into a story that we read as kids with horses and cows.”
“I never knew that,” Rowan admits. “I knew you lived in New York but not that you were loaded.”
Sometimes I think that’s the most ironic part of it. I was rich. Well, my parents were. Stupid rich, and when my parents died, we got a good portion of it. However, I used all of my inheritance to buy Aurora out of this farm, and the rest to improve it to get the organic certification.
Only to now be on the brink of losing it all.
I sigh heavily, pushing that sad thought away. “My parentswere, and the money is pretty much gone now, so a lot of good it did me.”
“How did you lose your parents?”
“They say there are moments in a person’s life when something happens that no matter what or where you go in life, you’ll always remember every detail.”
Rowan nods. “Yes, moments in history. Like when President Kennedy was assassinated.”
I turn to him. “Yes! And Pearl Harbor, my pop could tell you exact details of where he was when he heard about it, the Challenger exploding, September 11th, and for me, when I found out my parents were killed by a drunk driver.”
Rowan takes my hand in his, lacing our fingers together. “I’m sorry. It never should’ve happened.”
“No, it shouldn’t have, but it did. For so long I made up a hundred stories on how it went down instead of a drunk driver. Like, I would pretend they were killed by doing something heroic, like rescuing kittens on the road or stopping a robbery.” I laugh at myself, remembering the ways I would weave these stories.
“I don’t think that’s funny or strange.”
I shrug a little, rubbing my thumb against his. “When I turned sixteen, my grandparents felt like Aurora and I were finally old enough to know the details of our parents’ accident. They let us read the report of how the drunk driver, who said she always drove better drunk, came across the two lanes of traffic, into my parents’ lane and slammed into them. We read how my father was alive when they responded, and when he found out my mother was killed at the scene, he died in the ambulance. I always wonder if he didn’t just give up because his heart was broken.”
Rowan squeezes his fingers tighter around mine and we fall into a comfortable silence. I close my eyes and relax against him.
How is it that I’m so comfortable with him? I can’t help but wonder if it’s because there’s nothing here. We’re not even friends, so I can talk about all this without worrying he’ll use the brokenparts of me as a weapon later on, which is what the last guy I dated did.
In an argument, he’d bring up my insecurities. With Rowan, there’s no reason to be insecure since we’re nothing but fuck buddies.
Maybe we could be friends, but most likely not. He’ll say something that’ll piss me off soon enough.
