Page 103 of The Talk of Coyote Canyon

“Act like what?” she broke in. “It was fun while it lasted. At least I know you won’t tell anyone, because then you’d have to admit to consorting with the enemy.” She forced herself to laugh and prayed it sounded believable, because she certainly wasn’t feeling any mirth. The opposite was true, in fact. Something inside her seemed to be shriveling up and dying—and stealing all the power from her soul at the same time.

“Right,” he said. “Okay. I guess...” His throat worked as he swallowed. “I must be wrong. I apologize. Apparently, some things just can’t be fixed.”

With that, he walked out and didn’t even bother to close the door. She could hear his feet on the porch steps, broadening the distance between them as he hurried to the driveway, where her truck was parked beside his.

She’d done the right thing, she told herself in the silence that ensued—what had to be done. She wouldn’t allow him or her father or his aunt to hurt her ever again. That was a promise she’d made to herself when she was just a girl, and she’d keep it. She didn’t need anyone.

Besides, she could never truly expect him to choose her over Lynn. Lynn was his aunt. Actually, she was more like hismother.

Too charged up to stand still, she was breathing hard and turning in a circle, wishing there was some way to release the terrible pain inside her. It felt as though someone had stabbed her, weakening the defenses she’d built so carefully over the years—the defenses that held back the pain of her childhood, including her parents’ divorce, her father’s abandonment, her mother’s far-too-heavy reliance and all the things she’d missed as a child because of it.

I’ll be fine. I’ve always been fine. I have my business. I have Talulah. I have Ross. I have... I have my mother even though she’s part of the problem.

That kind of thinking had always worked before. But as she heard Hendrix unloading the hoses out front, she realized it wasn’t working now. She’d never felt so forlorn or bereft.

Then her eyes landed on the geode on her coffee table, and a memory she’d suppressed because she couldn’t bear thinking about it—sealed off like a coffin she’d buried deep in the earth—suddenly rose to the surface. She was eleven and staying with her father and Lynn during one of her early visits before she was cut off from the family. She’d wandered into Hendrix’s room right after he’d come to live with Lynn and Stuart—she’d been so curious about this interloper who was loved far more than she was—and picked up a geode he had on the dresser that, if memory served, looked a lot like the one that’d been left on her doorstep.

She’d never seen such a thing before, didn’t even know they existed, and had been entranced by the beauty of all the purple crystals—so entranced that she hadn’t heard Hendrix come into the room, hadn’t realized she’d been caught in his private space looking at his personal possessions, and he’d absolutely exploded in anger. He’d shouted for her to put it down and never touch it again, that she wasn’t even tolookat it, and when Lynn came to see what all the fuss was about, Ellen had been punished with a crisp slap on the hands. Then Lynn had grabbed Hendrix, pulled him in for a hug and started to cry with him, and it was only later that Stuart had explained that she’d been in the wrong for invading Hendrix’s space and touching something that was special to him because it had belonged to his mother.

She eyed her geode more carefully. Surely Hendrix hadn’t been the one to leave this on her doorstep. He would never give her such a priceless possession, one that meant so much to him.

As she stared at the rock, she realized that if it wasn’t the exact same one she’d been punished for touching, it was almost identical.

He remembered she’d liked it; that was why he’d given it to her. Who else would think of such an unusual gift? And why would whoever it was give it to her anonymously?

The sound of his engine rose as he started his truck. She wanted so badly to go to him, to stop him and tell him hedidmean something to her, and everything could be fixed, as he wished.

But she couldn’t. That would only bring more pain.

She began to tremble as she stood there, and as he started to back down the drive, more and more tears rolled down her cheeks. Then something snapped inside her, and the next thing she knew, she was running out the door.

Hendrix almost didn’t see Ellen. He was too upset, too eager to get the hell away from her house. That he’d even tried to reach her on an intimate level seemed foolish now.

But as he shifted into Drive, he caught sight of her white billowing shirt as she came charging down the driveway, saw the streaks of tears on her cheeks in the moonlight and had to stop. No matter what it was, she needed him, and he cared too much about her to drive away.

After he put the truck in Park, he opened his door and got out, half expecting to hear her scream every vile thing she’d ever thought about him.

But she didn’t say anything. She ran right up to him and threw her arms around his neck, and all his own pain and anger evaporated as he held her small body against his. “Don’t go,” she said. “I don’t want you to go.”

He smiled as he kissed the top of her head. “Okay, I won’t.”

“I don’t know why I’m crying,” she said. “This is stupid.”

Feeling he might finally be allowed entrance into the fortress she’d built around herself, he buried his face in her neck. “It’s not stupid. You need to let it out. Let it all go, Ellen. We all have a heart.” He cupped her face and looked down into her eyes. “Even me—and I hope you won’t break it.”

He held her for several minutes while she cried, but as her tears began to subside, he started to kiss her neck, and then her mouth and the next thing he knew, she wanted him to come back inside.

“Just let me pull my truck into the drive for the night,” he said.

“Don’t you think you should move it down the road, out of sight, like usual?” she asked as she wiped her eyes.

He kissed her forehead and then the tip of her nose. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because as often as I’m going to want to see you, I won’t be able to keep it a secret, anyway,” he said.

Twenty-Five

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