“I won’t,” Dani whispered, haunted. “I…no, never, Mae. I never meant to leave you before. I just—”
“I know,” Mae said quickly, to reassure the sudden pain that she witnessed in her niece. She wanted it gone, immediately so she said what she needed to let Dani know that she understood, because—heaven help her—Mae knew better than anyone else.
“I know,” Mae said again. “I left too.”
Dani listened. She listened as a child listens to a story on the very edge of their seat. She listened with her heart and soul in that moment.
“I…stuff happened,” Mae spoke as she saw her past. Her eyes darkened in remembered pain. “And I took off. I left too and I know that you weren’t leaving me. You were leaving yourself before. I get that, I do, but I was on the other side this time. I lost my niece. I came to tell you that I adopted you and Kathryn said you’d gone. I thought it was because of what I’d done, like you got wind and you bolted because you didn’t want no part of me—and Kathryn knew that’s what I thought. She never explained anything, but Kathryn’s more unhappy than anyone I know in this lifetime.”
Dani just stood and breathed. She took one breath at a time.
“You weren’t leaving me. I realized that, but it took me a while. I figured it out when I saw Jakey and Erica holding hands. I know what’s it like to want to escape everything going on around you. It makes a person forget what else is there or who else is there. I forgot when I took off. I forgot my little sister—your momma. And I paid for it, Dani. I lost your momma. She…she got taken under the wing of Kathryn and I thought your momma was going to be just like her.”
Mae drew in a shuddering breath, “And then your momma came to me and said that if I got myself together and I did good by you, I could adopt you. She’d have everything ready and all I’d need to do is sign my name. But she said to wait until I had stuff ready for you. And that’s the truth, Dani. I just…I think my standards were too high and I waited too long. I was…looking back now, I was still self-absorbed and worried about my standings that I never saw what you were going through. I knew what Kathryn could be like and I knew, in my heart, what you were going through, but…I was scared.”
Dani heard her aunt’s words, she heard the pain and the truth that was her aunt’s weakness, and she should’ve apologized in that moment. Dani felt her own sorrow that she hadn’t stopped to consider who would be affected by her need to escape the sorrow that seemed to takeover her life in Craigstown.
“I needed to go.” Dani wanted all the pain to go away. “I forgot you were there, but I needed to go. I wasn’t leaving you. I wasn’t leaving Jake or Erica or anyone. I was just…I was leaving myself.”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to apologize for leaving,” Dani stated. “I don’t think I can ever apologize because it wasn’t about anyone, but me. I had to go. It was for me. I went…”
“You went in search of yourself. You came back a woman,” Mae whispered as she stepped close and tucked a strand of hair behind Dani’s ear. Her touch was of a mother’s. “You left hurting, but you came back stronger than ever no matter what you went through. I know some old folks who can’t say that, who don’t got the look that you got in your eyes.”
Dani parked on the cliff and made quick work as she walked down the narrow trail. It was getting dark out, but she had a light and she had a blanket bagged to stay dry as she dove into the waters and swept her arms strong and hurried over her head to pull her closer to where she wanted to go. She broke the surface and felt around the darkness for the old embankment’s edge.
She wasn’t there long before she heard sudden splash and then nothing. Fish were known to jump and break the surface, but they didn’t produce a splash as forceful as the one she heard. Then someone broke the surface. “Dani?”
It was Jonah. He found the embankment and hauled himself up. “Are you in here?”
“I’m here.”
Jonah crossed to where her voice had rang from and he commented, “I forgot some tools here, but I saw your car on the cliff. I figured that you must’ve been in here. What are you doing here?”
“Thinking. Pondering my life.”
“That sounds…philosophical and slightly ominous.”
He didn’t touch her and she didn’t touch him.
“Jake knows about Boone.”
“How’d he handle that?”
“He didn’t say much. Just that it was good that I got over him.”
Jonah chuckled. “Jake’s a little peculiar at times.”
“Yeah,” Dani breathed out. “He is, but he handled it better than I did when he told me about Erica.”
“Circumstances are a bit different.”
“Yeah. Yeah, they are.”
Jonah glanced sideways at her and she felt his eyes in the darkness.
“You know, don’t you?” she murmured.
“Small town.”
“Yes, it is.”
Jonah waited.
“It’s true.”
“Is this…a bad thing?”
“No.” Dani shook her head. “I actually feel…I’m okay with it.”
“Are we talking about the same thing?” Jonah chuckled.
“My adoption, right?”
Jonah was quiet, “Actually I was talking about your aunt Kathryn.”
“Oh.”
“You’re adopted?”
“By my aunt. Mae adopted me the day after I left Craigstown. Can you believe it?” she said dryly.
“I kinda can,” Jonah admitted. “Mae always was last minute on things.”
“But when she got things going, she goes all out, doesn’t she?”
“I like it,” Jonah announced. “It fits that Mae adopted you. She’s like your real mom now.”
“Kathryn’s rejection makes a lot more sense now. She’d never pretend to raise me right when someone else was going to ‘take’ me away, anyway. That’s just how she works.” Dani frowned. “What were you going to say before?”
“Your aunt Kathryn is in the hospital. She went in an hour ago. I guess Julia got home and found her on the floor. She’d collapsed so she was rushed into the hospital.”
“It’s all over the town, huh?”
“Pretty much.”
“Oh,” Dani merely said. “Should I…am I supposed to go to her?”
“She is family, no matter who adopted you. She’s still the sister to your mom.”
Dani wondered faintly which ‘mom’ he meant, but it didn’t matter. Both were correct.
“I should go and see her,” Dani murmured, her eyes cast in sadness. “I’ll probably push her over the edge when I do, but I’ll try.”
“Give her a few days. She had stabilized last I heard, so she’ll be there a few days.”
“How do you know this?”
“Trenton’s sister has a thing for me. She’s a nurse there.” Jonah grinned.
“Everyone has a thing for you.” Dani smiled to herself.
“As they should.”
“But we fit.”
“Sure do,” Jonah smirked, self-assured.
“You’re cocky. Anyone ever tell you that?”
“On a few occasions, especially when I’m ending a relationship.”
Dani shook her head in amusement. “You mean that will be the demise of this thing? You’ll end it someday and I’ll tell you, again, that you’re cocky.”
Jonah chuckled, “No, no, you’re different.”
“How so?”
“If anyone is going to do the ‘ending,’ it’ll be you because you’re still hung up on your two exes. Not me. I’m quite liking my spot in your life right now.”
“The sex.”
“The sex,” Jonah parroted. “The sex without the clinginess, it’s nice. Refreshing.”
Dani laughed, “But that’s when the guy falls and the girl doesn’t. Someone always falls.”
Jonah frowned, “I don’t know. Maybe. I do think there are relationships where
one person falls harder than the other one, but I’ve been a part of some emotion-free hooking-up.”
“Then she probably lied.”
“Is that what girls do?” Jonah teased. “Do they lie?”
“Sometimes. Probably.”
“Are you lying to me? Are you falling for me?”
The light humor vanished from her and she replied, somberly, “I’d have to have a heart to do that.”
She heard him sigh softly and then his hand found hers in the darkness. His still-wet fingers slid between hers and their hands entwined and rested over one of her knees.
Jonah said softly, “You have a much bigger heart. You just don’t believe it sometimes.”
“I don’t believe it or I don’t want to believe it?” Dani asked, haunted.
“If you didn’t have a heart, you wouldn’t be asking that question.”
“Then why can’t I feel it at times?”
“Maybe you’re not supposed to,” Jonah offered. He squeezed her hand. “Maybe you’re supposed to handle what you’re handling right now and with time, you’ll feel all of your heart.”
“Here I am, holding hands with Jonah Bannon, and…,” Dani fell silent as she felt a surge of regret inside of her.
“What?”
“I couldn’t not look at him today.”
Jonah knew who she meant.
Dani continued, “Before when Boone drove away, I couldn’t not look at him. Before—I could never look at him because I was afraid of what I’d see in him.”
Jonah didn’t say a word.
And that it made it worse, but Dani whispered anyway, “He knows about Jake and you and…I couldn’t stop looking at him.”
Jonah took a deep breath and started, his voice husky, “I’ve never really fallen in love and I’ve been with my share of girls, but there was one girl, Cassy. I didn’t love her. She was just…she was fun to me. We had a good time together. This was when we were kids and in school. I got her to cut school a lot and we’d go skinny-dip and fool around. And then, I don’t know—a new girl came to school and I got interested in her. I never ended things with Cassy before I started hanging with Vee, but, I was coming to school one day and I ran into Cassy. I was heading in and she was heading out and we crossed paths. It had happened before with other girls, but…there was something about her that I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I didn’t love. I knew that, but it bugged me for the longest time. All the girls and Cassy was the one to make me rethink things and feel…I just felt bad about it. I didn’t know why, we were supposedly just having this light, fun, fling, but Hawk told me a year later that Cassy had been pregnant with my child, but she never told me.”
Jonah paused and coughed, to clear away the regrets. He continued, his voice soft, “Maybe I knew, I didn’t know, but when he told me that—everything made sense. Maybe I did know, maybe a part of me knew that something was off, but she never told me and when I found out—she had already left town.”
“How’d Hawk know that?”
“He was dating her sister and she told him. She knew that we were friends.”
“What happened with the baby?”
“I talked to her sister and she said that Cassy miscarried. The baby died in the first trimester, but…I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if she lied to me and I really do have a kid out there, somewhere.”
“Did you look for Cassy?”
“Yeah, but her dad’s on the town council and he got in my face about it. He said that his daughter is better off without me and I should respect her feelings. He said that she’s married and has two children with a husband who loves her and would never cheat on her.”
Dani frowned.
Jonah remarked, “It was the way he said that, like I would’ve cheated on her if I’d known.” He took a deep breath. “I wouldn’t have married her. No way would I have put that kid in a loveless marriage, but I would’ve helped take care of the kid. I would’ve done everything I could to be a part of his or her life.”
“You’re not a cheater,” Dani murmured. “I know enough about you to know that when you give your heart, you’ll give it all. You wouldn’t ever cheat on a woman that you loved.”
“I’ve fought my battles, early on, but I wish she had told me. I think I knew something was wrong and that’s why I kept thinking about her, but it wasn’t love. I knew that.”
Dani bit her lip, torn inside and she murmured, “I didn’t leave Boone.” She slid her hand free from his hold and wrapped them around herself now, to ward off the chills within, “I left him, but I was too wrapped up in my torment inside. He wasn’t even a blip on my radar at that time and I didn’t think about the consequences of my actions. I didn’t think how much I would hurt him when I left.”
She swallowed tightly and admitted to herself, out loud, “I was a coward and I did a cowardly thing. It was wrong—what I did or how I did it.”
“I think,” Jonah mentioned, “that you couldn’t stop looking at him because you know you’ve got to tell him some stuff that you haven’t said to anyone.”
Dani felt a stab in her stomach, but it was the truth. And the truth hurt, but he was right. She relented, softly, “I know.”
She had a lot to say to a lot of people, but she never said it. That was the truth that Jonah stepped upon without realizing.
She heard him take a deep breath, as if for courage, and ask, “Do you want…I think you and me should hold off until you, maybe, have that talk?”
He sounded final and he sounded questionable.
Dani glinted dry amusement as she murmured, “I thought you just said that I’d be the one to end this.”
“I’m not ending this. I’m just…asking if you want space.”
Dani turned and swiftly moved to straddle him. She slid her hands in his wet hair and whispered, “There’s more going on in my head than Boone. There’s a lot more that I haven’t told a soul, so it’s not just him.”
Jonah found her hips, but he didn’t push or pull. He just rested his hands there and she felt them mold around her bones.
Dani dipped her head and found his lips with hers.
It was a soft kiss, gentle, but both were breathing hard when they broke away for breath.
Dani fell into him and wrapped her hands around his neck as she merely lay atop. In his shoulder, she murmured, “Having space has been my problem. I’ve needed too much space and I just push people away. I know that. I’ve always known that, but…I don’t need it with you.”
Jonah swept a hand up and down her back. He asked as his breath warmed her forehead, “Are you sure? I don’t want to have regrets with you and me.”
“I have an aunt that’s dying and we’re estranged. I have…” A father to ponder if she wanted to know his identity. A grandmother that held so many pieces to Dani’s puzzle and she needed to so many ghosts to put to rest. “I have…other things besides Boone. He’s just a part of it.”
Jonah breathed out at her words and pressed a kiss to her shoulder. He swept a hand down her back and tucked her closer to him.
He tucked his chin over her shoulder and told her, “My dad’s coming to town tomorrow.”
“What?” Dani pulled back and searched his face. She didn’t need the flashlight to see the quieted pain that reflected in his features.
“Yeah.” Jonah sighed. “He’s coming to town because he’s real tight with Elliott Quandry.”
“Who’s that?”