His Secret Heart (Crown Creek) Read online

  “When you first came?” she echoed. “You mean you’ve been here since your Dad -?” She cut herself short. “You know what? I don’t care. This is silly. I have my own place and the world’s most comfortable couch. I’m coming to get you.”

  “Livvy.”

  “Sky, come on. We’re family.”

  My breath came out in a rush. I’d forgotten. I’d been drifting, unmoored, all this time, when land had always been in sight. I wasn’t alone in the world, and Livvy was someone who knew my past. She knew this town.

  And she also knew my dad.

  Suddenly I wanted to kick myself. I kept saying I wanted the truth but obviously I didn’t want it as badly as I’d pretended. I’d been avoiding it, hiding from it, content to let my secrets stay buried. But I, of all people should know that buried secrets were like a land mine. You never knew when they would go off.

  Better to dig them up first.

  “Yeah,” I breathed. “Okay, you know what? That actually sounds wonderful.”

  “Yeah? Good, because I’m already getting in my car. I should be there in ten minutes.”

  It took less time than that for me to break down my tent and pack up all my worldly possessions. Clothes, shoes, my sewing kit…

  And my DVD of My Fair Lady.

  I opened up the case and let out a long sigh. The DVD itself was missing. Still sitting in Finn’s trailer, no doubt. I licked my lips, feeling a strong sense of deja vu. It was the shoe incident all over again.

  I looked at the trailer.

  Finn was inside. Shut away from the world. I couldn’t be his girlfriend. I couldn’t even be his friend. We kept coming at each other from the wrong angle, reaching out and then missing each other. It was maddening.

  I’d been using him. Using him for a place to stay. Using him to distract myself from my real problems. It wasn’t fair, what I had done. It was no more fair than how I’d been treated.

  I turned when I heard the sound of a car pulling up. “Hey!” My cousin waved out of her window. “Sky! Hey!”

  “Hang on!” I shouted. “Just one more thing!”

  Livvy watched me as I ran over to the trailer. I lifted my hand to knock. Then thought better of it. I knelt down and put the DVD case on the step.

  It was his now. I hoped he’d take care of it, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t. Not when he wouldn’t take care of himself.

  Not when he wouldn’t let anyone care about him.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Finn

  I could see everything outside of the window.

  The car. The girl driving it. She was one of Claire’s friends - Libby or Liddy or something. I knew her immediately. How did Sky?

  When they hugged tight, I clenched my fist. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. Jealousy? Hey, that’s mine! She was her own woman. And I’d fucked things up irreparably enough to know that it was best to cut her loose. I was good at it, after all.

  But that wasn’t what was screwing with my head. It was what happened before they hugged. When Sky had come rushing across the road.

  Towards me.

  My heart stopped. I stood stock still, frozen. Rehearsing the apologies I’d make once she burst in. Hoping like hell she wouldn’t knock and make it awkward. This was her space too, now. And she had every right to come careening in and yelling at me. I really fucking hoped she would.

  But she didn’t knock. She didn’t careen.

  She rushed away from my door again, hair flying, and hugged Whatshername. Then she got into her packed car and the two of them drove away.

  Sky disappeared from view slowly. It wasn’t a cinematic moment. I had ample time to rush out the door after her. Claire’s quiet friend was driving so slowly down the rutted, pitted road, that I could have easily caught up to her.

  But I didn’t.

  It wasn’t until she was gone, until she was fully out of my reach, that I was able to move again. For the first time in a month, I opened the front compartment and sat in the bus’s driver’s seat.

  Why? Did I think I going to follow her? I was still hooked up to water and electric. It would take at least an hour for me to go anywhere.

  Numbly, I went to the door of the trailer and opened it.

  Her absence was heavy around me. Even the birds seemed silenced by the weight of it. I stepped down and my foot brushed up against something.

  It was the case for her My Fair Lady DVD. I opened it and saw it was empty, then turned, remembering that the shiny silver circle was still sitting on top of the DVD player. She’d left me the case so I could watch her favorite movie again. And keep it safe when I was done.

  I tried my hardest to feel nothing. Even anger would be preferable to this other thing.

  Gratitude. Shame. Clarity.

  Something that felt a lot like devotion.

  Desire.

  Love?

  How could I love her? I didn’t even deserve her. Sky Clarence Knight deserved a far better man than I could ever be.

  But she also made me want to try.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Sky

  The kitchen was dim. “I just moved in,” Livvy explained, hitting the light. It didn’t do much. “The tenants before me left the place a wreck. I was only working part time back then, so Mr. Grant - he’s my landlord - gave me a deal on rent if I did the cleaning myself.” She grimaced. “And then literally that very week I found a full time job. So I haven’t had a chance to… well...” She gestured helplessly

  Grime coated the windows. Dead bugs were scattered in the light fixtures like grisly confetti. “It’s going to look really nice when you do though?” I said, brightly. Unable to bring myself to lie and tell her it was fine.

  She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t know when I’m going to have time. The woman who ran Dr. Fenton’s office before had a terrible coke problem. The files are like…” She shrugged again. “Well they’re like this kitchen, honestly. Dr. Fenton is letting me work all the over time I can handle trying to match billing records. Which is great for my bank account. And terrible for my living situation.” She looked sheepish. “You’re the first person I’ve ever had over.”

  “I’m family,” I replied. It still felt weird on my tongue.

  “That’s right.” She smiled. “Now come in and tell me what's going on.”

  I followed her into the living room, feeling like I was walking towards my own execution. Shame sent heat crawling up my cheeks and down my neck to my chest, and tied my tongue in knots. But when I sat down and looked into her eyes, I took a deep breath. "Do you remember my Dad?"

  She raised an eyebrow. “Barely," she said with a sigh. "Maybe if I saw a picture? But it's more like impressions you know? We were so little when he split with your mom."

  "Livvy, my Dad is Bill Knight."

  It came out in a rush. And maybe that was on purpose. Maybe I wanted to blindside her the way I've been blindsided when I walked into the funeral home.

  "No he's not." I heard the skepticism there. And I knew that she didn't believe me. Why should she? This was the kind of story that was truly unbelievable.

  “When I went to the funeral home, I saw my father's body lying there, but there were people I’d never met before mourning him. Calling him Daddy.”

  “Jesus,” Livvy whispered. She kept shaking her head again and again. "Wait, no, but, no, but…”

  "I didn't even know he was sick, because he didn't dare get in contact with me from the hospital. Because he didn't want them knowing that I existed."

  "Sky, Jesus. Are you serious?“

  "My mom?” I choked. “Your aunt? She was the other woman."

  "Bullshit."

  "He was married. He had a family. Here. In Crown Creek. All those trips he would take? Going on the road? Not being home for weeks at a time? It's because he was here. With them." My voice was rising in hysteria. A month later it was still hitting me as hard as it had the day of. “I walked into the funeral home, and they kicked me o
ut. I couldn't even say goodbye. I didn't know about them. And they didn't know about me. No one knew anything because my father… Daddy… Daddy was lying to us all."

  When my voice broke, Livvy’s grimace of disbelief broke too. She stood up and enveloped me in a giant hug, then went over to a closet. “Get up a sec?” she asked, then she set about stretching sheets over the couch cushions.

  “What are you doing?” I sniffed.

  “You need a nap,” she said firmly. She pointed at the makeshift bed. “Now lie down.”

  “What?”

  “Lie down.”

  “It’s the middle of the day.”

  “You look like you are ready to drop.”

  I wiped my eyes with my sleeve. “I’m not though.”

  “You’ve been sleeping on a sleeping bag on the hard ground for how long now?” She handed me a tissue.

  Not as long as you’d think, I didn’t say. I just blew my nose loudly.

  She gave me an encouraging smile. “Come on, cuz.”

  I shook my head, balling the tissue with fretful hands. “I have too many things to do,” I protested. The month I’d spent hiding away from the world suddenly seemed like a lifetime. “I have to find a job, find a place to live, call a lawyer… God, do I need a lawyer do you think? I can’t afford one.”

  Livvy clapped her hand on my shoulder. “You can do all these things after you take a nap.” She gave me a gentle shake. “And don’t think you’re doing them all alone, either.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sky

  I climbed into the makeshift bred grudgingly. Just to make her happy. Because she was doing me a favor and I barely knew her well enough to know how to defy her.

  “It’s comfy, right?” She looked at me. Pleased. Hopeful.

  “Yeah.” It actually was. I shifted and rolled to my side.

  She leaned over and patted my pillow. “I’m going to run a few errands. When I get back, we’ll talk more, okay?”

  I figured I wouldn’t sleep. The strange house. The strange turn of events. They should have kept me awake.

  But the tears had exhausted me and I fell into a fitful sleep. The kind where outside noises seep into your dreams. There were voices, hushed and whispering. My parents are fighting again. I pulled the covers over my head, ready to wish that my mom would stop being so hard on my dad.

  But with the logic of dreams, I suddenly flipped sides. Now, it seemed like my mom was the one in the right. Her anger at my Dad seemed justified. And he’d always had me believe she was the one who caused the problems.

  It was him. All along it was him.

  The realization jolted through me and I blinked my eyes open, startled. The voices were still murmuring.

  I rolled over. It was coming from the kitchen. Not voices. A single voice. My cousin’s quiet, calm one as she spoke into her phone. “Uh huh? Yeah maybe, I don’t know.”

  I felt bad eavesdropping on her phone call. But if I moved then she’d know I was listening too. I froze and closed my eyes again, feigning sleep.

  “But we’re family too,” Livvy was saying.

  With a start, I realized she was talking about me.

  “You could try that, I guess.” She paused, listening to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Ha! You know I’m never going to remember that. Text it to me.”

  What was she planning? I gripped the sheets. For a moment I longed to be back in Finn’s trailer. In the little make-believe fantasy world where we were the only two people who existed.

  Would he watch the DVD? Or had he thrown it out after our fight? Did he know I was gone? Was he pissed that I hadn’t said goodbye?

  It had gotten ugly in the end. But he’d done so much for me before that. Livvy was family and felt obligated to take care of me because of it. But Finn had taken me in for no other reason than we were friends and he cared about me. And he’d done it in such a low-key, unceremonious way that I been able to take it for granted.

  Just like with my mom. Just like with Janet.

  I was just as selfish as my father,

  The realization made my whole body jerk like I'd touched a wall outlet. The shock was painful, and electric and filled me with revulsion.

  No. I wasn’t going to be this way anymore.

  It was time to stop floating through life unconscious of the things people did for me every day.

  Time to be grateful. Time to give back.

  Time to stop being a selfish dick like my father.

  I stood up and started folding the blankets neatly at the bottom of the couch.

  “What are you doing?” My cousin was in the doorway.

  “Making my bed.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Hey Livvy?”

  “Yeah?”

  I went to my cousin. It had taken hitting rock bottom to pierce the bubble of childish self-centeredness. “Thank you. I mean it. You’ve done more for me already than I deserve.”

  “You’re family,” she said simply. But hugged me back.

  I squeezed her tightly to me. “What am I going to do, Liv?”

  “I’m not sure. What do you want to do?”

  I took a deep breath. “Get answers.”

  “Even if they’re hard to hear?” Livvy wanted to know.

  I swallowed and nodded as I pulled back and stared at my feet. “I feel like I have to rewrite my own history,” I said as I watched my toes wiggle. “Everything I thought I knew about myself is turning out to be a lie.”

  Livvy looked at me. “That’s gonna be hard to do. Where do you even start?”

  I shrugged. “No idea.”

  She nodded, then touched my shoulder lightly. “I’ll be right here when you do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Finn

  It was the second day in a row that I'd awoken to frost glittering on the ground.

  Out of habit, I drank my espresso while staring out the window. If you’d asked me what I was looking for, I would have said nothing. Just enjoying the view. But if you watched me for longer than a minute, you would have known I was lying.

  Because my gaze was fixed on one thing only. The rough, scraggly patch of dead grass that had recently been covered a bright blue tent.

  It was still empty. She hadn’t shown up somehow in the middle of the night.

  Not that I wanted her to. I mean, I did. But not until I was ready.

  Not until I could confess my love and feel worthy to ask for hers in return.

  I took another sip and then rested my cup on my leg.

  That’s what four days without Sky in my life had given me. A dogged determination to be the man she deserved.

  I’d started the only way I knew how. By sitting down with my laptop with my credit card in hand. I clicked through a bunch of articles, scratching notes on a piece of paper until I'd made a pretty good list. It might not have been the ‘cultural touchstone education’ Sky had planned for me, but it was a start.

  The box full of old paperback classics arrived yesterday. Amazon will deliver anywhere, apparently. Including a campsite at the very edge of the middle of nowhere.

  The DVDs were arriving one at a time from dealers. They'd been coming in fits and starts. Which was fine. Because tonight I was going to re-watch My Fair Lady.

  When the old dude sang, "I've grown accustomed to her face," I kind of understood what he was talk-singing about.

  With her gone, I’d spent my days learning the things she’d wanted to teach me. Today I planned on starting The Great Gatsby after breakfast.

  If I could stop waiting at the window.

  What the hell was I doing? It wasn't like her tent would just appear there, springing up like some bright blue mushroom. With a grunt of annoyance, I dragged my eyes away from her site, and forced myself to scan the rest of the campground.

  It was unusually crowded for the last day in September. I'd thought the cold weather would keep driving people away. But there were a few more tents scattered acr
oss the grounds than yesterday.

  I looked up at the sound of car wheels crunching across the gravel. It was an older station wagon that looked familiar. I watched it bump closer and remembered where I'd seen it before. At the front of the camp. Parked in front of the owner's cabin.