Call Me Michigan (2 page)

Mason Stiles loved nothing more than the solitude and peacefulness his truck provided. He adored his family, his work, and his house, but sometimes, things just were too much, and he needed a break.

The day had started out sunny, and Mason had decided to head over after finishing work in Freedom, the next big town, to get the parts he needed to repair the leaking faucet at home and the broken fence at the end of his driveway.

He had just passed the Greyhound station that twelve years prior had taken his life away from him, and he figured in about another sixty minutes, life would swamp him again, chasing away the calm he had felt in the cab of his truck. Turning on the radio, he found his favorite country station, singing along to the familiar tunes while trying to avoid overthinking things. His thirty-third birthday was coming up in a couple of months, and as much as Brad had insisted they needed a barn party, Mason hoped he’d be able to get drunk all by himself. He wanted to nurse his broken, lonely heart in the sanctuary of his home, without anyone bearing witness to his pity party. In front of him, the sun was shining brightly, but his mood more fit the black clouds rolling in behind him.

Sighing, he suddenly spotted someone walking up ahead on the road. Between their location and the next farm or town, there were miles and miles of fields and more fields, meaning hours of solitary walking until that person even met another soul.

Judging by the stature, Mason guessed it was a girl, and looking at her clothes, he decided pretty quickly that she wasn’t from around here. Her curves, if you even could call them that, were barely concealed by a white blouse and hugged tightly by a pair of damn skinny jeans those urban folks loved so much. Mason preferred his girls the typical country style: boot cut jeans, plaid shirt, and real cowboy boots instead of those flimsy ballerina shoes this girl was sporting.

Her hair was in one of those fancy updos with not a single hair out of place. That wouldn’t be the case much longer because, before long, the storm rolling in behind them would catch up with her.

She carried a sea sack, one Mason knew people owned if they once had been in the Army like he had been. Frankly, the luggage made her appear even smaller.

Slowing his truck to a crawl, he rolled down his window and saw huge and ugly sunglasses covered half of her face. Her cheeks were hollow, and he could see the bones at the base of her neck standing out more than he thought was healthy.

“Hey, lady,” he called and then watched how she swallowed before looking at him. He couldn’t make out much besides her pursed lips, but something about her heart-shaped mouth triggered a memory in the back of his mind.

“You need a ride? It’ll rain soon,” he continued, and her face turned from him to the clouds behind his truck.

“Crap,” she muttered, her voice soft and warm.

“Wanna hop in?” Great job, Mason, he scolded himself silently. It’s not at all weird to invite a city girl into your truck since they were suspicious of everyone and everything. Unlike the women he knew, those damn girls from the big towns didn’t know the typical country friendliness; at least, that was what the TV always portrayed.

“If you don’t mind,” she replied without an ounce of hesitation, and Mason stopped the truck. She threw her bag in the backseat as if she had been riding in trucks all her life.

“Where are you from?” he inquired as she settled down in the seat next to him.

“Michigan,” she replied, and Mason noticed that instead of looking at him, she stared straight ahead.

“Where to, Michigan?”

She lowered her head, her shoulders slumping, giving her an air of defeat. The truth was Mason had never seen a girl who looked as unhappy as she did. Her skin was pale, her body was way too slim, and what he saw of her face held no traces of a smile. In fact, she looked as if no happiness had grazed her features in way too long.

“The Collins’ farm,” she eventually announced, and he shifted gears, making the truck finally move again.

“They’re nice folks,” he observed, avoiding the last name. Twelve years later and his heart still hadn’t forgotten the one who got away. The memories of the day Taylor had left were hazy at best, at least when it came to everything that had transpired after him entering the bar, and basically non-existent when it came to how he had left it again. “They just had tough luck with the dad runnin’ away. The middle child, Tamara, is takin’ care of the smallest one now, but I guess you know that. You’re heading there to help?” He really liked that since Tammy was way too young to be burdened with something like that. While she never once had complained, Mason couldn’t imagine it to be easy at all. The girl in the seat next to him simply shrugged.

“Something like that, yes.” She trailed one bright red fingernail along his dashboard while studying the pictures Mason had long ago meant to take down.

Rain started pelting down hard, and he turned on the windshield wipers, but they barely made a dent as the heavy drops kept falling.

“It’s a long way on foot to reach the Collins’ house,” he remarked, curious why she didn’t take the glasses off even though it was now dark. She kept her face hid.

“I know,” she gave back, and then added, “Ashley is a beautiful girl.” Mason had a hard time not slamming his foot down on the brakes.

“What?” he asked, disbelief coloring his voice, wondering how she knew that name.

“It says ‘love, Ash’ on this one, so I just wanted to comment … forget it.” She waved it off, resting her chin on her palm after placing her elbow against the door, staring outside again.

“I’m sorry, that wasn’t what I meant, Michigan. Ashley and I haven’t been a couple in two years. I wanted to take down those pictures quite often, but …” He rolled his shoulder as if that said it all.

“You’re having a hard time letting go?” She helped out, and he gritted his teeth as it got harder to see and even harder to concentrate.

“Funny fact … when I kissed her the first time, I knew she wasn’t it for me. The one, you know?” It was weird putting it out there like that, but it was the truth. He only held onto the thing with Ashley for so long because, besides it being the wrong woman, the rest had been close to everything he’d ever wanted.

***

Taylor’s heart was bleeding all over Mason’s truck, and he didn’t even see it.

“First kisses are a crucial thing,” she stated, wondering if she was hurting so badly because he hadn’t recognized her, or because in the pictures with Ash he looked so happy; she wished she could put that expression on his face just to bathe in the warmth his smile was radiating.

“You’re absolutely right, Michigan.”

For a short moment, she debated telling him who was in the truck with him, but then she decided against it. Coming home had not been her choice. When the lawyer had called in her mother’s and father’s name, she hadn’t hesitated and sold everything that had defined her up in Michigan.

Life on the Collins’ farm had always been tough. Her parents had loved her unconditionally, even after the farm had hit rough times, and while she didn’t mind helping out every now and then, Taylor knew that it wasn’t going to be her life. So once her mother had announced that Taylor was now old enough to take over the bookkeeping and help run the farm alongside her dad, she had grabbed everything she valued and had fled the sheltered life she knew. Five years later, her sister, Tamara, had called her in tears, delivering the news about them getting a baby brother. Add two more years and their mother had left the family hanging.

Tammy had never asked her to return, and Taylor had never offered. But now, with her father gone and Tammy left to raise an eight-year-old, Taylor hadn’t thought twice. She left her party-planning business to help her sister and take on the responsibility that should’ve been hers in the first place. Neither of them had deserved that life, yet Taylor at least had gotten twelve years of more or less freedom away from North Carolina.

When planning her future, she had always thought that she’d be married by now, but three years into her new life, she knew she couldn’t give her heart away because that day, in the rain at a North Carolina bus station, she had left it with a drunken boy.

If Mason had said different words that night, would her life have gone down a different path?

“I shared a memorable first kiss after I finished high school,” she hinted drily.

Mason laughed, sending uncalled shivers down her spine. God, she barely recognized herself as the desperate need to crawl into his lap and let him hold her came over her like the storm she hadn’t seen roll in earlier. She had lost weight, enough to scare her, too, but she hoped that some of her former curves would return eventually once she had settled down and found a new routine. She missed feeling like herself. Stress had taken its toll on her in the last months.

“You don’t sound impressed.” He grinned while she watched how he slowed down the truck more and more. It was almost impossible to see the asphalt through the heavy curtain of rain while thunder shook the car. While she couldn’t even begin to explain how glad she was that Mason had picked her up, she still didn’t want to spend any longer than necessary with him in here.

“He was drunk as a sailor, and it came out of nowhere. For more than a year, I had fantasized about being kissed by him, and then he tasted like the bottom of a whiskey bottle.” She shook her head while secretly checking his face with her sunglass-covered eyes, but he seemed unaware of the memory. It cut deep, realizing that she was the only one haunted by that kiss. Then again, she had already suspected as much. The confirmation didn’t sting any less, though. “Lucky bastard doesn’t even remember it anymore,” she finally added, and his expression turned serious.

“Lucky, indeed. He gets a second chance if that’s what he wants,” he concluded, and for a few seconds, she wondered if maybe she had been wrong about his lack of memory, but then he sighed. “First kisses are somethin’ else. I’m still waiting for my last first kiss. The kind where you know there’s no walkin’ away from it, ever,” he confessed, and it reminded her that a true cowboy was not only devoted but also honest. She missed the Stetson on his dark hair, yet she gave herself a chance to admire the scruff on his cheeks, his strong jaw, straight nose, and full lips. She found herself reaching out, only to change direction and fiddle with the radio instead.

“I think this storm makes listening to music impossible,” Taylor pointed out, thinking of one too many storms she had spent inside of Mason’s truck at one party or another. The groups would vanish inside vehicles at the first sign of thunder to wait out the rain. Somehow, she had always ended up in Mason’s truck – without anyone else around.

“Yeah, that just happens,” he agreed, reaching out for the radio as well.

“I guess you just have to sing by yourself, S … singer.” She amended the end of her sentence quickly as she noticed her almost slip.

He stiffened nonetheless, and Taylor cursed herself. She had said that sentence so often, it more was an inside joke now instead of a statement. She felt tears coming to her eyes at all the happy memories Mason’s presence awoke in her. He had an amazing singing voice, and each time she’d heard it, she had been able to see him singing a child to sleep, softly brushing a coarse kiss across baby soft skin afterward. If he ever had a baby girl, she’d probably adore him. She could easily see it: All his children would focus on their dad.

The image of them sharing a house and having a family seemed so real in her mind; she could almost touch it.

“What did you say?” he questioned while bringing the car to a stop at the side of the road, his eyes focused out the windshield, as if in his head he was trying to work something out.

“I … suggested you sing for us,” Taylor stuttered, wondering if he would.

“Ashley hated when I sang,” he started, turning toward her in his seat. Taylor swallowed a few times as her throat seemed to clog, then she looked away from him, no longer able to hold his gaze. His blue eyes were too watchful, and even though she still wore these stupid sunglasses, he seemed to look right through her pretenses. “She always complained that it reminded her too much of things long buried,” he went on, and she noticed from the corner of her eye how he reached out and started to pull the hair pins from her chignon, dropping them onto the dash one by one. “Obviously, one of her friends—her best one, in fact—loved to be serenaded by me, and while Ash loved her like a sister, she didn’t want the memory of another woman standin’ between us.”

Taylor squeezed her eyes shut as his movements, precise and surprisingly well practiced, made her whole body thrum with need. Holding her breath, she couldn’t deny that she wished that just once, accidentally, he’d brush her cheek.

Twelve years were between them, yet with every pin he pulled out, she had the feeling he made them vanish one by one. If only that were possible, Taylor thought as a tear left a wet trail down her cheek.

Mason had a lump in his throat. He had known something was off with this girl, but then she had been ready to call him Stiles as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and his body had gone into overdrive. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears, her silent acceptance of him freeing her hair saying more than a thousand words could. Eventually, long blonde waves tumbled down her back, and Mason reached out to pull them apart while his mind was doing a million miles a minute.