Kyland (Sign of Love #7) (17 page)

"Don't you dare even say that, Tenleigh," Kyland gritted out. "You have a chance here, a chance at a real
life,
and you'd turn it down for a shitty little
existence
with me? Both of us struggling and scrimping and going without until we both hated each other?"

"No," I squeaked out. "That's not how it would be. And I would turn it all down for you." Because it was true. I realized in that instant that I'd throw it all away for him. And I knew that was stupid and reckless and wrong, but it was how I felt. I wouldn't leave him here in this little house or on a lonely highway somewhere hitchhiking out of town. I wouldn't let him suffer and scrounge for food one more day of his life.
I wouldn't.
Nothing on earth could make me.

He barked out a sharp laugh and I winced. "Love will keep us alive?" he asked, his voice dripping with ugly sarcasm. "You of all people should know what a
stupid
thing that is to say. Love doesn't keep anyone alive. Food does. Warmth does. Have you, your sister, and your mama been barely surviving on
love
all this time, Tenleigh?"

I swallowed down a lump of hurt. "I just . . .  No." I looked down, but then looked up at him. "Why don't you come with me, then?" My voice cracked on the last word.

"What?"

I moved closer to him. "Come with me. You said you were going to walk out of here. Make your way to California. I'll wait for you. You won't be able to stay with me, but . . . you can get a job, find a place of your own. We can be together there."

I swore I saw longing flit through his expression, but then he turned from me again. "I can't do that."

I looked down, biting my lip. The truth was, that would be difficult. He barely had any money at all. To hitchhike all the way across the country without stopping . . . and then what would he do? Live in a homeless shelter until he got a job? Could you even get a job from a homeless shelter? Where would he get clothes? Could I keep him hidden in my dorm room? Would that risk my scholarship? Okay, so the logistics weren't exactly adding up . . .

"Okay, then listen, I'll go to California, Ky, and when I'm done, I'll come back here and—"

"Don't you
dare
ever come back here," he yelled, startling me. His eyes were fiery with anger. "Don't you dare go to college and then come back here. Why would you ever even consider that? This is your
chance
, Tenleigh. Why would you
ever
come back here? The whole point of this scholarship is that you can get
out
of Dennville. It's the whole
point.
There are no jobs here—there's no reason on earth to come back."

I frowned. "The people I love are here—you're here, my mama's here, my sister."

He shook his head. "You finish college and then you get a good job and you pay for them to move to California with you. Then all
three
of you will have a chance at life."

"I'd come back here for
you
," I said. "Or you could work for a year, save some money, and then you could come to California. If we have to wait—"

"I can't do that."

"Of course you can," I said. "Anything's possible. We can make it happen. Why can't we?" I asked.

His eyes met mine. "Because Shelly's pregnant," he said.

For a brief second, the words didn't compute. Then, ice water filled my veins. "Shelly's . . ." I trailed off. "What? What does that have to do with you, Kyland?" I asked, my voice breaking on his name.

"I have to stay here," he said in barely more than a whisper.

The world around me swayed, and my face turned hot. "I don't understand," I said. "How could . . . It's yours? I don't . . ." I backed up and when I felt the wall behind me, I leaned against it. Kyland watched me, his expression wary, unreadable. "You had sex with her?"

He let out a long, shuddery breath. "I'm sorry. Things were getting too intense with us. I just needed to remind myself that—"

"That what?" I sobbed. Kyland winced. "That it was going to be possible to dismiss me when the time came?" Devastation hit me in the gut like a body blow and I weaved. This couldn't be happening. Oh God, oh God.
No. No. No. No. No.
I realized I was moving my head along with my inner screaming.

"You said you loved me," I croaked out. I put my hand to my head. This couldn't be real. Make it
stop
.

"I—"

I stuck my hand up to halt his words. I held it out in front of me, shaking, warding off whatever he'd been about to say, whether to confirm or deny. Either one would be equally as bad. A sob came up my throat.

Suddenly Kyland advanced on me. "You listen to me, Tenleigh. You are going to leave here. You are going to forget all about Dennville, Kentucky. Leave here and don't ever look back. And when the time comes, you'll make a life for yourself, your mama, and your sister. All three of you are getting out of here. Do you know how fucking
rare
it is for people like us to get out from under the poverty of a place like this? You have a chance. Take it."

I was still shaking my head back and forth, looking at him in horror. This wasn't happening.

"It was meant to be that you won the scholarship. It's for the best that I didn't. Because I wouldn't have been able to use it anyway."

"You touched her," I choked out in a horrified whisper. "You touched me and then you touched her. Or did you touch her and then still . . ." I let out a sob. "In what order did it happen, Kyland? Tell me!" I screamed, hot tears finally starting to fall.

"I, what?" he asked, looking confused.

"Did you betray me with her before or after you took my virginity?" I screamed. I was shaking all over now.

Kyland closed his eyes tightly and opened them again. "Does it matter?" he asked.

I slapped him across his face. Hard. Deep hurt flashed in his expression for a second before he met my eyes.
Good.
I wanted to hurt him to his core right then. Just like he'd hurt me to my core. Just like he'd destroyed me with three words:
Because Shelly's pregnant.

I beat at his chest with my fists. He never raised his hands to push me away or to stop me. He just let me hit him—again and again and again, his face, his chest, his shoulders. This couldn't be happening. I choked out another sob, feeling sick and dizzy. I fell back against the wall again and cried out my misery and confusion, the very last piece of my stupid, unguarded heart crumbling away.

He stood looking down at the floor, his hands in his pockets, a drop of blood dripping from his lip where the cheap metal ring I wore on my right index finger must have cut him. I watched that drop of blood fall to the floor as if in slow motion and splash on the hardwood right next to the ridiculous list I'd made, both lying there, the last remnants of us. My eyes moved slowly to his face. It was filled with sorrow. It looked like he was trembling. I wanted to spit on him. He'd done this. How
dare
he feel sorrowful?

I stood up straight, gathering myself. Kyland finally raised his eyes to mine, red rimmed and pleading me for something. Forgiveness? I'd never give him that.

"You leave Dennville," he said, his voice raspy. "Leave here and don't look back."

I regarded him for a second, suddenly feeling strangely empty, numb. "You're the biggest disappointment of my life," I said. "I'll never forgive you—not as long as I live."

He nodded as if that was the best idea I'd ever come up with. "Good," he choked out, and then he turned his back on me.

I walked on legs that felt like they were made of jelly to his front door. I picked up my backpack and the scholarship packet I'd left on the floor, and I walked out of Kyland Barrett's house and out of his life, leaving behind the man I'd been stupid enough to give my whole heart to, the one who didn't want to love or keep me, the one who had betrayed me in the cruelest way possible. The pitiful words I'd begged him with echoed in my mind, shameful and humiliating.

I didn't go back to my trailer. I went into the woods, not bothering to push aside the tree branches that slapped me in the face as I walked, causing small, burning cuts across my cheeks. The pain brought me out of my fog and again, I recalled Kyland's words.
Because Shelly's pregnant.
I stopped by a vine of wild honeysuckle and vomited on the forest floor. And then I walked, all the while clutching that scholarship to my chest like it was a lifeline—it felt warm and comforting against my body. I didn't know how long I walked, but even in my half-shocked state, my body knew right where I was and eventually, I'd circled back around to my trailer. I sat on the steps, looking blankly out at the sunset, deciding two things: one, I was going to leave for California as soon as I possibly could, the next day if there was any way, and two, I'd never fall in love again. Not
ever
.

Four Years Later

Tenleigh

There's nothing like going home again, or so the saying goes. It was late afternoon when I got the first glimpse of those Appalachian Mountains outside the window of my car. I gripped the steering wheel. Despite nervousness and anxiety and a somewhat uncertain future, there was also a faint current of excitement flowing through my veins—a feeling that I was back where I belonged. I rolled the window down as I turned off the highway and took a deep breath of the cool, pine-scented mountain air, so different from the warm, salty San Diego breezes I'd been breathing for the past four years while I was away at college. I hadn't come home for summer or winter breaks, choosing instead to take classes year-round and graduate early. I'd stayed in San Diego a couple extra months to wrap up a few things with my student teaching and so I didn't have to drive through winter weather to get home. And now here I was, the mountains just barely coming alive with spring. God, I'd missed Kentucky. An unexpected peace fell over me and I smiled a small smile just a little bit later as I turned up the mountain road to our trailer.

"Home," I whispered. Everything was going to be okay. I was back because I had a goal. I had a purpose.

As I drove uphill, I looked at the small, rundown houses sitting to the sides of the road. Surprisingly, some of them looked better than I'd remembered. Several of the people on the mountain had cleaned up their yards. Well, that was a welcome sight.

But all too soon, the anxiety hit full force as I turned the bend in the road, knowing I'd be driving past Kyland's home in another minute. I purposely kept my eyes straight, not daring even a glance at the little blue house I knew was on my left. I turned at the next bend in the road and let out a long exhale as I pulled into the dirt clearing next to our trailer. I shut off the engine and sat in the car for several minutes, just looking at the only home I'd ever known until just a few years ago. But, oh, what a difference four years could make.

I'd left Kentucky broken and bruised, crushed in a way I thought I'd never recover from. But if time didn't heal all wounds, at least it made them bearable. And I'd survived. I stretched my limbs as I stepped out of my small beater of a car—a dull red VW Rabbit that I'd bought for three thousand dollars. It wasn't exactly pretty, but it was all I'd been able to afford. The truth was, I loved it. It was mine. It was the first thing I'd ever owned outright. I'd waited tables at a large chain restaurant in the evenings after classes, finally saving up enough money to buy my own transportation. It had just made the two-thousand-mile trip from California to Kentucky. I'd say I'd done a decent job picking a good one. Or more likely, I'd gotten lucky, but that was okay, too. I stepped out of my car and looked around, taking everything in as if it were the first time I was seeing it. The trailer looked just about the same as I remembered it—small and sad. But I felt a twinge of happiness nonetheless. "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home," I whispered. "Humble" was probably a generous word for our trailer, but it was still a soft enough place to land. And everyone had to land somewhere.

Still, I planned on getting my mama and sister out of here as soon as I could—somewhere bigger, more comfortable, somewhere where we could all have our own rooms.

My mama was in a psychiatric hospital in Lexington. Three years after I'd left, she'd had a particularly bad episode and thankfully, Sam had stepped in and offered to pay for her care in a really great facility. That was a relief because when I heard the news, I had planned to come home. There was no way Marlo could handle that by herself. I was actually surprised Marlo had agreed to let Sam pay, which spoke volumes about how bad it had been.
Oh, Mama . . .

The aged handle squeaked as I turned it and pushed the door open, the old familiar noise making me feel like a little girl again. "Hello," I called out. I heard a loud, excited scream from the bedroom and suddenly the door was flying open as Marlo danced out and launched herself at me. I screamed as she picked me up and jumped around with me, laughing out loud. "Stop! Stop!" I demanded. "I haven't peed in hours. I'm going to wet my pants."

Marlo set me down, laughing. She grinned at me and wrapped her arms around me, saying, "Welcome home, baby sister. College graduate."

I grinned back, squeezing her tightly, holding back tears. Marlo hated it when I cried. I went and used the restroom quickly and when I came back out, she smiled and took my hands again. "Let me look at you." Her eyes ran over me for a minute and she shook her head. "You always were pretty, Ten, but, wow, you're a class act."

I shook my head, embarrassed. "I'm the same," I disagreed. "Just some new clothes and a haircut."

She shook her head, too. "No, no, it's not just the clothes and the hair. It's you. You look all grown up. You're too skinny, though. Is everyone on a diet in California?"

I snorted. "Yeah. A little different than the starvation diet we were always on. There, they do it on purpose."

She let out a half laugh/half groan and brought her hand to her forehead. "How are you? Really?" she asked, sitting down on the couch. "Is it weird to be back?"

I sat down next to her. "Yeah. Kind of. I mean, I'm not sure yet."

A worried look came into her expression. "Have you seen him?"

"Who?" I asked back, as if I didn't know exactly whom she was referring to.

She just raised her eyebrows. I sighed. "No. I literally drove straight here."

She nodded, chewing on her full bottom lip. "Well, you know it's going to be fine. It's been long enough. And you know, he gained about two hundred pounds, lost all his hair, and came down with a really bad skin disease, so . . . he's hideous, unsightly. Sad." She shivered.

I gaped at her and the corner of her lip quivered into a smile. "What?" Then I laughed. "You're lying. He did not. I mean, God, that'd be a stroke of luck on my part, but . . ." I shook my head. "You're right. It's going to be fine. I have a job to do here. I have a purpose. It's been almost four full years, and I'm just going to have to look past the fact that someone I loathe lives right up the road. We'll just steer clear of each other, I'm sure."

"Do you really still loathe him, Ten?"

I thought about that for a second. Loathing Kyland was just a step below hating him, and I found it hard to completely hate him, as I still knew who he was capable of being. Still, I needed something to hold onto. "Yeah. Yeah, I do. And no one's going to take that from me. At least, not yet. When it comes to men, never forgive, never forget—that's my life motto."

She looked at me dubiously. "That's
my
life motto."

I sighed. "Well, I've adopted it."

She bit her lip and nodded in understanding.

I'd only ever asked Marlo about Kyland once, or rather, about Shelly. A couple months after I'd left, I'd woken up in the middle of the night, something from a dream, or a half-formed thought convincing me everything he'd said to me that horrible day had been a lie. In the dark of the night, it'd seemed so possible,
likely even
, that he hadn't been telling the truth. I'd
known
who he was. And that wasn't
him
.
It wasn't.
The pieces of some puzzle I couldn't fathom once I was awake had come together in my head in the bleariness of sleep. But in the morning when I'd called Marlo asking her if she'd seen Shelly around town recently, she'd haltingly confirmed that she had and that she looked like she was just a few months pregnant.
A few months.
Meaning Kyland
had
been with her right about the time he'd slept with me. I'd spent that day in bed, curled up, staring at the wall, contemplating how slowly an hour could tick by, my heart breaking all over again. I'd vowed not to ask about him again and I hadn't. Not once. Even the month I'd calculated in my head that his baby would probably have been born, I didn't ask Marlo a thing. It'd taken an act of willpower unlike any I'd shown before, but I'd done it.

The day four years earlier that he'd told me what he'd done, the day I ran from his house back to my own, was the last time I'd seen him. That night my sister had rocked me in her arms like I was a baby and she was a mama. I'd been so shocked and heartbroken I couldn't even cry. The very next day I'd gone to the principal, Mrs. Branson, and asked her if there was any way I could move to San Diego immediately. She'd told me I couldn't move into the dorm, but it turned out she had a niece who lived there and she'd called and asked if I could stay with her for a couple months until school started. She'd very nicely taken me in. Mrs. Branson knew my home situation and I'd made it seem like I couldn't stand it one more minute. The truth was, I couldn't live in the same town as Kyland Barrett after that day—not for any longer than I had to. And so a week after I'd learned I'd won the Tyton Coal Scholarship, I'd left Kentucky for the first time in my life. And I'd flown across the country, leaving everything I'd ever known behind. I'd stared bleakly out the window of the airplane just focusing on taking one breath after the next.

"I think you should know . . ."

"What?" I asked.

"Well, he works below ground at the mine. I've seen him coming home, covered in coal dust."

Shock slammed into my chest and I froze for a second, picturing what Kyland would look like with the blackened face of a miner, only his teeth and the whites of his eyes showing. "The mine?" I squeaked out. "Below ground? He can't." I recalled Kyland's fear of small spaces, how he loathed the dark . . . his brother . . . I shook my head. "That's not possible."
He'd never do that.

"Well," she said gently, "it is, because he does. I know I'm not supposed to talk about him, but I just thought you might want to know." She watched me with a sensitive expression in her eyes. "In case you were going to go see Jamie there, I wouldn't want you getting blindsided."

"Thanks, Mar," I whispered. My hands were trembling at the very thought of Kyland down there . . . below ground, in the dark . . . I knew he'd have to work
somewhere
, but I never for one second imagined he'd work at Tyton Coal.
How?

Marlo watched me worriedly, finally saying brightly and obviously to change the subject, "So tell me more about this school." She patted my knee once. My attention snapped back to Marlo.

I forced out a small smile. Marlo and I had talked as often as possible—I'd even shipped her a cell phone that she could load with minutes so I could get a hold of her when I wanted or needed to. Unfortunately, she didn't always keep it full, and if she was at the trailer, there was no reception anyway. If she was at Al's, we could only talk for a few minutes before someone, usually Al, was yelling at her to get back to work. So we still had a lot to catch up on.

"It's going to be right on the edge of town where Zippy's Ice Cream Parlor used to be before the mine cave-in."

Marlo nodded. "Isn't the library on that lot?"

I nodded, a feeling of deep sadness moving through me. That small building—practically a shed really—had been my sanctuary at one point . . . and the place where I'd received my very first kiss . . . the place where—

I cut those thoughts short, focusing back on Marlo. "The building is going to be torn down to make room for the school, but I'll pack the books up." I took a deep breath. "Anyway, I've already started spending the money from the grants. I have a construction crew lined up. It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm excited about it. And it's going to make such a difference for the kids who live on this mountain and the ones who still live in Dennville."

Marlo nodded. "That's for sure. I can't even imagine what it would have been like not having to walk six miles to school every morning and then back home again."

I nodded. I knew a lot of the kids on the mountain didn't make the effort most of the time—hence the never-ending cycle of illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, and hopelessness. But I was hoping to change some of that. At least for a few, hell, even for one.

It would even help the kids who lived in Evansly and went to school there. As it stood, the public school system there was so overcrowded, and the ones who needed it, didn't get any individual attention.

When I'd started college in San Diego, I'd thrown myself into my studies full force. I'd been in survival mode, just trying to get from one day to the next, my heart so cracked and battered, some days I felt like I was too broken to move.

Having something other than Kyland to occupy my mind had been my saving grace. One late fall day my first year, I'd gotten into a discussion about education and poverty rates in Kentucky in a small study group I was in. I'd told them how the kids like me who lived on the mountain walked six miles or more to school every day. I'd held back from telling them the worst of it, but the group had been astonished that where I lived, very few people had cars or even heat. There had been a boy in that class, Howard, who mentioned offhand that I should look into grants for building schools. That comment had lived in the back of my head for several months until I'd finally decided to actually look into it.

I'd spent the next few years getting my teaching degree in English literature and applying for grant after grant—both public and private—to build a school in the poverty-stricken town of Dennville, Kentucky. Much to my surprise and joy, I'd secured a few grants from several private investors right before I'd graduated a few months ago. The funding would pay for the building, all the operating costs, and a very small staff.