Rough Tumble (5 page)

A single brow lifted. “Which time? Now or then?”

She bit her lip for a moment and looked back to Trent, remembering that it was for him why she was spilling this. Somewhere at the start of this conversation to now, she lost that. Had been talking to just Trent, her best friend. Not Trent the guy she was totally and completely crazy about. And now this was harder. He was sat back in his chair. Silent. Calculating sounding in his words.
He would understand
.

She took a breath a pushed it all out. “Almost every time I’ve mentioned him. Except for just now. About when we broke up.”

Trent said nothing.

She hurried with the rest of the explanation. “Everything about the beginning is the truth. He did go to boot camp. We were going to get married.”

“That’s not happening now.”

She shook her head until the tips of her ponytail slapped her on the cheeks. “Never. He married someone else.”

Somehow, his eyes got larger.

And now for the humiliating part. The reason she lied to everyone to begin with. “Um, he got married within a few months after he finished boot camp.” That familiar hitch started in the back of her throat. The one that made her voice catch and the only way to fix it was to talk faster. Talk louder and somehow at this high pitch. She tried clearing her throat, but it was useless. The pinch in the back of her throat remained. “He found another waitress. Knocked her up. Married her. Broke up with me through email.”

“Through email?”

Even with the rain cooling the temperatures, it was getting sweltering hot. “Yep. We played phone tag for a couple months. Or I did. He was just avoiding me. Managed only to ‘have time’ to call me back during my busiest times at the diner when I couldn’t talk. Hard to find time to talk to your girlfriend around your pregnant wife, I would imagine.”

“You’re shitting me.” His lips remained parted.

She shook her head. This was good so far. At least, he seemed unbelieving. She hoped it was over Marc’s actions to her. Not that she’d hidden this for all this time. “Flora and Gretchen have known since the beginning. That’s it.” The tears were stupid as they watered her eyes, but she blinked ferociously fast and cleared her vision. “I’ve wanted to tell you for months.”

“I can’t believe you’ve pulled off this lie for this long. And everyone just believes it? Hell.” Her rubbed over his face. “I guess I did too. I can’t believe you kept the lie going this long…to everyone.”

She nodded. “Gretchen and Flora backed me up on everything. In the beginning it was easier. It was humiliating. The man I told everyone I loved and would marry had married another woman and they were having a family before I even knew. I lost him because I didn’t want to leave here.”

The fingers that had been caressing her arm stopped. “What?”

“Before he left, he offered to move me where he was stationed. We could get married. Start our life somewhere new.” She looked back at that water stain. “My life is here—our life was here. My aunt had given me the diner to deal with not long before he left. It took months before I finally figured it out, had a big reopening, got steady customers. I was making money. I didn’t know what to do. I was twenty with a successful business to run that I’d been in and out of working since I could walk. I looked at the future and saw us moving around wherever the military wanted to send us for four short years before he got out. Then we’d be back home and to what? It seemed smarter to stay home, have somewhere for us to live when he got out where we were financially sound. I was an idiot.”

“Because you didn’t move to wherever he went, you lost him and you’re the idiot?”

She frowned. “No. He’s the idiot for cheating on me. I’m the idiot for believing he wouldn’t.”

He stood up from the table. “And I’m the idiot for thinking you were smart.”

Wait…what?

He got up and walked toward the door.

“Trent?”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t look over his shoulder. She got up and ran after him, but he was too far ahead and with his long legs, by the time she was at the door, he was sprinting across the yard between their trailers and at his door. She yelled over the rain. The rain wasn’t that loud. There was no strong wind or even thunder. Not a storm. Just a spring pouring. He had to have heard her.

He didn’t look back. She yelled again and the answer she got was his trailer door slamming closed. “Shit.”

Not what was supposed to happen. He was her best friend. He was supposed to understand. Not walk out. He had been understanding for a while. What the hell just happened? Barefoot, she sprinted across the short distance, trotted up the narrow, rickety and wobbly stairs and beat on the door. The knob jiggled and then nothing. She smacked the cheap door with the flat of her hand. “Trent!”

Nothing. This was not happening. This was ridiculous! She tried the knob, but it didn’t twist.
Locked.
He’d locked her out. Those tears were back in her eyes as she stomped her foot, then jumped off the wiggling stairs. She moved to a nearby window and yelled for him again. The window from her angle on the ground only let her see the underside of his kitchen table. Nothing else. No sign of him.

“
Trent!
”

Chapter Four

Trent sat at the table in Jacob’s house. Or well, Flora’s house if you want to get technical about it, even though Jacob was living there. With those two though, nobody was getting technical about anything.

Trent pulled the plate of bacon forward, snatched a couple pieces he’d just cooked off the top and then reached for the jam for his biscuit. There now. This wasn’t so bad at all.

He had a full breakfast and managed to avoid Tonya for the morning. And he thought this was going to be hard. Not that it was all easy. Not by any means, but he was doing it. Avoiding her because…he didn’t know and this seemed the best idea. If he didn’t see her, then nothing changed. In a few days, everything would be normal. It seemed to make the most sense.

Because what Tonya had said at her table made no sense whatsoever. Not coming out of the Tonya he knew.

He’s the idiot for cheating on me. I’m the idiot for believing he wouldn’t.

He shook his head, getting furious and worked up all over again. Just the implication of it. That she believed a man couldn’t be faithful unless his woman was right there on top of him. He grabbed another piece of bacon, shoved it on his biscuit with jam and butter and leaned over his plate.

Jacob sat across the table from him, eyes heavy and baggy as he leaned over his plate. Fork clutched in his hand in a way that toddlers tend to do. “Not that I mind you cooking breakfast, but it’s five in the morning.”

Trent shook head and sipped coffee. “I guess you’re always going to be a lazy ass.”

Jacob just stared. “It’s five in the morning. You banged on the front door forty minutes ago and walked in and started cooking breakfast.”

“You could be thankful I saved you the trouble.” And five wasn’t that early. Now three thirty, that was early. And so was two. One as well. All those hours were early. Hours he hadn’t seen on the clock since he pulled night shift years ago. The backbreaking, hard as hell labor he’d performed to prove he wasn’t afraid of work.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to admit seeing those hours now and he wasn’t even at work.

Or going to work. Just laying there, in bed. Tossing and turning. Complication wasn’t quite right to describe the issue. It was a bump or hurdle.

It was something he wasn’t sure how to define because in all his thoughts, imaginations and things he’d like to have happen, hearing Tonya say she broke up with that piece of shit wasn’t something he ever expected to hear.

Glad
was a good fucking word for it because the guy was a shit. Nothing he’d heard over the years was remotely redeemable about the man. Trent didn’t care that he was ‘fighting’ in the war as so many other town members had emphasized.

Judge a man by his job. It got Trent pissed off and worked up all over again.

The guy left her behind and never came back—not to visit, nothing.

Trent wasn’t in the military. He wasn’t sure how it all worked, but he had friends that were in and he knew the guys were let out for vacation time, down time, whatever you wanted to call it. They had a couple weeks to come home. Marc never did. That should have been his red flag that something was wrong. And the other should have been that in all the time he spent with Tonya, not once had the guy called. No flowers on her birthday, presents at Christmas. Nothing because Trent had noticed all those things.

But still. Because he was in the military, the guy was some amazing man.

He sipped from his hot coffee, the soothing warm liquid passed down his throat and relaxed his tight muscles.

Jacob pointed at him with his fork. “If not for you, I’d be waking up to a beautiful naked woman who I’d be getting ready to—”

Flora walked through and scraped her fingers across the top of his head. “Getting ready to what, Jacob?”

He smiled up at her. “Give her a wake up kiss before she had to start on her hard day at work that she loves so much.”

Trent shook his head, not even wanting to know what his brother was really about to say. Bothered the shit out of him when guys talked like that about girls they loved. Trent had loved a girl once, and he didn’t share a detail about her with the other guys on the oilrigs. Never showed her picture, never talked about her figure or discussed what he planned to do with her when he saw her again. First guy to make a sexual comment about her would have had his teeth knocked in.

Flora’s brow lifted as she hummed. “You’re here pretty early, Trent. Normally this would be an issue, but since you made breakfast I’ll let it slide.”

He pushed her the plate of bacon to keep the peace because this was her house and he wasn’t in the mood to be kicked out of it. “Slow cooked to crispy. Just how you like it.”

The smile on her face got bigger. “Oh, yes. So letting this slide. We can do this tomorrow too.”

Jacob narrowed her eyes. “You never like it when I cook breakfast.”

“You cook the bacon floppy. The toast is burnt and the eggs are dry.” She glanced at the table. “Crispy bacon, buttery soft biscuits and I’m betting homemade gravy.”

Trent couldn’t stop the smile on his face. “When you’re good, you’re me.”

Jacob flipped him off and grabbed a biscuit.

Flora twisted off the jam lid. “I’ll have to give Tonya my thanks. She’s trained you well.”

He stopped with his coffee going to his mouth. “Trained me?”

She pointed at the table. “In the kitchen. All that helping out in her kitchen when she’s short or busy.” Flora bit into a biscuit and moaned. “Oh my God. Tonya is good. So good. I should send her Jacob for a few weeks if this is what I can get.”

“Hey.”

Trent shook his head as they teased back forth. True, Tonya had taught him how to do everything that was on this table. She was good, smart. An amazing, driven woman who worked ungodly amounts of hours. And yet…he shook his head. She’d really let him down yesterday with her broad sweeping statement.

Any other stereotypical statement probably wouldn’t had stung so hard but this one just slammed into his chest. Hit right at home and opened the floodgates to his past in an instant. Took him back to the girl who he stayed faithful for hadn’t returned the favor.

Flora straightened and then slowly faced him. “Why are you here instead of the diner this morning?”

“I came to fix breakfast for my brother and his favorite girl.”

Jacob leaned forward and coughed. “Bullshit.” Then he coughed again.

Flora’s face fell; she dropped the bacon. “Oh my, God. I’m eating traitor bacon.”

“What?”

She pushed the plate away and looked a little sick. “And traitor biscuits.”

Trent shook his head. “What?”

She faced him, hands closing to fists on the table. “You had a fight with Tonya. That’s why you’re here.”

“We….” It wasn’t a fight exactly. It was a walking about before he lost his temper.

Flora’s eyes squeezed to narrowed, angry slits and she stood from the table. “Just so you know, Trent Iverson, the only reason I’m not kicking you out of my house is because your brother lives here too. But if you knock on my door again, you better hope to God I don’t answer it.”

He stared at her and sank in his chair a little. “We just had a little disagreement.”

“You’re hiding at my house this early in the morning. I’m not stupid.” Her hands pulled up to her hips. “What did you do?”

His mouth fell open. “I didn’t do anything. Her lies caught up with her.”

Some of the red eased out of Flora’s cheeks. She licked her lips and turned her head a bit, studying him. “What lies?”

“The one only you and Gretchen know about.”

Jacob cleared his throat and paused with a piece of bacon to his mouth. His gaze lifted to Flora. “Is this the secret I’m not supposed to know?”

Trent turned on his younger brother. “You knew and didn’t tell me?”

Jacob wore a big shit-eating grin. “Well I don’t know. What secret do you know, and I’ll tell you if it’s the one I know.”