One Wild Wedding Night_ No Way Out - Leslie Kelly [18]
Blowing onto the steaming top of her own cup of coffee, she waved an airy hand, as if that didn’t matter at all.
It mattered.
“I didn’t want to.”
“Stan, that’s ancient history.”
“Not ancient enough.” He rubbed his jaw where she’d punched it the previous night. He didn’t get any sympathy, just a scowl that said she didn’t buy his ploy.
“Okay. Say what you have to say.”
He made it fast, blunt. “My father died.”
Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. Vanessa’s eyes widened and she leapt out of her seat, rushing to his side. Dropping to her knees in front of him, she put her hands on his legs. “Oh, my God, Stan, when? Last night? Do you need to get home?”
He took her hands, shaking his head, hard. “No, no, I meant, he died that summer.”
She jerked away, sitting on her heels, still wide-eyed, but now more wary. “What?”
He sighed heavily, remembering that awful time. “You can’t know how it was.”
“I might understand more than you think.”
Hell. Of course she would. “I’m sorry.” Wondering if he could get through this without making any more stupid verbal mistakes, he sighed, then started again. “He came to me about the letter. Your letter. And he was so disappointed, V, I can’t tell you.”
Her mouth twisted. “Like my granny, I suppose.”
Grabbing her hands again, he clenched them. “Just like that. Only, he also told me something else: he’d been diagnosed with colon cancer and it didn’t look good. He…”
She waited, saying nothing, letting him get it out in his own way.
Stan pulled himself together, squaring his shoulders, shoving away the waves of grief that sometimes threatened to drown him, still. It crushed him to realize his father had never seen just how far he had come. “He told me he was counting on me to take care of my mother and my brother. Told me how it had been for him—how he’d had a chance, how good he’d been at baseball. He’d always envisioned himself in the major leagues. Then he’d been careless.”
“And had you?” she whispered.
He nodded. “He didn’t make me feel unwanted, V,” he said, wanting to be sure she understood. “Never that. He made it clear how much he loved me and my mother and brother.”
“I’m glad.”
“But he also swore that I had a gift, a God-given talent and not only was it my ticket to a better future, but it was the door to a good life for the rest of my family. And that I needed to focus only on that gift and on the family who needed me. Not on any girls, not on sex, not on anything else.”
She squeezed his hands. “That’s quite a load on a sixteen-year-old’s shoulders.”
Yes. It most definitely had been.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“Exactly what you think happened. I promised him I wouldn’t ever be stupid again, would never take a risk and get myself tied down with a wife and a kid. That I’d finish school, make it in the majors, take care of Mama.”
“That wasn’t all though,” she whispered. Her eyes grew moist and he knew she understood. All of it.
“And I begged him not to die,” he admitted, his throat so tight he could barely manage the words.
Tears spilled out of those eyes and her full lips quivered. It would probably have been impossible for anyone who hadn’t gone through it to understand. But she did. She did. “But he died anyway.”
“Yeah. That September.”
“You kept your promise.”
He nodded. “I worked hard, practiced twelve hours a day. Never looked at girls, made money where I could. Jeez, Vanessa, I never even had sex again until I was twenty-one years old and I had to propose to the girl to make it right with myself.”
She was sniffling, the tears spilling down her beautiful cheeks. Damn, he had not meant to make her cry, not meant to make her feel sorry for him.
He only wanted her to understand.
“I loved you, Vanessa.”
She froze, blinking, her lips parting in a shocked gasp.
“I loved you,” he repeated. “I was young and inexperienced and stupid. But I loved you and it about killed me to have to do as my father asked and put you out of my head…and my heart.”
It was true. It had about killed him. The only thing that had gotten through was the