Her eyes were shining with mirth, knowing what it had cost me.
“Yes,” I felt my face flush. I wasn’t sure that it was a good thing that she knew just how much her son did it for me. But it wasn’t like I could control my reaction to the man. “I used to run a lot in high school but fell out of it when I was in college. Your son encouraged me to start running again. I’m not sure if I like him yet for it or not.”
Rue started to giggle. “How far are we talking here?”
“Twenty-six point two miles,” Zach called over his shoulder. “A full fuckin’ marathon.”
“Language,” Rue snapped at her son, then turned to me. “Are you sure that you’re sane?”
I started to giggle then, liking the way that she’d brought me into her family without so much as a hiccup.
“I am sane.” I paused. “At least, I think I am.”
Cleo chuckled at my answer, his dark eyes coming my way from where he was replacing the now-clean cast-iron skillet on the stove. “I think everyone thinks they’re sane, whether they are or not.”
That was true.
And my smile agreed.
“It was never my intention to start this life out running,” I said. “But when my mother died, I needed an outlet for the pain. So I started running for real. Before, it’d just been a hobby. Schoolyard fun. Signing up to run in class. Track meets and all that jazz. That first year, I signed up to do a memorial run for people that died of cancer. It was a breast cancer awareness one and a race that draws thousands—runners and walkers alike. Anyway, I had to find my own way there, so I’d already run/walked about three more miles as I arrived at the half-marathon. And I not only won my age group, but I won the entire women’s division. On tired legs.”
“Wow,” Rue breathed. “That’s impressive. I can run… it’s something that I’ve really picked up later in life. But I can’t run like that. When did you run your first full marathon?”
“About two months after that race I just spoke about,” I said. “And my coach for the high school long-distance team happened to be there. He saw me almost win it, and then took a more substantial role in helping me train. He got me a nutritionist, and that’s when I started training for the Olympics.”
“The Olympics!” she cried. “How fun! It’s sad that you didn’t go that far, though. But I think it’s admirable that you’re going to do it now. Or, at least try. Do you think that you still have it?”
“Mom,” Zach chided his mother.
I grinned and waved him off. “It’s a legitimate question. And yes, I believe I still have it. At least, I feel like I do.”
“She does,” Zach said. “She can run her recovery run, which is about seven miles, faster than I can run my regular run.”
“Well,” Rue looked excited. “If you need a partner to run with you during a long run, or just someone to hand you waters as they ride beside you in a golf cart, I’m totally there.”
I grinned. “I actually have to run tomorrow. You’re more than welcome to join me.”
Rue smiled. “As much as I’d like to say yes, tomorrow is my rest day. I’ve learned not to ignore the aches and pains of my body as I’ve aged.”
I grinned. Hopefully I’d learn that one day, too.
After the dishes were done, and the parentals went to bed, it left Zach and me on the back porch looking out over a rolling back lawn that stretched out for what looked like miles.
There was a howling song of coyotes serenading us, and I shivered at how close they sounded.
“It sounds like they’re right there,” I murmured.
“They are probably right on the other side of the fence,” he jerked his head in that direction. “But sounds carry out here. It’s all the flat pasture land. No trees to block anything.”
I snuggled in deeper. “Why’d you ever leave here?”
He curled his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in tighter.
“Well,” he said. “I don’t think that you’re going to like hearing why I actually left.”
“It was Juniper, wasn’t it?” I guessed.
“It was,” I confirmed. “Juniper asked me to leave with her. She wasn’t able to get into any of the nursing schools around here, so she went where they would take her. And since I already had friends in Kilgore, I thought, why not?”
I lifted my feet to rest on the seat underneath me, then curled my arms around my upraised knees. “Do you regret it?”
He frowned, his eyes gazing off into the distance.
“I regret Juniper in a way, yes. Mostly because I think I had a lot more interest in her than she had in me. I wish that when I’d made that decision to protect her, to take that man’s life, that I would’ve known her true feelings. Maybe that would’ve made me react differently in the heat of the moment.” He paused. “That guy was as good as dead anyway. He had a piece of glass embedded in his heart. I just helped him along a bit faster.”
I snorted. “Don’t do that for me, please. I’d regret not having you here more than I’d be appreciative that you saved me from something like that.”
He curled his arm around my shoulders and rested his head against my own.
“Don’t get hurt, and we won’t even have to contemplate it,” he countered.
I didn’t like that he wouldn’t give me a promise.
I also didn’t like that he said it in such a way that made it sound like it was final, and that we wouldn’t be discussing the matter any further.
“Your friends.” I decided to change the subject. “Are they coming over here tomorrow, or are we going to them?”
His finger found a lock of my hair, and he started to twirl his finger around it as he spoke.
“We’ll probably have to go to them. It’d be easier on them, anyway, with the new baby and all.” He paused. “I think I’m more terrified of seeing them than I was of seeing my own parents.”
I leaned my head up to stare at his face in profile. I studied his nose, and the dark beard that covered the lower half of his face. The hair that was above his eyes, making bushy eyebrows that likely would’ve looked ridiculous on anyone that wasn’t him.
“Why?” I asked.
He sighed. “I’ve been a coward these last few months. Doing shit that I never should’ve done. Avoiding anything and anyone that had to do with my old life like the plague. I just… I’ve got no excuse. I just didn’t want to see them. Honestly, I’m kind of pissed that none of them confronted me on Juniper. Do you know how many freakin’ times I heard, ‘I never liked her’ or ‘she always struck me as a bitch’?”
My brows rose. “Really?”
“Really,” he confirmed. “Ashe and Ford, who we’re going to see tomorrow, were my best friends. And both of them made a comment like that when they heard that Juniper didn’t want to see me anymore. Neither one of them ever said a word. I guess I was just… hurt. Why would they not say anything? If the situation was reversed, you damn well better bet your ass that I would’ve said something. I was seconds away from asking Juniper to move in with me. Would they have said something then?”