Page 52 of Hard Rain Coming

“I remember.” She replied so softly, he barely heard it.

“You were mad that I’d gone to town with Benton.” She’d shown up at the Sundowner and created the kind of scene that folks had talked about for years. “I was too young to deal with it, and I said some things.”

“You did.” The tears were now falling freely. “You called me a spoiled child. Told me we were done and that I’d embarrassed myself.”

“Viv, I?—”

“You called me crazy. Told me I sucked all the oxygen out of the room when we were together.” Her brow furrowed. “You said I was too intense and that you needed some space. Then you walked over to Megan Caruthers and pulled her onto the dance floor. You shoved your tongue down her throat while I watched.”

Shame spread heat across his face, and, uncomfortable facing his past behavior, Dallas could do nothing but watch her now.

“I knew if I stayed, I would scratch her eyes out or do something worse, something so bad, you would never talk to me again. I know it’s no excuse, but you have to remember I was so young. I wasn’t thinking straight. I was an emotional seventeen-year-old girl in love with a boy she thought was slipping through her fingers. A boy who, at that time in her life, was the only good thing she had.”

“We were both young and dumb, but you left the next day without a word, and I never saw you again. Not for years.” His voice was hard now, because those were facts. “I guess I figured you thought you were better off somewhere away from your old man and that wherever you landed, it was better than what I could have given you.”

Vivian swiped at the tears on her face and then squared her shoulders. Time did that wonky thing just then. It slowed down, and the rest of the room faded to nothing but gray noise, while everything about her sharpened and intensified. His gut rolled over, and he found himself clenching his fists as if preparing for a fight.

“I left because I had no choice. Dad kicked me out.”

“What?” Surprise all but took his voice away. He cleared his throat, confused but unable to say anything else.

Vivian looked him square in the eye. “He found out I was pregnant, and when I refused to tell him who the father was, he called me a whore and said a bunch of other stuff that I still have a hard time thinking about. Said he’d kill whoever I’d been with if he found out. Then he told me I didn’t have a home anymore, and I left.”

Silence. The big kind. The kind that presses in and makes a man feel small. It washed over him, and for a long time, he couldn’t form a thought, let alone a sentence. Pregnant?

“Viv,” was all he got out before she turned away from him.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You drop a bomb like that, and you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I can’t right now.” She sounded anguished, but he didn’t care.

She shut down and cut him out, which was what she always did. And that burn in his gut, the one that had him trembling with anger and remorse and shock and a bunch of crap he had no name for, had him heading for the mudroom.

“Un-fucking-believable.”

He had to think. Had to get away from her.

Dallas trudged through the snow and spent the night in the barn with his animals, stretched out across two bales of hale until nearly dawn. He must have fallen asleep at some point, a damn miracle considering his mind was going a mile a minute. And when he rolled off the hay, the storm was over. By the time he got everyone fed and watered, it was light out.

With nothing left to do but face his past, he took one last look around the barn. Chest tight and still in a black mood, he headed for the house. But it was empty. She was gone. Vivian must have taken the Ski-Doo from the shed and left.

Dallas swore as he stomped across the room, not caring that he still wore his boots. He spied a piece of paper on the kitchen counter.

I’m sorry for everything. Please give me some time.

I’ll be in touch when I can.

V

Teeth clenched so tight his jaw hurt, Dallas sat down at the kitchen counter. There were questions he needed to ask. Answers he needed to hear. What the hell? A baby? What happened to the child? His child.

But if time had taught him one thing, it was that he needed to cool down and clear his head before he did any asking. Because if he didn’t, he’d say the wrong thing, and he’d already hurt her too much.

Dallas needed to abide by Vivian’s wishes. He’d give her a couple of days. He’d do that for her because he owed her. As he’d spent the night on that bed of hay the night before, he couldn’t get rid of the image of Vivian so young and hurt and alone. How in hell had he not known?

Why had he not gone after her all those years ago? He could blame it on his age, the fact that he was barely a man himself. Or he could face the truth. A part of him had been relieved because being with Vivian was hard work. She liked to start shit and wasn’t afraid to hit back when he was an asshole. He hadn’t been equipped to deal with her and figured she’d come back in a week or so.