The Damaged Hearts Bargain (Tetherington Hearts #2)

Chapter Thirty One

C al put her bag down at the bottom of the stairs and went to the bar.

“You’re off then?” Rosalee said.

“Might as well. The house is mostly empty now. No point in me spending money here and taking up one of your rooms,” Cal said. “Not when I can sleep there for the next couple of nights.”

“Then back off… to wherever it is you came from?”

“Something like that,” Cal said numbly.

It wasn’t that she wanted to hurt herself. It wasn’t like she’d gone into this thinking that she’d end up with a heart so sharp and jagged that it was cutting her from the inside out. Maybe the problem was that she hadn’t gone into this thinking at all.

“You look like you’ve lost a pound and found a penny,” Rosalee observed as she printed out the receipt for Cal’s room.

“Yeah, well, I suppose that’s what happens when you revisit the scene of a crime, eh?”

Rosalee gave a look then sniffed. “That or it’s what happens when you break up with someone you thought was different.”

“So town gossip has got hold of it already, huh?” Cal scoffed. “Well, just to set the record straight, this has nothing to do with Lucy. None of it is her fault at all. So don’t let people go around saying she had anything to do with this. ”

“Not that it takes two to tango,” said Rosalee.

Cal leaned both arms on the bar, practically leaning over it. “Lucy was not at fault here,” she hissed. “Not in the slightest. This was all me.”

Rosalee gave her a speculative look, then nodded. “Alright, I believe you.”

“No reason for you to, is there? Not really.”

“No,” said Rosalee. “There isn’t. Not at all. Except…”

“Except what?”

“Nothing.”

“Except what?” demanded Cal. She was in no mood for this.

Rosalee sighed. “Except that things are different now, aren’t they?”

“Like how?”

“Like I’m not leaping over the bar trying to strangle you,” Rosalee said. “Like they’re not mumbling under their breath about you being a thief.” She nodded toward a cluster of men at the side of the bar.

“And that’s supposed to make things better?”

Rosalee shook her head. “You know, I did what you’re doing, once.”

“What? Ran away?” She wasn’t stupid enough to think that wasn’t what she was doing.

“No, cleaned out my parents’ house,” Rosalee said. She folded her arms. “Years ago now it was. My dad passed and mum wasn’t able to get around by herself, so we found the best home we could for her. Then my sister went back off to her family and I was left with the house to clear out.”

Cal was still.

“Took all of a day before I found the letters his fancy woman had sent to him. Didn’t read them all, of course.” Rosalee grimaced. “Still, I found them, and I knew what he’d been doing. Went on for years, it did, behind my mum’s back.”

“What did you do?” asked Cal, curious.

Rosalee glared at her. “Burned the lot of ‘em and never told a soul except you. Because that’s the best thing to do with the past. You can’t change it, you can’t undo it, so you turn your back on it and keep right on marching forward, watching it disappear in your rear-view mirror if you like.”

Cal felt a wobble in her chest. “And what if you can’t? What if it’s so intrinsically a part of you that you can’t get over it?”

“Then you’ll never be happy,” Rosalee said gently. “And that’s a shame. Because despite all evidence to the contrary, you’ve turned out alright, Callan Roberts. And despite what you might think, I reckon your mum’d be proud of you, being brave enough to come back here and face your demons and all.”

Cal bristled at the mention of her mother. “It doesn’t matter a jot to me what she’d have thought.”

Rosalee slid the bill across the counter. “Does it not? Cos if that’s true, I don’t see why all of this matters to you at all.”

Which made an odd kind of sense actually, now that Cal thought about it. Maybe because she’d lied, because what her mother thought did matter, had mattered. No, not what her mother thought, what she’d known. Because Cal’s mother had known the truth all along and had sat there with her mouth firmly closed and let the entire town accuse Cal of something that they both knew she hadn’t done.

But then there’d be no changing all of that now, would there? Not with her mother dead. Maybe she should have come back sooner, got some closure sooner. Maybe then she’d have been able to move on, able to love someone like Lucy whole-heartedly.

All of which made Rosalee right. Now she’d never be happy. She had to be content with living a miserable life all because of something that happened years and years ago.

She handed over her credit card and Rosalee took it.

Cal didn’t see how anything could change. And it broke her heart even more than it was already broken.

“Maybe,” Rosalee said as she handed back the card. “Maybe you should think a little bit about what you deserve.”

Which could go either way. Maybe Rosalee was telling her she deserved all this for being a lying thief. Or maybe she was telling her to believe that she deserved better. Either way, Cal knew it was too late now. It always seemed to be too late.

???

“Do you want me to take you to a gay bar?” George asked, putting a cup of hot chocolate in front of Lucy.

“It’s thirty degrees out, George, why are you giving me hot chocolate?”

“Because chocolate is good for a broken heart,” said George, sitting down at the kitchen table opposite her. “And also because Billy is in bed and I don’t want to wake him up with the coffee machine.”

“Is there a gay bar in town?” Lucy asked, wondering just how she’d missed it.

“No,” said George. “But I’d take you out of town to one.”

“With your bus pass, considering that you can’t drive,” said Lucy, laughing.

George squinted at her. “You’re looking oddly cheerful. I thought I’d find you here crying your eyes out. Or at least looking faintly sad.”

“I am sad,” Lucy said. “But… I don’t know. Something Pen said on the phone has stuck with me. Well done getting the gossip all the way across the Atlantic, by the way.”

“I do my best,” said George. “Anyway, Pen made me promise that I’d tell her anything important that happened while she was away.”

“She’s busy choosing a child, she doesn’t need to know my relationship worries.”

“It’s not like a department store. You don’t just choose the one you want,” George said. Then he looked doubtful. “I think.”

Lucy sighed. “Pen told me that we all get to write our own endings.”

“True enough,” said George, eyeing her. “And from that I’m taking it that you’re starting to think that you and Cal don’t have an ending yet. ”

“No, not exactly that.” Lucy wrapped her hands around her mug. “It’s all wrong. It’s unfair. I think Cal doesn’t have her ending and that’s what’s bothering me.”

“Wait, what?”

Lucy shrugged. “I know that you all think that I’m just looking for a relationship, someone to settle down with, and that I don’t know what I’m doing. And maybe you’re all right. But I think I’ve realized that this is about more than all of that. I’m not going to lie, being broken up with hurts. It hurts a lot. But I’m not a child, I know that life is hard, I know how much being rejected hurts and that life isn’t always fair.”

George reached out and patted her hand. “Life can be pretty unfair.”

“I don’t want this relationship to end. But more than that, I look at Cal and I can see why she’s doing what she’s doing and it all seems so… wrong.”

“So what do you want to do?” George asked.

“I want Cal to be happy. I think that all break ups hurt, but if you know it’s happening for the right reason, if you know that you or the other person will eventually be happier this way, then maybe that helps a little. This one hurts more because I don’t see Cal improving.”

George blew out a breath. “So you want to respond to a break up by… making Cal’s life better?”

“I want her to leave me in a better state than when she found me, if that makes sense,” Lucy said. “Even if we’re not together, I want her to be able to go on to be happy. And that can’t happen with all of this theft nonsense hanging over her head.”

“I don’t get it,” said George, frowning at her.

“I’m not exactly sure I do either,” Lucy confessed. “I just know that I can sit around being miserable that I’m not with Cal, or I can do something so that at least Cal will be happy. And maybe if she is, she might choose me again.”

“And if she doesn’t?” asked George quietly.

“Then she doesn’t,” said Lucy. “I can’t help that.”

It would hurt again, she knew that much. But she also knew that she couldn’t let Cal live her whole life constantly thinking that she deserved less. She knew that Cal needed someone to stick up for her, someone to fight on her side. And if Lucy could prove that she was that person, maybe, just maybe Cal would end up happier.

Or perhaps even Cal would change her mind.