Liz Talley - The Road to Bayou Bridge

Darby took another swallow of the crisp wine and leveled his blue eyes at her. “It’s not about apologies though I do think I owe you one. I had no idea you were injured so severely.”

The sorrow in his gaze melted something and for the first time in a long time a familiar longing wormed its way along the tunnels of her soul, convincing her the misery she’d suffered after the accident hadn’t been so awful after all. She dashed that devil of a feeling against the stone-hard resolve built long ago in the recesses of her heart. “You wouldn’t have, because you never bothered to come see me.”

“What are you talking about? You refused to see me.” Truth sat in his gaze. He wasn’t jerking her chain. The reaction was honest.

“I never refused you anything. Ever. That was the problem.”

For a moment, they held each other’s gaze. Dawning descended and in that moment, they both seemed to understand something—they had not been the only players that moonlit night. There had been others involved, each with his or her own motives.

“No, you never did, did you?” His words were almost a whisper and the tone in those words made Renny swallow hard.

“But that’s the past,” she muttered, reaching for her wineglass so quickly she knocked it over. The liquid splashed across the buffed cypress table she’d found in an old warehouse outside Lake Charles and ran off onto the carpet.

“I’ll get it,” Darby said, leaping to his feet, jogging toward the kitchen and reemerging with a dish towel. Chauncey shot out behind him as he knelt to wipe up the spill. Renny sat glued to her chair, mostly because she didn’t trust her legs, especially the one that had been broken in several places and gouged by the splintered fence...but that wasn’t the true reason she couldn’t manage to rise. No, the true reason hummed inside her.

Most of what she’d believed about the man stooping at her feet had been a lie—a lie perpetuated by her mother. The Dufrenes. Hell, even the hospital staff.

He hadn’t denied her.

Why hadn’t she known that?

Darby tossed the cloth on the table and looked up. His eyes were so blue and the chin that had once been smooth to the touch was scruffy and manly.

It was a face she knew well.

It was a stranger’s face.

“You know why I came tonight?”

She licked her lips and shook her head. “I guess I don’t.”

He eased forward and lifted one of the hands she’d curled in her lap. The warmth of his touch and the heady smell of the spilled wine kick-started something slithery and dangerous in her belly.

“It’s not about apologies.” He shook his head. “Man, this isn’t easy. I don’t know how to do this.”

“What?” She looked down at him on his knees and for an instant her mind flitted back to an eighteen-year-old Darby on his knees outside the Bayou Bridge high school football stadium. The flash of a simple gold band—one still lying at the bottom of her jewelry box. The flash of his smile. The hope and possibility of young love under a February moon.

“Renny, I’d like to ask you to unmarry me.”

She pulled her hand away. “What? Unmarry you? We’re not—”

“You remember what happened that afternoon before we guzzled two bottles of champagne?” Darby interrupted, wiping his hand on the thigh of his jeans. Now her mind flashed to champagne dripping down her neck and Darby licking it off before his head went lower and lower still. Before they spread the blanket he’d packed in the back of his pickup and made love beneath the arms of the live oak in the center of the property his grandfather had left him. “Before the car accident?”

Renny shook her head as something much heavier replaced the desire brewing inside her. It felt like she’d reached the zenith of the world’s highest roller coaster and the track tilted south. “Oh, God, we got married.”

CHAPTER FOUR

DARBY WATCHED THE EMOTIONS dance across Renny’s face—dawning, incredulity, anger, and then confusion. All the same things he felt nearly two weeks ago when he’d found the marriage certificate among his old papers.

“How? It wasn’t legal.”

Her question was the simplest of questions, but he didn’t have a good answer. “I don’t know. Somehow the license was filed. I’m checking into that, but hold on a sec—”

He went back to where he’d laid the boxes, picked up a manila envelope she hadn’t seen earlier and gave it to her.

Renny pulled the document from its sheath and studied it with a little crinkle in her forehead. He sank back into the chair he’d abandoned and waited.

“This is official? Not a joke?”

“Who would have forged a marriage certificate and mailed it to me at Winston Prep?”

She shrugged. “I don’t understand. That boat captain was drunk and there wasn’t really anything official about it. I don’t even remember signing this.”

“But it’s my signature, and if I’m remembering correctly, that’s yours. Whatever may have happened, somehow we ended up married.”

Renny slumped back in her chair, fork abandoned in the half-eaten pasta, and rubbed her face. “This is crazy.”

“Yeah. More than a little.”

She sat up straight. “Oh, my God! What if one of us had gotten married...had kids?”

“That would have been...awkward. Guess that’s a silver lining in all this. We both stayed single...or rather secretly married.”

The sound of the chair scraping against the floor jarred him. Renny launched herself from the table, whipping up his empty container along with her empty wineglass, and headed toward the kitchen. “I can’t deal with this right now. This is nuts.”

He didn’t move, because he knew she needed time to process. Likely she was in the kitchen trying not to hyperventilate. Maybe he should go check on her, but that didn’t feel like the thing to do. She needed space—from him. Her cat curled in and out through his outstretched legs and purred. Any other time, he’d have reached down and given it a pat, but he didn’t feel friendly toward any creature at the moment, so he jerked his legs away and shooed the long-haired cat away.

The sound of glass breaking in the kitchen made him leap to his feet.

“Damn it.” Her words sounded tinged in tears. Or hysteria. He wasn’t sure which but neither was good.

He nearly tripped over the cat as he hurried to the kitchen. A yowl later, he found Renny standing at the sink with a broken wineglass in one hand, her other under the faucet.

“You okay?”

“No.” She held up a hand and studied the blood streaming down her finger and dropping into the ceramic sink. “I cut my finger.”

“Here,” he said, taking her wrist in his hand and studying the gash on her pointer finger. No slivers of glass and no need for stitches. “Don’t think we’ll have to go to the hospital. Let’s put pressure on it.”

He grabbed a clean white towel from the half-open drawer next to the sink and wrapped her finger in it, holding it firmly to stop the bleeding. Renny studied his hand curled around hers, reverting to careful observation like any good scientist. He followed her gaze and noticed their two left hands were linked together and wondered about her thoughts.

“Better?” he asked, dropping his voice to a lower, softer register.

Renny shrugged and lifted her brown eyes to meet his gaze. The emotions pooling within the depths socked him hard in the solar plexus and sucked him back in time. How many times had he looked into those eyes? How many times had he smelled that scent that was hers alone? How many times had he bent his head to hers? Too many to name. Déjà vu blanketed him, covering him in memories, forcing him to remember how much he’d once loved this woman.