to get this off my chest.”
She tossed her purse on the seat. “You’ve got two minutes.”
Tony rubbed his palms on his jeans. She wasn’t going to make this easy. “I am so sorry for the way I treated you. And the way I left. I never meant what I said that night.”
“Yes, you did. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have said it.”
“That’s just it. You ruined your reputation by vouching for me the night I was accused of robbing that store, so I couldn’t let you take any more chances on me until...” He paused. “Until I could deserve you.”
Sabrina shrugged and looked down at her feet. “It doesn’t matter anymore. We were young. I’m over it. I went on with my life, just like you.”
“Is that what you think I did? Just went on with my life like nothing happened?” He pointed to the diamond on her left hand. “Looks like you didn’t have a hard time moving on.”
She whipped her head up to look at him. Anger flashed in her eyes. “You’re the one who left me. You have no right to judge me for the decisions I made when you left.”
Is that what he was doing? Judging her? The truth was, he was jealous of the man she’d loved enough to have a family with. Angry, even. “I only left because I thought it would make things easier on you.”
She threw her hands in the air. “How was leaving me when I needed you the most supposed to make things easier for me?”
“When I heard you tell Adalie you wanted to put college off for at least a year so you could go to Louisiana with me, I panicked. Without me around stirring up trouble, I thought the town would forget about me, and you would go to college like you were supposed to.”
“Well, guess what? It didn’t work.”
“If I’d stayed, you’d never have become a nurse. We’d both be stuck in this little town forever.”
Her hands curled into fists. “Here’s a newsflash for you. I’m not a nurse. I still haven’t finished college and I like this little town.”
Tony sucked in a breath. “Your scholarship—”
“Got yanked right after you left.” She pulled herself up tall. “And thanks to your disappearing act, people just shook their heads when they saw me. So I pulled a page from your book and ran away, too.”
“I didn’t know.” Stepping over to her, he took her face in his hands. How had things gone so wrong? “Everything was planned. You were going to finish school and become a nurse.”
“No, we had everything planned. Then you decide to leave. I have the same CNA certification I had when I graduated high school. That’s how perfect our plan worked out.”
The words slapped him in the face. He had hurt her. On purpose. And it killed him. Had he done it for nothing? “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care. Not anymore.” Sabrina slid into the car and slammed the door.
SABRINA SNUGGLED DEEPER into her pillows. It was Sunday afternoon and she wasn’t moving until she finished the book she was reading. She caught a whiff of honeysuckle and listened to the bees humming a steady rhythm as they gathered sweet nectar from the rose bushes growing along the rock wall.
How long had it been since she’d had the time to read a book? In Houston, what little time she had between two jobs and Levi was spent taking classes at the local junior college. Simple things like reading for pleasure were luxuries she hadn’t been able to afford for a long time. Especially in the middle of the afternoon.
“Don’t you look like the cat that ate the canary.” Her dad stood in the hallway and grinned.
Sabrina closed the book and stretched out across her bed. “That’s how I feel.”
“Are you sorry you came home?”
The question surprised her. She’d been too ashamed to visit after Levi was born, but Salt Creek would always be home. What would people think of her now? After all, she’d found acceptance by excelling at school.
“No, Dad, I’m not.” She got up and padded across the carpet to brush a kiss against her father’s cheek. “It’s one of the few decisions I got right.”
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