Page 19 of I’m Not Yours

Jace brought ribs in huge tin pans. “I’m the rib man,” he joked.

“I’m the pie woman.” I’d baked three apple pies. Not because I’d been planning on going to the barn dance with Jace, oh no.

Later I took tiny slices of different pies: apple, pecan, lemon meringue; then bites of pies called Coconut Devil, Explode Your Taste Buds Chocolate Pie, Bite Me (raspberry-rhubarb), and Sexy As Hell.

Sexy as Hell was my favorite—it was a butterscotch pie.

The pie competition was fierce here, I thought, then laughed.

I met a lot of people. A number of them knew my dad. I was shocked to find that they liked him.

I asked Pearl about this as we shared a slice of pie called Wake Up Your Romantic Life, a three-layer slice of chocolate heaven topped with chocolate chips and whipped cream.

“ ‘Pearl,’ he told me once, ‘I hate myself for what I did to Allie and MaeLynn. I hate myself. Hate myself. Hate myself .’ He said it three times. I told him to stop making life gruesome for everyone else and get out there and be friendly and helpful to atone a little bit for his past.”

“Did he do it?”

“He sure did, sugar. That’s why these people liked him.”

I watched a chicken strut by. Did I still hate my dad? If so, how long was I going to hate him for? How long was I going to let myself be angry at him and the past? The hate was hurting me, not him. How much more of my life was I going to allow him to negatively affect?

“He said he bought the house and apple orchard to make amends to you, Allie.”

“I think he bought it to make fun of me and how many apples I used to eat.” I heard the bitterness in my voice. “He called me apple-core face. One time he broke my mother’s purple-flowered china plates, which I used to cut apples on. I still have the pieces.”

“I’m sorry, sweets, about the plates, but he did buy the apple orchard for you as a gift and as an apology.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not at all. He wanted you to have all the apples you could ever want. He told me that.”

All the apples I could ever want. I could hardly wrap my mind around that one. My father had wanted to give me a gift.

“He did love you, Allie, and your mom. He was simply too demented with alcohol to show it.”

I sniffled and Pearl squeezed my hand. I saw Jace laughing with some other cowboys. One of the cowboys was the police chief, the other was a lieutenant with the fire department, the third owned property in Hawaii.

Man, he was better-looking now than he was when we were younger.

He was a whole heck of a lot of man. Real man.

Not like my dad at all. No, Jace was polar opposite to my dad.

He turned and saw me smiling at him and wandered over, setting his beer down on the way. He put a hand out to me and I grabbed it.

“Now, there’s a tall glass of manhood for ya, honey,” Pearl drawled. “I’d drink that one up.”

Jace swung me into his arms and out onto the dance floor. We danced most of the night: line dancing, the swing, square dancing, the two-step. I found my rhythm with him, my beat. The rhythm and beat I’d always had with him.

The barn dance was, without a doubt, the most fun I’d had in years. Jace swung me around the floor, sat close to me on hay bales while we ate ribs and laughed with others, snuck in more than a few kisses, which tingled those nether regions, and held me close.

When we arrived at his house, well, things got out of control.

Jace kissed me straight out of my mind as we left that red barn, the white lights behind us twinkling through the night.

He kissed me when he opened the driver’s side of his truck.

He kissed me when I was sitting beside him in the truck, then pushed me back on the seat and kissed me until I could hardly breathe and I felt like we were teenagers again in Yellowstone.

He kissed me on the drive back to our homes, my arms wrapped around him.

In the middle of the street, where he could turn left to go to my house or right to go up the hill to his house, he stopped. Outside it was quiet, inky dark, the apple orchards dark shadows.

Inside that truck, the windows were steaming up, my white lace shirt was off, and he’d unhooked my pretty yellow lacy bra. My hands were in his black hair, my chest arched against his, those talented hands of his doin’ their thing . . .

“Allie,” he said, his own voice ragged. “Spend the night with me, please. Please, Allie.”

I couldn’t even answer. His hands were making mush of my brain, and all I could do was feel and breathe hard, like a locomotive.

“Please, honey, come home with me.”

He kissed me again, long and seductive, holding me close. I ran my hands straight up his chest and he groaned, inhaling sharply. Jace was my best friend and the only man I have ever trusted in my life. “I can’t resist you for one more day, Jace. Let’s go.”

He had that truck up the hill in record time and parked in front of his house.

When he parked, he lifted me up and straddled me across his lap, one kiss following another, wild and fun, passionate.

He pulled me out of the truck and scooped me up in his arms, my pretty yellow lacy bra and lace shirt now hanging off my fingers. He opened his front door, then kicked it shut while I kissed his neck and face, and we stumbled up the stairs and onto his bed.

His bed was huge, the blue bedspread cushy, the moon shining through the windows. I let my hands, my mouth, and my whole body do what they had longed to do since the second I’d seen him at the hospital.

I did not look away from him when our eyes met. I matched each kiss, each caress, each arch, each stroke.

I welcomed him, welcomed us, welcomed the love I felt for him.

I didn’t fight that love, and in the middle of it all, I cried, and he became teary eyed, and we wiped those tears away, then kissed again, rising and falling with the same passion we’d felt forever.

I woke up in the middle of the night, the moon still glowing, with Jace wrapped around me, his arm over my waist, my fingers entwined with his. I felt his steady breathing behind me. For the first time in so long, I felt at peace, safe, happy. Grateful. I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

I did not allow myself to think about what I’d done. That would have ruined it all.

I woke up again to Jace’s mouth on my neck when the sun began to rise and I turned to him, our passion burning us up in a whirlwind of incredible lust and love.

I felt it in every touch, every kiss, every roll, and I heard it in his voice as he held me close, his voice gruff and raw.

“Allie, I love you. I have never stopped loving you, babe.”

It wasn’t hard to say. It slipped right out, as if I’d been saying it to him for years and years. “I love you, too, Jace. I love you so much.”

I smiled at him, and we made love again.

It was so fun.