Free Blue by You by Rachel Gibson

been in the hospital with something life-threatening that day, or that he’d fallen in a well and couldn’t get out. Something.
    He was silent, and she looked up. “I know,” he said, just above a whisper. “I saw you that day. You wore jeans shorts and brought a yellow blanket.”
    “You saw me?” A scowl wrinkled her forehead. “With the blanket. When?”
    “When you got there.”
    “What?” She didn’t understand. “You saw me, but you didn’t meet me?”
    “No. I left for Camp Lejeune a day early.”
    The anger she hadn’t felt at seeing him again after all this time hit her smack in the face. “You had to leave early and couldn’t spare ten minutes to let me know? So I didn’t wait for you?”
    “I didn’t have to leave early. I chose to leave a day early.”
    She didn’t understand. Maybe didn’t want to understand. “You just left? You left me sitting in that tree for hours? You knew I was there, and you just left?”
    “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
    “For whom?” She pointed at herself. “Not me. The right thing would have been to meet me, and say, ‘Hey Blue, I’m leaving for Jacksonville early and can’t meet with you. Bye. Have a nice life.’ The right thing was not leaving me there, sweating to death in that tree. Waiting for you while you were on your way to North Carolina!”
    “You’re angry. I don’t blame you.”
    “Thanks for not blaming me. ” He reached for her, but she pulled away. “I think you need to go.”
    “Blue.” His hand fell to his side. “Cher, I’m sorry.”
    She folded her arms across her breasts. To keep from giving him the throat punch he deserved or to protect herself from the punch in her heart, she wasn’t sure which. Maybe both.
    Blue made herself a Purple Jesus. It wasn’t Sunday, but she needed it. She called Billy, who usually cheered her up with his antics, but even her son couldn’t lift her mood. Kasper Pennington had somehow managed to make her fall in love with him.
    She took a drink and set it on the bedside table as she pulled a short white nightgown over her head. She’d been in love before. With Billy’s daddy. She’d loved him madly, but never like this. She picked up the jar and headed into the parlor. Love with her former husband had not happened this fast. Or hard.
    She raised the jar to her mouth as someone pounded on her door. There was only one person who had the passcode to get onto the estate.
    “Open up, Blue. I’m not leaving.”
    She believed him and opened the front door. Her stupid heart swelled in her chest. “What do you want Kasper?” She expected him to try and sweet-talk her into letting him inside.
    “Let’s go.”
    “What? I’m not going anywhere.”
    “Get your shoes.”
    She looked closely into the eyes of the man she knew and noticed a hard glint she’d never noticed there before. She got the impression she was looking at Gunnery Sergeant Pennington, and he did not tolerate disregard of a direct order.
    “I’ll get them for you.” He moved past her and grabbed a pair of rubber boots she wore when she gardened.
    “Not those,” she protested, as he ushered her out the door. Headlights blinded her as he put his hand in the small of her back and pushed her along to the passenger side of his truck. She balked at climbing inside, and he sighed.
    “Please, Blue. I’m tired, but I will hog-tie you.”
    “Fine.” Which, of course, wasn’t fine. With her drink in her hand, she climbed inside. He tossed her boots at her feet and shut the door.
    Neither spoke as he drove out of Dahlia Hall’s gate or as the truck tore up the River Road. He turned off the highway about a mile from Esterbrook and finally piqued Blue’s curiosity enough to ask, “Where are we going?”
    “Scared?”
    Not at all. “Should I be?”
    “Maybe.”
    She drained her Purple Jesus and shoved her feet into her boots. The truck bumped along in the darkness, and the headlights shone on a dirt road,