Free Heath's Hope (The Brothers of Beauford Bend Book 5) by Alicia Hunter Pace

and marry me. That’s all she wanted. I’d lost you. I knew I’d never love anyone else. So I figured, why not?”
    The streets were beginning to fill with high-spirited people on their way to The Café Down On The Corner. The Broncos must have won.
    Finally, Hope spoke again. “And you had to go through all that? It had to be—”
    “Awful?” A breeze blew his hair in his eyes, and he pushed it back. “Yeah. Not as bad as being without you, but bad. I was making angels and counting out pain pills. Later, Foster said I really stepped up. But I don’t know.”
    “I can’t do this!” Hope choked out the words around tears. Great. Now he’d made her cry. He never knew how to deal with tears—but it turned out not to be a problem.
    She jumped up, took off her high heel shoes, and ran, ran for all she was worth, without looking back.
    And he let her go—just like he’d let her go before, because he was bad at seeing what was coming, worthless when it came to finding the words to stop it.
    “That wasn’t good.”
    Heath looked up to see Jimpson standing over him.
    Damn it all to hell! “Were you spying on me?” Heath demanded.
    “Some might call it spying.” Jimpson sat down beside him on the bench. “Some might call it headed to The Café Down On The Corner after the ballgame and laying low to keep from interrupting.”
    Heath didn’t say anything.
    “The Broncos won,” Jimpson said.
    “That’s good.” That was the socially correct thing to say.
    “Do you want to know by how much?”
    “No.” He’d spent every bit of energy he could in the name of social correctness on the last response.
    “What do you want?” Jimpson asked. “Besides Hope?”
    “What makes you think I want Hope?”
    “Do you deny it?”
    “No, but it doesn’t matter what I want. I would also like to be intuitive and eloquent, but I’m not.”
    “No,” Jimpson agreed. “You’re never going to be. But I don’t think Hope cares about those things. She loves you anyway.”
    That was good to hear. It warmed his heart, even if it wasn’t true.
    “Do you want to know how I know?” Jimpson asked.
    “No. Not unless she told you directly.”
    “She didn’t have to. A woman who runs away from you barefoot and crying because she caused you pain loves you.”
    “Even if that were true, it’s not enough. She’ll leave and go back to Charlotte.”
    “Did you tell her you love her? Did you ask her to stay?”
    “No.”
    “Did you when she left you before?”
    “She knew.”
    “Did she?” Jimpson asked.
    “Of course.”
    “Just because you have next to no perception, you assume others are a hundred percent correct at reading people.”
    “I don’t think that. I don’t think it of you.”
    “And that’s another mistake. I have lots of time to ponder the human condition while I buff floors. And I buff a lot of floors.” He stood up. “Here comes Coach MacKenzie and Miss Vanessa.”
    Great. More MacKenzies. Just what I need.
    “Jimpson. Heath.” Hope’s uncle shook their hands.
    “Hello, Jimpson,” Miss Vanessa said. “And Heath. Why don’t you come join us?”
    First Rafe and Abby. Now the coach and his wife. Everybody wanted him to “join them” except Hope.
    As the three of them walked away, Jimpson said over his shoulder, “Remember what I said, Heath. If it won’t sink in go buff some floors.”

Chapter Ten
    Hope had hurt over Heath for ten years, but that was nothing compared to hurting
for
him.
    She could barely fathom it. He’d been a groom at twenty-one and a widower at twenty-two, while others his age were taking one last trip to the beach before real adulthood set in. She could imagine him sitting by Aimee’s bed, taking her to doctors’ appointments, and trying to find a way to console her when he didn’t have the tools to do it.
    He’d never had the tools, never known the right thing to say or do when the unexpected happened. Sometimes he said all the wrong things, and, sometimes,