put his dollar in the vending machine and raised his hand, ready to pound his fist against the glass front, but then he stopped himself. His chest ached, and each breath had to work its way from lungs that seemed to be closing up.
A hand touched his back, small and gentle. He didn’t turn. He knew that it was Oregon. He inhaled her presence, the soft scent of wildflowers.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He nodded, slowing his breaths, feeling his heart return to normal. Yeah, he was fine.
“We have to talk,” she said so softly he almost didn’t hear.
But he’d known this moment was coming.
Oregon stood in front of Duke, his features chiseled in stone but somehow beautiful with his bright blue eyes, wide, smiling mouth and golden skin. He’d been just as beautiful thirteen years ago. She’d been eighteen. He’d been barely twenty. It had been the year her mom married a Texas rancher who raised quarter horses and didn’t mind Oregon trying to be a cowgirl.
Now she had to tell him what she’d come here to tell him. It’d been a year since she’d first arrived in Martin’s Crossing. At first she hadn’t told him, because she needed time. Needed to make sure he was a person she wanted in her daughter’s life. She wanted to know that Lilly would have someone she could depend on. Someone who wouldn’t walk away, who wouldn’t let her down.
“Oregon?” His voice was cold. His tone hard.
He knew.
“It’s about Lilly.”
“What about Lilly?”
“Lilly is...” She looked past him, down the empty hall. Where were all the people who would interrupt, keeping her from having this difficult conversation?
He took her hand and led her to a consultation room that was empty. She balked at the door. “We can’t just walk in there.”
“We can and will.” He pulled her inside.
Once the door was closed, he pointed to a yellow vinyl chair. She sat and he stood in front of the door like a bouncer at a club. Blocking her from running? No. He stood because he had too much energy to sit. Sometimes in the early-morning hours she saw him running through the streets of Martin’s Crossing. Sometimes she saw him at night. Outrunning his nightmares, she thought.
These were some of the many things she’d learned about him since moving to town. Thirteen years ago, she hadn’t known much. She’d known he was a young man with a lot of anger who partied too hard. He’d team roped with his brother, Jake. He’d bought her a cheeseburger, and she’d laughed when he wiped ketchup off her chin, right before he kissed her.
“So, Oregon Jeffries. Tell me everything.”
“I think you know.”
“Enlighten me.”
“We met in a small town outside Stephenville, Texas, when I was eighteen. Nine months later, I had Lilly. When I first came to Martin’s Crossing, I thought you’d recognize me. But you didn’t. I was just the mother of the girl who swept the porch of your diner. You didn’t remember me. Not a flicker of recognition or a question about who we were.” She shrugged, waiting for him to say something.
He brushed a hand across his face and shook his head. “I’m afraid to admit I have a few blank spots in my memory. Bad choices in my youth. You probably know that already.”
“It’s become clear since I got to town and you didn’t recognize me.”
“Or my daughter?”
His words froze her heart. She trembled, and she didn’t want to be weak. Not today. Not when her daughter was somewhere in this hospital having tests done. Today she needed strength and the truth. Because some people thought the truth could set her free. She worried it would only mean losing her daughter to this man who had already made himself a hero to Lilly.
What if he wasn’t the man they needed him to be? Oregon wanted to stop the cycle of broken promises, broken relationships. She wanted Lilly to have a solid foundation that didn’t shift and move on the whim of an adult.
“She’s my daughter.” He repeated it again, his voice soft with wonder.
“Yes, she’s your daughter.” She whispered the words into the small room. A Gideon bible had been placed on the table between two chairs. A lamp in the corner offered soft light. In this room, lives changed. People were given the worst news. People received options.
In this room, Duke Martin learned he was a father.
“Why didn’t you try to contact me?” He sat down heavily, stretching his long legs in front of him. “Did you think I wouldn’t want to know?”
“I knew from friends that you had a problem with alcohol. And then I found out you joined the army. Duke, I was used to my mother dragging me along from relationship to relationship. She was with men who were abusive, who were alcoholics, and a few who were okay. I didn’t want that for my daughter.”
Oregon’s own father hadn’t stayed. He’d been a nameless man who walked out on them. And then there had been her mother’s countless marriages, with Oregon never being given a choice in the matter.
“You should have told me,” Duke stormed in a quiet voice, respectful of this place. She’d learned something about him in the past year. She’d learned that looks could be deceiving. He looked like Goliath. But beneath his large exterior, he was good and kind.
He kept his power carefully leashed, his temper controlled, his voice even in tone. He leaned forward in the chair, brushing his hand through his short hair.
“You’ve been in town over a year. You should have told me sooner,” he repeated.
“Maybe I should have, but I needed to know you, to be sure about you, before I put you in my daughter’s life.”
“Maybe?” He erupted in quiet anger. “Maybe you should have told me Lilly is mine? What if something had...”
She shook her head. “No, don’t go there.”
“You kept her from me,” he said in a quieter voice.
“You have to understand. I was eighteen and alone and making stupid decisions. And now I’m a mom who has to make sure her daughter isn’t going to be hurt. I have to make sure the man I bring into her life isn’t going to walk out on her.”
“I do not walk out.”
“I know. And I was going to tell you. I just didn’t know how.”
“You could have told me years ago. A letter, even a short note, would have been nice.”
“You left.” Another person in her life who had left. Not that she’d expected him to stay. He’d been a day, a smile, a moment. She’d been a kid who’d made bad choices in her search for love.
“You know for sure...” he started to ask, but his words trailed off.
“I know without a doubt. There are no other possibilities.”
He studied her for a few seconds. She met his gaze head-on because she had to be strong. “Why did you change your mind and decide to bring her to Martin’s Crossing?”
Of course he would want to know that. She would tell him why, but not today. She couldn’t tell him everything, not in one crazy, overly emotional day. “I knew she needed you.”
The simple answer was the truth. It was enough for now.
* * *
She wasn’t telling him everything but for Duke, it was enough for one day. He had a daughter. For the past year Lilly had