“This is trouble,” Aurora said when the last entry in the parade moved past them. “Big trouble. Tell me the whole story. Why did you—”
Winona walked away. “I’ll talk to you later, Aurora,” she tossed over her shoulder.
By the time she got to her car, she was practically running to avoid the gossip on the streets. She jumped into her car and drove out to Luke’s house. He would be the only person who would understand and appreciate what she’d done. She found him exactly where she’d expected to: sitting on his porch, staring out. Cuts and dried blood marked his left hand.
“Hey,” she said.
He barely acknowledged her, just tilted his chin a little.
She sat down on the seat beside him, her heart aching for how hurt he felt right now. It was the same pain she’d felt since he first turned to Vivi Ann. “I’m here for you.”
He didn’t answer, didn’t even look at her, and something about that made her nervous.
She started to put her arm around him. “It’s all for the best, really. If she didn’t love you, you had to know that. Now you can go forward.”
He pushed her arm away.
“Luke?”
“Why did you tell me?”
“What? You had to know. What she was doing with that man was wrong. I knew how hurt you’d be.”
“Exactly.” He got up and walked over to the porch railing, putting as much distance between them as was possible. With his back to her, he stared out at his land.
“It’s not my fault, Luke. I wasn’t sleeping with him. I didn’t cheat on you and break your heart. What she did was wrong. Of course she got caught. I’m the one who is trying to help you. Look at me, Luke.”
He didn’t turn around. “Just go, Winona. I can’t talk to you now.”
She didn’t know how to react. None of this made sense to her. “But—”
“Go. Please.”
It was the please that grounded her. She’d come to him too soon; that was all. Of course he wasn’t ready for comforting yet. But he would be. Time healed all wounds. She just had to be patient. “Okay. I’m available anytime, though. Just call me if you need a friend.”
“A friend,” he said, putting a sharp, strange emphasis on the word.
She was halfway to the door when his voice stopped her.
“Was she at the parade?”
“No,” she said bitterly, looking back at him. “She chickened out.”
“Did she? You think?” He sighed, and still he didn’t turn around. “You shouldn’t have told me.”
“It broke my heart,” she said quietly, “seeing them in bed together. I knew what you’d think.”
“I love her.”
“Loved,” she corrected, reaching for the door. “And you didn’t even know her.”
Vivi Ann and Dallas got married in the Mason County Courthouse, with a justice of the peace presiding and a law clerk as witness. After the ceremony, they climbed into the truck and turned on the radio. The first song that blared through the speakers was Willie Nelson’s “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys,” and Vivi Ann laughed and thought: That will be our song.
All the way out of town and deep into the Olympic rain forest, they talked. When the sky turned dark and the road began to twist and turn, thrusting deep into the old-growth trees, they came to the lodge at Sol Duc, and there they rented a cabin.
“I guess we’re just a cabin couple,” Dallas said as he carried her over the threshold and into the piney-scented room. For four days they stayed in bed, making love, caressing, talking. Vivi Ann told Dallas everything there was to know about her—when she’d lost her virginity and to whom, how it had felt to lose her mother, why she loved Oyster Shores so much, and even what foods she despised. The more she talked with him, the easier he laughed, and it became a new addiction for her, this needing to make him smile.
On the fifth day, they hiked up the beautiful, rugged trails to the famous Sol Duc Falls. There, completely alone in the wild old-growth rain forest, with the sound of the falling water thundering around them and the air full of spray, they made love in a small clearing at the base of a two-hundred-year-old cedar tree.