I Don't Want Your Love Out of Pity novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Gate Twelve

At the Denver airport Leandra turns away the foreman, hangs up on Conal, and is helped by Odette; she ends on a plane to New York.

At five in the morning, the Denver airport was almost empty, and I was sitting at Gate Twelve with a duffel bag on my lap.

I had driven through the night, and I had stopped twice to be sick at the side of the road.

My truck was in the long-term lot with the keys under the mat.

It was the one thing I owned outright, so I did not feel bad about leaving it.

I had bought my ticket at the counter with cash.

I had done that on purpose, because our joint card sent him a message every time I used it.

The gate agent had asked if I needed help boarding.

"Yes," I said, and hated how easy it was to say.

Then a man came through the glass doors at the far end of the hall, walking fast, with his hat in his hand.

It was the foreman.

He had worked the Draper land for forty years, and he had been the only witness at my wedding.

He stopped in front of my chair and could not seem to get his breath.

"Miss Leandra. Please. Come home."

"That isn't my home, and you know it."

"He told me to bring you back."

"Then you can tell him I said no."

The foreman turned his hat around in his hands.

"He's not the man you saw on that stage. Not all the way."

"I saw him say he owes me," I said. "I heard every word. So did three thousand people."

"There's more to it than that."

"Then tell me what it is."

He opened his mouth, and shut it.

"It isn't mine to tell," he said at last.

I looked at him for a long moment.

He was the kindest person on that ranch, and he would not meet my eyes.

"That's what I thought," I said.

His phone rang in his shirt pocket.

He looked at the screen, and his face went gray.

"It's him."

"Give it to me."

The foreman set the phone in my hand.

I put it to my ear.

"Leandra." Conal's voice was low and rough from no sleep. "Where are you?"

"Congratulations on your engagement," I said.

"That wasn't real. Listen to me, whatever Priscilla sent you, it was for-"

"For business. You told me. Twice."

"It's not what you think."

"You told three thousand people I'm someone you owe," I said. "I'm not a debt, Conal."

He was quiet.

I heard him breathe, once, and then once more.

"I never meant it like that."

"Then how did you mean it?"

"Come home and I'll tell you."

"You have had two years to tell me," I said.

I ended the call.

I put the phone in the foreman's hand and closed his fingers around it.

"Don't follow me, Miss Leandra," he said. It was almost a question.

"I'm not the one following anyone."

The foreman looked at my face for a while, and then he looked, very briefly, at my stomach.

I pulled my coat closed.

"You've been sick every morning this week," he said quietly. "I'm sixty-one. I raised four kids."

"Please don't."

"I can't lie to him, Miss Leandra. If he asks me straight, I'll answer."

"Then he'd better not ask before I'm in the air."

"He's going to ask."

"Then be slow about it."

He did not answer.

The gate agent called my row.

A young man in an airline vest came to take my chair, and I let him push me down the walkway to the plane.

The foreman stood at the glass with his hat against his chest.

He did not wave, and neither did I.

On the plane, I borrowed the stewardess's phone charger, because my own phone had died somewhere in Wyoming.

I called the only number I knew by heart that was not on the ranch.

It rang four times.

"Leandra Linwood," Odette said, thick with sleep. "It's five in the morning. If you are calling to say your sewing machine is broken again, I'm going to-"

"I'm coming to New York."

The line went quiet.

"Is it him?"

"It's him."

"Is it bad?"

"I'm pregnant, Odette."

I had not said it out loud to anyone.

It sounded smaller than it felt.

"Okay," Odette said, and I heard her sit up. "Okay. I have a spare room above the shop and a very bad couch. When do you land?"

"One-thirty."

"I'll be at the gate. Are you in the chair?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll steal one of those carts and race you."

I laughed, and then I was crying, and I put my hand over my mouth so the man in the next seat would not hear.

"Don't hang up," Odette said. "Just breathe. I'm here."

The phone buzzed in my hand with a message from the number I had given the airline.

I had never given it to Conal.

He had found it anyway.

"Priscilla says you've been sick. Are you carrying my child?"

I read it twice.

Under the seat, my sewing shears were in my duffel, and in my coat pocket was a marriage certificate I could never show anyone.

If I said yes, Conal would drive to New York, and Priscilla's father would know by Monday.

I did not trust Priscilla's father with anything of mine, least of all a child.

I typed a single word, and I sent it before I could change my mind:

"No."

Then I held down the button until the screen went black.

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