River
Elias put the top up on the convertible. It made it cozier than before, when we were riding with the top down and the wind blowing.
It was more intimate somehow. There was less space between us, and it was quiet. Still, for a little while, neither of us made any attempt at small talk.
It sounded silly, but I was still reeling from that kiss. All I could think about was the way I felt when he kissed me, my heart racing, my body on edge. I knew I should be sad about my relationship. I should be sad I wasn’t getting married.
Except instead, I felt this huge sense of relief, the weight of a burden lifted from my shoulders.
I felt positively giddy.
I giggled, the sound erupting out of nowhere, this weird release of the tension and stress of the past twenty-four hours. Elias had to think I was a crazy person.
"What?" he asked. "Is it that couple? They were a fucking trip, huh? You think they went in the bathroom and got it on?"
I let out a louder laugh, covering my mouth. Calm your shit down, River. "Yes." I nodded. "Definitely."
"I'll still be like that when I'm eighty," Elias said. "With a fucking hard on for my old lady."
I laughed at his bluntness. Elias just seemed to have no problem saying whatever popped into his head. He was the first person I'd hung out with in years who didn't seem to have an agenda, wasn't working an angle to get something from me.
"That's funny?" he asked.
"No," I said. "It's cute how they were all over each other. I hope I still have the hots for someone when I'm older."
"You'll be a hot old lady," he said. "No doubt."
"Well, in Hollywood terms, that's like ten years away."
"I don't get that bullshit," Elias said.
"Which part?" I asked. "The obsession with staying young?"
"All that crazy shit in general," he said. "It seems like it would fuck with your head. I mean - no offense, you seem pretty normal and all. For an actress, I mean."
I laughed. "Give it a while," I said. "I'll impress you with my brand of crazy."
"Hah." He paused, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove. "Go for it."
"Go for what?"
"Impress me," he said. "What's your brand of crazy?"
I was silent for a minute. My crazy was too much for someone like Elias - someone who seemed like a normal guy, if there was such a thing - to deal with. "Well, I can't give away all my secrets," I said. "But this is probably already on the internet anyway, so I might as well say it here. I took a baseball bat to all of Viper's shit, all his memorabilia and stuff."
"Yeah?" he asked. "So you smashed the shit out of a bunch of his collectibles, because he was fucking your sister? That's like, nothing."
"It was some really priceless stuff," I said, sheepishly. "Like a Heisman Trophy he acquired. And the bat was Mickey Mantle's."
"The asshole deserved it, didn't he?" he asked. "He's lucky you didn't take the bat to his ass. I'm only slightly impressed by the fact that you destroyed a bunch of collectibles."
"Only slightly?" I asked. "I'm not sure if I should be disappointed or scared that you don't think that's crazy."
"Eh," he said. "I wouldn't call it crazy. More like redneck justice."
"Redneck justice, huh?" I asked, my face coloring. All this time and effort trying to get away from my past and my behavior always betrayed me.
Elias looked over at me and winked. "Don't worry, darlin'," he said. "It's a compliment, not an insult. Where I come from, it means you've got some balls."
I felt tears begin to well up in my eyes, and I turned to look out the window, trying furiously to blink them away. Not now. Not here, in front of him, this guy I just met. I was not going to cry. I didn't even know why I was upset.
"Shit," Elias said. "I didn't mean anything by it."
I didn't know why I was crying, just that I felt like I'd been running on an adrenaline high for the last twenty-four hours and now I was crashing hard. I wiped a tear from my cheek.
Elias reached over and touched me. His hand on my leg was warm, the heat radiating through my body. Even through the haze of tears, his touch was electric.
"I wasn't saying you were crazy or anything," Elias said, sounding confused.
"I'm not a crier," I said, sniffling. "I'm really not. I don't know what my problem is."
"It's all right," he said. "I have that effect on women."
"Making them cry?" I asked. I couldn't help but smile.
"Well, sometimes it's hard to be in the presence of someone this good looking," he said, gesturing to himself.
I couldn't help but laugh. "Yeah, I can see how that would make them cry."
"Hey," he said. "You know what you need?"
"What?" I wiped the corner of my eye. At least he didn't think I was a total baby. Or was polite enough not to say so to my face, anyway.
"You like drive-ins?"
10
Elias
Shit. I stole a glance at her. At least she wasn't crying anymore. I couldn't help but get a little panicked at the sight of a girl crying - what guy didn't feel that way? But I guess she had just broken up with her fiancé and shit. Most girls would be wallowing in a pint of Ben and Jerry's and listening to sappy music - that's how they did it in the movies, right? At least this chick wasn't like most girls- shit, she'd beat her fiancé's collectibles into pieces with a baseball bat.
That was fucking cool.
I could respect shit like that, even if it was crazy.
So, if she was shedding a few tears in the car now, who was I to judge?
"Do I like drive-ins?" she asked. "That's kind of random. But okay. You mean like a movie theater?”
“Nope,” I said. “Like a restaurant. Up ahead. I’m starving.”
“Oh,” she said. “You mean a Sonic.”
I rolled my eyes. “While I appreciate the fact that you even know what a Sonic is, being a big movie star and all, no. It’s not a chain. It’s an old place. It's been here since the fifties.” I squinted, watching for it to come into view. “At least, it used to be here. It’s been a few years.”
“Since you’ve been back home?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” she asked.
“You’re awful nosy,” I said. I squinted as Linda’s Drive-In came into view.
"What's West Bend like, anyway?" she asked, as we pulled into the parking lot.
I shrugged. “I don't know. Like any other small town.”
How the hell did I explain West Bend to an outsider? Real pretty on the outside but rotten to the core inside? Maybe it was just me and my brothers that were that way, all looks and no substance. It’s what my father used to say.
God rest his soul, my mother said when she’d called to tell me the news.
I’d laughed bitterly. Can’t rest what you don’t have, I’d told her.
"Are all small towns the same?" she asked.
I was going to formulate a smartass response, but I merely grunted, since we were already pulling into the parking space. And then River was practically scrambling over the top of me to get a look at the menu. “Excuse you,” I said, as she dug her hand into my thigh.
“Didn’t complain when I was this close to you before,” she said.
True. And I could see down her shirt, so that was a bonus. I felt the familiar stirring between my legs, and she looked down, then up at me. I shrugged. “Don’t put your hand down there if you don’t want it to get hard.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but we were interrupted by the car hop at the window. While the girl was taking our orders, I found myself actually wondering what River had been about to say.
We ate in silence for a while, until River spoke. "So," she said. "You grew up in West Bend?"
"Yup." I popped a French fry into my mouth, and didn't elaborate.
She let the silence linger for a minute before breaking it. "Anyone ever tell you you're amazing at small talk?"
&
nbsp; I shot her a look.
"Thought so," she said, her voice light. "Well, there's this thing called conversation, where one person asks a question and the other one answers, but says some more stuff in response."
I shrugged. "I'm not much for talking about where I grew up." I got the hell out of West Bend as soon as I could, and I'd only gone back once. I wasn't exactly looking forward to going back now.
Especially considering the fact that now I had to think about what the hell I was going to do with a movie star in tow.
I sure as fuck couldn’t take her to my house. A girl like that would run screaming when she saw where the hell I came from. Hand to mouth living was probably the best way to describe my family's situation growing up - we had four walls and a piece of dirt, but not much more than that. My father- the asshole, as my brothers and I called him- brought in our meager income mining on our land, until that went to shit when I was in high school.
I wasn’t about to bring a girl like her home with me to see my family’s clapboard house, that was for damn sure, even if the asshole wasn't there anymore.
“Well, we’ve got how much longer until we get to West Bend?” she asked.
“About an hour or so,” I said.
“Then you’ve got about an hour or so of a captive audience here,” she said. “Considering you had your tongue down my throat before, I’d say we’re pretty well acquainted enough for small talk.” She winked at me, and it made me laugh.
“All right,” I said. “What do you want to know?”
“Who said I wanted to know anything about you?” she asked. “I’m a fucking movie star, and you don’t want to ask me anything?”
The same damn words out of someone else’s mouth and they would have sounded stuck up and bitchy and just plain tacky. But there was this...lightness about everything she said, this playfulness about her.
I laughed. "You are full of yourself, aren't you?"
“Just direct,” she said. “I don’t see any point in beating around the bush about it. There’s obviously something worrying you about going home, and you’re clearly man enough to tell me if you don’t want to discuss it.”
“I don’t want to discuss it,” I said.
“See how easy that was?”
"Okay, princess," I said. "Where'd you grow up? Hollywood? You think you're going to be able to hack it in rural America?"
She looked down for a minute, and I hoped she wasn't going to start fucking crying again. But she didn't, just took a bite of a French fry. "Golden Willow, Georgia," she said. "I know small towns. I think I'll manage just fine."
"Huh." I hadn't expected that.
"Surprised?" she asked, her smile more of a smirk.
"Didn't expect you were a country girl," I said.
"Not all of us movie stars grow up rich, you know," she said. "I wasn't always a princess."
"You're not really what I expected from an actress."
"Glad I'm not disappointing," she said, munching on the end of a fry. "I'd hate to be a cliché."
I watched as she took a bite of her burger, and she turned toward me, her hazel eyes bright, hair messily sticking up on the ends. "You're definitely different, River Andrews," I said. "That's for damned sure."
11
Elias
“You’re sure this place is discreet?” River asked. “This is someone you’ve known for a while?”
“You sound like we’re visiting a whorehouse or something,” I said. “It’s a bed and breakfast.”
I deliberately failed to mention that I wasn't friends with the owners, and that people from West Bend may not exactly be particularly happy to see one of the Saint brothers show up, dragging with him a movie star demanding to stay incognito. That’s not the kind of problem you just dumped on people who thought you were the scum of the earth.
Not that I knew the people running the bed and breakfast anyway.
Not personally.
That's not to say we didn't have history, a sordid history. But I didn't know what else to do with River. All I could think about was the look that would inevitably cross her face when I brought her home to my house.
No thanks. I sure as fuck wasn’t a masochist.
And I sure as fuck wasn't bringing her home.
Not to my house.
Not to my mother.
Not to my brother.
"You sure we shouldn't have called first?" she asked, giving me this weird look.
"I'm sure it's fine." I said. I wasn't.
River met me on my side of the vehicle. Her hand went up to my shirt, where the collar would be, her fingers lingering at my neck line. The way she did it, the way she paused there, reminded me of a scene from an old movie, the way a woman would adjust the tie of a man.
"Well," she said. "I'm guessing this is goodbye." Up on her tiptoes, she touched her lips gently to the side of my face.
"I'll walk you inside," I said. "Jesus, I am a gentleman."
She laughed, this bawdy, totally in the moment sound that lacked any kind of pretense whatsoever. Her finger trailed across my chest, and she bit the bottom of her lip. I could see her tongue snake along the edge of her lip, and it made it me want to be the one doing the biting. "Somehow I doubt that," she said.
"That I'm a gentleman?" I asked, my brow furrowed. All of a sudden, I was offended that she didn't think of me that way. I found myself wondering what the hell I'd need to do to prove that I was, in fact, a gentleman.
River nodded, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "Elias Saint, I doubt you could ever be a gentleman."
She turned and walked toward the white ranch house, leaving me wondering whether the hell that was an insult or a compliment.
And leaving me in her wake.
I had a feeling I wasn't the first man to feel that way.
At the front door of the ranch house, River knocked. I stood