My eyes closed. My heart dropped. My shoulders sagged.
I knew Rose wasn’t saying any of that to hurt me—she didn’t have a clue how I felt about Jesse—but her speech, coming hot on the heels of Garth’s speech, was the tipping point. That last wooden block slid out of the tower and made it crumble.
I’d been living a dream. I’d gotten lost inside of it and mistaken it for reality.
And I’d just woken up.
I stood and found my legs were stronger than I would have thought. I guessed after waking up, I could accept my fate bravely. “Rose? Would you mind if I took the rest of the day off?”
Her face flickered with concern.
“I’ve had this nasty headache all day I can’t seem to shake,” I said, drilling my finger into my temple. The real pain ran a couple feet lower. “I’m just going to find a quiet place to park it under a tree and hope some fresh air and rest does the trick.” I hated lying to Rose. I hated lying to her more than I’d hated lying to anyone else, but it had to be done. I couldn’t make it another nine hours of holding myself together. She’d see right through my act, or I’d lose it in front of her, and I didn’t want her to know about Jesse and me. I didn’t want her to ever know. I didn’t want to give her a reason to be ashamed of her son and awkward around me.
“Did you take some pain reliever, honey?” she asked, rising from the swing.
“Only about a hundred,” I exaggerated, “but this thing’s beyond medicine right now.”
“You poor thing,” she said, looking like she wanted to wrap me up in a giant hug. “Of course. Take the rest of the day off and just give a holler if you need anything.”
Guilt made its debut when I saw how quickly she’d agreed. How easily I’d pulled the wool over her eyes. “Are you sure you and the girls will be all right? I can check back in around dinner time to see if you need a hand.”
“Please,” she said, waving me off, “the girls and I have been cooking meatloaf for so long we could do it in our sleep. Go find yourself a shade tree and get some rest.” She pointed at the old trunk on the porch where she kept pillows and blankets. “Grab a blanket and pillow, and I’ll check in on you later.”
“Thanks,” I said as I opened the trunk and grabbed the first blanket.
“You’ve got your phone with you?”
I patted my back pocket. “For your checking-in-on-me pleasure.”
Rose shook her head. “Go get some rest, silly girl. You must have a headache. Your humor is off this afternoon.”
I flashed Rose a wave before heading down the porch steps and bee lining for the field. My lungs weren’t working right. Not since Garth’s, and Rose’s, words. I felt like I could barely fill them halfway up. I had a theory: the farther I got from Willow Springs, the better I could breathe again.
After hoofing it through a field of grass up past my shoulders for more than a half hour, I realized my theory was wrong. It didn’t matter how far I got or how fast I walked. I still couldn’t breathe quite right. My heart felt like it was shriveling to the size of a raisin, and my head felt like it might explode from everything running through it.
After another fifteen minutes of traipsing around some nameless field, I practically stumbled into something anything but organic. It was an old trailer, and old was putting it generously. It was basically a rat-infested looking, once-upon-a-time human dwelling so rusted out it made Old Bessie look shiny and new. More windows were covered by plastic sheeting than actual glass, and the front door—or was it the back?—looked as if a gentle breeze would blow right off its hinges.
Sweet pad.
Not.
Other than a run-down pickup that looked like it hadn’t been started since Clinton was president, the place gave no indication any humans had ever lived there. Even in the trailer’s prime, imagining people living in it was hard. It was so far gone, imagining it had been anything useful in its past was hard.
I tip-toed away until I realized I was tip-toeing when no one was around to hear me. After that, I continued to step away, but I didn’t turn my back until the trailer was out of sight. It wasn’t the kind of place a person turned their back on.
After I’d put a safe distance between me and the trailer, I spread the blanket under the next closest tree, turned my phone off because I didn’t want anyone checking up on me, laid down, and was lights out a few heartbeats later.
THERE WAS NOTHING quite like being woken up by the toe of a shoe tapping against your shoulder. It had happened to me a handful of times, and I remembered each one. I recalled each shoe that had nudged me awake since kneeling down and using a hand was apparently just too much work. That time, it wasn’t a loafer, or a wedge, or a sneaker. It was a boot. A black one.
I groaned before I looked at the boot’s owner. When I did, my groan deepened.
“What are you doing lurking around here?” Even in the dark, I made out Garth’s twisted smile.
“You know me.” I shoved his boot away and sat up. Stiff, stiff, and more stiff. “I’m good at lurking.” I grabbed the corners of the blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders. If it was dark and cool enough to need a blanket, it was late.
That meant Rose was probably worried sick. That meant Jesse probably was, too. Jesse . . .
The reminders flooded my mind as the sleep cleared from it. I had no future with Jesse. In both the immediate and distant sense.
The pain had been bad that afternoon, but something about the night and being so close to the anti-Jesse brought on something else entirely. I almost reached for my chest, half-expecting to find the handle of a dagger protruding from it.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked, trying to distract myself. I didn’t care. Not really. Some girls might freak out if a creeper like Garth Black stumbled upon them late at night in the middle of some random field, but I wasn’t. I’d been around enough real creepers to know the difference. Garth was a creeper, make no mistake about it, but a harmless one.
Harmless save for the nasty comments he wielded like a damn samurai sword.
“I live here,” he said, like it should have been obvious.
My eyebrows knitted together.
“What? Did you flatter yourself by thinking I’d come looking for you?”
I didn’t like the way he looked down at me, so I stood and tucked the blanket tighter around me. “Of all the people who’d come searching for me if I needed to be found, your name wouldn’t be anywhere on that list. Least of all first on that list.”
Garth couldn’t have looked anymore unfazed. “And who’d be first on that list?” From the curl of his smile alone, I knew who he would name before he did it. “Jesse? Your precious, infallible, ivory tower Jesse Walker, eh?” Garth extended his arms and did one slow turn. “Well, I hate to tell ya, honey, but that white knight of yours isn’t here. He wasn’t the one to come find you when you got yourself lost.” His dark eyes shone. “Looks like you’re stuck with me.”
I glowered at him as hard as I’d ever glowered at anyone. “I. Am. Not. Lost.”
Still the unfazed expression. I wanted to smack it right off of his face. “Rowen, you’re so damn lost you’ve forgotten how you got there in the first place. It’s just become who you are. Rowen the Lost.”
Before I knew what I was doing, I shoved him. Hard. So hard he fell back a step. But even at that, he didn’t look any more concerned than if he were dealing with a litter of mewing kittens.
“I’m not lost!” I balled my fists at my sides. “You are, you dickhead! You’re the lost one—not me!”
“Yes,” he said in a calm voice, “yes, I am. And so are you.”
Giving him another shove for good measure, I spun around and marched away.
“I hate you!” I yelled over my shoulder, heading into a night so dark, I wasn’t sure I could make my way back home.
Home . . .
Willow Springs wasn’t my home. It was a mirage of one. A carrot dangled in front of me. A dream I’d let myself dr
eam and one that would never be realized.
When Garth’s next words came, I felt the first tear about to form in the corner of my eye. “You want a drink?”
I came to a stop. Sniffing, I turned slowly. “No,” I said, the volume long gone from my voice. “I need one.”
Garth inclined his head. “Me, too. And I hate to drink alone. Reminds me too much of my dad.” He waited for me to cross the distance between us before adding, “Let’s go drown our sorrows before we have to wake up and get back to our shitty lives.”
Drinking alone with a guy like Garth Black wasn’t the smartest thing to do. I knew that. Hell, I’d lived that. But right then, with the way I felt and the pain I wanted to forget, I just didn’t care. I’d gone through a long period of turning to guys to make me forget, to temporarily ease the pain and sell me the illusion of being wanted and loved. The past couple years, I leaned more toward drowning the pain out with a bottle. Or I had, pre-Willow Springs. I hadn’t had one drop of alcohol since arriving . . . but that was about to change.
I followed Garth for a few minutes. Long enough to wonder if he was leading me into the middle of nowhere. Until I remembered “middle of nowhere” was where I’d been since I’d stepped off of the bus. After another minute, Garth came to a halt. Sweeping his hand ceremoniously in front of him, he said, “Home sweet home.”
Oh. My. God.
The trailer that made a person itch just by looking at it? Yeah, that was what we were standing in front of.
“Um . . .”
“Don’t worry. I know what you’re thinking.” Garth moved around to the side where a couple of lounge chairs in the same ruin as the trailer were. “How can I live with myself living in the lap of luxury when there are little children dying of starvation.”
I glanced over at Garth curiously. Was that a joke that had just slipped out of his cryptic mouth? Was that a bit of snark where I’d been so certain none could reside?
I didn’t know how to respond to his unexpected slip of humor, so I stayed silent. After sweeping off the debris on one of the rundown chairs, he loped toward the trailer. “I’ll be right back with whatever I can find that’s the strongest.”
I almost replied, Don’t touch anything, but thought better of it. If that was Garth’s home . . . well, that was his home. I wouldn’t step a foot inside of it, ever, but that didn’t mean I had to knock it.
A couple of windows had a bit of flashing light streaming from them, like maybe a TV was playing inside. I was just settling—carefully—into the lounge chair when I heard a couple of raised voices. So Garth didn’t live alone and, judging from the deep voices, he lived with another man. A brother, maybe? A father?
Whoever else shared the dilapidated trailer with him, one thing was clear: they weren’t on good terms at the moment. I couldn’t make out individual words, just lots of shouting and curses thrown back and forth, but I was familiar with that “conversation.” My mom and I had it at least once a week since I’d been brave enough to stand up to her.
When I heard the familiar sound of glass shattering, I popped up in my chair. I was about to break a solemn vow and actually enter that rust bucket when Garth practically lunged out of the door. What looked like a bottle exploded into tiny pieces behind him when it crashed into the doorway instead of . . . his head?
Garth glared at the ground for a couple seconds as he continued toward me, a bottle clutched in his hand, but when he lifted his face, his expression was almost as unfazed as it had been when I’d been the one yelling at him.
“What the hell was that?” I asked. I knew, as someone who’d dealt with it, if a person was within hearing or seeing distance, we hoped to hell they’d just keep their mouth shut and pretend they hadn’t witnessed a thing. However, being on the other side of the equation, I understood why so many people couldn’t stay silent.
“Well, let’s see,” Garth said as he stopped in front of me. “It’s a weekday night, past ten o’clock, and all the liquor except for my secret stash”—he lifted the bottle—“ran out an hour ago. So that means he’s still drunk enough to be pissed but not quite drunk enough to be passed out yet.”
I jumped when I heard another breaking sound. “Who?” I asked, wondering if being within the same county line as that person, let alone their backyard, was safe.
Garth’s expression ironed out. “My dad.” His words were like ice again, and from that look on his face, I guessed he really did need that drink as badly as I did. “So? Bottoms up?” He shook the bottle in front of me, and even though I knew I shouldn’t, I couldn’t say no.
Not when relief from the pain was a few inches and drinks away.
“Bottoms up.” I took the bottle from him and unscrewed the lid. “Tequila?” Judging from the label, it was cheap tequila.
“To-kill-ya?” Garth said as he dropped into one of the chairs. “Yep.”
Since there weren’t any cups to be found, I lifted the bottle straight to my lips. “Why do I have a feeling I’m going to regret this in the morning?”
“Because you will,” he said as he slid his hat off and dropped it on the ground. Seeing those guys without their hats was always strange, at least when they weren’t sitting around the Walker dining room table. “Me, however? I won’t.”
“You strike me as the kind of guy who doesn’t regret much,” I said before tipping the bottle back. Cool liquid entered my mouth and ran hot down my throat. I hadn’t had a straight shot of alcohol in so long I almost made the pucker face and coughed, but I held it back. I passed the bottle to Garth.
“I don’t,” he replied, taking his own heavy swig. “And you shouldn’t either.” Garth kicked his legs up onto the lounge chair and stared at the stars. He took another drink before passing the bottle back.
“Regret’s one of the few things I’m good at,” I said, taking a shot-sized drink. “I’m not giving that up.”
Yikes. The tequila was already getting to me. That’s the only reason I’d let those vulnerable words slip through my mouth. I didn’t like being vulnerable, but I hated seeming vulnerable in front of guys like Garth Black.
Time to change the conversation.
“So what’s up with you and your dad? Always been this dysfunctional or did you recently decide to jump on that bandwagon?” I handed the bottle off to Garth. Too much, too fast, as my words proved.
Garth’s eyes narrowed at the sky. “I don’t want to talk about my past any more than you want to talk about yours,” he said before taking a drink. Actually, it was more of a chug. “Don’t ask me questions about my family unless you want me asking you the same ones about yours.”
That got my attention.
“Like I said before, Rowen, you and me are so alike, if I had tits and got my head stuck in the clouds every now and again, I’d be you. And if you had a dick and were a bit meaner, you’d be me.” Garth took another drink before passing me the bottle. It was halfway empty. That probably explained why the stars were swirling above my head.
“So.” Just the way he said it, I was already wincing before he said anything else. “I take it, since I found you curled up asleep and alone a good couple miles from Willow Springs, that you took my Jesse warning to heart.”
It wasn’t a question. He knew I had.
The tequila had dulled the blow of hearing his name, but it hadn’t made me immune. I knew it wouldn’t matter if ten years down the road, I heard that name as I passed a stranger on the street. I would never be able to hear the name Jesse again without thinking about him.
“You don’t want to talk about your dad, great. I don’t want to talk about Jesse.” When I took another drink, the tequila didn’t burn. In fact, it drank more like water than alcohol. I’d experienced that enough times to know I was a few more drinks away from passing out. So I took one more drink and handed it back to Garth. I was officially cutting myself off.
“We can’t talk about our families. We can’t talk about our pasts. And we can’t talk about Jesse, or I’m gu
essing any of the Walkers.” He looked at me and waited. Like he was waiting for me to agree.
So I lifted my eyebrows and gave him a Your point? look.
“Then what will we talk about?” He seemed amused with himself. Or with me. Or with the situation. I couldn’t tell, and the alcohol only made deciphering emotions more difficult.
“Why don’t we just not talk?” I suggested. Partly because I didn’t feel like talking, and partly because I was nearing the point where speech would be difficult. At least non-slurred speech. I burrowed down deeper in the chair and my blanket, closed my eyes, and let the alcohol do its job.
“That’s my favorite kind of conversation to have,” he replied, sounding like he was shifting in his seat.
So we agreed on something at last. “Mine, too,” I said right before the haze took me over, and either I fell asleep or I passed out.
Whichever it was, I was pulled back to the surface when a hand molded over my cheek. The hand was warm, and rough, and strong. Another hand wove through my hair before a pair of lips settled just below my ear, at the pinnacle of my neck. The hands holding my head in place curled deeper when that mouth started traveling down my neck. When it stopped at the base and gently sucked at the sensitive skin, I moaned. The touch was familiar, yet foreign. The urgency in the touch, the gentle strength in the hands were familiar. The stubble I felt scratching against my neck and the spicy scent were foreign.
When that mouth made its return journey back up my neck, I arched for it to come closer and practically trembled when his tongue tasted my skin.
“Jesse . . .” I whispered, trying to push through the haze. I wanted to touch him back with the same kind of precision. I wanted to feel him, but my hands were numb and could barely function.