"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?"
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 weren'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."
“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 behind her, feeling like I was back in middle school again, the dirty son of a coal miner, a no good kid from my no good home. I knew June Barton owned this place now, and June's family wasn't like that. I didn't know her, but I knew that much.
She didn't know me, either. Not personally. That's what I was counting on here. The last thing I wanted, with River standing right here, was for June to realize who I was.
A woman came to the door, wearing an apron over her T-shirt and jeans. The apron didn't do much to hide her pregnancy; in fact, it seemed to accentuate her growing belly. "Hi there," she said. "I'm June. Are you the Robinsons? I wasn't expecting you- I thought you'd cancelled your reservation." She looked back and forth between River and me.
"No," River said and she looked at me for a moment and I thought she was about to turn around and bail. What the hell was she going to do here in West Bend anyway? But then she answered. "We're not the Robinsons. Actually, I just wanted to see if you had any availability."
June looked back and forth between the two of us again. She paused for a moment, her eyes narrowing, and for a second I had the irrational fear that she recognized me.
But the moment passed, and June held open the screen door, beckoning us inside. Inside, the ranch house was painted in white and blue, the hardwood floors gleaming. It was a nice place, and I was glad that this was the place where June lived now. I was glad that my family wasn't responsible for destroying her entire life.
I was happy she had this, even though I didn't know her. I was too young back then, back when it all happened.
A kid, I wasn't sure how old, a couple years maybe, came toddling across the room on unsteady feet and June scooped him up in her arms. "What are you doing, little Stan?" She asked. "Did your daddy lose track of you?"
"Nope, I'm right behind him," a voice called out, and a man rounded the corner, dressed in faded blue jeans and a T-shirt, his arms covered in tattoos. I immediately recognized one of the tattoos as the identifying mark of a Marine Corps sniper. I was pretty sure that was Cade. I was young when all the shit happened, just a toddler, but I knew of Cade from later on, by reputation. I knew he'd been injured in the Marines, gotten a Silver Star.
I hoped he didn't know who the hell I was.
“Afternoon,” Cade said. “You all visiting West Bend?”
“I am,” River said. “He’s come h-”
I interrupted her. “Just visiting.”
River gave me a weird look.
“You know, you look so familiar,” June said. “I bet you get this all the time, but you look like that girl from the movies, the one in all those romantic comedies, you know who I’m talking about, Cade?”
Cade rolled his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m real big on the romantic comedies.”
“She’s married to that rock star, Viper Gabriel. Or getting married or something,” June said. “River - that’s it. River Something. It's on the tip of my tongue. The pregnancy is making me stupid lately, can't remember anything.”
River laughed. “Can you keep a secret?” she asked.
June leaned forward. “Of course.”
“I totally met her once,” she said.
“Did you?” June asked. “Are you from California or something?”
River shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “But I traveled out there.” She handed June a credit card and ID. I wondered if they had her real name on them, or if they were fakes.
June took her card to her laptop, talking the whole time. “Was she nice? She seems like she’d be nice."
River smiled. "I thought she was nice," she said. "Although some people seem to have mixed feelings about her."
I cleared my throat to cover my laugh, and River glanced at me. June didn't seem to notice.
"I have king size beds and a smaller room with just a twin," June said. "Is king size okay?"
"If it's open, I'd like to rent the house."
June paused, River's card in her hand, mid-movement. "The whole house?"
"If you have other guests, of course I understand," River said. "I don't want you to move anything. But if not, I'd like to just rent all the rooms you'd otherwise rent out."
June's brow furrowed, and I could feel Cade's eyes burrowing into the back of my head. They had to be thinking we had just stolen a credit card or something.
June looked at River for a long minute. "That's five bedrooms," she said.
River nodded, seeming completely at ease under the scrutiny. "That's perfect," she said.
June finally broke her gaze and nodded. "I think the next whole week was free except for the Robinson's," she said. "Tourist season is winter here, so things are slow right now. How long are you staying?"
“I’ll probably be here a few days, depending on things."
June clicked a few things on her laptop, and then looked up at us. "I guess the whole house would be fine then."
"Good," River said. "That's settled. Is there someplace I can rent a car?”
“Didn’t you two drive up in -” June asked, then stopped, distracted. “I forgot to even ask your name.”
River’s mouth opened, and I jumped in before she could say anything. “E,” I said. “Friends just call me E.”
It wasn’t true. Nobody fucking called me E.
“Well, let me give you a tour of the place - and Cade here can help you with your bags if you need help,” June said.
“No bags,” River said. June started ahead, and I followed down the hallway.
After June had given us the tour and left us in one of the larger bedrooms, River turned to me. “Well, E,” she said, smiling, “thanks for the ride.”
She stood there, inches away from me, and it took all I had not to kiss her. I told myself she was a complication I didn't need. Her situation wasn't simple, and neither was mine. I had enough complications to deal with - complications I was on my way to face.
So I turned in the other direction, away from those bright eyes and gorgeous lips.
“See ya, River.” I looked over my shoulder as I left, and she was grinning at me.
She winked. “See ya, Elias.”
“Feel free to wander around,” June said. “Do you ride at all?”
I nodded. “A little bit." I'd had to learn to ride, just basic stuff, for a role I'd had, but I didn't want to explain that to June.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” June asked, watching me sip my tea on the front porch.
I nodded. Nice wasn’t even the word for it. The whole thing - the bed and breakfast, the house next door, the log barn for the horses that looked simultaneously new and rustic- and all of it surrounded by the meadows and rolling hills covered in sagebrush and aspen trees. It was all like something out of a book.
Growing up, we lived in the country, but not this kind of county, the kind where the landscape spread out in rolling hills, mesas, and mountain peaks in the distance. Our kind of country involved trailers and broken down pickups clustered together, kids running naked in the front yard and old men leering at you while you walked by as they sat outside drinking from bottles wrapped in brown paper bags.
It was about as far away from this kind of country as you could get.
This kind of country I just wanted to breathe in.
Out here, surrounded by this, I couldn’t help but feel calm. Peaceful.
“Being out here in the country grows on you,” June said. “Especially when you’ve got stuff you’re running from.”
I looked at her, but she just blinked innocently, and took another sip from her coffee cup.
I changed the subject. "How long have you lived here?" I asked.
"Oh, I grew up here," she said. "Moved away when I was seventeen, but couldn't quite ever shake this place. Came back here