Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
W hen they stopped that night in a small town in Kansas, Gabe’s muscles were stiff from being folded inside Cinderella like a Jack-in-the-box. He could tell by the way she rolled her neck, by her quick grimace when she shifted in her seat, that Sunny was aching, too. He almost felt bad about adding hours to their trip. Not bad enough to risk another panic attack, though.
The motel shared a parking lot with a diner. The good thing about taking the state highways was finding gems like this pair of small local businesses. As the CEO of a family-run corporation, Gabe felt a kinship with these buildings that had stood against the national chains. He hoped Beach Island could do the same.
When Sunny stretched beside the car and rubbed her shoulder, Gabe said, “I’ll check us in. Why don’t you go get us a table at the diner?”
She smiled, the one that dazzled him and made him forget she was the one who’d sent him on this terrible quest. “I bet they have a killer apple pie.”
“I wouldn’t turn down something sweet.” He cringed. How did Sunny keep turning him into an awkward teenager? “Pie, that is. I’ll meet you there in a few.”
In the bathroom of the clean but shabby motel room, Gabe checked himself in the mirror as he washed his hands. His eyes weren’t as pinched as they’d been last night. His hair was probably flat in the back from the nap Sunny’s singing had lulled him into. That day, he’d had only a couple of flashes back to the accident. Nothing like the thing with the deer the day before.
After checking that his door and Sunny’s were locked, he strode back across the parking lot. The weather had been clear so far, and stars sparkled overhead. He breathed in the dry, cold air.
The diner was humid with the warmth of cooking and the bodies of many locals crammed inside. Gabe spotted Sunny at a small booth by the windows. Shucking off his coat, he made his way to her.
Uncharacteristically, she hunched her shoulders, almost like she was hiding behind the laminated menu sheet. She startled when Gabe wedged himself between the vinyl seat and the melamine table.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said too quickly. Her gaze darted to the counter and then back to Gabe, but the smile she gave him was brittle.
Gabe turned to look at the counter. A couple of guys in canvas coats and baseball caps stared at him. They were big, though not as big as him, and weathered-looking even though they couldn’t have been older than thirty-five. The blond one squinted at him before he turned back toward the counter. The dark-haired one scanned Gabe from his casual oxfords to his khakis and all the way up to Gabe’s set jaw. Slowly, he rotated on his stool so his back was to them. Gabe scanned the dining room, but no one else paid him any attention.
“Those guys weren’t bothering you, were they?” He jerked his thumb back toward the men at the counter. He shouldn’t have sent her in alone. He’d use his bulk to show everyone she wasn’t unprotected.
“No,” she said quickly. Gabe stared at the part in her hair to try to interpret that no. Had she said it because they were bothering her, but she didn’t want Gabe to do anything about it, or did it mean that they weren’t bothering her, and she was interested in one of them? Or both? Gabe hadn’t yet seen this un-sunny, terse side of her personality. What did it mean?
When the waitress trotted over to take their orders, Gabe shook it off. He was hungry, considering all he’d done that day was sit in the car, but he went with it, ordering the meatloaf and apple pie for dessert.
His phone buzzed while they spoke with the waitress, and after she’d retreated to the kitchen, he pulled it out. Another text from Brandon. For someone who’d ignored the family business for the past eight years, Brandon suddenly had a lot of detailed questions about it: the annual attendance, the age of various rides, their profitability over the past five years. Gabe smiled. The expo must have sparked his cousin’s interest. Maybe he’d like to come in and work with Gabe. He’d happily unload some of his responsibilities on his cousin. Not operations or safety—never that—but Gabe would be overjoyed to give up public relations or human resources. Plus, it’d be fun to hang out with his cousin the way they used to do.
A chill dribbled down the back of his neck. If he belonged to this family in Vegas, would Brandon still want to hang out? Or had he only been friendly because of their blood connection?
He looked up from his phone when a body loomed over their table.
“Hey, darlin’,” the blond man from the counter drawled. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
Sunny gazed up at him, and this time her smile wasn’t brittle. It was glittering steel. “Nope.”
“Though you look familiar.” He passed a callused hand over his pale stubble. “You been here long?”
Sunny ducked her head. “No, just passing through.”
“Around here, we pay better attention to our women than that.” He tilted his head toward Gabe. Gabe’s fingers stilled on his phone.
“That so?” Now her eyes glittered, too.
Was she flirting with this guy? Gabe wanted to crawl under the table and leave them to it.
“Yeah, I can show you the town. Leave this guy to his phone.”
Gabe shoved the device into his pocket.
“What’s there to see around here?” she asked.
“Bet you’ve never seen stars like we’ve got out here.”
“Bet I haven’t,” she said. “And what more do you need than the stars on a night like this?”
“Only a little music and the love of a good woman.”
Damn, this guy was smooth. Gabe could’ve never come up with a line like that. He leaned back against the squeaky vinyl.
“‘I am constant as the northern star,’” Sunny said, “‘Of whose true-fixed and resting quality/ There is no fellow in the firmament.’”
The blond man said, “Wait, I know that one. It’s from Romeo and Juliet.” Gabe squinted at him. He wouldn’t have pegged him as a Shakespearean scholar. He must have finished college. Unlike Gabe.
“ Julius Caesar, but still, pretty good,” Sunny said. “It means thanks, but no thanks. Have a nice night,” she said, more gently.
He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, and with a final sneer at Gabe, left the diner.
An awkward silence blanketed their table.
“I, ah, don’t mean to get in the way of your…social life,” Gabe said.
“Social life?” Sunny snorted. “You mean I could’ve gone out with that guy, given him some good lovin’, and you wouldn’t have cared?”
Gabe’s stomach burned. Keeping his face neutral, he held his hands out in front of him. “Whoa. I just mean, you don’t have to spend every minute with me. You can meet other people. If you want.”
“We’re leaving in the morning. Why would I want to meet anyone tonight?”
Another stab in his gut. Why did he care if Sunny spent time with anyone else? “I—we don’t know each other very well. I don’t really know anything about you.” And she knew nothing about him. Aside from the obvious: that his birth family hadn’t wanted him, and his adoptive parents had hidden the truth. He stared at the melamine tabletop.
Sunny tapped the top of his hand, and he looked up to find her biting her plush, pink lower lip. “You’re right. Let’s play a game until our food gets here. A game of Truth. I’ll start. I’m not the kind of girl who picks up guys in diners. I mean, I’m into sex, don’t get me wrong. But I usually have to actually like someone before I sleep with them.”
“Are you seeing someone now?” The question popped out of Gabe before he could stop it.
Her lips twitched like she was suppressing a smile. “The game is Truth, not Twenty Questions. Now it’s your turn.”
Okay. Tit for tat. “My girlfriend broke up with me right before Christmas.”
She made a sound like the buzzer at a hockey game. “You already told me that. New truths only, please.”
Crap, he’d told her that in their very first conversation. “Fine. We’d dated for almost a year. I…I proposed. She said no. Said we’d stayed together because of inertia. And I was only proposing because I thought she expected it. Because I always do what people expect of me.”
Sunny’s grin faded, and she stiffened. “Was it true?”
“No questions. Your rule.”
“Fine.” She straightened her knife and fork on her paper napkin. “I guess I’m the same. Right now, I’m driving cross-country because my parents asked me. They’re the ones with the job opportunity. Though I—” She looked up with a tight smile. “That’s my truth.”
He didn’t know her well, but Gabe could see the pain hiding under her smile. Families were tough. A truth about his parents slid to the tip of his tongue, but he held it back. Instead, he said, “I have a cousin. Brandon. We’re almost the same age, so we hung out a lot together.” He rotated his cutlery roll on the table.
She grimaced. “You’re terrible at this, Gabe. That’s a fact, but it’s not a truth. How does Brandon make you feel?”
Always having a friend across the playground at recess. Brandon and Gabe picking up each package from under Aunt Pat’s Christmas tree, shaking it to guess what was inside. Late nights at the diner near Beach Island with a couple of girls after the park closed. “He always accepted me. Even though he looked like an Armstrong and I didn’t. Aunt Pat—his mom—used to call me the family’s black sheep. Only when my mom couldn’t hear.”
“Oh.” Sunny’s forehead wrinkled. “I’m glad he was nice to you. That you had a friend. An almost-brother. I never had cousins. Or siblings. I come from a long line of only children. Growing up was kind of lonely. Until I started acting. The other actors and I spent a lot of time together, so it was sort of like a second family. Better than my first family because they accepted me as I was. No expectations, even though… Anyway, it was a safe place where I didn’t have to be on all the time, like at home.” She dipped her finger into the puddle of condensation around her glass and drew a circle on the table.
Ah. He knew all about playing a role. Though his parents had never made him feel that way. Not until after they’d died. “Why’d you have to?—”
“Wait! That’s, like, four truths. Now you owe me at least two.”
But Gabe had spotted the waitress coming toward them, plates in hand. He gave Sunny a fake sorry look. “Time’s up.”
She scowled at him. “Cheater.”
“Definitely not,” he said. “You can have that one for free. I’m the dullest, most consistent, dependable person ever. In high school, I was voted Most Likely to Stay Married for Fifty Years.”
She looked up from the bowl of salad the waitress had slid in front of her. “That’s sweet, Gabe.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot. Exciting, not so much. I’m one hundred percent boring. Ask any of my ex-girlfriends.”
“Exciting’s overrated.” She stabbed her fork into her salad. “Exciting is never being in a relationship for more than three months. Spectacular break-ups. Jewelry throwing.”
“Wait, jewelry throwing?” Gabe had seen rings thrown at cheating husbands on TV, but never in real life.
“This guy I was dating, Cade. We were at the beach one day, and he gave me a necklace. A heart with two gemstones, one for my birthstone, one for his. Ugliest thing you’ve ever seen. For our three-month anniversary, he said.” She set down her fork and frowned. “I lost my shit. He was a nice guy, but when I thought about dating him for another three months, about carrying his birthstone against my skin, I felt like he was trying to put me in a box, just like that pendant. I tried to give it back, and when he wouldn’t take it, I threw it, box and all, into the ocean. Then I ran.” She blinked a few times, fast. “He called me a psychotic bitch on Instagram.”
“That’s terrible.” Though Gabe knew the pain of thinking everything was fine and then finding out it wasn’t. Of being rejected. The pain in his stomach returned, the one he felt every time he thought about his birth parents. He stared at his uneaten meatloaf and yearned, inexplicably, for Aunt Pat’s dried-out version he always drowned in ketchup.
“Him or me?” Sunny’s voice was almost too low for him to hear. But he wouldn’t pretend he hadn’t heard.
“Him, of course. Only cowards troll people online. He should’ve talked to you.”
She grimaced. “He couldn’t. I made sure of it. I was long gone by the time he was ready to talk.” Her expression faded into something sadder. “I’m not cut out for long-term, so I knew we’d never last. I thought he did, too.”
Pain stabbed through his gut, and he set down his pie fork. “Me, I’m no good at endings.”
Sunny squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her palm against her forehead. “I guess Truth and dinner isn’t the best combination. Want to take our pie to go? It’ll be good for breakfast.”
Over dinner, Truth had been a game. And yet, the next day, they’d be hurtling at fifty-five miles an hour toward his very real Truth.
His appetite might not be the only casualty.