Chapter 9 #2
Now that my brain was full of logistics, I could answer him without trembling. “It was a nightmare. Mama Starr and Daddy Bjorn—that’s what I call my birth parents—they weren’t . . .” A shiver ran through me and the rest caught in my throat.
He pushed up to his elbows and looked solemnly over his shoulder. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
Some of the guys I’d dated had gotten really pushy. Others hadn’t wanted to hear a downer of a story. Eli had listened like I was telling him the plot of a movie, then he’d tried to cheer me up, not realizing the day my parents died wasn’t a topic I could move on from after a few laughs.
I squeezed more lube into my hands and rubbed them together.
“Mama and Daddy weren’t answering,” I said, stronger this time, and he laid his head back down.
“I knew something was wrong, and I knew it was bad.” I kneaded my fingers into his calf and earned another groan.
“I think I even knew they were dead.” I swallowed hard.
Almost twenty-five years had passed, and I’d had a damn good life since, but the pain of the day resurfaced as fresh as if I were in the hospital again getting told that yes, everything I had feared was true.
“That’s awful.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me.
I worked my fingertips into the hard tendons around his knee, following the grooves and bumping over scars.
“I tried to keep my sisters from panicking while we waited for help, and then I was alone in the hospital and they were all in their own rooms and it just sucked.”
“That part was almost as bad as the accident. Losing Eli will always be the worst, but the helplessness of not being able to leave a bed to do anything about it? That was torture.”
He understood. I opened up in a way I hadn’t around anyone. “I wanted my sisters so bad. I felt like I had failed them. Then we got to the Baileys, and I didn’t have to be so strong and I felt worthless. But not for long.”
“There’s plenty to do at the Baileys’ to give you a sense of purpose.”
Again, he got it. “Mama Mae knew to throw us into ranch duties. Daddy was there with everything bourbon and whiskey. And my brothers . . .” I sank my teeth into my bottom lip.
I’d never told anyone about my first impression of my brothers.
“They, uh, were a lot like my birth parents. A little wild. They didn’t end up homeless or cart four girls all over the wilderness because they were careless or anything, but—”
“You were homeless?” He propped himself on his elbows again.
“Yeah, I never really told anyone. Neither did Mama Mae.” The social workers had known, but four girls starting with a new family in a new school didn’t need salacious gossip following them.
“We went from campsite to campsite for months. Sometimes they’d take day work and we could afford a hotel.
The nights were getting so damn cold, and I’d hear them arguing about what to do for winter.
Then the storm hit and we crashed and that was that. ”
“Shit.” He was still watching me as much as he could from his crooked angle. “Is that why you hate planes?”
“I think so. Being closed in like that?” I shuddered. “I don’t care for dark spaces. I’m not fond of storms, but I handle them better than Wynter.”
“Autumn and Junie?”
Another thing with Jonah that no one else had done. He asked about the rest of my family. He knew them and perhaps that was why he was different from the pompous investment banker I’d met through work connections. “We all have our thing. Junie sings, but she also runs, know what I mean?”
He nodded. I didn’t want to spell it out and feel like I was tossing my nomadic sister under the bus.
“Autumn is cautious to the point it stifles her. I guess the silver lining for Wynter is that she couldn’t stand to watch Daddy Darin die slowly from cancer, so she tracked down Myles.”
If I couldn’t find my own happily ever after, I was grateful my sisters could have them. Although it didn’t seem like Autumn or Junie was rushing to any altar like I had.
Several quiet minutes ticked by while I worked on his knee.
“The whole town seems to think they know what the accident did to me,” he said.
I thought about what he said, worked it over in my head. He’d listened and understood, and I wanted to do the same. Was I just another person who assumed I knew what Jonah had gone through?
I moved north of his knee, nudging the sheet up, praying I didn’t expose a butt cheek and turn the air between us uncomfortable. His muscles there were tight in a way the rest hadn’t been. The massage was starting to be like molding steel with the heat of my hand.
“People call you a recluse,” I said. “You don’t agree with them?”
“People are annoying.”
I grinned and continued to stroke around his lower thigh. His skin heated under my touch. “You never had patience for stupid shit. I thought that was why you couldn’t stand me.”
He rested his head back in his arms. “My brother was stupid in love with you and that was annoying enough.”
My smile died. “Yeah. I cringe when I think of how we were.” I’d been in love with the idea of love. Eli had been a good guy to explore those emotions with. “Puppy love can steal common sense.”
He half turned instead of twisting to look over his shoulder.
I was presented again with the scarred side of his face.
I recalled what he used to look like. A guy who could’ve walked out of the pages of an outdoor catalogue.
He could’ve modeled the clothing, but he hadn’t acted like he knew he was ruggedly attractive.
That his grin was everything a young girl lived and breathed for.
The scar didn’t change that beauty, but it acted like a visual block for the shallow minded.
People thought the jagged scar and the network of lines it turned to under his beard detracted from his looks.
Instead, it just made him a different version of a handsome man.
I’d heard the comments over the years. The older crowd wondering if there was nothing a plastic surgeon couldn’t do.
Kids pointing his looks out in public. Then there were the younger women.
Those who thought the scars and the way he avoided much of town gave him a bad-boy edge. The ladies who wanted a rough ride.
How many found out what sex was like with Jonah?
“Puppy love?” he asked, dragging me back to the conversation about Jonah.
“We were teenagers. Didn’t you have that with someone? Jackie?” I kept my gaze on my task. Had I sounded jealous?
Jonah had been one of those older boys. The type of guy girls wanted attention from and rarely received. He’d been in his own world, but that place had included high school sports like football and baseball. He’d driven a big truck and had even been on the homecoming court.
He snorted. “No.”
I scooted his leg out to get better access to his full thigh. He moved without much prodding, whether it was more comfortable or because he didn’t want me to jerk his limb in a direction it couldn’t go easily. “You two were hot and heavy.”
“We were teenagers.”
“I heard you were seeing her again,” I murmured. Was I digging for information? Absolutely.
“We were, but we’re done.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Oh?”
“Sometimes you just gotta let something go that should’ve stayed in the past.” His gruff words steadied my pulse. If he thought like that, maybe I could talk to him—about everything.
I continued to work the flesh around his thigh. He was so dang tight. That couldn’t be good. I shifted the blanket higher. “I can do your hip while you’re like this.”
He tensed. “It’s fine.”
“There’s that word again.” I halted my upward progress. “I’ve learned, Jonah, that when you say it’s fine, it’s not. I can help.”
“No.”
I held his gaze. I couldn’t cross my arms when my hands were slippery with lube. I’d get the gel on my sweater, and while it was water-based lubricant, I had no other clothes. “Does your shoulder feel better?”
A muscle ticced in his jaw. “Yes.”
“Your knee?”
“The ache isn’t as bad.” Stubbornness resounded in his voice.
“Then I can help your hip.”
He held my attention, his pupils dilating. He worked his jaw like he was chewing over the words. “My dick isn’t by my shoulder or my knee.”
Oh.
Oh. I was rubbing him down with lube. I’d heard once that erections were a common occurrence for men getting massages. Surely, he wasn’t having problems getting a massage from me. Delight pushed through my shock. Would his reaction be from me?
He tugged the sheet, and if he kept straining his shoulder at that angle, he’d undo all the work I’d done. “I’m a lot more comfortable than I was. I think I can sleep now.”
Disappointment was a loud gong in my ears. It didn’t matter that my palms tingled from the warmth of his skin and the slide of his silky body hair under my fingers. He was dismissing me. After barging into his home and pushing him into a massage, the least I could do was leave him alone.