Chapter 8
Eight
C arter settled back onto the couch at Bennett’s house and dug his hand into a bag of chips.
Nothing but dust. He lifted the bag and dumped the remainder directly into his mouth.
Bennett had been slacking on groceries ever since Mia Darcy had come back into the picture.
But that was apparently done now, or it was if Bennett’s mood was any indication. He’d been a dick all day long.
Taking a long pull from his beer, he emptied the dregs from the bottle. It was disgusting. Bennett’s was still sitting on the coffee table, so Carter grabbed it and drained what was left in the bottle, washing down the last of the crumbs. Much better, he thought.
He knew it was gross. He knew he’d been moping around just as much as Bennett, but he’d be damned if he’d let anyone else see it.
Bennett came back into the living room and flopped down on the couch.
The game was on. It was going to shit, but it was on.
Basketball season would turn everything around, Carter thought.
Unable to watch the disgrace, Carter rose to his feet and walked out onto the porch.
The rain had just started. Tilting his head back, he inhaled the scent of it.
He fucking missed her. He missed the way she giggled when he tickled her belly, the way she smelled, the way she snuggled against him in bed.
God, he was a sad-ass bastard, he thought.
It had been just over a week, but all he did was think about her.
He didn’t know if that was enough time for the Fontaine gossip mill to shut down or change gears, but it was all the damn time he was giving them.
Taking his phone from his pocket, he glanced at the last text from Josie. It had come two days earlier, and he hadn’t replied. He’d told her he could swallow his pride, but he just wasn’t sure if that was true. It stung like a bitch.
It would be different if she were just another fling, but she wasn’t. Of course, it wouldn’t matter what he said to her. She wouldn’t believe it. The only thing that would make her believe it was time. And he was back to square one, because giving her time would mean swallowing his pride.
Fuck it, he decided, and started tapping out a message on the keypad.
I want to see you.
He didn’t expect an immediate response. In fact, he expected her to be so pissed she might not respond at all. While he’d been pouting, and he was man enough to admit that’s what it was, she’d been left hanging in the wind.
On the one hand, he understood her completely.
Every word she’d said to her parents that day in the kitchen had carried up the stairs to him.
Feeling the weight of judgment from everyone in town on your back was something he understood on a fundamental level.
He’d been living that way all his life. Every time someone said to him that he was just like his father, it meant one thing. He’d come to a bad end.
Josie was broken inside. It didn’t matter that she looked whole and pristine on the outside. Inside, she was still a scared little girl who didn’t believe that good things would last.
His phone dinged. Looking down at the screen, grinned.
You took your damned time.
Carter smiled. If she texted him back that quickly, it meant he wasn’t totally screwed.
She’d make him pay. That was her nature, but he wasn’t sure he minded.
Watching her get worked up and pissed off was one of life’s greatest joys, as far as he was concerned.
Thoughts like that would have made him panic at one point in time.
He didn’t get attached, but from the moment she’d thrown that first shoe at him, everything with Josie had been different.
Carter heard Bennett cursing from inside. He’d discovered he was out of beer. He started to turn and go back into the house, to face the music and to bust Bennett’s balls a little, but through the rain, he saw something that stopped him.
Mia Darcy was walking down the road, barefoot, and she looked like hell. Something was very, very wrong.
“Bennett!”
He could hear Bennett curse from inside the house. “What the hell do you want?”
“Bennett! Get your ass out here! Now!”
Bennett appeared in the doorway. “What the fuck is it?”
Carter ignored his shitty mood and pointed to the disheveled woman walking down the driveway. “You’ve got company.”
Carter stood back as Bennett crossed the expanse of the porch and headed into the yard.
He looked at Mia, really looked at her. The girl looked broken, like maybe all the pieces would never go together again.
But he also saw the way Bennett held onto her.
Whatever was between them, whatever ugly history and hurt feelings, they had something that defied all of it.
For just a second, Carter was jealous. What would it take for Josie to come to him that way? She wouldn’t, he realized. There was nothing, as far as he could figure, that would ever be as important to her as the way this town saw her.
The wind picked up, and the rain that had been falling straight down slashed inward, plastering his shirt to him.
The cold hit him like a knife. Another glance at Mia and he realized she was absolutely blue with cold, but whatever she was saying to Bennett seemed to be more important than getting warm.
Carter stepped inside the house and grabbed a blanket off the couch. Carrying it into the yard, he passed it to Bennett and watched him wrap it around Mia as she stood there tearfully confessing everything.
He didn’t hear it all, just enough to know that Samuel Darcy was as big a bastard as he’d always thought he was, and then some. Not wanting to intrude and feeling more than a little uncomfortable with the whole situation, Carter retreated to the house.
In the kitchen, he hopped up on the counter and checked his phone again. There was another text from Josie.
That’s it? I want to see you and then radio silence?
Carter thought about for a second before replying, just trying to get his thoughts in order.
Shit hit the fan. Mia Darcy is here. In full view of everyone. I’ll come to your house after dark. Leave the back door unlocked.
There was a pause of about two heartbeats and then those damned annoying dots on the screen as he waited for her reply. Her saying yay or nay seemed like a life and death decision.
You’re telling me every detail when you get here.
It didn’t escape him that she was more interested in what was going on with Bennett and Mia than with whatever was happening with them. Good god, but she was hell on his ego.
Fine.
After typing the single word response, he pressed the send key. Getting up from the counter, he opened the cabinets until he found one lonely bag of chips stuffed behind everything. Savannah had probably hidden them the last time she was there.
Contraband in hand, Carter returned to the living room and the rest of the sad-ass game. Bennett had taken Mia upstairs, and he was just going to hang out until he knew he wasn’t needed. And eat the rest of Bennett’s chips.
It was a good ten minutes before Bennett came back downstairs. He took one look at Carter, who was elbow deep in a bag of corn chips, and grimaced. “You dickhead.”
“Hey,” Carter said, making to get up off the couch. The last thing he wanted was to hang around them and be reminded that his own love life was in the toilet. “I’m just getting out of your way.”
Love life. Where the hell had that thought come from, he wondered? Sex life. Yes. He’d been having a very active one of those for a decade plus, and he was all about that. But love was something else.
Did he love Josie? No, he thought. Not yet. But he could. Easily. She’d just have to give him half a chance.
“Don’t. I need you to stay here with Mia while I take care of something,” Bennett said.
Panic hit Carter squarely in the chest. “No. Oh, hell no. I do not deal with crying women.”
Bennett rolled his eyes. “You made that pretty clear by running like a whipped dog at the sight of her!”
It hadn’t been the crying that sent him running. Looking at Bennett and Mia together, in an intimate moment that was not at all about being physical, that was just a little closer than he wanted to be to either of them. But it also reminded him of just how fucked up his own situation was.
“I got her a blanket. That was sensitive.”
Bennett closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose just the way their grandfather had always done when one of them was being an idiot. “That was first aid, you dumb fuck!”
“How long?” Carter asked, thinking about the texts from Josie. He needed to go there. He needed to see her. Standing her up wouldn’t go well for either of them.
“I don’t know. An hour. Maybe two. She’s going to sleep like the dead. She’ll never even know I left.”
He could do that. It would put him late getting to her, but he’d text her and let her know. “Fine. But you owe me.”
“You’ve been paid in chips and beer,” Bennett called back as he grabbed his keys and headed out.
“The chips are stale,” Carter said under his breath. Settling deeper into the couch, he pulled out his phone and glanced at the picture of Josie that he’d snapped while she wasn’t looking. Wearing a UK sweatshirt and a smile, it cut him right to the quick.
“I’m a fucking idiot,” he said aloud. “And this little girl is going to ruin me.”
Even as he uttered the words, he knew they were the truth. But he was still having a hard time caring.