Chapter 19 #2
“You as well.” Though, I don’t let go of Jo. I don’t allow her to move more than an arm’s length away from me as she greets her sister.
As Tonya peppers us with questions about our drive down and orders about how Jo will be sleeping in Lizzie’s and her old room while I’ll take the couch in the living room, I note Waylon staring daggers at me. Lizzie merely taps away on her cell phone.
“Dad wants to know when dinner’ll be ready,” Jo says, her accent suddenly flooding back, and I smile into her hair.
“As soon as Danny and Bobbi Jo get here. Lizzie, go set the table.”
“Me? Why do I have to do it? Bucky should do it. She’s—”
“She will clean up the table. You can go set it.”
Lizzie huffs, shouldering Jo on her way out, and Tonya is either blind to how her children treat Jo, or she doesn’t care. Either way, she’d probably get along great with my mother.
“In the meantime, why don’t you show Nico around, Buck?” she suggests, and I casually drape my arm over my fiancée’s shoulder.
“I’d love for Josephine to show me around.”
“Hm? Yeah, that’s what I said.”
“No, you said Buck.” At Tonya’s frown, I try my best to sound noncombative. “You gave your daughter a beautiful name, so I’m confused why you don’t use it.”
Tonya’s tinted brows shoot up, but before she can answer, Jo yanks me out the back door. “You’re makin’ trouble.”
“I’m setting the record straight. Your accent is cute, by the way.”
She pushes me farther into the yard, back to the line of trees that leads to the woods. “Don’t try to charm me.”
“Is this where you murder me?” I ask, slapping at the trunk of a tree.
“No, I’d take you down to the holler. Drown you in the crick.”
I cock my head. “The what now?”
She sighs and points behind me, careful to speak without her hometown accent. “Down there’s the hollow, by the creek.”
I laugh, gathering her up into my arms. “My mountain mama.”
She skims her hands around my sides and under my T-shirt to skate up my back. I like the idea that my bare skin may provide some comfort. She can use me for whatever she wants. I am at her command.
She must feel it somehow because she tilts her head up, offering her lips to me. I bend, closing the distance between us, but right as I’m about to kiss her, we’re yet again disturbed.
This time by her brother. “Dinner’s ready, Beave. Stop fucking around out here and get inside.”
Danny stands by the back door, hands on his hips, as if we’re keeping him from something important when we were the ones waiting on him for dinner.
I clutch Jo’s hand in mine, my patience and temper hanging by a thread, and take the lead as we cross the backyard.
I nudge Jo to enter the house, but I stop Danny from following with my hand clamped on his shoulder.
“I already asked your mother to stop calling her that, but I’m not going to ask you.
I’m telling you. Don’t use that name for your sister unless you want to lose some teeth. ”
Danny’s lip curls. “Is that a threat?”
“An assurance.”
His eyes drift between mine, probably searching for truth in my words, before he eventually bats my hand away, stalking off. Because he’s nothing but a bully.
Too bad for him, I am literally paid to bully people on sharp blades professionally. He might be able to scare his sister with his tough-guy act, but he’s already proven what a joke he is.
I’m the last to be seated at the worn wooden dining table, all eyes on me, and I smile in apology before Tonya motions to Lizzie to lead the prayer, and I copy Jo, folding my hands, bowing my head.
As soon as it’s over, Tonya then hands Ron all the platters and bowls first for him to serve himself, before the chicken and dumplings and green bean casserole are passed around to the rest of us.
Dinner is delicious but tense. Not that I expect anything less.
Ron can’t be bothered to speak, and as soon as he finishes eating, he reclaims his recliner.
Meanwhile, Danny’s death glare almost never leaves me, although I don’t know why, because his very pregnant wife is clearly uncomfortable.
Lizzie tries to egg Jo on, though my girl doesn’t take the bait, and Tonya completely ignores all of it to blabber on about the party tomorrow.
When everyone is finally done, Waylon and Lizzie disappear, while Bobbi Jo asks Danny to help her take a walk, rubbing her back with her hand, and I stay with Jo to clean off the table.
Tonya heads to the living room with Ron, watching Wheel of Fortune, and I empathize with how Jo must have felt both invisible and under a spotlight growing up, going from being picked on one moment to forgotten about the next.
Later, after Danny and Bobbi Jo have left, and Lizzie has made out with Waylon right in front of Jo and me as if she has something to prove, I’m relegated to the couch with a pillow, old crocheted blanket, and glare from Ron Atkins.
Jo bends to kiss my cheek, and I assume that’s all I’ll be allowed tonight.
I try to make myself as comfortable as possible after I’ve changed and brushed my teeth, but I don’t physically fit on the couch, and all the ducks are creepy, so I retrieve my iPad, opening the Jurassic Park fan fiction I found.
It’s full of fated mates and a lot of sex, so I’m super into it, but I’ve only been reading an hour before I hear a creak of the stairs.
I sit up, expecting Ron or Tonya, hoping it’s not Lizzie, only to be relieved when Jo appears in bare feet, plaid pajama pants, and an oversized Mountaineers shirt.
“What are you doing up?” I whisper.
Illuminated as she is by the tiny night-light in the corner, I barely see her shrug, and I hold my hand out to her. She easily takes it and sits next to me on the couch.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah. I just wanted to thank you. For before.”
“Thank me? For drying the dishes?”
She sinks her head to my shoulder. “Yeah, but also for standing up for me about…what they call me. No one’s ever done it.”
My heart breaks, and I pull her tighter to me, kissing the top of her head. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“First time you’ve ever said that.”
I lay my cheek against her head, thinking back to all the times I’ve asked her to thank me as a joke, a flirtation, but here she is genuinely thanking me for something I don’t want to be thanked for. I don’t even want to have done it. I wish I never had to, but I would do it over and over again.
“I’m sorry, Jo.”
“What do you have to be sorry for?”
“Everything. You don’t deserve any of this bullshit.”
“Yeah, but I think—” When she stops herself, I nudge her to keep going. “I deserve someone to stand up for me.”
“Lowest bar possible. Raise your standards.”
She picks at the blanket. “Like sunflowers and breakfast deliveries?”
“It’s a start.”
She’s quiet, curling into my side, so I pick up my iPad again, and she tilts her head to look at the screen. After a minute, she leans back, her hand on my chest to meet my gaze in the dark. “Are you reading Jurassic Park erotica?”
“Yeah. You want to read with me?”
“Obviously.”
“Oh, Jojo, you dirty girl.”
“You’re corrupting me.”
I curl my arm around her, humming contently. “My absolute pleasure.”