Chapter 13 #3
He looked at his phone and she thought he was checking the time. “Why don’t we do all that after dinner? Chelsea will have it ready and waitin’, and I feel like a jerk when I drag my carcass in late after she’s worked so hard.”
She lowered her eyes.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to brush you off.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s just everyone’s always there. It’s hard to get a minute.”
He reached out and broke their rule, as if they hadn’t shattered it already, by stroking his thumb across her cheek. She braced her spine to keep from shivering.
“Why don’t we meet on the front porch after everyone’s gone to bed?” he asked.
She let her eyes latch onto his, because there was no point fighting it. She said, “How are you, really, Ethan?”
His brows bent a little, as if he were asking himself the same question. “I don’t think I know.”
“I can’t even imagine,” she said. “You find out de Lorean’s dead and left you everything including the cantina, your reputation is flayed in the press only to rebound higher than ever, you have another hit song on your hands, then you learn you have a brother, only to have him vanish. And all within the space of a week.”
She’d left out the part where they’d made love, because she didn’t think it had been as life-altering to him as it had been to her. Especially not in comparison to all the rest.
“I’ve been thinkin’ how he’s been here this whole time, watchin’ the place. And then that brown paint on the Caddy.”
She nodded slowly. “You think he’s the one who caused the accident,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
He lowered his eyes. “Part of me wonders?—”
“Whether he’s a chip off the old block?” she asked.
Ethan nodded. “Maybe he’s a piece of shit like his father. On the other hand, how wrong can it be if he did ram the Caddy? The dead man had just threatened the woman I-I-I…”
“Ay-i-i,” she muttered when he trailed off, but she kept it low and her head down.
“…obviously care about.”
It was the lamest finish ever. He kept going, though, and she tried to follow along, but the only thing she could hear was the voice inside her mind wondering if he’d been about to say, “the woman I love.” It seemed like what predictive text would have filled in.
“Jeremiah…he seemed like a good guy, didn’t he?” Ethan asked, taking the focus off them and putting it back onto his newfound sibling. “I don’t really trust my judgment here.”
She wanted his brother to be a good guy, for Ethan’s sake, so she pulled her head out of her heart and tried to focus on helping Ethan find his footing in the storm.
“I already told you I thought he was a decent guy. Maria’s ex beat the tar outta my brother over tacos, right there. ” She pointed at the spot.
The tale had been recounted to her in vivid detail…by Maria, not Harrison, who would rather forget it. “He helped.”
“Pulled a gun, as I heard it,” he said.
“So did half the other customers. And that’s not the only time he’s jumped in to help. He’s busted up bar fights, and shown unruly drunks the door a dozen times, according to Manny.”
He nodded slow.
“Do you think he might’ve come here to watch out for you? Big brother style?”
“I don’t know.”
“I mean, maybe he wanted to get to know you,” she said. “From a distance, for whatever reason. Maybe he has the same twisted-up notions about the sins of the father that you do. Maybe he thinks he’s unworthy somehow, by virtue of his DNA.”
He acknowledged her words with a shrug, and didn’t even try to argue with her or deny what she’d said. They walked side by side to his pickup. The late afternoon sun was blazing its reflection in the chrome bumper, and she had to cover her eyes.
He opened the passenger side for her, and she climbed in.
“I think you should look for him,” she said, when he got behind the wheel and started the engine. “I think you should track him down and get answers to these questions. I think it’s gonna eat away at you until you do.”
He looked at her for an extended moment, given that he was also driving, but he kept the truck between the ditches all the same. “It’s not,” he said. “I’m disappointed but not devastated.”
“Why do you think that is?”
His brows went up. He pushed his hat back farther on his head. “Frankly, Lily, I think it’s bein’ around you all the time.”
She was so surprised she had to clench her jaw to keep it from dropping.
“You have that effect on folks,” he said, easing the truck around a bend in the road.
Her surprise shifted ever so slightly toward irritation. “What effect?” If he started acting like she was her mom two-point-oh—him of all people—she was going to jump right out of this truck.
“Soothin’, I guess.” He sent her a smile that turned instantly to a frown. “Why do you look offended?”
“That’s who my mother was. I thought you said you could see me for who I am, and not as her sainted reflection.”
“I thought I made that clear when I explained the name of the honky-tonk.” He pulled the truck to a stop on the roadside, then he turned, watching her face, and he said, “I want you to consider one thing regardin’ your argument—which, if it were true, would piss me off, too.
I can’t imagine how I’d hold my head up if everyone I knew expected me to live up to Garrett Brand. ”
“You expect it of yourself,” she said.
“I don’t?—”
“Oh come on. Isn’t that the reason you think you can’t live in the same town with your own family?”
“That’s different.”
“How, exactly, is it different?”
“I—” He looked away from her, then looked back, then shook his head. “We’re talkin’ about you . And how wrong you are about the way I see you. Can we just stick to that for now?”
“Fine. Tell me you don’t see me as some kind of glowing being, beaming light and love wherever she goes.”
He turned fully in his seat, facing her. His eyes moved over her face. He opened his mouth to speak and then he closed it again. And then he folded her into his arms and kissed her.
She was surprised, and then she melted. All her anger just pooled at her feet, and her body went soft against his. She held on tight, and the idea of how upset Chelsea tended to get when folks were late for dinner faded away so fast she couldn’t find it. A few minutes in, he lifted his head.
“I do see you beamin’ light everywhere you go, Lily Ellen.”
Why’d he have to ruin it? She turned face-front and crossed her arms over her chest with a huff, but he was still talking.
“I don’t think you could turn it off, even if you tried. It’s who you are, and you need to keep one thing in mind if you’re fixin’ to deny it again.”
She turned to face him so he could see her roll her eyes. “What’s that?”
“I never met your mamma.”
He could’ve sprouted antlers and surprised her less. This had not occurred to her.
It was impossible for Ethan to judge her based on her mom’s sheer perfection. He’d never had the chance to know the first and best Lily.
Otherwise, he’d see how much she paled by comparison.
“You’re an amazin’ woman, all on your own.” His voice was soft and low, a deep whisper that stroked her nerve endings in paths of fire.
And I’m in love with you, she thought. Say it. Say it!
He didn’t, though. He faced front, put the truck into gear and resumed driving.
They didn’t talk again. Lily didn’t want to talk, so she turned on the radio to fill the silence and tried turning over and over in her mind what Ethan had said.
Linda Ronstadt’s cover of “Desperado” came on.
The radio had a sense of irony, didn’t it?