Chapter 4 #2
Eliza’s talking about adding a second doctor to her practice before she and her fiancé, Luis, get married.
Mom’s slammed at the inn because the Brine is coming.
Wilder’s thinking about taking his Harley on a road trip before the cold weather sets in, and Robbie asks him about business at the repair shop.
Ames tells a story about one of his regular customers at Watchfire, who claims she’s voting for Ames as Big Dill this year, and when Holden teases she’ll be the one and only vote for Ames Axford, Robbie argues loyally that he’ll vote for Ames too.
This scene is so comfortably familiar, my shoulders loosen. I take a deep breath for the first time in days…
And then Mom pushes back her bowl, turns to me, and says, “So what’s this I hear about you threatening to murder Jim Grange’s nephew, Beckett?”
I aspirate some rice, and I have to choke down water while True whacks me on the back.
“You shouldn’t listen to Winsome gossip, Mom,” Holden chides. “Beckett didn’t threaten to murder anyone.”
I shoot him a grateful look through watering eyes.
But then the fucker goes on, “Not out loud anyway. Although if looks could kill…” He whistles low.
While I try to remember how to breathe without gasping, Holden goes on to give a technically accurate but highly biased version of yesterday’s events, complete with dramatic gestures and sound effects.
“So there’s Beck…” He stiffens his shoulders, puffs out his chest, and makes a grrr noise, because apparently, I’m an enormous growling rooster.
“And then there’s this other guy, pretty much naked, holding up a tennis racket like it’s Excalibur…
” He narrows his shoulders, messes up his hair, widens his eyes, slumps in his seat, and clutches his fork with both hands, jiggling it like he’s terrified.
“And the whole time, I’m thinking these two need a room, ’cause the sexual tension was off the chaaaaaarts—”
Everyone laughs. Truett elbows me, inviting me to share the joke, but I don’t.
“It wasn’t like that!” I choke out. “Please tell me you weren’t spreading this around, especially when you got your facts wrong, wrong, wrong. For one thing, Griffin’s not tiny; he’s just not as tall as you.”
Holden is the tallest of us—even taller than me, which, yes, is a heinous miscarriage of justice since he’s the fourth sibling out of five, but I rarely give him the satisfaction of commenting on it.
“And Griffin wasn’t afraid. He was prepared to… volley me to death,” I continue.
This earns a snicker from Wilder and an “awwww” from my mom, who can’t be listening properly to any of this because if she was, she’d know it’s not an aww-worthy story.
“And he wasn’t naked either,” I finish.
Just saying those words, the mental image hits me all over again—Griffin’s long, pale legs, the sharp jut of his hip bones above the waistband of those ridiculously small briefs, the way my flannel shirt had swallowed him whole when he put it on.
Holden wrinkles his nose. “Looked pretty naked to me.”
“He was wearing underwear!” I insist. “Skimpy black underwear that barely covered his ass—” I dart a look at my mom.
“—assets, but still. And you know very well I gave him my shirt to put on. So, no, definitely not naked.” I shake my head.
“Did they not train you to be observant when you went to policeman summer camp, asshole?”
“Beckett.”
“Sorry, Mom,” I huff. “What I meant to say was that I’m concerned that my beloved brother Holden, a well-trained law enforcement officer, needs his fucking eyes checked.”
Mom heaves a long-suffering sigh.
I glare at Holden, and his eyes twinkle back merrily.
“Well, you’d know since you were the one ogling the guy,” he concedes. “And since my vision’s so bad, I probably also mis-saw the part where you threw Griffin’s tennis racket into a tree like you were auditioning for the Olympic hammer throw, and he started shrieking like a siren—”
“Banshee,” True interrupts. Since he doesn’t interrupt often, everyone stops to look at him, and he shrugs. “Banshees shriek. Sirens sing.”
“I meant like a police siren, not the mythological character, but point taken,” Holden agrees. “He started shrieking like a banshee… about how Beckett and his crew are forbidden from his land.”
“That was a… a misunderstanding,” I say. “And I’m handling it. It’s handled.”
This is only half-true. Handling it means staying ahead of whatever Griffin tries next, and now I’m behind. My original plan of taking Holden’s advice to calm down and talk to the man is still stuck on step one.
I specifically don’t look at my father to see how he’s taking this news.
“Huh.” My mother tilts her head at me. “Do we know if Griffin’s planning to stay in Winsome permanently? Does he have a job in town? What does he do for work?”
Vivian Axford is usually a pretty sharp customer, but once again, I feel like she’s missing the point here.
“We didn’t exactly exchange lists of hopes, dreams, and future plans, Mom. And I don’t care where he ends up, as long as he lets me—”
“Because he could have simply sold the land,” she goes on. “Plenty of people would buy it for Jim’s treehouse alone. But instead, he came all this way, and I heard he went grocery shopping today like he’s settling in.”
“Probably because I did something bad in a past life,” I say sourly. “And Griffin Mercer is my punishment.”
She smiles. “Well, I think Griffin sounds like a very interesting man, Beckett.”
It’s not so much what she says but how she says it that makes my head whip toward her while Ames, Robbie, and Wilder chuckle.
She calls Griffin interesting the same way she says Robbie’s Lissa’s a “sweet girl.”
The same way she used to say True’s ex, Kelly, was a “pretty little thing.”
Like she approves of him, somehow.
Like he’s mine.
“Mom, no. You’ve gotten this all wrong. I was only trying to move the guy’s car—”
“Tow it,” Holden corrects.
“Improperly,” Wilder adds.
I feel my face get hot. “—and he came at me with a weapon, then banished me from accessing the Far Tract! He’s not interesting; he’s a fucking menace. And if he thinks he can keep me from our land, he can—”
“You know, Beckett…” Mom’s apparently too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice my language…
which is frankly terrifying. “I was just telling your father the other day that it’s been so long since you were out and about in town.
Wasn’t I, Grant? I said, ‘Honey, I’m worried Beckett’s been working too hard.
He used to go to the movies with Gupta Perryman’s daughter all the time—’”
I gape at her. Maybe she’s the one having a stroke, not my dad. “Mom, Jalissa and I haven’t gone out since high school—”
“‘—and then he dated that nice boy Kevin from Calbee for a while—’”
“Kevin and I weren’t dating,” I argue. “We went out twice. Maybe three times. Also several years ago.” Winsomefolk had immediately begun thinking of us as a couple, which is why I’ve made it a point not to “date” anyone since.
“—and he used to go to the Shed every weekend to have a drink and make new friends—”
“Mmhmm. I heard a rumor Beckett once made two friends at a time,” Wilder agrees around a mouthful of chicken. He bounces his eyebrows at me where my mother can’t see, and my cheeks go hot.
“Beck’s skill at picking up friends is inspiring,” Holden chimes in.
“You mean it was,” Ames chips in. “I haven’t heard about him making any friends in a while.”
I glare at my brothers and cousin so hard they’d burst into flame if there were any justice in the world.
“See, Beckett? Everyone agrees. You need to socialize more,” Mom says.
“So why not kill two birds with one stone? I’m not saying you should marry the guy—heck, we have enough wedding excitement already with your sister—I’m just saying take some time off work and have a little fun.
If you ask Interesting Griffin out for a drink and show him around Winsome, you can see if—”
I shake my head wildly at her. “Not only no, but hell—heck no,” I say, and I mean it with every ounce of my being.
Because yes, fine, I admit I’m attracted to the guy, against my will and all common sense.
But my mother’s transparent as glass. She’s not talking about me and Griffin becoming friends, and she’s sure as fuck not talking about me picking Griffin up at the bar and banging his brains out.
She’s trying to matchmake me… with the worst possible contender.
Eliza’s laughing into the sleeve of her sweater, True’s openly grinning, and Robbie won’t meet my eyes, which says they recognize it too.
I know my mom wants nothing more than for me and my siblings to have loving, committed partnerships like the one she has with my dad.
She thought True had found that once, but then Kelly left him a few years ago.
Right now, Eliza’s the only one of us with a steady partner, which means Vivian Axford’s fired up like a matchmaking locomotive.
But I refuse to be the only one she’s aiming for.
“Holden was making eyes at Griffin’s friend Milo!” I announce, sliding my brother directly into my mom’s path.
To my surprise, Holden merely laughs and shakes his head.
“You mean Milo Fitzgerald, aka @MilotheWundertwink, who hawks health potions and talks about his cellular regeneration all over Instagram? He’s only twenty-eight,” he tells my mom seriously.
“Too young for me. Also, prickly as a cactus and born and bred in the city. Not my type.”
Mom nods, accepting this—which is weird enough since Holden’s thirty, not eighty-two, so I’m not seeing the problem—but then the rest of what he’s said hits me.
I gawp. “You ran a background check on him?”
“Mmhm. One of the many useful skills I learned in policeman summer camp.” Holden sits back in his chair, hands locked behind his neck, and smiles smugly. “Ran one on Griffin Mercer too.”
“Don’t care,” I say, but I don’t sound convincing to my own ears.