Chapter 13
I thought there was nothing left to discover in this world. I know every hard truth there is, but I didn’t know this joy.
Jessie Jane pulled right in behind him when he parked in front of his house. He had been a little worried she was going to make a run for it. She was in a strange mood, and he couldn’t entirely sort out what it was.
She had seemed to enjoy tonight, but this evening, she had been a little distant.
It had been interesting meeting her parents. They were definitely unique. But they were kind people. That much was easy to see.
In fact, the whole troop was comprised of some of the nicest people he’d met. Yet again, he thought it was a shame that his family had judged them so harshly. The Hancocks had a way of infusing a lot of joy into this outlaw thing.
He could only respect them.
He opened his truck door, and she did the same; they closed them in unison. He walked straight over to her, wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her in for a kiss. He had been behaving himself the whole time they were in public.
“That was great,” he said, and he meant it. “Your family is …”
“Weird?”
“Yeah. They are. But in a very fun way.”
“Or something.”
“I like your parents,” he said.
“And West?”
“He might take a little longer to warm up to.”
She huffed a laugh. “He likes you.”
“Does he? Well. That’s nice.”
He kind of meant it. After all, who was harder to win over than the brother of the woman you were …
Well. Sleeping with.
“How did your parents meet?”
He was curious about that. Because William Hancock was very charming. And Lucinda had her own charm, for certain. But she was definitely the sort of person people would call quirky rather than personable.
“Oh, they went to school together. My mom is from here too. But not part of any notorious family. Her parents moved away a while ago. I don’t remember them.
My dad called her his sparrow. Like she had fallen out of the nest, and he picked her up.
He just always wanted to take care of her.
He always says he really likes how easy it is to know what she wants.
Because she speaks her mind. You got a little bit of that. ”
“Yeah. That is true.”
“It was hard for her, though. Having to take care of the house and kids. Participating in the chaos of the show. But not all of the glamor around it.”
He opened the front door and gestured for her to go in.
“I see.”
“When they were trying to get the show off the ground, we didn’t have any money.
I mean none. It’s been in our family for several generations, but when I say it has gone through feast and famine many times in those years …
I mean it. My dad isn’t the best businessman.
He has big dreams and big ideas, but it’s hard for him to execute them.
He’s interested for five seconds, and then he moves on to something else.
Conversely, my mother can’t let go of anything.
So that’s always interesting. Between the two of them, it’s …
amazing that they get anything done. But they do. And I’m proud of them. Truly.”
“You said that you do a lot of the behind-the-scenes organizing.”
“Yes. I do. And actually, West handles a lot of things. My parents are dreams people, idea people. The doing part, though …”
“Got it.”
They were both silent for a moment, standing there in the entryway of his house.
He flicked the lights on. “My dad was really imperfect. Like, really. He was kind of a mess. And definitely more than a little bit self-serving. I really miss him. If you’d asked me when I was thirteen what my life would be like without him, I would have said that he didn’t matter.
He would forget to pay the electric bill, and the lights would get turned off.
He would forget to buy us food. Three teenage boys up at a house that only had beer in the fridge.
He was doing his best, though, I think. It just wasn’t good enough.
And he never got the chance to become good enough, because he died.
Because his bullshit killed him. I know what it’s like to have a parent who actually loves you quite a bit, but isn’t like everyone else’s parent.
” He paused for a moment. “Though your parents seem a little bit more together than my dad.”
“Oh, we had some adventures. Sometimes the power got turned off, and we had to pretend we were camping.”
He laughed. “Well, we have that in common.”
He didn’t judge, because he’d experienced many of the same things. She didn’t judge him either. They just knew how it was. Other than his family, he couldn’t remember ever connecting in the same way with another person.
“We always had food, though. Even if we had to go down to the Wesleyan Church to use the food pantry. My parents always took care of that.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Embarrassing, though, when we would see classmates who were volunteering with their parents at the food pantry, and we had to use it.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah, you know this kind of stuff is hard enough without everybody else making it harder. Your dad said something to me earlier today. Just that he thought the town might let us down in regard to the election. And I’ve been thinking on that.
My dad is at fault for some things—but not everything bad that happened to me.
Some of it was the small-minded people in this town who made everything worse. Who want to rub things in your face.”
“Well,” she said. “That is true enough.”
It was a very strange realization that maybe Jessie Jane understood him best of all. They could’ve been having these conversations for years, but hadn’t. Because he had pushed her away. And she had pushed him away.
He’d only known one way of doing things, and it wasn’t this. It wasn’t talking to the woman he’d slept with. Sharing deep emotional wounds.
But then, Jessie wasn’t like anyone else, and she didn’t do things the way anyone else did. She was an anomaly and a contradiction. A woman who seemed so at ease and yet had the deepest part of herself on lockdown.
A woman who acted as if she hated him and yet was drawn to him like a magnet. Just as he was to her. Maybe they were both full of contradictions. Because he was an outlaw. He wasn’t supposed to give a shit. But he did. So much. That was the problem.
If he could hate his family, things would be simpler. And the companion piece to caring, to not hating them, was loving them and wishing they accepted him the way he was.
Because he would’ve accepted them.
He had come into their house open. Wanting to fit in. Wanting to be like them.
It was only years of being pushed away that had created the resentment inside him.
Love was just so much work.
And Jessie knew that same truth. Her family was great in many ways, but her parents looked like a lot of work. They had created a lot of extra work for her.
So had the people in town.
He felt cocooned here. With her. With this woman who defied everything he had ever believed about himself.
About the world.
And so, in the entryway of his house, with trauma still on their lips, he kissed her. Because it was the thing he wanted most of all.
She whimpered, and leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his neck.
How had it taken this many years to do this? To taste her. Touch her. Talk to her. Share a bed with her?
She was extraordinary. Beautiful. Strong.
“I want to see your room now,” she said, her eyes alight. Then it occurred to him for the first time that he had never brought a woman back here. Well, except for her. She had slept in his guest bedroom. But he hadn’t let her into his room.
Tonight would be different.
“It’s not that exciting,” he said, taking her hand and leading her down the hall.
“I imagine we’ll find a few exciting things in it.”
“You,” he said. “It’s going to be you.”
She turned pink, all the way up to the roots of her hair, and he had to admit he liked that. He wouldn’t have thought Jessie Jane Hancock was the blushing type, and the fact that he could make her blush sent an unreasonable thrill surging through his veins.
He hadn’t lied to her—his room was simple. But she moved away from him and began to look around, opening up his closet door and peering inside.
“No interesting secrets, I’m afraid,” he said.
“Can I open your nightstand drawer?”
“Sure,” he said.
He stood back with his arms crossed. When she opened it and found it empty, she frowned.
“There’s nothing there.”
“Did you think maybe the Gideons had put a Bible in there?”
She huffed. “No. But I was expecting condoms. Lube. A couple of sex toys.”
“I don’t bring women back here,” he said.
“Oh. Well. Don’t you need lube for when you …”
“Oh, I have it,” he said. “Don’t worry. And sometimes I even bring it out with me, because I am a gentleman.”
“I won’t need it,” she said, her cheeks getting pink.
“No. You won’t. But some women do. And that’s fine too.”
He probably shouldn’t have said anything about other women, but she’d brought it up.
“Do you have sex toys?” she asked.
“I might, Jessie. Play your cards right, and maybe I’ll show everything to you.”
“Where are the condoms?”
She was insatiable.
“My bathroom,” he said. “Because I grab them when I get ready to go out.”
He went into the bathroom, opened up the medicine cabinet, and took the box of condoms out. When he returned to the bedroom, Jessie was perched on the edge of the bed with her hands on her knees, staring at him. He held the box up and shook it. “See?”
“I’m intrigued.”
“By what?”
“You really don’t bring women back here.”
“I said that I didn’t.”
“I know. But I mean, you really don’t. Here’s the evidence and all of that. It’s fascinating.”
“Why is that?”
“I suppose for the same reason you were so interested in my virginity.”
All right. He couldn’t argue with that. “Well. This has been different from moment one. I know you. I … I like you. And it doesn’t feel weird to have you here.”