Chapter Eighteen
Reed
“The harder you want to control something, the more it gets out of your control.”
—Clayton Kershaw
Eliza quickly pulled her hand back and slid down into her seat. She hid behind her menu and kicked me under the table.
“Ow!” I rubbed my shin. “What was that for?”
She lowered the menu just enough for her scared eyes to come into view and gave a short nod to something behind me. At six feet, I’ve never been able to be sneaky about looking over my shoulder, but that didn’t stop me from trying right then.
I wished I hadn’t.
Viola Gratton, Fairfield’s nosiest church lady, walked over to the bar area of the diner. With her was none other than Eliza’s father.
Busted.
I snapped my head forward and tried sinking down into the seat like Eliza had, but yeah, not possible. “What’re they doing here?” I muttered from behind my menu.
“I have no idea. She’s probably pressing Dad about fundraising for the church or something.” Eliza now hid almost completely under the table. “He doesn’t know I left work early either. Ugh. We are so dead.”
Of all the diners the two of them could walk into.
Then again, this was the only one nearby…
Nana always said a good Christian didn’t hate people but that it didn’t count if it was directed at Viola “Greedy” Gratton. The woman was known for having dirt on everyone, and supposedly people paid her to keep quiet.
“We gotta get out of here,” Eliza whispered.
Yeah, no shit.
It’s not that I was afraid of Mr. Crowley. But if he or Ms. Gratton saw us, one of them would definitely tell my family or the rest of the town, and then what?
The team would lose every bit of trust they put in me to deliver them a championship win, and Granddad? Granddad would be furious.
He had been through enough, sacrificed enough, for this season and the chance to win back something that was his to begin with. If he found out I was hanging out with the daughter of his longtime enemy, it would destroy him.
I couldn’t do that to him. Not like this.
If anyone was going to tell Mr. Crowley or Granddad about me and Eliza, it would be me or Eliza. Period.
I whispered around my menu (to the top of Eliza’s head, since the rest of her body was still practically below the table), “There’s an exit door behind you. I’ll stand first and give you some cover. Maybe they won’t recognize me from behind. Then you can sneak out, and I’ll follow, okay?”
“Okay.”
I stood and waved for her to move. The seat creaked loudly as she slid out of it, and she stayed hunched over until she reached the exit, stumbling down the steps into the parking lot. I tossed my menu to the table along with a twenty and quickly trailed her.
“That was close,” she said after I pulled out of the parking lot. “Dad would’ve lost his mind.”
“Ha. My granddad would’ve been worse.” I opened our windows and was grateful for the low humidity tonight. “Nana would need to replace the door to the laundry after all the darts he would’ve thrown.”
“Darts?”
“Never mind.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek for a half a mile as the woods grew denser on the sides of the road. “So would your dad really have been that pissed if he saw you with me?”
She huffed. “Uh, yeah.”
“Just because I’m a Fulton?” Granddad had a legit reason for not trusting her family. What was Mr. Crowley’s excuse? What did we ever do to them?
“Yep.”
Something sharp pressed against the inside of my throat. “But it’s just my name. What’s the real reason you guys hate us?”
“ ‘Us’?”
Nana told me once that Viola Gratton spread some nasty lies about Charlie Fulton back in the day, but a Fulton would never do the shit that that horrible woman said he’d done. Would Eliza’s dad really believe those kinds of stories? That I was the same fruit from the same poisoned family tree?
Or worse: Would Eliza?
The bright reflection from her Rolex caught my eye, and Ben’s words swirled back into my head. Dude, watches like hers cost close to twenty grand.
My wrist prickled with sweat underneath my dingy watch when another possibility settled into my gut.
Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with the past after all?
“Hold on a sec.” She turned in her seat to face me. “Are you seriously saying your grandparents wouldn’t flip out if they saw us together?” she asked.
“Yeah, but that’s different.”
“How?”
I turned my hat forward. “Because mine have a reason to be mad at yours. The stadium was theirs—”
“Reed, that was ages ago.” She turned her face toward her window.
“Doesn’t feel that way to them,” I mumbled.
She crossed her arms and sighed. I thought about bringing up the fact that she still hadn’t given me a real answer about why her dad would flip out over me being with her. Saying it was because of my name was an easy excuse. My name shouldn’t have anything to do with it.
We drove on for a couple of miles in silence before thunder rumbled. Dark clouds filled the sky ahead of us.
I cleared my throat. “Should I just take us back to Fairfield?”
She started fidgeting with the bottom of her shirt. “Do you want to go back?”
My cell buzzed from inside my pocket. I let it go to voicemail. It was probably just Nana asking me to pick something up on my way home, but I was thankful for the brief distraction. I knew the answer to Eliza’s question.
But I wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted me to say.
Did she want to go back? Is that why she asked? After a long, quiet minute, I reached across the seat and took her hand. “No. I don’t want to go back.”
“Me either.” She smiled and then faced forward again. “Take a right where you see that turnoff up ahead. I wanna show you something.”
I did as she said and wound around a few turns until the road dead-ended at some kind of clearing lined with tall trees. The sky over us was dark with the promise of a storm.
Eliza opened the door and jumped down. “Follow me.” She began running through the tall grass toward a large stage with an awning at the edge of the property.
I got out and followed as heavy raindrops started to fall. The clearing was ringed by large stones and angled down toward the stage in a horseshoe shape. Lightning flashed as I reached the stage where Eliza stood.
“What is this place?” I asked, shaking the rain out of my hair.
“The Clairview Amphitheater.” She spun around one of the beams holding up the awning over us. “It hosts a ren faire every year in the fall and a few other events in the spring. My grandmother used to perform here back in the day.”
Rain fell steadily now, but under the awning, we were kept dry except for the passing breeze that blew some of the rain sideways.
“It’s pretty cool.” I ran my hands over the pillar closest to me and breathed in the familiar scent of cedar. Tall trees outlined the outdoor theater but not close enough to block out natural light to the stage. Being here felt like I had stepped back in time. “Do you miss her a lot?”
Eliza stopped spinning. “Every day. But she was in a lot of pain—cancer—before she passed, so I like to think she’s comfortable now. Plus, Grandpa had passed a couple years earlier, so I know he’s with her too.”
Jesus.
I know they can’t live forever, but losing Nana or Granddad would be hard enough. I couldn’t imagine, didn’t want to imagine, losing them both. Someone would have to pull me out of the hole I would dig for myself in their cornfield.
“My dad’s been having a harder time with it than I thought,” she whispered, almost too softly for me to hear.
“Have you tried talking to him about it?” I crossed the stage toward her.
“Yeah. It, uh, didn’t go over too well.”
“I get that. Dads close themselves off a lot.” If I tried to talk to Dad about his feelings, it’d probably go the same way.
Why was that? Why was it that older men felt like they had to keep all that shit bottled up inside?
Would I be the same way someday?
I hoped not.
The rain to fell more heavily now, and although the thunder quieted, heat lightning flashed in the sky over us. Fireflies started blinking in the clearing.
Eliza sat down and leaned against one of the wooden poles closest to her. “I don’t want to move.”
“Who said anything about moving?” I didn’t plan on moving from this spot any time soon, unless a hurricane blew through. My knee touched hers, and I tried not to think about how charged I felt from it—like jumper cables hooked up to a battery.
She let her head fall back against the wood. “If we lose the stadium, Dad said we’ll probably go somewhere else to manage another team. Leave Fairfield.”
“Leave Fairfield? Like literally move?”
“Yep.”
Shit. I didn’t even know that was on the table. Sure, her family drove Granddad to throwing darts at a door and sneaking a beer every so often, but no Crowleys in Fairfield?
So if I led our team all the way to the championship and if we won, I was not only responsible for taking the stadium back but also taking away her home?
Guilt slid down my throat like sour syrup.
I brought my knees up. “I’m sorry. I…I didn’t know you’d be moving.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.” She placed her hand on mine. “It’s my dad who decided all of this without talking to any of us about it.”
Still.
“Lauryn said moving can be a good thing,” she added. “That I can reinvent myself.”
“That’s true.” I squeezed her hand. “Take it from someone who’s moved around a few times. There are some perks.” A lot of negatives too. But I didn’t need to tell her about those.
“I’m not like you though, Reed.” She dropped her head and lightning flashed across the dark purple and blue sky above us. “You walk into a room the way you take the mound. Like you own it. Like nothing can stop you—”
“It’s an act.” I laced my fingers through hers. “Most of the time I’m scared shitless. I’ve just learned how to channel it. All you have to remember is FAFI.”
“Faa-fee?”
“F. A. F. I. The fine art of faking it.” I grinned. “I use it all the time.”
Except with you.
“I like that.” She ran her thumb over the back of my hand. “I wish I didn’t care so much about how other people saw me. I want to be more like my grandmother—leap first, think later. Or say what I believe instead of worrying about what other people think first.” Her foot waved back and forth.
“When you’re ready to take the big leap, you will.”
“How do you know?”
I stood and opened one of my playlists on my phone, turning it up as “I’m with You” by Vance Joy started. “Because I watched you at the theater when you talked to those technicians. You’re tougher than you give yourself credit for.”
“It’s so frustrating. All I want is for people to respect me for me and not because I’m a Crowley, you know? I want my own parents to see that.” She held up her wrist. “Dad just thinks he can buy respect with watches or cars or whatever.”
“Respect has nothing to do with money. Or it shouldn’t.” I opened my hand for her to take. “Not with my family.”
“I like that about your family.” Eliza smiled and took my hand as I helped her to her feet. I spun her out and brought her back before we began dancing in a slow circle.
Buying respect with fancy watches and cars? She was right. Definitely backward. But would she expect that someday from me?
I frowned at the broken digital watch on my wrist as a hard truth settled into my shoulders.
What could I really stand to give her that she didn’t already have?
She laid her head against my chest. “I didn’t know you could dance.”
“Your brother wasn’t the only one who took cotillion. Mom wanted me to look presentable when we went to Dad’s military balls.” I twirled her out to where she wasn’t protected by the awning. She squealed as the thunder rumbled and the rain touched her skin.
I laughed and tried to pull her back, but she yanked my arm, bringing me into the storm with her.
For the rest of the song, we spun around outside. Every part of me was soaked through, and I would’ve stayed out there with her forever if she’d let me.
But when lightning flashed a bit too close for comfort, we hurried back under the awning. Tendrils of Eliza’s long hair stuck to her cheeks, but her eyes and smile had never looked brighter.
Damn, this girl was beautiful.
“When did I tell you about Robbie’s cotillion classes?” she asked.
“First grade.” I gently lifted her hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear. “You used to waltz around by yourself outside the post office.”
“That’s right. They had—”
“The best parking lot for dancing.” I smiled. “Yeah, you told me that too.”
“You remember all that?”
I gently wove my fingers through hers. “I remember everything.”
We started dancing again but stayed quiet for a long moment. The thunder and lightning had stopped, but the rain poured on.
“You know what’s the absolute worst? Thinking of exactly what you should’ve said twenty minutes after you should’ve said it.” She stopped dancing but still had her arms around me. “Sorry. I ramble when I’m nervous. I’m totally ruining this first date, aren’t I?”
Something like bubbles floated through my chest. “Is that what this is? A date?”
“Oh, I mean, it doesn’t have to be. Not if you don’t want it to—”
“I want it.” I kissed her, and everything inside of me relaxed. Kissing Eliza Crowley felt like coming home. “And never apologize for being honest. I always want you to be honest with me.”
Even if it hurts me in the end, which it probably will, because this already feels too good to be true.
She ran a hand across my jaw, making me shiver. “Reed?”
“Yeah?”
“I honestly want you to kiss me again.”
The wind picked up and blew the rain under the awning, but neither of us moved as I kissed her slowly. Every wall that I spent years building up broke down.
Let them.
Let them all.
Let every single stone of mine lay at her feet.
She was worth it.