Chapter Eight
Eight
Margot
Gremlin snores in the back seat while Caine grips the steering wheel like it owes him money. His easy smile is a front, the one he does when he’s actually tense. I was half-joking, half-serious when I told him it was his turn to share, but now I’m worried I’ve triggered an unpleasant memory.
“You don’t actually have to share anything if you don’t want to,” I offer. “I won’t be that offended.”
Rubbing the steering wheel, he chuckles. “I need to give you a heads-up anyway; I was on a season of Love I know it’s editing.”
Caine swallows, his throat bobbing. “I’d love to blame it on editing, but that was all me.”
I nibble the inside of my cheek. Part of me wants to tell him he wasn’t that bad, but if it wasn’t strategically arranged clips, he was a jerk.
“Well, for what it’s worth, you don’t seem anything like that now. I don’t even think I’ve ever seen you lose your temper.”
I’ve heard him and Shane talk about their high school years enough to know that while Shane spent most of his time in the library, Caine was in detention—usually for fighting.
Though I only see him a few times a year, I’ve never seen him lose his cool.
Through broken pipes, drunk patrons, and even the time someone snuck a camera in and pulled the fire alarm for a prank YouTube channel, Caine’s always kept it together.
Aggravated? Of course. Annoyed? All the time.
But not the unbridled rage I witnessed on the show.
“Therapy.” He chuckles. “It helped me sort a lot of shit out.”
This is new information. I like it. I have so many questions, but don’t want to pry too badly. “You should be proud of yourself. Therapy is hard, putting what you learn into practice is even harder.”
Caine shrugs, redirecting the conversation. “It’s a weird feeling going to these things. Knowing anybody there to see me only knows me from some of my worst moments, and that’s the guy they expect. Sometimes it feels like they’re disappointed when they meet me and I’m boring.”
“That is hard. I’m sorry.” I sigh. “Don’t let this go to your head, but you aren’t boring.”
“I am.”
“You gave your brother a taxidermied deer as a wedding gift.”
He chuckles. “That’s just my fantastic sense of humor. One of many amazing qualities.”
“Like humility,” I mutter under my breath before asking, “Was the show what made you realize you needed therapy?”
“It was a few years after. Went to a ‘reunion’ and they were playing a greatest-hits compilation.” His jaw is tight, each word slipping between clenched teeth. “I’d managed to avoid watching my season until then. Seeing it was…”
My hand twitches, the intensity of the urge I feel to reach over and rub his shoulder startling me. I lace my fingers together in my lap to ensure I don’t.
“…a wake-up call.” The rest of his words come out rough and rushed.
“Shane and Delaney both take after our mom, and it always pissed me off that I could have been Joel’s twin.
So I grew out my hair and went all in on the tattoos until I could look in the mirror without seeing him.
Then I watched those episodes and realized none of it mattered because I acted just like him.
The anger, the shitty attitude, all of it.
This was right after he’d died. The next day, I sat down and started looking for a therapist.”
For as much of a menace as Caine is, his emotional intelligence has always impressed me. This new information makes sense and makes my heart ache.
“I’m on edge the whole time at these events because I don’t ever want to be that person again.” He lets out a grim chuckle. “I realize that I have complete control over that, but it still fucks with my head sometimes.”
Tucking my socked feet underneath me, I resituate. “You’ve clearly grown since the show, though. I think it’s smart to be cautious not to fall into old patterns, but you also need to remind yourself how much you’ve changed.”
Side-eyeing me, he’s thoughtful. “How much do you think people can change?”
The question weighs more than it should, making the air in the cab denser, like humidity rising before a storm rolls in.
Nicholas’s current redemption arc pops into my head.
“I think people can change a lot, but they have to be doing it for themselves, because they genuinely want to be different. Not because they’re using it to get something.
” I want to say more, but I’m scared I might tell on myself.
That how much I need to believe that people can completely transform will seep into my voice and give away the fact that I believe it so hard because I have to.
Because if I don’t, I’m doomed to stay who I was.
A reactive, boundaryless, people-pleasing mess of a human, pinballing my way through life, always moving because I was flung by an outside force, not an inside one.
Technically, attempted murder is an action.
Unhelpful.
“I agree with that,” Caine says, jarring me out of my thoughts. I give him a smile, but it’s cut short when my phone vibrates several times beneath my leg. Tugging it free, I see it’s Lauren with more questions. What’s the convention called? Will you be back for spin on Sunday?
“What’s going on over there?”
Nibbling my lip, I try to decide if I want to tell him about the “sort of friends, sort of regret giving her my phone number” dynamic I have with Lauren.
I’m in over my head here, and I struggle with finding the happy medium when setting boundaries.
If I say what I’m thinking and how I feel, I’m too direct, or “bitchy.” If I try to wrap my feelings in what seems like a socially expected amount of niceties, the boundaries I set get stomped on.
I wish I could ask Claire. She’d have some tactful way to extract myself from this situation or tell me if I’m in the wrong.
Unlike me, she is not the scorched-earth type; she is the healthy-boundaries type.
My phone vibrates again with another question. I turn it off. That seems like a nice middle ground.
“Nothing,” I finally answer Caine, then circle back. “Why’d you change?”
He snorts. “I realized I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life as an angry SOB.”
“Then trust your progress. From what I’ve seen, you do a good job keeping yourself in check.”
Caine’s exhalation is long, like he’s been holding it in for a while. Tension eases from his muscles, his shoulders slowly dropping away from his ears.
He shoots me a look that feels like sliding into a warm bath. “Thanks. I think I needed to hear that.”
“Anytime.” Unable to soak in the moment, I pull the plug on the metaphorical tub. “But now I see why you actually made me come. You know I’ll zap your ass and drag you out by the hair if you start acting up.”
Caine laughs. “Caught me, that’s exactly it.” This time, his grin is the real one. It transforms his whole face, proving he earned the smile lines at the corners of his eyes.