Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Wyn
“One of these days, I’m going to convince my big sister to join me on an episode of The Distilled Truth.” Stevie’s voice echoes loudly over my speaker. I smile, knowing my answer to her question: Not a chance.
I shift my weight back and forth in front of the notes projected on the front wall.
I need to make sure I didn’t miss anything on these starting equations—my graduate students will be all over me if I do.
Taking a step back, I lean on my desk as I suck down what’s left of my coffee.
I used to always be eager to get here early, tackle my own research before lesson plans when the campus was still quiet, but I can’t focus.
I’ve forgotten what it’s like dealing with eager students in organics.
I want it to feel the same as before. I want the adrenaline to kick in.
I want to feel that rush of admiration students had when they realized the work they were capable of making happen.
That excitement when a theory can be experimented and proven like the curriculum plans.
Grants and published articles used to have my pulse racing in the best way, but now . . .
I huff out a breath, frustrated. Feeling like this isn’t part of the plan. This should be the easy and natural part of returning to Rumor. Everything in this place is the same as before. Everything except me.
Stevie’s voice shoves my internal spiral away.
“The needle isn’t moving on any of the missing persons cases in my neck of the woods, either.
I walk through the Rumor County sheriff’s station and see another person listed, and let’s not get me started on the number of sexual assault complaints that do not line up with arrests or warrants in this part of the county.
” My sister has never been one to let dust settle.
The moment something doesn’t work in her favor, she’s ready to dive in with tweezers and figure out what went wrong.
Stevie’s managed to merge two things that would make people around here, and just about everywhere in this country, listen to what she had to say—crime and whiskey.
And while it started as a passion project, a way to siphon questions that she wanted answered, and a way to deal with losing me, she’s built a helluva following for herself.
A business that could keep her from having to do shifts at the bar if she wanted.
But she was in her element there, a focal point, and of all the things that my sister was good at, being the center of attention is the winner. She’s like our mom in that way.
She doesn’t know I listened, or that I had made it a big deal in the small place I called home for a while. But she’ll probably never really understand what hearing her weekly meant to me, especially during a time when I thought I’d never hear or see anyone from my family again.
I pluck an earbud out of my ear and glance toward the door.
It’s early, and the weekend, but now that the sun is up, there’s finally some movement around campus.
I slept like garbage. I tried to numb my emotions the moment my body hit the mattress, but Julian made a home at the forefront of my mind.
I wanted to march over to The Rackhouse, knock on his bedroom door, and finish what we started.
He said we’re nowhere near done, and I agree.
I want the answers that’ll make me feel like someone knows me.
The way I felt when I saw him again, how it felt to have him near me . . . I shouldn’t, but I want more.
And since I’m not interested in lying to myself, despite everyone else, I know that if I went there, I wouldn’t have left without feeling his hands on me again.
So I came here instead. I tossed and turned for too long and watched the shadows of my ceiling fan move like a metronome, until I did what I always have done—found distraction in my work.
“Thought I might find you here,” a calming voice says from the doorway to my office.
I know the tone before I turn to see Reed leaning against the frame.
One hand slung into the pocket of his navy chinos as he eats an apple.
The smile he flashes at me used to feel flirtatious but now seems more concerned than anything else. “How long have you been working?”
I glance at the clock on my laptop—8:30 a.m. So, for more than three hours now, but I decide on saying, “A little while.”
“I tried to get into my office, but I left my key card somewhere and can’t seem to find it,” he says, looking behind him at the empty hall from where he just came. “If you’re not in the middle of something, want to duck out and have some breakfast with me?”
I exhale, more loudly than I intended. The last thing I want to do is unload any of my feelings on Reed, but maybe some food and a break wouldn’t be the worst idea.
He shifts, crossing his hands over his chest. “Are you doing okay? Feels like something is off—at the cocktail party, you looked like you were about to have a panic attack. And when I just came in here now, you looked about ready to throw your laptop clean across the room.” He smiles, asking more gently, “Or am I misreading things?”
Misreading things . . .
“I’m sorry.” I pinch my eyebrows and quickly shake my head. “What did?—”
“Let me buy you a coffee and a bagel, maybe some grits too.”
I’m overthinking everything. I nod. “Coffee sounds like a good idea.” I slide my laptop into my bag, flash him a smile, and slip my shoes back on. “I’m meeting my sisters in Rumor a bit later this morning. Feel like hitting Moonie’s with me?” I ask with a more genuine smile.
“If it ends in a cup of coffee and some time with you, then yeah, I’m game.”
Rumor might be considered a small town in Tennessee, but I always thought it felt so much larger than the population or the size of its downtown footprint.
The trees that line our version of Main Street are so old that their roots make for a bumpy ride as we park along it.
I throw on the parking brake and glance down at the cemetery that connects to the church at the bottom of the hill.
The county sheriff’s department is opposite of the direction we’re walking, running along the far end of the green.
While I’ll be the first to admit that my town isn’t quaint and cute by most small-town standards, it’s always felt like it has a big personality.
A few things feel like traditions here—a farmers’ market on Saturdays, the drive-thru in the winter, and Rumor’s garden club that’s usually held on Birdie’s property, despite most having no problem bad-mouthing my family whenever the mood strikes.
There isn’t a cute coffee shop with trendy drinks either.
We have Moonie’s, an old train car that crashed off the tracks during prohibition, and nobody had bothered clearing.
It was an old, repeated story about the train that ran through this part of the state, the only one that brought booze in and out without consequence.
Until someone caught wind, tried to steal what was inside, and it ended up derailed and burning.
“I’m just brewing another pot now,” Mickey says as Reed and I step inside Moonie’s, taking a seat at the tightly packed counter. He always looks like he’s smiling with the way he tips up the edges of his thick mustache. “Give me two minutes, and I’ll bring you both a cup.”
“Mind if I ask you something?” Reed questions once we’ve both settled into our seats.
I take a look at the small printout of today’s specials, and my mouth waters at the sight of their savory Moonie Pie—short ribs and grits quiche. “Depends,” I answer him mindlessly.
He laughs, like I’m joking. “Alright. Then maybe I can start small and then see where that takes me.”
I smile as Mickey pours out two cups of coffee in front of us, seemingly not listening, but I know this town far too well to know that he’s clocking every word.
“What was it like?” Reed rushes out.
My throat runs dry. “I’m not sure what you?—”
“Transitioning,” he clarifies. And still, it takes me a beat to wade through my own trauma to hear what he’s really asking.
His eyebrows raise as if I should know what he means. “From associate to professor . . .”
My shoulders sag on an exhale, and the steel rod that held my posture feels like it’s giving way for me to breathe.
“To be inside this department without really caring what others think.” He leans closer, and I let the question settle. There’s something about his tone that feels condescending.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You came back, after deciding you needed some time to reflect, and plenty of people have things to say about it.”
It’s the only explanation I was willing to share when I returned to town, yet hearing him say it back—time to reflect—he’s making it seem like our colleagues believe I went on a self-discovery trip.
“I’m fucking this up,” he says with his boyish smile.
I give him a reassuring smile and touch his forearm. “You’re not. It’s okay.”
“All I’m saying is . . . I’m impressed. You were gone, then came back from—from, wherever you went, and now you’re jumping right back in as if no time has passed at all.”
I know the rumors about what happened to me are all over the map—from dead to eloping with a stranger.
I told Reed, along with most people at the university, that I’d needed time away and that the rest was personal.
None of it even came close to the truth, and I didn’t want to add another lie to the mix, so I kept it vague.
My phone buzzes inside my bag, and when I pull it out, seeing it’s from a number I don’t recognize, my nerves kick in.
UNKNOWN
Are you on a date?
I glance up and look to my left, only to see a few folks focused on their breakfasts. When I look right and past Reed, I find hazel eyes locked on me from the other end of the counter. Julian. He swipes at his screen, and my phone buzzes again. How did I not notice him when we came in?
WYN
Sorry, wrong number.
I try biting back a smirk after I send it, feeling relieved that it’s him and that he’s still here. He wasn’t lying when he said we weren’t done . . .
“Last semester, there had been a nasty accusation, and it’s been an ongoing issue,” Reed says.
I haven’t been listening, so instead of asking him to repeat himself, I just nod and add, “That all sounds fairly disruptive.” I try to not look at the end of the counter and focus on whatever it is Reed is going on about.
“That’s exactly what it's been,” he says, just before holding up his hand for something from Mickey.
My phone vibrates in my hand again.
UNKNOWN
I know you just saw me, Crowne. Let’s not play pretend. Unless you’re into that . . .
I swallow the flood of emotions that hits me all at once.
That fucking flutter in my chest—and I know it’s excitement at seeing him unexpectedly, and the stubborn part of me wants to stifle down and ignore it on principle.
My cheeks warm at him using my last name like that, while my alarm bells sound off at the nagging reality of what he’s capable of.
“Would you like anything else?” Mickey asks.
But before I can even answer, from the other side of the counter, Julian calls out, “I’ll take a coffee to go, Mickey.
” He stands to his full height, walking towards the door, and us.
I slightly shift away from Reed as he continues talking, not having caught on to any of what my attention has shifted to.
There was a time when I read into every word the young teaching assistant said to me, but right now, I only catch every few.
“All I’m saying is, I couldn’t find you.” Reed clears his throat. “And then you didn’t come back. I was afraid that you were going to think . . .”
I take one last look at Julian, who’s standing next to me as he pulls cash from his back pocket. It’s impossible to ignore the way he smells like oak and mint or how impossibly tall he seems as I sit low on a stool next to him.
“We’re okay,” I tell Reed, trying to pay attention to the man I came here with and not the one stealing my focus.
“Hey, Mickey, any chance I can get some slices of pie to go?” I ask, leaning forward.
I need something sweet, and even more so now, I need this breakfast to end and go talk with my sisters.
“Sure thing, Wyn. What kind?”
I wave in front of me. “Surprise me.”
“Wyn,” Reed says, a little more quietly when he realizes who else is listening.
Like he just remembered something, Mickey snaps his fingers. “You know,” he says to Julian, looking at me briefly as he slices into the oversize pie. “If you haven’t gone yet, The Whispering Fool is a spot where you might find some faces who’ll remember your father.”
I’m stuck staring and instantly curious that Julian would have talked about his personal life with Mickey Moonie over coffee.
Mickey tilts his head toward me. “Birdie Crowne met him here a couple of times. They were close.” His mustache tilts in a friendly half smile, completely oblivious that we already know each other, that Julian is well aware of who my grandmother is. “Wyn here is her granddaughter.”
When Julian’s focus shifts from Mickey to me, I feel it fucking everywhere.
“That’s really helpful,” he says in a measured tone. “Where did you say The Whispering Fool was again? I’ll have to stop by.”