Chapter 16 #2
“Maybe he could go with you and become a river guide too. You could stay out there in the wilderness until you have kids, and then—”
“Chloe.” Summer laughed. A real one. “Come on. I don’t think about that kind of stuff.”
“Why not?”
“Well, because…I don’t know,” she said honestly.
Chloe grinned. “You know, you act so tough, but I think you’re really just a big chicken.
” She flapped her arms and made a clucking noise.
“Want to know a secret? I’m chicken too.
My dad walked out on my mom, and granted, she got lucky the second time around, but I don’t think I inherited any of the luck at all. ”
“If Braden walked, he’s not worthy anyway.”
“Don’t say his name,” Chloe said with a pout.
“He doesn’t deserve you.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Her eyes filled. “Damn it. I fell hard for that jerk. It was the real thing too. True love.” She sighed. “At least for me.”
“You were okay with falling in love?”
“Are you kidding? Yes. Look, I know we both come off so tough and independent, but the truth is, while you’re the real deal, I’m not. I want to share my life.”
Summer had seen how love worked. She’d watched it bloom like a new rose between her mother and father every day of her life. It’d been the can’t-eat can’t-sleep kind, heart-wrenchingly real to the point where for her parents, little else had been able to penetrate. Little else had mattered.
Summer had lived with that, knowing she was an afterthought, a result of their bond but not really part of the circle.
She even understood it, though she’d never felt such a bond herself.
And she’d decided life was too big, the possibilities too endless to tie herself down to one person to the exclusion of everything else.
She’d been told more than once that she approached relationships like a guy would.
She was fine with that. Had always been fine with that.
Until now. Being here reminded her how nice it could be to have those ties she always avoided.
Being here reminded her that love could be a nice, warm, sort of fuzzy-like emotion that maybe could grow on her quite nicely.
At the thought, a little flicker came from deep inside.
Maybe she could want to belong to a specific place rather than roam, be part of a group that didn’t change with each trek she took, to be a part of a relationship that mattered, that stuck.
“You’re definitely the strong one here,” she said to Chloe.
“Being able to admit what you want, being able to go for it.”
“Wow, look at us,” Chloe said. “Bonding. Who’d have thought?” She tipped up the glass, downed it, then slapped it down on the bar. “We should go get inked together next time.”
“Um…thanks, but no.”
Chloe shrugged and topped off their glasses with the last of the pitcher. “We could go get a piercing. I was thinking of getting a nipple piercing.”
“Ouch.”
“I hear you get used to it.”
“Really?”
“Well, I don’t really know. But then I could reward myself by getting a massage, and Sven is so gorgeous…”
Summer choked on her drink and Chloe’s grin nearly split her face.
“And you think I’m crazy,” Summer said.
“I’m plastered,” Chloe said cheerfully.
“I can tell.” Feeling superior, Summer pushed her empty drink away, then swayed. She put a hand to her head. “Whoa.”
“The drinks were doubles. And we had two. Or four. So that’s like…” Chloe began counting on her fingers, weaving a bit in her chair. “A lot.”
The bar had begun to fill up. People shifted in closer, and Summer wasn’t so far gone she couldn’t focus on the faces. An unmistakable desire to giggle overcame her. “Uh-oh.”
“Huh?” Bleary-eyed, Chloe looked and gasped. Braden was heading purposely their way, his mouth grim, his face granite.
Nothing unusual there.
But his eyes. Those dark, usually unreadable eyes blazed with hunger, with need and temper and heat as they lit on Chloe and no one else.
“Chloe,” Summer said carefully, enunciating each syllable. “That’s not the look of a man who doesn’t give a shit.”
“I know. Oh God, I’m sweating. Look at him, he’s so pretty. And I can’t hardly see straight, I’m drunk.” Chloe sounded panicked. “What do I do?”
Summer had never seen her cousin look so open, so vulnerable in her life, and her heart swelled in sympathy.
“Well, I think you should stay seated, for one thing.” She glanced at Braden, and her heart started to beat faster for Chloe.
God, to be looked at like that. Joe had, when he’d been buried deep in her body, so deep she’d lost herself in him.
She’d loved it. Why hadn’t she told him she loved being with him like that?
“What do I do?” Chloe whispered desperately.
“Smile?”
“I don’t know if I can. I want to cry.”
“No. Crying would be a mistake. Don’t let him see how much this means to you. Suck it up,” Summer demanded.
“Okay.” Chloe forced a smile that hardly quivered at all. “How’s that?”
“Good.”
“I’ll just keep remembering he wants to throw me away simply because it’s time to move on.”
Summer didn’t respond because she’d thrown plenty of good people away simply because it was time to move on. The wrongness of that was something she’d have to live with.
Braden wound his way through the other customers and came close without so much as a glance at Summer. And the cool, bad, tough Chloe threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck.
Braden stared down at her, his cool visage nowhere in sight as he hauled her up from her barstool, wrapped his arms around her, and held on tight.
“I thought you were leaving,” Chloe murmured.
“I couldn’t go without seeing you again.” The look on his face broke Summer’s heart. He did love Chloe. He loved her with everything he had.
So why was he leaving at all? Feeling like a voyeur, Summer slipped off her barstool. She wobbled and had to blink to clear her vision. Wow. Strong drinks.
The bartender was watching her. She hitched her chin toward Chloe, who was now kissing Braden as if their tongues were fused. “Make sure he drives her home, okay?”
“Will do,” he promised. “How about you?”
“I’m going to call for a ride.”
“Good idea.”
She made her way outside. Night had fallen, and it was still drizzling. She leaned carefully against the building and pulled out her phone. It was midnight. Later than she’d thought.
Who to call? She tried Tina.
But the very male, sleepy “hello” that resonated through the phone into her ear and through her body was not Tina’s. It wasn’t Bill’s either.
It was Joe’s. Huh? Stupefied, Summer glanced at her screen and groaned.
She’d hit Joe without her brain’s approval.
Bad fingers. She tried again with the slow precision of a person who’d had three double strawberry daiquiris.
This time she went for the twins. Sure they enjoyed hating her guts but this was a family emergency, and even dysfunctional families stuck together.
The rain sifted down over her like cooling fingers on her hot face as she waited.
“Are you going to hang up on me again?” asked a slightly bemused Joe.
Ohmigod. What was the matter with her fingers? “Sorry,” she said quickly. “Wrong number.” She disconnected and touched her forehead with the phone. “Concentrate, damn it!”
Before she could call her mother next, her phone vibrated in her hand. She peeked at the screen and winced. Yep. “Hey,” she said casually.
Joe no longer sounded sleepy. “What are you doing?”
“Sorry I woke you.”
“You don’t sound like yourself.”
That he knew her so well no longer surprised her. That it made her want to cry did. She wasn’t going to get mushy over just the sound of him, she wasn’t. But why hadn’t she ordered an Uber? The answer was rather revealing she decided shakily. “Look, I hit the wrong number.”
“Twice. Who were you trying to call this late?”
“I don’t know.” She tipped her face up, closing her eyes as the rain soothed her. “I’m a bit off my center here.”
“Yeah. Join the club.”
The utter weariness in his voice cut right through her happy little fog. “Joe?”
“Good night, Red.”
He was going to hang up. Panic gripped her.
Not her typical kind of panic attack, where she couldn’t breathe, but a new kind, a vise on her heart, squeezing out terrifying emotions that she nearly choked on.
She imagined him sitting in his bed, all rumpled and sexy with it, maybe without any clothes on, and her body tingled.
“I got a text tonight. It threw me off. And then I drank Chloe’s stupid pitcher and it turned out to be doubles, and now I can’t—”
“You’ve been drinking? Where are you?”
“Outside of Tooley’s.”
“By yourself? In the rain?”
“Yes, but—”
“Get back inside. I’ll be right there.”
“Joe, wait. I—”
But he’d already disconnected.
“Fine.” She sighed. “I’ll wait.”
For him, she had the feeling, she’d always wait.