Chapter 21
Twenty-One
“Now what?” Leaning against my car parked in front of Nash’s house, I’m sweaty, exhausted, and covered in mosquito bites. “That got us nowhere except carriers of malaria.”
“Angel Oak tomorrow?” Cap asks.
Nash’s phone dings from his pocket as he nods. “Sounds good.” He slides the phone out and glances at me. “What are you doing the rest of the night?”
I don’t have a hotel room, I don’t have money, I don’t have a plan.
I also don’t want to tell him any of that.
After the phone call with my mom, our time wandering the plantation, and the impact of his simple sorry, I could easily be convinced to spend the whole afternoon with him and pretend there’s no fiancé, child he doesn’t know about, brain tumor, or financial wasteland in my bank account.
I might want to listen to him tell stories in that ridiculous shirt and make me laugh so I forget to cry.
I might want to hit pause on my whole life and just . . . pretend.
His gaze drops to a text and pulls mine along with it.
Emma: My bed’s too big without you. Can we talk?
Emma. The blond horse and buggy driver.
Even with the short interaction I witnessed, I knew there was something personal between them.
My chest tightens.
I viscerally hate this information and have no way to justify it.
I’m engaged; we’re supposed to be divorced. Yet the smallest flame of jealousy flickers just the same.
A cane jabs my arm.
“You listenin’?” Cap barks, making me jump. “I said I’m hungry.”
Nash catches me looking at his phone and darkens the screen. Right. We’re married but not. I’m here for a divorce and gold. Of course he has a personal life. Women he texts. Beds he fills.
And of course he was nice today. He’s helping me.
Which makes me realize it’s not just envy I’m feeling toward this woman, it’s fear.
What if she’s not okay with him spending time helping an almost ex-wife?
What if she reels him in, and I can’t find what I need?
What if the $23.48 in my account are the last dollars I’ll ever see?
My mom won’t have surgery. Bennie will have to leave school. The business will be gone.
“Right.” I clear my throat. “Sorry, I just remembered I need to call Jonathan—my fiancé—and have things to do at my hotel.” I dodge Nash’s gaze, saying to Cap, “We should go. Leave Nash to whatever he usually does. No need to interfere more than we already have.”
“Stay for dinner,” Nash says. “I can make burgers. I don’t have plans.”
As unnerved as I am that Emma even exists, I’m shocked by how easily he’s blowing her off and how flattered I am that he is. What is wrong with me?
“Aha!” Cap jabs his cane into the gravel of the driveway, thrilled at the prospect of Nash’s grilled meat. “Now you’re talking my lang—”
“We can’t stay,” I interject. Because really, we can’t.
I need to clear my head and figure out where I’m going to sleep tonight; that won’t happen if I’m around Nash.
I can’t think if he’s making burgers and telling me stories, distracting me from what matters and the whole point of me being here.
And if I’m an issue for him and Emma, I’m not hanging around any longer and risking upsetting her.
Aside from all the feelings churned up today, it also showed me how ignorant I am of the historical matter we’re dealing with. I need him.
“Really?” Nash is cool as a cucumber. “You can’t talk to your fiancé after dinner?”
“It’s normal for people who love each other to prioritize talking.” That sounds nothing like our relationship. “Plus, he worries.”
He shrugs one smiling avocado-covered shoulder, twisting his lips to the side. “Doesn’t sound like a very secure relationship. What do you think, Cap?”
“Nope,” Cap says around Penny.
“Oh we’re secure,” I say, smug. “So secure we could start a security business. Maybe we will when we get married.” I pause for emphasis then wiggle my ring in Nash’s direction at the same time I realize it’s June. “This month, in case you forgot.”
He looks from the ring to my face, so damn unbothered. “You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep forgetting.” I open the driver’s door of my car and step between it and the opening, leaning into the door with my arms folded. “And you could take notes on the benefits of being in a relationship and staying committed.”
He pokes his tongue against his cheek. “So that’s what you call being married and engaged?”
Touché.
“Well it’s not what I call being married and having a girlfriend I blow off.” I quirk a brow. “Nashy.”
I say it in jest, but I’m also fishing. I want to know how serious they are.
Understanding clicks in Nash’s expression.
“Hear that, Cap?” He lifts his chin and wets his lips. “I think Rue here’s jealous.”
Cap grunts in agreement.
It’s my turn to laugh. “Jealous of the poor girl who’s fallen for your shit skills on the harmonica and mediocre storytelling abilities?” I pin Nash with a look. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
“Bet you’d like to know how I sleep at night,” he volleys back, taking a step toward me.
“Been there, done that,” I say, bored.
His lips twitch. “And you kept coming back.”
“Did I though?” I purse my lips, squinting at the live oak branches stretched above us. “Seem to remember telling you I’m marrying someone else.”
“Yet here you are.” His tone shifts—slightly—but enough I notice.
Notice the way the syllables lack the same lightness the same way his eyes do.
His next step brings him to the opposite side of the opened car door.
He wraps his hands around the top, right next to my arms and so his thumbs touch my elbows. “And still married to me.”
“Not for much longer,” I remind him. I’m acutely aware of his thumbs on my skin, but I don’t react. I don’t look at the points of contact nor jerk away. I’m also a masochist, because I can’t shut my mouth. “As I’m sure Emma would prefer.”
“You really want to talk about this.” Now he’s the one who’s smug.
Damn him.
“I do not.” I sound defensive. “You got a text—”
“That you read,” Nash finishes.
Cap grunts; I send him a scathing look.
“That you practically showed me,” I correct, flustered and borderline hostile. I shift my arms around the top of the door, but his thumbs tack them in place. “And I think it’s telling that you haven’t said anything about her.”
Nash stares at me, lips twitching like a marionette puppet from how funny he thinks this is. “And what does it tell you?”
“Nothing,” I snap.
“It must tell you something or you wouldn’t be all worked up.”
“Told you she gets like this,” Cap joins in.
I glare at them both.
“I’ll tell you what I think.” Nash leans closer to me over the top of the door, thumbs not budging. “I think you’re a wife who wonders what her husband’s been doing since you’ve been gone.”
Every quick remark dies on my tongue along with my need to fight him. Right now, that’s who I am. The wondering wife. I wonder what he’s been doing. If he makes her London Fogs. Dances with her when they fight, and what they fight about. Mostly, I wonder why I’m wondering about any of this.
Mostly, I’m wondering why he won’t say what I want him to say and put me out of my self-inflicted misery.
“Hate to interrupt,” Cap barks, “but I’m still hungry.”
“Right.” I shake my head to wrangle my thoughts and slip my arms from the door and Nash’s two thumbs of contact. “I’ll take you somewhere.” Like a soup kitchen.
Cap looks like he might argue, but at my wooden smile—my silent, desperate plea for him to be agreeable, just this once—he complies with an adjustment of his captain’s hat and a grin.
As he starts hobbling around the car, he says, “If you wanted some father-daughter time, you just had to say so, kiddo.”
“Saw right through me,” I deadpan, turning back to Nash. “Thanks for your help today. It was . . .”
“Fun?” he finishes.
A laugh puffs out of me. “I was going to say fruitless.”
The way he looks at me makes me think I’ve said something wrong even though I’ve stated the obvious—I’m ending today with less money than I started with and no closer to the gold I came to find or the divorce I came to finalize.
Maybe it was a little fun, but fun isn’t what I’m here for. It’s certainly not the priority.
He steps away from the car. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Rue.”
I slip into the driver’s seat and close the door, wringing my hands around the steering wheel as I stare blankly through the windshield. A million thoughts tear through me as Cap situates himself in the passenger seat.
Flawed is a word I’d use to describe myself.
I can be stubborn. I like for things to go as planned to a fault.
Based on the number of lies I’ve told Bennie, maybe I’m a liar.
But I also see myself for what I am, and right now, what I am is extremely bothered by the way Nash just looked at me and the fact he’s in a relationship, even though I’m engaged to another man—a wonderful man who checks every box I’ve ever wanted.
I’m blindsided by it. By him. By how he’s somehow exactly the same yet totally different.
A woman once brought a 1950s radio into the store.
It was a mid-century model made of cream-colored plastic with a geometric clockface.
As soon as I plugged it in, Taylor Swift’s staticky voice blasted through the speakers.
I remember thinking how little sense it made: something so old playing something so new.
I expected “Blue Suede Shoes” but got “Bad Blood” instead. A convergence of old and new.
That’s how Nash feels: old and new. Two hims that don’t line up. I can’t comprehend it.