Chapter Ten
CHAPTER TEN
“I’ M GOING OUT .”
“Really?” Fia asked, looking at her keenly. “With who?”
“With Gideon, if you must know.”
“With Gideon ?”
“It’s not a date- date , don’t look at me like that. But...” She’d been thinking a lot about this. It was going to look like it was a date. And that...that was going to make her seem like she might be something special. Though she was supposed to help him talk to women so no one could think they were together.
But no one would.
“I am going as his wingman, kind of. And he’s kind of mine.”
“I don’t understand any of that.”
“You had to be there. I’m supposed to think of a safe word.”
“Rory... Are you sure that he thinks of you as a wingman if he wants you to have a safe word?”
“It’s not that kind of safe word, Fia.”
Fia narrowed her eyes. “Is there another kind?”
“It’s a code word. If he’s acting too grim. And he’s going to have to say it if I’m too boring, or too weird, or too...”
“Why do you think that about yourself?”
“It’s how everyone has always treated me.” She wasn’t getting into The Beer Incident. Or The Diary Incident.
“It’s not true. People are just... Kids are jerks. If you’re basing this off the way people treated you in high school, then you just have to stop.”
“It’s not that . I wish it were just that. But it’s like I’m... In middle school I was an object of ridicule, but now I’m just...furniture or wallpaper at best. I’m tired of it.”
“Nobody thinks of you as wallpaper.”
“Fia...”
“You’re sweet and funny. And just because you’re like that in a quiet way, does not mean that you’re boring, or wallpaper. It doesn’t. It isn’t fair if anyone made you feel that way.”
“A lot of people have made me feel that way.”
“Have I?”
“No.” She ground her back teeth together. “I don’t know, there was something about being the age I was when Dad left, and Mom was just so...grief-stricken. And I needed help with things, and I didn’t feel like she cared.”
“Rory,” she said. “That was her. Her stuff. It wasn’t about you.”
“I don’t know how to get dressed up.”
“I didn’t know that you wanted to dress a certain way, or different than you do.”
“Yes, I desperately do. I don’t know how to be like you. You always looks so put together and pretty. Quinn is so sharp you can’t ignore her. Alaina is a bombshell. And I’m none of those things.”
“You are adorable. I’m annoyed that anybody gave you the idea you weren’t.”
She sighed. “It’s just, all the markers in my life seem to indicate that I’m not interesting at all.”
“Come on. We’re about the same size, even though I’m two inches taller than you. I can find you something to wear.”
She found herself getting ushered into Fia’s room, which was funny because generally Fia guarded her bedroom at all costs from intruders of any kind.
Her sister’s room was always a little bit haphazard. There were quite a few dresses slung over the armoire and even a few on the floor. There were about four pairs of shoes in various places about the room—they weren’t paired up together.
Fia was so together and type A about most things. Running the house, the farm store, the ranch. But very much not her bedroom.
Maybe it was just a bridge too far. She organized all these other things, and she couldn’t possibly organize that as well.
It was fair.
“So...what are you after?” Fia asked.
“I need to look a little bit shocking. Where the people in town almost won’t recognize me. And I am kind of like a rom-com where the heroine takes her glasses off and then she’s pretty.”
“You don’t wear glasses anymore,” Fia pointed out.
“I know. The contacts were shortsighted on my part. If I had kept the glasses, imagine how much easier having a big transformation would be.”
“Right. Well. So what you’re saying is...you want a makeover, but you still want to be you.”
“I don’t have to still look like me. If you have enough makeup to pile on to make me look like someone else, go for it.”
“I don’t think that’s body positive,” said Fia.
“I don’t feel very positive about myself overall, or did you not get that from this interaction?”
Fia sighed. “Fine. I’m not going to argue with you. I’m not going to try to make you feel better. I’m just going to put your makeup on for you.”
She ended up putting on a blue dress that was buried in the back of Fia’s closet. Rory had certainly never seen her sister wear it. It was very fitted and came above the knee, the neckline was scooped and it had thick tank-top straps.
She didn’t like wearing things that were so tight, because she was still sensitive about...everything. And her legs were still skinny.
But the color suited her, and Fia did a good job on her makeup.
She made it coordinate and made Rory feel something close to confident. Mostly because she actually did look like somebody else.
Get a makeover.
She’d done it.
She could check that off her list.
By the time Fia got the glossy red lipstick in place, she might as well have been a sexy stranger.
Sexy. Maybe she looked kind of sexy.
“And these,” said Fia, holding a pair of high-heeled shoes, which Rory slipped her feet into, and then winced.
“These are like torture devices.”
“And your legs look eight feet long.”
“Uh...not sure about my knobby knees getting that much attention.”
“Your knobby... I don’t even know what to say.” Fia looked at her critically. “Take your hair down.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s pretty. Show it. And please be careful. I don’t know exactly what you’re planning on doing.”
“I’m not planning on doing anything,” she lied.
Because if some man wanted to make out with her in full view of the bar, she was going to take him up on it. And if it felt good, and she liked him, then maybe she was going to have to give him her virginity, because again, the idea of going to Boston weighed down with that was...not the best.
“Be safe and watch your drink.”
“I will. Thank you. But you don’t need to worry about me. I have literally spent all my life being cautious, I’m not going to suddenly go out and get not cautious.”
“People do,” said Fia. “And I get that you’re going out with Gideon... Is there something to that? Or are you hoping for there to be?”
“I told you. I’m his wingman.”
“No, I get that. But are you sure that’s all?”
Even Fia was a little worried about Rory losing sight of reality.
“He’s Gideon Payne,” she said, feeling incredulous and annoyed, because...he was still the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.
She was only human.
But she also knew that he was completely out of her league, and she was never that stupid. She couldn’t be. She looked pretty tonight. Because she didn’t look like her. And it wasn’t about the way her features were arranged or the way her body was shaped. There was just something about her that seemed to be fundamentally average.
It was that spark. That specialness. She was trying to manufacture it out of thin air. It reminded her of Girl Scouts. Trying to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together, but not having any real tinder for it.
“Rory, I get that you see yourself as someone invisible, but trust me, you aren’t. You’re underestimating yourself.”
“Nothing in my life has ever made me think that I was a hot commodity.”
“You were an easy target because you were easy to hurt. And that isn’t at all your fault. It’s about the people who took advantage of that. I don’t know everything that happened when you went away to college, but I know something did. I get that it was horrible and upsetting. But whatever someone said or did, I need you to know they weren’t speaking for everyone. Not everyone looks at you and sees a soft target, or an ugly duckling, or any of the other things that you seem to think. But you know, men and other people around you, they probably know you do feel that way about yourself. They know that they don’t have to reach for you. They can just bend over and pick you up off the ground. They don’t have to be good to you, and they don’t have to treat you well.”
“No offense, Fia,” said Rory, feeling instantly defensive of herself, “but it isn’t like you’ve had any relationships in the last decade.”
Fia pitched up the corners of her mouth into a tight smile and nodded. “That’s fine. You can say that if you need to. But just for the record, if you have to open the sentence with no offense , you should assume that offense is going to be taken.”
“I didn’t mean to be unkind,” said Rory.
“No, I know. I’m giving you advice. To go with your makeover, okay?”
“Okay. But I’m fine. I’m doing something. You have to trust me. I know that you’re protective of me because I have had so much trouble with certain things in the past. But I need to stop protecting myself. So I need you to chill out, too.”
“Hey, I provided the high heels. I’m supporting you. I just don’t want you to be walking into anything you’re unprepared for.”
“I’m listening,” said Rory. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m with Gideon. And you can trust him.”
“Oh, Rory. I don’t trust anybody.”
She said it with a slight smile on her face, but Rory felt the weight beneath that.
She was going to his house, and they were driving from there. So she said her goodbyes to Fia, realizing that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with her sister at this point, and drove her car over to Gideon’s.
By the time she pulled up, he was already out of the house.
He was wearing a tight black T-shirt and similarly snug jeans, and everything feminine inside her wound itself up into a swoon.
He was just so...so beautiful.
She was the one who had gotten the makeover. She shouldn’t be held captive by the sight of him. By this man who was a wholly different creature to the one who had left. To the one who had captured her preteen heart.
He was out of her league. She knew it.
As out of her league as he’d been when she was in middle school.
She needed to learn. She needed to remember.
She was Rory Sullivan. She was too weird for somebody like Gideon. Except her heart beat faster as he took a step toward her when she got out of the car.
“We can take my truck. I’m the designated driver.”
“All right. Should we... Should we not go to a bar?”
She realized that she should’ve asked about that. She was so bad at this.
“I’m fine. It doesn’t bother me to be around somebody else drinking.”
“Okay.”
Maybe she’d misunderstood why he didn’t drink.
“I don’t buy into the alcohol lie anymore,” he said. “That I’ll feel better if I take the drink. Hell no. I personally know I’ll end up feeling a whole lot worse.”
“Okay.” But she promised herself not to order anything alcoholic.
He was staring at her, and there was something cold and hard behind those blue eyes of his.
“Did you come up with a safe word?” she asked.
“You didn’t like it.”
“It’s fine. I’ll use it. Snowy plover it is.” She took a breath. “So... Snowy plover.”
“What?”
“I can’t tell if you want to yell at me or...”
“I don’t want to yell at you,” he said, his face still set in stone.
“You look a little bit like maybe you want to cancel the evening.”
“I don’t want that, either.”
“Then you’re looking a little bit too serious.”
She watched as he made a concerted effort to relax the muscles in his face.
“Is that better?”
“It’s going to have to do. I accept that as an effort.”
“Well, thank you. And when you’re acting out of pocket, I’m going to say termite .”
She scowled. “Why termite?”
He looked at her with that same inscrutable expression. “I don’t know. I think it’s funny.”
“ You think that’s funny.”
“I do. Both are funny.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. Helplessly, even though it was ridiculous. He was so taciturn and he just radiated fury all the time, and yet he thought animals as safe words were hilarious.
Even if he couldn’t quite express it.
“I don’t like it,” she said. “What lady wants to be a termite?”
“You’re too hard to please.”
“I... I’m too hard to please. Ah. Well. That’s ridiculous . I’m not the one that wanders around being grumpy all the time.”
“I’m not grumpy all the time. That’s the problem. Well, I am grumpy a lot, and often don’t know how to...dig back out of it.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. Termite and snowy plover, because they amuse you , because we need to court your amusement tonight.”
“Court my amusement.” His eyes moved over her, and there was something frank and open about his assessment of her body. She had never in her life experienced anything like it. At least not that she’d been conscious of.
She wasn’t supposed to dream about him. Not the man he’d been. Not the man he was now. Both were off-limits. One, because he always had been and he didn’t seem to exist anymore.
The other because...
She didn’t have a reason.
Right then, with his blue eyes on her, making her feel like she might be beautiful, she didn’t have one.
“You look good,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, despising that her voice trembled a little bit. She should try to pretend she was used to compliments. That, she supposed, would make all this more believable. That she was interesting. A siren. A vixen.
With him, she couldn’t be.
Because she wasn’t that good at playing pretend.
She needed to get it together a little bit. Because she needed to exude at least a modicum of confidence when they walked into Smokey’s.
She got into his truck and closed the door firmly, folding her hands in her lap. He got in beside her, and she was struck by how good he smelled. Masculine and spicy and clean.
Her breath left her lungs.
She hadn’t appreciated just how much she didn’t think about desire when she thought of her goals or when it came to this whole endeavor. Whether it was getting a kiss or losing her virginity, it was all about external things.
But he made her heart beat faster. He made her think impossible things.
He made her want things.
And she didn’t especially like that.
Because that made this feel so much riskier. It was one thing when she was out to show the naysayers. It was quite another when it involved him. And her feelings were and always had been so tangled up with him.
Good, bad and impossible.
She was relieved when they pulled into the parking lot, but also afraid.
Relieved because she could get out of this confined space with him. Afraid because it was showtime, and they hadn’t done a dress rehearsal.
“Are you okay?” she asked. Because it was easier to focus on him. On the way that she had noticed his discomfort with the parade. And on the fact that when they walked in, they were going to draw attention. In a way he didn’t want, and in a way she wasn’t used to.
“Just fine,” he said.
“How do you know when you’re fine and when you’re not?” she asked, a genuine question and not just one designed to deflect from her own difficult emotions.
“I’m not battling uncontrollable rage?”
“Oh. Well.”
“I know soon enough when that’s going to happen. I can usually remove myself from the situation in time.”
She looked at him, at the stark lines of his face. “I wasn’t afraid of you.”
“That’s nice,” he said. “Many people are terrified of me.”
“I’m not trying to be nice. It’s true.”
“You never saw me throw a screwdriver through the wall.”
She couldn’t imagine the Gideon from thirteen years ago doing that. She could imagine this one doing it. There was so much in him. Vibrating beneath the surface. It had to come out somewhere.
“Did you throw it at anybody?”
He shook his head. “When I was still hospitalized, sometimes I’d lose track of where I was. Then, I could be a little bit dangerous. After that, it’s just... I get angry. Quicker than I used to. Everything seemed like a joke to me back before. And now sometimes things don’t when they should. I don’t like struggling with anything I...”
“Nobody does.”
“I’m not used to it,” he said.
“Sorry. It must be terrible to know how the rest of us feel all the time.”
She wasn’t making fun of him. If she had always felt competent and popular and easy in a group, she would hate to lose that.
Lost.
He was lost.
He’d been one thing all his life, and he didn’t have it anymore, and the understanding in that moment was so deep and real and harsh, she nearly wept with it.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go in.”
They got out of the truck, and her heart was pounding hard. She looked at him and tried to see if he felt the same. He had that same look she’d seen on his face in the woods. The look of a predator. The look of a soldier.
He was beautiful even then.
And it felt like a secret, to see him like that. Because she knew that no one else had seen that, not here.
“We’re going into a bar. Not war.”
“Snowy plover?” he asked.
“Snowy plover- ish .”
“I’ll relax.”
He did his best. And without thinking, she linked her arm through his, and they walked into the bar.
As soon as the door swung open, she had some regrets.
Because every eye in the place turned toward them. Stared at them.
There were a couple stares of open malice.
She also realized that people thought they were together. Her touching him didn’t help.
She hadn’t initially considered that because she had thought it was laughable that anyone would think they were together. But now that she could float above them and see them in context, her in that mini dress and high heels, clinging to him, she realized how it would seem.
She slowly released her hold on him because she was supposed to be helping him pick up other women. Her touching him wouldn’t help with that.
There were women aplenty in there. All dolled up in dresses that were tighter and shorter than hers.
Maybe she had failed in this assignment, even trying her best.
No. Everybody has different tastes. It’s okay.
She remembered what Fia had said. That people saw her the way she saw herself. That part of her problem was she held herself in such low esteem.
Maybe it was true.
She lifted her chin. She didn’t think so.
Or, at least she wouldn’t from now on.
So she sauntered, or she did whatever walk the high heels would allow, into the bar and went and sat down. He came and sat down beside her.
“I’ll have a soda water,” said Gideon.
“I’ll have a Coke,” she said.
Sheena, the bartender, was an absolutely stunning woman. She had tattoos on her left arm, a twining vine with flowers. She looked edgy and mysterious, and like she’d pair well with Gideon.
Rory ignored the tightness in her stomach.
“On the house,” Sheena said, grinning. “Heroes don’t pay.”
Gideon looked tense for a moment, and she was about to give him a snowy plover , but then he managed a smile. “Thank you, Sheena.”
“You’re very welcome, Gideon.”
“There,” she said. “That was friendly. And you remembered her name.”
She didn’t ask if it was because she was a beautiful woman with curves like Highway 101. Because she wasn’t going to act petty like that.
“I did,” he said, after a beat.
“Okay, there are a lot of people in here.”
“Yes, there are.”
“So, should we go talk to them or...”
“I think we’re going to have to focus on each other,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s unavoidable. We have to dance with each other. I’m going to have to test out my flirting skills on you. And you can try yours on me.”
“Why do we have to do that?” she asked.
“Because everybody in here thinks we’re together.”
“I didn’t mean...”
“It’s better this way. If people think you’re with me... Well, that raises your mystique, doesn’t it?”
The problem was he was right. She wanted to badger him about his ego, but there was no ego here. Just Gideon knowing full well how his reputation worked in this town.
“Did it ever occur to you that other men might not want your castoffs?” she asked.
“No. Because in my experience, they do.”
“I just don’t know what it’s like,” she said. “To go through life with this much confidence.”
“Yeah that’s...not really so much what it is anymore. You know now that I terrify people without even trying.”
“You’re not scary,” she said.
“Many people think I am,” he said, darkly.
“You don’t have to be offended by the fact that I don’t think you’re scary. You’re not in military fatigues carrying a weapon, I might find you vaguely more threatening then, but even so, I wouldn’t be your target so...”
“Fine. I get it. But I am just saying, most people think I’m a little bit scary.”
“And you don’t want them to.”
“No. Not especially. I need to be able to hire people, I need to be able to run my business. I’d like to be able to go out like this. I want to be...something like normal someday. Or at least, normal enough.”
Silence lapsed between them, and her chest ached. She wanted something she’d never been.
He just wanted to feel like himself again.
“All right then. I guess we’ll have our drinks, and we’ll dance.”
“All right.”
He looked at her, his expression going intense, and her breath froze in her chest. Then he reached out, slowly, and tucked her hair behind her ear.
Right then, everything in her body gave thanks to Fia’s demand that she take her hair down. Because then he pinched a silken strand between his thumb and forefinger and drew them down a curl. He looked at her like she might be magic. And even though she thought he was wrong, she felt it somewhere, shimmering low in her belly.
The spark in his eyes wasn’t like ice now, but it had warmed to something like a blue flame.
“You look beautiful.”
He’d said it earlier and it had been like a balm. But here it was something else entirely. A bridge to a whole new place.
To insanity maybe.
She had to remember that he was flirting as practice. For all to see.
“You’re doing a pretty good job,” she said, her throat going tight. “If this were a math quiz, I would probably give you an A.”
He laughed, and he looked almost shocked to be laughing, and that did something to her. Warmed her. He was laughing at her for saying something offbeat. He thought it was funny.
She should’ve known that he might. After all, Lydia found her entertaining; that was how their friendship worked. They had off-kilter senses of humor, and they liked that about each other.
So, of course, it stood to reason that Gideon might also like it.
“Well, thank you for that. I appreciate it. Makes me feel warm inside.”
“I was hoping that it might.”
“You have no idea.”
He was performing. But it still felt nice. And they were drawing attention, which was what they wanted.
“Dancing?”
“Yeah,” she said.
But when he whisked her off the barstool, she wasn’t prepared. She wasn’t prepared for what it would be like when he took her hand. Wasn’t prepared for what it would be like to be caught up in his arms. Pulled up against his hard chest and...everything else.
People were dancing, but she felt like they were the only two people in the whole bar. Maybe the only two people in town.
She’d never experienced anything like this before.
She’d had a crush on him, yes. And then, she’d tried to find a guy to make out with when she was older, and none of it had been this.
The reality of being the focus of his attention.
But it wasn’t the same.
When he’d looked at her before, his gaze had been easy. There had been something engaging and soft about it. And it wasn’t that at all now.
It was hard and sharp, and she felt like he was cutting through her, felt like he could see things that she would rather he didn’t.
It was something she could hardly breathe past, hardly think past. And maybe she was supposed to say something for now, because this didn’t feel easy or fun or just a little bit flirty. It felt like something else altogether. And she felt undone. But she didn’t want to say anything, because she didn’t want to disrupt the moment.
Because suddenly, right now, she felt like a woman who could go to Boston and be anything. She felt powerful. She felt strong.
In his arms, she felt like maybe she was beautiful. Maybe she was worthy of this. Maybe she could have this.
If her middle school bullies could see her now...
She looked over into the corner of the bar, desperately hoping that those bullies were there somewhere. Sadly, they weren’t. But Rory liked the idea that they could have been.
This felt like a victory. Because his arms felt like magic, and she never wanted him to look away. Never wanted him to break the intensity of his gaze.
His hands were large and hot. His body was so hot. That was one of the things she hadn’t fully counted on.
They were just dancing, swaying out in the middle of the floor, but it was more physical than she had imagined this kind of thing might be.
She supposed that spoke to how naive she was.
She felt like a layer of that naivety had been peeled away.
Just now. Just being held in his arms.
Maybe that didn’t make sense. She was past sense now.
“Do you come here often?” she asked.
“I’m going to let you in on a secret,” he said. “Women don’t have to work hard to get a man if what they want to do is hook up.”
“Then why can’t I find anyone to hook up with me?”
“Because you haven’t wanted anybody enough to do it.”
“What?” she asked.
“I know that I haven’t been around in recent years. I haven’t watched all your interactions with men. But what I’ve seen of you recently, Rory, is that if you want to do something, you do it.”
“No. That isn’t true.” She shook her head. “I’m a quitter.”
“That’s what you think. But I haven’t seen that.”
No, he’d said she was beautiful. He made her feel like maybe more was possible than she’d imagined.
He always had.
“I didn’t climb the mountain. Or finish the rope climb,” she said, her voice soft.
“Yeah, I know. But did you want to?”
“No,” she whispered.
“That’s the problem. You didn’t want to. You didn’t want to, so you didn’t. Now you do, so you will. I’m not saying that there wasn’t some personal growth that you needed. You told me that yourself. You wanted to be comfortable more than you wanted to go to school. And that’s fine. But now you’re ready to have some discomfort, and I think you’re going to tolerate it just fine.”
His words reached down deep to something wounded in her. Eased an ache there. He made it sound like it wasn’t she who had been wrong. That she’d just been in the wrong places, doing the wrong things at the wrong times. He made it sound like she could make anything happen if she really wanted it, and that she could forget about the rest.
He was here, saving her, just like he’d done then. And he thought he was broken. But he wasn’t. He was different. Like a bronze statue that had gone back into the fire and been reformed into something else. But the heart of him was still the same.
“Do you want to know what I think?” she asked, her voice almost coming out a whisper.
“What?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you. If that was flirting, then...it worked. Okay?” She felt fluttery and hot. “Because that was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“I don’t think, somehow, that most of the women in this room would agree.”
“Well. I’ve never been like most anyone in the room.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Do you? I never got the idea that you did.”
“The reason I appreciate it is because I’m not like everybody else in the room now. I used to be, though. And I’m finding the transition a little bit difficult. If you can show me the way, then maybe I won’t get lost.”
“I think you’re leading,” she said, heart thundering wildly.
She wanted to kiss him.
The thought stopped her short, like hitting a brick wall.
She wanted to kiss him because he was beautiful. Because she wanted him.
Not because he was a stranger in the woods, something tied more to fantasy than reality. She wanted to kiss him because he was Gideon. And all the reasons she’d had before for not doing it seemed like they didn’t matter. Seemed pointless.
She wanted it.
And that felt like enough.
But she wasn’t sure she was brave enough. At least not yet.
The song ended, and they went back to the bar. She felt like her heart was in her throat.
Some women came over and started talking to him, and she felt toxic, raging jealousy well up in her chest, and she hated that. Because all jealousy was a sense of heightened inadequacy, and she was well familiar with that and didn’t enjoy it in the least.
“Sorry,” said one of them. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced to your girlfriend.”
“She’s a friend. Rory Sullivan, her family is part of the Four Corners crew.”
One of the women looked interested.
“How does that work?” she asked. “I’ve aways been so curious.”
Rory cleared her throat. “Well, it works because we all run it as a collective. We have a common goal, and we pool our money and resources to help each other. It makes it so we cover any shortfalls. Makes it so that all the branches are functioning. Recently we opened the farm store...” She studied the woman closely. She still looked interested.
“We opened the farm store. And that’s bringing a lot of new revenue. It’s been a really exciting time.”
“It sounds like it,” said the woman, and she sounded like she meant it, which was incredible as far as Rory was concerned.
So much for making people think they were together, though. He’d dropped that as soon as those women came over.
And she tried not to feel acidic about it, because what was the point?
She turned away from them as one of the women put her hand on his bicep, and as she did a man approached her. He was tall, though not as tall as Gideon, muscular, though not as muscular as Gideon. Handsome, but not... Well. He wasn’t Gideon, was the thing. But he was a nice-looking man, and probably a little bit closer to her age.
“Hey,” he said. “Thought maybe you were attached, but it doesn’t seem like you are.”
“I’m not,” she said.
“Good to know. So, you’re from around here?”
“Yeah, I’m...Rory Sullivan.”
“No shit,” he said, his brows lifting. “Rory Sullivan. Rory Sullivan. Mike Heater. We went to high school together.”
“Oh,” she said.
Mike. Mike who had photocopied her diary, Mike .
That Mike.
Her bully was, in fact, in residence.
“Do I look that different?” he asked, grinning.
Well, yes, because he was looking at her, and he was smiling. Which was a weird experience.
She should be thrilled with that, she supposed. This was the point of what she was doing. She wanted people to see her differently. She wanted attention.
He was looking at her like she was beautiful, and her only experience of that before this one had been with Gideon just recently. But it felt so different to have Gideon look at her. It had felt warm and exciting. Wonderful.
This was...satisfying in a way but also made her feel a little bit edgy. Not in a fun way.
It didn’t matter, though. She’d never thought she was going to build lasting connections. She wanted to be a legend. It was different.
“ You look amazing,” said Mike, not waiting for her to answer his question.
“So do you,” she said, doing her best to use that same casual tone.
“I’m in real estate now,” he said.
Well, she hadn’t expected that.
“Oh. That’s interesting.”
She wasn’t interested. She didn’t need to be. She needed him to be interested, and he was. How big of a triumph was it? Rory Sullivan chatting it up with Mike Heater.
He was interested in her. He’d approached her. It made her feel...powerful in some way.
“Listen, if you’d like to go get some dinner sometime...”
“I’d love to,” she said, forgetting everything in that rush of actually getting asked out on a date. “Oh. I’m moving. At the end of the month.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “A casual dinner is even better.”
Maybe that meant sex. Maybe.
She didn’t know what she thought about that. It felt weird. This object of pain being the one she could potentially...
She needed to think more about what she wanted out of sex. In her mind now, it was much more than about doing something to prove she could.
She thought of what it had felt like to dance with Gideon. And she couldn’t help but stare at him. At his strong profile. The broad set of his shoulders.
Dancing with him wasn’t about proving anything.
It was the heat of his touch, the solid muscular body beneath her hands. Being close to him. Breathing his air.
“Yeah,” she said, dragging her gaze away from Gideon. Because he was still chatting up those women, and so why shouldn’t she do this? She should. It was the point of them going out, after all. It had been the point the whole time.
“Great. Can I get your number?”
“Sure.”
She gave him her number, and then he offered to buy her a drink, which she accepted. But just another Coke.
“So, he’s not your boyfriend?” Mike asked.
She wanted to laugh. Because why would she have accepted a date with him if she was there with her boyfriend?
And why would she be letting her boyfriend chat up other women?
Did he not recognize Gideon?
“No. He’s not,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s a family friend. And he just came back into town.”
“That’s good. If your boyfriend was flirting like that with another girl...”
“Well, if I agreed to go to dinner with another guy, then we would have some serious problems, wouldn’t we?”
“I suppose so.”
She was glad that she was getting some attention, but she also very weirdly wished she were talking to Gideon again, and that was kind of a mess.
They stayed for just a little while longer, and then Gideon turned to her. “You ready to go?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“How about Friday?” said Mike.
“Yeah,” she responded. “Sure.”
“See you then.”
When they walked out to the truck, Gideon looked at her. “You have something to report?”
“I guess I have a date.” She opted not to tell Gideon about her history with Mike, since that history was linked to Gideon in ways he didn’t know. “I guess coming in with you worked. It made me seem a little bit interesting. Notorious, maybe.”
“Well. Glad I could help.”
“You didn’t seem to have any trouble talking to those two women.”
He shrugged. “Yeah. It was fine.”
“Just fine?”
“I didn’t want anything else out of that. I just wanted to be able to have an interaction and have it not go south. I get that might not make sense to you, but...”
“No. I do get it. I have a date. I’ve never been on a date before.”
“You haven’t?” He sounded shocked, which made her feel soothed in some ways.
“No.”
He opened the passenger door for her, and she climbed up into the truck. He went around to the driver’s side. He got in. He started the car and began to back out of the driveway. “And that guy is going to be your first date?”
“I went to high school with him.”
“Interesting.”
“Why is it interesting?”
“I only mean that... Nothing. Never mind.”
“What?”
“I thought you were aiming for something a little bit more notorious .”
But for her, it was notorious. She’d come in here and she’d... Well, she’d been different because she felt different, and Mike had responded to it. It was like Gideon had said. She’d wanted it, so now she’d done it. It made her feel bold. Like anything was possible.
“It’s a small town, that’s kind of the origin of all my problems. Everyone here knows me too well. But my makeover must’ve worked because he was pleased enough to see me. And believe me, in school he never noticed me unless... He was a popular guy.”
“And you want to go out with a guy who’s just now noticing you with mascara on?”
“Maybe I needed the mascara to signal some availability. Or to look...dateable, I don’t know.”
“You look great,” he said. “But you didn’t need all that. You’re just as pretty without it.”
Her stomach felt hollowed out. Why was he saying all this?
She cleared her throat. “If I didn’t know better I’d think that was flirting.”
Was she flirting? Was she just high on her power because she had been asked for a dinner date, and now she thought she could punch this far above her weight?
“It’s just the truth. It’s not flirting. I don’t know that I succeeded in doing anything like flirting tonight.”
“But you think you can...”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out. To relearn talking to people when I don’t feel like it. To relearn being out when I don’t necessarily want to be.”
“You liked it before, didn’t you?”
“I never really thought about it before. I was out because people wanted me to be. I was around people because they wanted me to be. I wanted to get laid, so I flirted. I wanted to win a medal, so I fought. I don’t know. It just seemed like everything was much simpler then. You would think that having your brain rattled around inside your skull would make you less of a deep thinker, not more of one.”
Her fingers itched, and she realized it was because she wanted to reach out and touch him. Wanted to soothe the lines on his face. Whatever this thing was that had been building between them, she wanted to take it deeper.
But she kept her hands at her sides.
“You had a near-death experience. It’s not surprising it made you reevaluate things. I didn’t have anything of the kind. I’m just getting older, and watching the people around me change. My sister Fia is making this successful business. Quinn is getting married. Alaina has a baby. I just... I was watching everybody do something meaningful with their lives and I wasn’t. I was just the same me. The same nervous, scared me . And I didn’t want to be anymore. I can’t imagine how much more almost dying would do that to you.”
“I don’t know that it was the almost dying so much as everything that came after it.” He paused for a moment. “It wasn’t an easy road to recovery.”
“Your wife left you.” She hadn’t meant to say it like that. Like an accusation. But how could that woman have left him like this? It hurt her to think about. Made her chest ache.
“Yeah. She did. Well. I’m the one that physically left. Because she stayed in the house. But she...she asked me to go. And I did.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “She should have...”
He shook his head. “No. She shouldn’t have. She expected something different. I promised her something different.” He cleared his throat. “I met her at an event on base. Her dad’s an officer. Kind of a cliché, I guess. But she was the daughter of a high-ranking military man, and she was attracted to military men. The Army brats get into what they know.”
“If she knew, then how could she divorce you after you got injured?”
He let two curves in the road stand between her question and his answer. “Because she looked at her dad, and saw a man who had endured the same things and come out strong, unchanged. Because for me the injury wasn’t the end of the story. Recovery is a whole different thing. Okay?” His voice was getting short now, and she could tell he didn’t want to keep going. “Hey, do you want to do that hike?”
“What?” The change in subject was so abrupt she nearly got whiplash.
“We’ll do the hike. I’ll take you up to hike, and we’ll camp.”
“Oh. Right. It is like a two-day thing, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. It is. I got all the equipment. I’ve been getting it all set up for the new property.”
“Then yes. I’d love that. You can help me climb the mountain, and I can get you started on your outdoor business. Though I imagine pretty much everybody you’re going to take out is going to be more competent than I am at this whole thing.”
“Remember, it’s about what you want to get out of it. What do you want in the end?”
“I want to not quit.”
“Then that’s all you have to do. Not quit. Remember, there are no points for a good attitude.”
She smiled just a little bit. “Okay. I’ll remember that.”