Chapter Eleven – Alright
Chapter Eleven
Maisey
ALRIGHT
Performed by Lady A
SIX YEARS AGO
HIM: What is a romance book you would recommend to someone starting out?
HER: Who is it for?
HIM: Why does it matter who it’s for?
HER: Who they are will determine whether I suggest a slow burn or a sweet read or something really steamy.
HIM: Never mind.
HER: That only makes me more curious about who it is.
HIM: Fine. It’s me.
HER: *** crying laughing emoji *** Why are you reading a romance book?
HIM: I lost a bet about a prank.
HER: Wait. The King of Pranks lost a bet about one.
HIM: Don’t rub my nose in it, my Maisey-girl. It’s already painful enough.
PRESENT DAY
My vision turned spotty, and I realized I’d forgotten to breathe.
I inhaled slowly, forcing myself to count to four before letting it out.
I repeated the action, all while staring at the orange words written on a piece of white construction paper.
It looked like the signs the cheerleaders used to make for the high school football team.
The ones Chelsea would have spread out around the living room while she and the other cheerleaders laughed and joked and gossiped.
Beckett stopped me just as I reached for the sign. His hands were warm, searing into my wrist, searing into me and reminding me of the heat that had existed in our life-altering kiss.
He’d bent me over movie-star style and kissed me. Not a gentle peck. Not a mere brush of lips. Instead, it had been the kind of kiss you gave in the dark. Full of longing and lust.
It had felt like returning home and being wrapped in love and acceptance.
It had felt like an inferno of desire had been released, blazing through our veins.
If his crew hadn’t whistled, we might have ended up on the floor in a tangled twine of legs and lips and mouths. Or at least, I’d wanted us to end up there before I’d remembered our audience. Before I’d remembered the kiss was for show.
Beckett had put on a top-notch performance, but I had to remember that was all it was. An act. One I’d been struggling to play along with, just like I was struggling to pull together my emotions as I stared at the note on my car.
I pressed a hand to my stomach, reading the words on repeat.
Fix it before someone gets hurt.
Fix what? And did it mean emotionally hurt? Physically? Was this an actual threat?
“We need to bag it and take it to the sheriff.”
Lost as I was in my own spiral, it took a minute for me to really register what Beckett had said. “What? Why?”
When I looked from the note to him, fury swept over his features. An angry flare I hadn’t witnessed since our teen years.
“What do you mean, why? So we can see if there are fingerprints on it. I want to have a nice long talk with whoever left this and set them straight.” Beckett’s voice was dark and menacing. It sent goosebumps over my skin in all the right and wrong ways.
“It’s just some stupid prank. I’m not wasting the sheriff’s time with something like this,” I said, reaching for the note once more, only to have him jerk me away again. I was up tight against him with my shoulder pressed against his chest and our hips jammed together.
It was too much touching…or maybe not enough.
“We are absolutely giving this to the sheriff,” he insisted.
“This isn’t any different than when the kids used to call me Corny the Deformed Corncob. Or Frankenstein Mouth. The best way to handle it is to ignore it.” I hated that my voice shook a little.
“It’s not the same at all. Whoever this is, threatened you.”
I took a deep breath, glancing back at the sign.
It could mean nothing, or it could mean everything.
I frowned. The only choices I’d made today had been about moving out of my apartment and in with Beckett while pretending to be his fiancée.
I could think of only one person who would despise that choice.
Only one person who still felt like she had a claim on Beckett, even though he’d never really belonged to her.
I pulled away from him, ignoring everything he’d said and tearing the sign off the window as he grunted in disapproval.
“I’ll talk to her,” I said.
Inside, I was groaning. I didn’t want to add “confront Delilah Nattingly” to my growing list of tasks.
“Her?” Beckett’s jaw clenched tight. “So you think this is Del.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course it’s Delilah.”
I unlocked the truck, opened the passenger door, and threw the sign and my phone inside before turning to face him.
“I’ll make a detour to city hall on my way to the bank,” I told him.
Worry flashed over his face, followed by anger and regret. “You have enough to do. I need to drop by the mayor’s office with the budget numbers anyway. I’ll talk to her. If this was her, she won’t bother you again, Maisey. I promise.”
The surety in his tone should have relieved me, but I knew better. Delilah hated me as much, if not more, than she hated my sister.
She and Chelsea had been bitter rivals from middle school on. In high school, Chelsea had taken it to a whole new level, spewing rumors about how Delilah was willing to spread her legs for anything on two—or four—legs just like her dad’s mistresses. Chelsea had never let up once.
My sister’s smear campaign, on top of everything happening in the press with Delilah’s parents, had sent Delilah off the edge in her senior year, and it had been Beckett who’d ridden in like a white knight to save her.
From that moment on, the crush she’d had on Beckett had become an obsession, and Delilah had always seen my friendship with him as the one thing in her way.
Finding out we were engaged would be just the thing to set her off.
But I also knew Delilah wouldn’t be inclined to listen to me today any more than she’d listened a decade ago when I’d told her she needed to get out of Swift Rivers for a few years for her mental health.
If there was anyone who had a hope of reaching her, it was Beckett.
He was the one person she really wanted.
The one person who’d been a friend to her more than anyone else.
“Fine,” I said. “You talk to her.”
I slammed the passenger door and went to move around the truck to the driver’s side, but he grabbed hold of my hand one more time.
“I’m sorry, Maise.”
When I looked up, he was studying my lips. This time, he wasn’t apologizing for Delilah’s note. He was apologizing for kissing me, like he had when I was twelve. I beat back the humiliation before it could hit fully.
I tugged my hand away, putting the truck between us before responding. “Nothing for you to be sorry about, Beckett. You don’t owe me a romance novel for that kiss. We both knew it would take a lot to convince people we were a real couple. I’m not going to pass out from shock or expect more.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I didn’t respond. I just jumped into the truck, celebrated when the engine started, and pulled away from the curb while Beckett watched from the sidewalk. He had his hands shoved into his pockets and a frown between his brows. Was the frown because he didn’t believe me? Or because he did?
Because my heart absolutely didn’t believe a single syllable of the lie I’d uttered.
I’d always wanted Beckett for real.
My sister’s words from fourteen years ago, when I’d come out of the bathroom with my headgear on after Beckett’s first kiss, rang in my head.
Don’t do something stupider than normal and start to think that kiss was the real deal, Cornlette.
You’ll only end up with a twisted heart to match your twisted jaw.
I just had to find a way to make sure my heart got the picture this time.
? ? ?
While Beckett was at the station for the last three days of his shift, I spent my after-work hours moving most of my belongings to his house.
I still had the larger furniture and the heavy boxes of books to move, as well as Dad’s bedroom set and whatever else he wanted with him, but I needed Beckett’s help for most of those things.
Spending time in Beckett’s home and seeing all the beautiful renovations he’d done made walking into the burnt remains of my childhood home with Dad on Thursday even more painful.
Dad’s eyes filled with tears as he took in the charred walls and the boarded-up door and window. His raw pain echoed mine, and I had to blink rapidly so I didn’t break down in front of him.
“What did I do?” he whispered angrily.
At least he was fully aware right now. He wasn’t calling me Marjorie and telling people I was coming home from school.
While he’d been in the hospital, he’d had several more bouts that had sent him reeling into the past. The doctors told me it was a side effect of the transient ischemic attack, or mini-stroke, he’d had when he’d crashed his rig.
The cognitive decline and vascular dementia should be temporary, but the knot on his head he’d earned the day of the fire, and the stress of the disaster itself, had likely exacerbated the effects.
While I wasn’t sure what I’d do with Dad when I was at work if he continued to forget where he was, what he was doing, and what year it was, I knew it was important to keep him calm when we were together.
So, even though my heart was bleeding at the damage to the house, just as much as his was, I looped my arm through his and tried to lighten the mood.
“This is the last time I ever let you try to cook anything again.”
Shock traveled over his face. “I was cooking?”
Try as he may, Dad couldn’t remember the fire.
“Guess so. You didn’t have to burn the house down to get a meal, you know. I would have made one for you,” I continued to tease.
He didn’t respond, and I tugged on his arm to get him moving. We stepped around the fans the water restoration company had set up and headed toward the bedroom he and Mom had shared on the opposite side of the house from my old room.