Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Lila was all tangled up after that two-night stay in the woods with Nolan. Everything was Nolan, no matter how hard she tried to make it not that.
She was supposed to be focusing on her date with Jason. She had even tried to make things a little bit more normal between the two of them. Although, normal would have been sniping at him, maybe, but she was actually trying to find something healthier.
That companionship that they’d had when they were kids, before she was attracted to him. It made sense to her. To try and go back to that. To try and find real companionship with him again, family even.
And she had opened a vein and shared some things with him, asked a really vulnerable question about whether or not they deserved their abandonment, which she hadn’t actually meant to do, but he had been kind about it, and he had actually helped her work through it to an extent.
So she felt good about that.
But what had happened after, when they had gone swimming...
That was pretty difficult. Difficult to cope with, difficult to erase, difficult to pretend had been nothing.
Because for one moment...
For a moment, she’d been so sure that she’d seen the same need reflected in his eyes that she felt inside of her always.
From Nolan, who had always treated her like a piece of furniture, like she wasn’t a woman, it was like he could suddenly see it, and part of her had wanted to push him.
But she was doing so well, and she was probably imagining it anyway.
She had a date with Jason.
And she just wanted to be free of this. Of this ungodly, ridiculous longing that had controlled her life for so long.
She deserved to be free of it.
Not to backslide just because he had been shirtless and beautiful, and only a few inches away.
She had slept so fitfully last night, and now even though she had spent a couple of days away from him, she was still haunted by it.
Tonight, they needed to get Marlowe and Cody off the ranch and out for drinks.
They had already planned on how to do that.
It was a risk, but they didn’t want to plan it too early, because that was going to seem suspicious.
She had subtly manipulated their calendars so that they didn’t actually have anything going on.
And she knew that Nolan was going to bring it up with Cody while they were working together, and Lila was going to send a text to Marlowe and Cody later.
When the hour came, she pushed send on the text that she had copied and pasted from her notes app. She had spent way too long trying to make it sound casual, and, like, nothing was happening, and was very breezy, and there were no big deals to be found.
At least this was something of a distraction.
She hadn’t really been talking to Jason that much on text, and she couldn’t figure out how weird that was.
Or wasn’t. Were they supposed to talk before the kind of date that seemed like a necessary prelude to a hookup?
Was there any point in them getting to know each other?
Maybe it was completely normal, but she wouldn’t know, because she wasn’t normal, not in that way.
Which was a fine thing to think on a night like this.
Marlowe and Cody both confirmed that they were happy to go out, and she watched her texts and tried to guide a time.
Then she stood in front of her closet and looked at the offerings.
She had a couple of dresses. She had no less than three denim skirts because she had bought them at the farm and garden, and she felt like they were cute and feminine, but also went with all of her boots.
Her hand hovered over the dress, and for a moment, she thought about what Nolan might think if she rolled in wearing it. It was a floral pattern—and she had also gotten that at the farm and garden. It fell just above her knee, and it was cute enough.
She had bought it to wear at the weddings that they had on-site, because she felt like she blended in a little bit better if she was wearing a basic dress versus wandering about in her denim and plaid.
She otherwise, though, didn’t wear them.
At the last minute, she redirected. She pulled a pair of jeans out of her drawer, found a belt with rhinestones, and a white tank top.
She put a plaid button-up over the top, rolled the sleeves up to her elbows and grabbed her favorite pair of tan boots.
She checked herself in the mirror. She didn’t normally think about her body. She didn’t normally need to.
But, if she said so herself, her ass looked pretty good in the jeans, and it was a very normal thing for her to wear.
She popped into the bathroom and looked in the mirror.
Her hair was styled basically, as it ever was, and the braid that she had put it in was beginning to fall out.
She pulled the rubber band off the end of that braid and worked her hair back through itself, finger combing it and staring at her reflection.
It was all right. And, anyway, even if it wasn’t, she had no idea what to do about it.
She had never really learned how to style her hair.
She could have. She had learned how to do a lot of things in her life, and it wasn’t like she couldn’t have applied herself to that.
But there was some part of her that had always felt...
Outside of the kinds of femininity that other women learned how to project from an early age.
Her mom hadn’t helped her with this kind of thing, and it had been easier to decide that it wasn’t important than to feel inadequate.
She engaged in a sudden wild fantasy about taking classes for makeup and hair, just so she could be competent at it.
Because sometimes she wished that she could.
Because she had a date coming up in a few days, and how was she going to get herself...
vampy for that. She had no idea. If she tried, she would probably end up looking like a raccoon, rather than like someone who was made up for a date.
That was just challenging. Scary, even.
She opened up the drawer in her bathroom vanity and pulled out the meager little makeup kit that she had.
She had a semi-sheer pink lip gloss that she put on, and a swipe of shimmery taupe-colored eyeshadow.
She pinched her cheeks a few times and looked at her reflection, and she just saw Lila.
But that was a good thing. She didn’t need to look like something else. She was just going out with her brother, his fiancée.
And Nolan.
She turned back and looked into the closet again, examining the dress, and then very determinedly did not change her clothes.
She drove to the hotel where they all piled into Nolan’s truck. She sat shotgun, with Marlowe and Cody sitting in the back holding hands.
Marlowe was dressed up. That was probably good, considering that the engagement party was happening after.
But it also made Lila feel like maybe she had made the wrong choice.
Too late now.
Nolan, for his part, had cleaned up nicely. He was freshly shaven, and she could smell the aftershave, and the soap on his skin.
She could smell his skin. Maybe that wasn’t normal. Did that make her some kind of vampire? Perhaps.
He had on a black button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows just like hers, but that gave her a good look at his tattoos, his muscular forearms. She didn’t know what his tattoos meant, and right then, she wished that she did.
It was the kind of thing that she supposed you didn’t really tell your friend’s younger sister, but she was sure Cody probably knew. What the tattoos meant, why he had gotten them, what they symbolized.
Right then, it was difficult for her not to reach across the space between them and touch the darkest incline that ran from his elbow down to his wrist.
She clenched her hands into fists and pressed them firmly in her lap.
“So what made you guys want to take us out for a drink?” Cody asked.
“To be fair,” Lila said quickly, “we all wanted to take you for a drink, but Addison ended up with some campaign stuff, and Walker had to deal with something at the ranch, so it ended up just being us.”
“Gotcha. Where are Zane and Cara?”
She and Nolan exchanged a glance.
“Something to do with the ranch, his ranch,” Nolan said. “Though to be honest, I kind of wonder if they were just wanting a night in. You know how Zane gets.”
“Sure do.”
“He’s gotten less that way with Cara, of course, but every now and again, the antisocial kicks back in,” Nolan continued.
She looked at Nolan and lifted her eyebrows, trying to indicate that he was going a little too far explaining all of this.
He finally stopped talking.
“So how is the trail project going?” Marlowe asked.
“Just fine,” Lila said. “Great.”
“Oh, good,” Marlowe said. “And, how did the rafting trip go?”
She froze, and she knew that this was...
Was she supposed to say anything about Jason in front of Cody?
She was twenty-five, she wasn’t fifteen, but God knew Nolan was sure being weird about it, so how would her actual big brother act?
“I got a date. Actually.”
She heard an abrupt shift in the back seat.
“With who?” Cody asked.
“This guy named Jason? I don’t know. He was part of the bachelor party that we had a little bit ago. I’m going out with him on Saturday night.”
“You’re going on a date.”
“Don’t sound so shocked,” Lila groused.
“I’m not shocked because I think that you can’t get a date, you just generally don’t.”
“As far as you know,” Lila said.
Nolan shifted just a little bit, his hand switching position on the steering wheel, and if he said something about her being a virgin, she was going to outright punch him in the gut.
Thankfully, he didn’t say anything.
“So is he from here?” Cody asked.
“No. He’s from Bend. You don’t know him, you’re not going to know him, don’t worry about it. It’s not that serious. I’m just going on a date because it seems like a fun thing to do. And he asked.”
“I think it’s great. Way to set goals and reach them.”
“You scheme this up?” Cody asked his fiancée.