Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Michael dropped Jamie off at home hours ago, but he was as wired as he’d been in that alley, his hands on Brinton and his heart aching for her light.
Sitting on his porch and looking across the lake’s glossy expanse, he still ached for her.
She’d blamed the article. Was that the truth? He wasn’t sure.
Things had been going so perfectly. In truth, that also scared him. His attraction had grown beyond a superficial crush. Now, it was dangerously close to something that felt more permanent, like a searing tattoo.
Was this how it was supposed to feel?
Jamie certainly hadn’t figured that out with Kendall. Or the Houston beauty queen. Or the daughter of his record label’s CEO. She rightfully gave Jamie a purple-nurple when he broke up with her at the local drive-in, after they’d watched Inside Out 2 together.
Or any of the other women he’d been with over the years.
Jamie’s father never gave him “the talk” about the building blocks for a healthy relationship. His version of the birds and the bees involved a box of condoms on the kitchen counter the week before Jamie’s eighteenth birthday.
“Make smart choices,” he had said, sliding Jamie the Trojans. “Your future depends on it. The last thing you need is another dark night.”
Jamie knew exactly what his father had meant: When the ambulance came, and the tears flowed, and both their lives crumbled into dust.
It was the last night Jamie had felt like a whole person.
But he had never stopped wondering how different things would have been if he’d felt safe enough to open up to his father about his feelings. Or his mother, who he believed loved his father, despite their troubles.
If he could, Jamie would have asked his mother so many questions about how love worked. Could it be fine-tuned like a song, or was it something more organic, wild and fleeting? With Brinton, deep down, he wanted to hold on to her, even as their circumstances kept tearing them apart.
Jamie leaned into his outdoor sofa’s linen cushion as a slice of silver moonlight edged through the clouds. The candles he’d lit doused his notebook in an amber haze.
Jamie had been secretly coming out here to write, but it had been a while since he sat down to create something new. Five days ago, before Brinton arrived in Iris, he’d given up hope that any of it mattered.
Now Jamie wanted to name the entire scope of feelings he was exploring—the good, the exciting, the uncertain.
He wrote lyrics and worked out melodies on his acoustic guitar until his fingers cramped and the sun climbed over the horizon.