10. The Shape Of A Secret #2
"I was so shaken," I whisper, the memory making my stomach turn over.
"I couldn't breathe. I couldn't stay in the city.
I got in my car, and I drove toward Galveston, but I couldn't go home.
I couldn't look at Daddy. I ended up pulling over at this dingy, dark dive bar right off the highway near the coast. I just wanted to disappear into a glass of whiskey. "
Gran Iris watches me, her eyes tracking the movement of my lips.
"I met Jax there," I continue, my chest tightening. "And well…things happened."
Gran's eyes go wide as saucers. She lets out a sharp, sudden intake of breath, her hand flying to her mouth as her brain instantly fills in the seven-year-old geographic gap. "Oh."
"It was a one-time thing," I say quickly, waving my hand dismissively as if I can brush the intensity of the memory out of the room. "It was one night. It didn't mean anything, Gran. It was just a mistake born out of panic and whiskey."
Gran Iris doesn't move her hand from her mouth for a long time. She stares at me, her sharp mind turning the information over, re-architecting every single interaction she has witnessed between Jax and me since she arrived in Moonrise.
"Funny thing about mistakes," Gran says softly.
"They usually aren't the memories we carry for seven years."
"A mistake," she repeats slowly, lowering her hand. "Nora, a man doesn't drive past a diner, see you sitting with another man, and storm onto your porch to start a shouting match over 'dirt' if it was just a mistake."
"He's territorial," I defend stubbornly, my face burning. "He's an MC biker. It's in his DNA to be aggressive and crude."
"He is jealous," Gran corrects smoothly, her voice leaving no room for argument. "And more importantly, you are devastated."
"I am not devastated," I flare, my chin rising defensively. "I am insulted."
"If it truly meant nothing," Gran says, leaning forward again, her blue eyes locking onto mine with ruthless clarity, "you wouldn't be angry at his stupidity, Nora. You would laugh at his ignorance and find a legal way around him."
"What are you saying, Gran?"
"But you aren't laughing. You are bleeding. You are this broken right now because Jackson Rowe thinks low of you, and his opinion matters to you a hell of a lot more than you are willing to admit to yourself."
She pauses. Her voice drops to something quieter.
"Nora. You have spent seven years surviving."
Her eyes soften.
"I'm starting to think you're forgetting how to live."
I open my mouth.
Nothing comes out.
That is the most honest thing I have said since I walked through that door.
I pull my hands away from the table. I stand up so fast my chair screeches loudly against the linoleum. I turn on my heel and trudge down the short, narrow hallway toward my bedroom, my heart pounding a frantic, suffocating rhythm against my ribs.
I slam my bedroom door shut, twisting the lock until it clicks.
The room is dark, the evening shadows stretching long and heavy across the old iron bed frame. I don't turn on the light.
The bones of this room are good. Original heart pine floors, plaster walls, a window that still seats true in its frame after sixty years. I have restored houses in worse shape than this.
I have never been able to restore myself as cleanly.
I walk over to the window, pulling the lace curtain back by a fraction of an inch.
Through the dense canopy of the live oaks, I can see the distant, harsh glow of the floodlights hanging from the corrugated tin roof of the Rowe salvage yard.
His opinion doesn't matter.
I have been standing at this window for ten minutes.
The subtext of the porch confrontation is heavy in my gut. He thought I was using him. He thought I looked at him and his mother's legacy and saw a paycheck.
The fact that he could look into my eyes, the same eyes that had watched him shift in the dark of that Galveston motel room, and see a liar... cuts deeper than any insult Stanley has ever hurled at me.
Because Stanley has spent years deciding who I am.
Jackson Rowe is the first man who ever made me believe he might be wrong.
That is not nothing. That is everything.
Determined to wash the dirt, the potatoes, and the suffocation of his judgment off my skin, I turn away from the window and walk into the small, attached bathroom.
I reach into the tiled shower stall, twisting the porcelain knob until the pipes groan and a heavy stream of hot water begins to hiss against the fiberglass basin.
Steam immediately begins to rise, curling into the cool air of the bathroom and fogging the silver surface of the medicine cabinet mirror.
I stand in front of the mirror, my hands hovering over the hem of my damp gray cardigan.
Slowly, I peel the layers off. The heavy wool sweater drops to the floor with a dull thud. The white linen blouse follows. I reach behind my back, unhooking the lace bra, letting it slide down my arms.
I pause for a moment to look at myself in the fogged glass.
I raise my hand, wiping a clear circle through the condensation so I can see my reflection in the dim, golden light of the single vanity bulb.
My shoulders are tense, pale, and splattered with a few stray drops of orange carrot juice from my frantic kitchen venting.
My skin tone is striking against the dark tiles, a creamy, translucent porcelain that maps every blue vein beneath the surface, standard for the Beckett line.
I trace the line of my collarbone down to my breasts.
They are full, heavy, and firm, the pale skin there untouched by the harsh coastal sun, the nipples already tight and dark from the sudden shift in temperature from the steam.
My gaze moves lower. My stomach is flat, tapering inward toward the soft, flared curve of my hips and the heavy, womanly slope of my thighs.
As I stand there, completely bare in the quiet room, my mind betrays me.