Chapter 16 #2
“I can practically hear you thinking.” His deep voice slices through the silence.
“What? No, it’s…” I take a minute to figure out exactly what I want to say. “I just don’t know why you brought me out here.”
“I told you,” he says. “I thought you needed—”
“No.” I’m the one cutting him off this time. “I heard that, but why?”
“Why?” he repeats, confusion as heavy in his voice as the humidity in the air.
“Yes. Why? You freaked out and ran out of my house out of nowhere, then when you see me at your parents’ house, you act like you’re anything but happy to see me.
” I won’t even mention the woman he was with.
Yet. “So even though I appreciate this gesture, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t understand what’s going on here. ”
I’m not sure I have the right to ask him.
I barely know him, and I spent the day hoping I could feel with his brother even a modicum of the spark I feel with him.
But I can’t sit next to him in the dark quiet of the night and not ask.
Not when my feelings for him seem to grow every time I’m near him, no matter how much I wish they didn’t.
“I was an asshole at your house. I’m not used to people around here asking me questions they don’t already know the answer to.
I thought you were fishing because people already told you the wrong and shitty version of my life.
I made an assumption, took it out on you, and when I realized I was wrong, I was pretty fucking embarrassed.
” He rolls over and props himself up on his elbow, and suddenly I wish it was light out so I could see the corded muscles of his forearm flex under the weight of him.
“You didn’t deserve that and I’m sorry. As for tonight, well…
that’s harder. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about me and my family, but as much as I love them, I don’t always love being around them.
I’m never at my best when I’m with my dad and Silas. ”
“I did notice there was a little tension between you guys.”
Understatement of the century.
“Yeah.” He lets out a humorless laugh, and my hands itch at my sides to hug him. “You could say there’s ‘a little tension.’ ”
As the president of the awkward family trauma club, I know better than to push. Now that I understand where he was coming from the other night and he offered a genuine apology, I’m happy to let him share what he’s comfortable with while I busy myself shoving his mother’s cooking into my mouth.
“Holy shit. This is amazing.” I take a bite of the loaded mashed potatoes and groan. “Your mom is an artist.”
“She does know her way around a kitchen and a potato,” he says. “She says it’s the only way she knows she can get all her kids back around her table, and she’s not wrong.”
“She’s not.” I take another not-so-ladylike bite, grateful for the cloak of darkness disguising my lack of table (blanket?) manners. “I might start showing up now too.”
I am technically an orphan now. I wonder how adult adoption works?
I immediately scratch that idea. The last thing I’d ever want is for Tate to be my brother. Gross.
“She’d love that.”
“Well, obviously. I’m a delight,” I say. “Plus, your mom is great. She wouldn’t even have to cook to lure me over.”
He lies back down and stares at the sky. “She’s the best.”
I wait for him to continue on, and when he stays quiet, I follow his lead. I don’t really understand what’s happening between us, but thanks to his mom and Mother Nature, I have good food and a better view. There’s not much else I could ask for.
Except…
“Was the woman you were with tonight your girlfriend?” I won’t push the family stuff, but I have to know the answer to this.
He starts to cough and sits up straight. “What?”
“You know, at your parents’ house.” I shrug, attempting to go for casual and not like I’ve been obsessing over the beauty queen for the last six hours. “Is she your girlfriend?”
“Alessandra?” He says her name like a question.
Of course the tall, willowy woman with perfect hair and legs that went up to my waist is named Alessandra. I mean, really. It’s got to be boring when everything about you is off the charts sexy. Get creative. Find a struggle.
“I don’t know if that’s her name,” I say. “You didn’t introduce us before I left.”
“Before you ran?” He calls me out, which was—
“Rude and unnecessary.” I contemplate lightly stabbing him with my fork before I think better of it. Running is my modus operandi, hence moving to Celestial in the first place. I might as well own it. “But yes, then.”
His body shakes with laughter, and the raspy sound washes over me like whiskey, setting me at ease and winding me up all at once.
“Alessandra is not my girlfriend,” he says. “She’s not my type and I’m definitely not hers.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Not your type?” I set the almost-empty glass container down. I need both hands accessible in case I have to strangle him. “Do you have a problem with women who are physically flawless?”
She’s probably smart and kind too. You don’t have hair like that if you’re rotten on the inside.
“It’s not that,” he says through laughter, and it’s a struggle to focus on anything other than the rare sight of Tate Jacobs looking so carefree.
“I’ve known Alessandra since she was little.
She’s actually visiting from your neck of the woods.
She’s at Colorado State getting her veterinary degree.
I brought her by so she could talk to Dad and Silas about working at Starlight when she’s finished. ”
Beautiful and saves animals? I wonder how it feels to be God’s favorite.
“If you could just whisper one single flaw, it would do wonders for my mental health.”
“We’re not that close, so I couldn’t tell you her flaws,” he says, which is really just code for everything I know about her is perfect. “But what I do know is that whether or not she’s my type is a moot point, since if she had her choice between the two of us, she’d be much more into you than me.”
“Really?” I ask, even though, in my heart, this feels right.
Someone as smart, pretty, and seemingly kind as her shouldn’t be subjected to the dumpster fire that is dating men.
I was right. Definitely God’s favorite.
“She came out when she was in high school,” he says. “I remember Ciara telling me.”
I know I’ve enjoyed my time in Celestial, but it would be silly of me to pretend it isn’t a small town in Texas.
The chances are high that Alessandra was met with opposition, and that breaks my heart for her.
She’s obviously thriving and living her best life now, but the idea that the future vet could’ve been made to feel small because of standing tall in who she is makes me want to punch someone.
“People better have been nice to her.” I defend the stranger against the villains of my imagination. “I’ve held grudges for less. What do we do in small towns? Should we go egg their houses? Tip their cows?”
“What the fuck?” he asks. “Did you watch every nineties’ small-town movie before you moved here?”
I fold my arms and glare at him. “No.”
Yes.
“I’m sure there are things I don’t know, but if it makes you feel better, the only person I remember who was outwardly a dick to her was the pastor at a church in town,” he says and that does not make me feel better. At all. “And he was basically chased out of Celestial after the fact.”
I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding. “That does make me feel better.”
It’s one thing to feel welcomed in a town; it’s another to be in a town that welcomes everyone. And as much as I hate to admit it, I’m also really relieved to know she’s not his girlfriend.
I lay my head on the pillow he placed down for me. His head is right beside mine, and although I want to look at him, take in his perfect profile, and maybe—just maybe—catch him staring at me, too, I can’t look away from the stars hovering overhead.
I search out the Milky Way just like I always do, straining my eyes and hoping for a wink from the Universe.
“I was happy to see you,” Tate whispers into the dark of the night sky, his words hitting me like the shooting star I’m looking for.
“You were?” I don’t know why I want to believe him, why I need this to be true, but I do.
“Yeah,” he says. Our chests rise and fall in tandem, the sounds of our breaths melding together, harmonizing with the rustling grass and gentle breeze. “I was.”
My fingers twitch at my side like a magnet being pulled to him. “No offense, but you had a pretty terrible way of showing it.”
“I know. It’s just that—” He pauses as if to gather his thoughts, and I have to pull my lips between my teeth in order to stay quiet while I wait. “I didn’t want to be here.”
I’m not sure what I thought he was going to say, but I know it wasn’t that.
“What?” I move to sit up, but his hand holds me in place.
“No,” he says. “That didn’t come out right.
I don’t mean here, as in here with you.” He stumbles over his words even as he tries to clarify them.
I know it shouldn’t, but for some reason, seeing him get all flustered makes him even more attractive.
“I mean Celestial. I wasn’t supposed to still be in Celestial. ”
Everything about Tate is a giant, noncommittal, walking red flag. The last thing I need, after he brought me to lie beneath the stars with him, is to know Pam was right and he’s a wounded bird, in need of saving.
I should just let it be and not ask.
I absolutely should not ask.
I will NOT ask.
I ask.
“Where are you supposed to be?”
And the award for the biggest dummy goes to Luna Starr for her performance in Seeking Out Emotionally Unavailable Men, episode 78.