Chapter 9 #2
Mac gives her a deadpan look. “He also tried to take my laundry basket out of my hands yesterday like I was one poorly folded T-shirt away from collapse.”
I laugh softly into my cup. “You are kind of scary right now.”
“I’ve always been scary.”
“True,” Ana says.
Mac nods once. “Exactly.”
Brooke takes a bite of a blueberry muffin and immediately sighs like it changed her life. “Carter cried because I cried over a commercial.”
Kya turns toward her so fast her ponytail swings. “Which commercial?”
“The one with the old dog getting adopted.”
A beat of silence.
Then Kya presses a hand to her chest. “Oh my God, I saw that one.”
Brooke’s eyes immediately fill. “It was so sad.”
“It was beautiful.”
“I know.”
Mac looks between them and mutters, “Jesus Christ.”
I’m smiling into my coffee again, warm all over with that particular kind of affection that only comes from being surrounded by women who feel like home.
And then, because life hates me, the conversation turns.
It doesn’t happen all at once.
It starts with Ana looking at me over the rim of her drink in that way she gets when she’s trying not to smile too obviously. Then Shaina catches it and immediately lights up like she’s just been handed entertainment.
And I know.
I know before either of them says a word that I’m about to become the target. I should run. I don’t.
“Speaking of men who have no idea how to act,” Shaina says sweetly.
I narrow my eyes. “Don’t.”
Ana grins. “We didn’t even say anything yet.”
“You were about to.”
“Maybe.”
Kya’s eyes sharpen with interest immediately. “Oh, this is about Allison’s crush.”
Mac leans back in her chair, calm and composed and suddenly much too observant. “Good. I was getting bored.”
Brooke perks up like she’s just remembered joy exists. “Wait, are we finally talking about Jimmy?”
I stare at all of them in horror. “No.”
Five identical looks say they do not believe me even a little.
“Absolutely yes,” Shaina says.
Ana points at me with her straw. “You’ve been in love with my brother since, like, birth.”
I choke on my coffee. “Jesus Christ, Ana.”
“What?” she asks, entirely unbothered. “It’s true.”
“It is not.”
“It absolutely is,” Shaina says. “You used to stare at him across the clubhouse like you were in a Nicholas Sparks movie.”
“That is slander.”
Kya gasps. “You’ve loved Jimmy this whole time?”
Brooke’s hand flies to her chest. “That’s actually kind of romantic.”
“It’s tragic,” Mac corrects.
I hate all of them. Every single one.
“I do not love Jimmy.”
The silence that follows is so unimpressed it almost offends me.
Then Mac lifts one brow and says, “Allie.”
And somehow that’s worse than if she’d laughed.
Because Mac doesn’t waste words. She doesn’t say things she doesn’t mean. So when she gives me that look, cool and cutting and a little too knowing, I feel something uncomfortable twist low in my stomach.
Brooke reaches over and pats my hand. “Honey.”
That’s it. I’m done.
I drop my head into my hands. “I hate this group.”
“No, you don’t,” Kya says.
“No, I really do.”
Shaina grins. “You can’t hate us. We’re right.”
“I would rather die than admit that.”
Ana leans back in her chair, clearly delighted. “You kissed him.”
I lift my head so fast I nearly get whiplash. “Excuse me?”
She shrugs. “You did.”
My entire face goes hot.
Brooke’s eyes widen. “You kissed Jimmy?”
Kya slaps a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God.”
Mac just sits there watching me with that same unreadable calm while every molecule in my body begs me to fake a medical emergency and leave.
“It was one time,” I mutter.
That only makes it worse.
Shaina’s jaw drops. “Holy shit.”
Ana points at me like she can’t believe she’s finally getting to use this information. “See?”
“Why do you know that?” I demand.
She gives me a look. “Because he came home acting weird for like two weeks and then you couldn’t look at him without blushing.”
I want to crawl under the table and die.
Brooke looks like she’s about to cry again, which should not be possible. “That’s actually so sad.”
“It wasn’t sad,” I say too fast.
Kya narrows her eyes. “It’s was definitely sad.”
Mac takes a slow sip of her coffee. “Tell the story.”
“No.”
“Tell the story,” Brooke echoes.
“Absolutely not.”
“Tell the story,” Kya says, because apparently she enjoys my suffering.
Shaina smirks. “I’d love details.”
I look at Ana for help.
The traitor just smiles and says, “I’d tell them, but I think hearing it from you would be more fun.”
I hate this family. I really, really do. But there’s no escaping now. They’re all looking at me. Waiting. Entirely too entertained.
And the worst part is, the memory is already there.
Already moving. Already dragging itself to the surface before I can shove it back down.
It was after one of the club parties.
I don’t even remember what we were celebrating anymore. Maybe a patch anniversary. Maybe somebody’s birthday. Maybe just the fact that in this club, people don’t need much of a reason to fill the backyard with music and beer and smoke and too many bodies packed too close together.
I remember the heat though.
The sticky summer air. The low bass of music from the outdoor speakers. The way the yard glowed under strings of lights and firepit embers and porch lamps.
And Jimmy.
Of course I remember Jimmy.
He’d been drinking.
Not falling-over drunk, not sloppy, but enough that his edges had softened a little.
Enough that he’d been laughing more, leaning closer, touching people more easily than usual when he talked.
Enough that every time he looked my way, my pulse had tripped over itself and made me feel sixteen all over again.
I’d been pretending not to notice him all night.
Which, in hindsight, was a joke. Because if there’s one thing I’ve never been able to do where Jimmy Baker is concerned, it’s act normal.
By then I was old enough to know better.
Old enough to know he still saw me as Uncle Torch and Aunt Tracie’s daughter, Ana’s best friend, the girl who’d always been around.
Old enough to know that loving him was humiliating and pointless and had never once gotten me anything but a front-row seat to my own suffering.
And still.
I watched him anyway. I always watched him anyway.
At some point later in the night, after most of the older generation had either gone inside or settled around the back firepit, I found him leaning against the side of the clubhouse near the bike line, one hand braced on the brick and the other around the neck of a beer bottle.
He looked up when I came around the corner.
That look still lives in my bones.
His eyes had gone heavy-lidded and slow, his mouth tipped in the faintest hint of a smile like he was trying to place me through the haze of whiskey and noise and night air. “Allie-girl,” he’d said.
My heart had nearly stopped. Not because it was particularly romantic. Not because he’d said anything outrageous.
Just because he’d said my name like that. Like it belonged in his mouth.
“I think you’re cut off,” I’d told him, trying for teasing and landing somewhere closer to breathless.
He’d laughed, low and rough and entirely too warm. “You offering to save me?”
And maybe that should’ve been the moment I walked away.
Maybe that should’ve been the point where I remembered every reason this was a bad idea and used my common sense for once in my life.
I didn’t.
Because he’d looked at me differently that night. Not dramatically. Not in some obvious, life-changing way.
Just enough.
Enough that when I stepped closer, he didn’t move away. Enough that when I took the bottle from his hand and set it on the low brick ledge beside him, his eyes stayed on mine.
Enough that when I said, “You should probably sit down before you fall over and embarrass yourself,” he smiled like he was trying not to and said, “You worried about me, sweetheart?”
Sweetheart.
God.
Even now, sitting in a baby boutique with five women staring at me like they’re waiting for me to bleed out on the table, I can still feel what that one word did to me.
“I hate all of you,” I mutter.
Brooke leans farther across the table. “Then what happened?”
I exhale slowly and look down at my coffee because somehow that feels safer than meeting anyone’s eyes.
“I helped him around the side of the building,” I say quietly. “Toward the back where it was quieter.”
Kya makes a tiny sound like she’s physically invested now.
I ignore her. “He wasn’t that drunk,” I go on. “He was just…looser than normal.”
Shaina grins. “That’s enough.”
“Shut up.”
Ana bites back a smile and gestures for me to continue.
So I do. Because I can’t stop now. Because the memory is here anyway, and maybe saying it out loud will finally make it smaller somehow.
It doesn’t. It only makes it sharper.
I remember the dark. The quieter stretch of wall behind the clubhouse where the music faded just enough to feel distant. The smell of summer air and cigarette smoke and beer and him.
I remember him looking down at me with that soft, unguarded kind of focus that almost never exists in sober men like Jimmy. Like he wasn’t thinking too hard about what he should or shouldn’t be doing.
Like for one brief, dangerous second, he was just feeling it. Feeling me there.
And I remember saying something stupid.
I don’t even know what it was now. Probably some smart-ass comment about him being too heavy to drag if he passed out. Probably something designed to make him laugh because that was always easier than standing too close to him and letting myself want things.
He did laugh. Then he looked at me. Really looked at me.
And everything changed.
“I don’t remember moving first,” I admit softly.
The table has gone quiet. Not awkward quiet. Not pitying quiet. Just listening.
“It just…” I swallow. “It just happened.”
Because it had.
One second we were standing there in the dark, half smiling, breathing the same warm summer air.
And the next his hand was on my waist and his mouth was on mine.