Chapter 9 #2
He got into the driver’s side and thought again how stupid it was that they were playing this game. “You look great, by the way.”
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, and her cheeks were lit up pink. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I mean, you look great too. You do.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t really know to do this. Dates.”
He laughed. “Me neither. But here we are. It’s a great excuse to go to Adeline. I hear the food is amazing. Farm to table and all of that.”
“Well, that sounds decidedly above my pay grade.” He looked at her again, and she squared her shoulders, seeming uncomfortable. “What?” she asked.
“Nothing. You just seem a little bit more feral than normal.”
“I don’t ever bring anybody out to my house. I do have money, actually. It’s just I’m used to the way I was raised.”
He put his truck in reverse, turned around, and headed back out toward the road. “I’m the last person to judge anyone about something like that.”
“Well. Good. Because I’m not home to judgment. I dealt with enough of all of that back in school.”
He frowned. From his memory, Jessie was really popular in school—at least with a certain crowd. No, it was never the preppy kids, like the pack his half siblings ran with, but she had been very well liked in general.
“I remember you having a lot of friends.”
“Sure. Later. But not when I was really young. I barely had any. Nobody wanted to hang out with me. I was … one of the weird-ass Hancocks. And I just … I carry that with me.”
“You don’t seem to care about what anybody thinks.”
He could feel her staring at the side of his head. “I’m a performer. Who’s also running for mayor.”
They were silent for a moment, and he let her words sink in.
Let them get under the top layer of his skin.
Well. The things she was doing definitely indicated someone who cared what other people thought.
But she just … She was such a wild card.
She gave off the vibe that she didn’t care what anyone said about her or thought.
“Just forget it. You’ve seen my house.”
“You don’t bring any of your gentleman callers back home?”
“I can’t say that I ever have.”
That made him feel satisfied for some reason. Like he had an edge on those guys, even though he hadn’t slept with her. He had been to her house. So there. And they were going on a date, which was something. It just was.
“Well. One of these days, you’re going to let me in.”
He took his eyes off the road for moment, and his gaze clashed with hers.
He realized the double meaning in what he had just said.
And he felt the impact of it way down low in his gut.
Down even lower. He had never been so affected by a woman in his life.
There was just something about her. And there always had been.
Despite her vibe, she really did care what other people thought.
She worried about it. Because she felt different?
Was that all it was? Did he feel that maybe he understood Jessie Jane and she understood him because they were both odd birds?
He had never considered that. But then, he did his very best to wear his disenfranchisement like a second skin.
To act as if he didn’t give a shit what anybody thought about him.
When in reality, he felt sidelined by his family, and he had embraced the label of outlaw because at least then he was alienating them on purpose.
There was something that scratched the back of his brain, something to do with Jessie.
Some quality he recognized. He couldn’t exactly nail it down, he only knew that it was closer to who he was than he had ever anticipated.
But that wasn’t the only reason he was attracted to her.
The other reasons were visible and obvious, particularly right now, when she was looking more polished and done up than he had ever seen her.
Particularly now, when she was close to him in his truck, and he could smell her perfume.
Or maybe it wasn’t even perfume. Maybe it was just soap and her skin.
Either way, her scent attacked his senses in a way he couldn’t call unpleasant.
“You know what it’s like to grow up in a home that looks totally different from all the ones around you,” she said softly.
“Yeah,” he said. “I do. When you don’t have a mom and dad.”
“Or a front yard,” she said.
“You have a giant piece of property.”
“Sure. But it’s more carnival than home.”
“Did you ever even try to have anyone over?”
She shook her head. “No. Never. Did you?”
“Dalton. He’s one of those people that doesn’t … I don’t know. His family moved here from out of town, and he’s never much seemed to care. Who my parents were or what the house was like, you know?”
“I just never met a Dalton. The Wilders and the Hancocks—our families could’ve been allies, but we weren’t.”
That made him feel guilty. It shouldn’t. It wasn’t his fault … Except, he hadn’t done anything to fix the enmity between their families when they were kids. But why would he?
Kids inherited prejudices from their parents, and didn’t really question them until they were given a reason to.
But it did stick in his gut that the Wilder family had experienced hardship in town because of their name, and the Hancocks had too, and rather than banding together, they had put up barriers.
It was a helluva thing. Not necessarily a good thing.
He had made a friend; she never had. Well, not when she was younger.
“You got invited places, though. When you were older.”
“Yes. I did. Thank you for the concern.”
“Good. I just … don’t like the thought of you being totally by yourself.”
“Thank you. I didn’t think there would ever come a day when Flynn Wilder was worried about my social calendar. Obviously, I’m fine.”
“Yeah. Well. You definitely figured it out.”
“Something.”
They didn’t speak the rest of the way into town, and when they pulled up to the front of the restaurant, he parked against the curb and got out.
He held his finger up when she started to undo her seat belt, indicating that he wanted her to wait.
When she acted as if she was going to try to race him, he moved quickly to the door and opened it before she could. “Don’t be a brat,” he said.
She looked shocked and offended. “I’m not a brat.”
“You’re a brat,” he said, leaning in. Why was he playing this game? He was torturing himself. Torturing her. Her eyes dropped to his mouth. Her cheeks turned pink, but she didn’t tell him to move. Didn’t say that she wasn’t attracted to him.
“For what it’s worth,” he added, “I don’t hold anything against your family. That was an Austin Wilder special.”
“I know. I don’t really blame him. Not really. You were never mean to me. I mean, your family never was. We weren’t friendly, that’s for sure, but we weren’t mortal enemies either. At least you didn’t run around calling me Contagion.”
She got out of the truck then and he closed the door behind her. “Contagion?”
“Don’t you remember that? I guess not. You were probably in middle school. I had lice. And I got sent home. So some of the boys called me that for a while.”
“Shit,” he said. He didn’t like that at all.
He had never really thought of her as a human being with frailties.
That was his fault. He’d been shortsighted.
He’d thought of her as an emblem of something rather than a human being.
People hadn’t been mean to him in school because they had always known that Austin or Carson would beat them up.
And once he got older, he would’ve done it.
“Why didn’t West beat the shit out of them?” he asked.
“I didn’t tell him.”
“Why didn’t you tell him?”
“West is four years older than me. He had his own life. He had his own stuff going on. I was never going to go whining to him whenever I had a difficulty. That’s just … it’s silly. It wasn’t something that I needed to do. So I didn’t do it.”
“He should have. He should’ve known, and he should’ve beaten them up.”
She laughed and rested her head against the back of the seat. “Appreciated.”
There was something soft about her then. And it evoked something in his chest. Because now he was looking at her and seeing something other than all that brash attitude she put on display; now he was looking at her and he was seeing someone softer. Someone who had been treated badly in this life.
Someone who wasn’t all that different from him.
They were seated at the table, and he knew that everyone was paying attention to them.
That people were fascinated by seeing them together.
Especially because word of Jessie Jane’s candidacy was now common knowledge in the area.
But also because not only were the two of them never seen at nicer establishments, but the two of them were never intentionally seen together.
Not before this past week. Jessie tossed her head, her glossy brown hair shimmering over her shoulders.
She smiled as she looked at the menu. She slipped back into that cocky ease.
That ease he was beginning to realize was a mask, and an important one.
A defense against being wounded.
She looked down at the wine list. “I don’t really know anything about wine.”
He saw her bravado falter just a little bit then.
“Do you like it?”
“I guess. I favor a bottle of Two Buck Chuck, if I ever have it.”
“I’ll choose something for you.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Let me.”
He reached out and put his hand over hers.
It wasn’t sexual. It wasn’t part of this game they were playing.
The back-and-forth dares, the tit for tat.
He wanted to reassure her. His intention wasn’t sexual, but it didn’t stop him from feeling all the heat and fire he always felt whenever she was near.
Her cheeks turned pink, and she looked down.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “What are you interested in for dinner?”
“I like pasta,” she said.
“Good. I’ll choose a wine that I think would go well with your pasta.”
“How did you learn that?”
“Oh, I have at different times in my life tried to figure out what the hell I might talk to my family about. You know, that family.”
“Oh.”
The waiter, Bradley—Flynn took a dislike to him immediately, though he wasn’t sure why—came to the table. He was one of those servers who didn’t write anything down, and Flynn was never a huge fan of that.
But, as long as the guy got their order right, he supposed he would be impressed, rather than annoyed.
But then he saw Bradley look down Jessie’s dress, and he decided his initial irritation was justified.
But Bradley wasn’t here with Jessie, and Flynn was.
Flynn ordered some fancy-sounding appetizers. Then he chose two different pasta dishes, and glasses of wine he thought would complement them both, so that he and Jessie could split the meal and get some variety.
“Wow. I didn’t know you could pass for civilized.”
“Like I said, at times in my life I tried to figure out how to be the kind of person who could sit at dinner with my mom’s family. Especially my grandpa. He was a good man.”
“He used to be the mayor,” she said. “When I was almost too young to remember.”
“Yes,” he said. “He was. And he was a good one. I think my mom was rebelling against her family, against the idea of having to be perfect, when she hooked up with my dad. You know they were never married or anything. But my grandpa never held that against me. I don’t know what things were like between the two of them, and I’m not foolish enough to think that everything is as simple as it looks on the surface, but he was good to me.
He used to take me to dinner sometimes, and we would talk about wine that he liked, music he liked.
You know, he left me that property, and his sweaters. ”
“His sweaters?”
“Yeah. They’re ugly. Loud-patterned knit things that I would never wear. But they remind me of him, and they smell like his pipe tobacco. So I have them in the closet at my house.”
“I didn’t realize that you had a good relationship with him.”
“Well, it’s strange. Because having me was so difficult for my mom.
And you would think maybe that was in part because of how difficult her parents made it.
I don’t really remember my grandmother. She died when I was young.
I don’t know what she thought about me. I don’t know that she was as enamored of me as my grandfather was. He was good to me from the beginning.”
He wanted Jessie to keep on softening up.
Wanted her to continue to share things with him.
He was fascinated by her. By the realization that there was more to her than met the eye.
He had a feeling that if he was gentle with her, he could continue to draw her out.
It was the one thing he’d never tried to be with her.
Because he had been locking horns with her forever, he hadn’t realized her toughness was all a facade.
“There are probably some really important parts of me that wouldn’t be there without him. This is where things have always been complicated. I can’t hate them.”
“I get it.” She looked down at her hands. And he covered them with his own.