Chapter 7 #2
She’s already shaking her head before I’ve even finished. “Not that kind of artist.”
“Julian is a big deal,” Wyn interjects. I almost take it as a compliment until sarcasm dances around her words when she adds, “Makes me wonder what he’s doing in our small town to begin with.
” She raises her eyebrows at me in challenge, as if I’ll actually answer her.
She doesn’t waver, looking me in the eye.
She’s not the kind of woman who backs down.
The gash in my thigh aches at the reality of that.
Alright, if she wants to play, I’ll play. “You’re forgetting how we met, darling,” I say in a low, teasing tone.
“Please tell me this is something salacious,” her louder of the two sisters interjects.
Theo leans forward, elbows on the table, chin resting on his closed fist. “Feed me with something that’s not as boring as an online hookup or at a fucking farmers market meet-cute…”
Wyn locks eyes with me and then smirks. “He drugged me,” she says, tipping her chin up in the air.
Birdie chokes on her wine.
Wyn’s mother starts laughing next to me.
“That’s not—” I mutter under my breath as the rest of the table erupts. Closing my mouth tight, I shake my head. I can’t believe she just said that.
Wyn’s uncle looks at me like he’s about twenty generous seconds from trying to kick my ass, his chair sliding loudly on the wood floor as he starts to stand. “Wyn?” I don’t doubt he’s waiting for her approval to throw a punch.
“Thomas,” Lu says, trying to calm him or maybe set him off; it’s hard to tell.
Theo points to his son. “Earmuffs, dude.”
Without missing a beat, Nash stuffs another bite of meatloaf into his mouth, and then covers both ears.
“While we all love a juicy story, Wyn . . .” Theo starts to say.
But it’s Jameson who sits with his arms crossed, observing, and shifting from being a part of this dinner and into his detective role.
“Theo, come on,” he says, annoyed and almost reprimanding.
When he looks back at me, it’s Wyn who he addresses.
“Wyn, I’ve been told there are reports coming in too frequently lately, and while it’s not my department, if this is true . . .”
Fuck my life.
But Wyn answers over whatever her sister was saying. She looks at her uncle first. “I’m okay, and I shouldn’t have said that.” She shakes her head. “But that’s what it felt like,” she says, trying her hardest to backpedal.
Birdie just sips her wine, watching her granddaughter lie. Because I absolutely drugged her, but for some reason—and one I’m hoping has everything to do with how she wants to see me again too—she tells the men who looked seconds away from beating my ass that it was a poor choice of words.
“It was a bit . . . like I was in a daze, or like we—” She stops and looks down at the leather cuff she’s still wearing and smiles.
Glancing quickly my way, she shakes off whatever she was planning to say.
“We met a while ago, and I’m still not sure how I feel about seeing him again.
” Her eyes are glassy when her attention lands back on me.
It makes my chest ache. “Things got heated last night, and now it just feels like an inconvenient coincidence that we ended up in the same place again,” she says with an exhale.
Her words feel like a slap across the face. Inconvenient.
A succession of quick knocks sounds at the front door right after the doorbell rings out.
Jo stands, circling the table. “I’ve got it.”
“Julian fucking Colton,” she says, turning her head left and then right, almost in disbelief. “Damn, big sister. Total opposite of your usual type.”
I’m dying to hear this. “What type is that?” I whisper.
Wyn’s glaring eyes meet mine, and I can’t help but smirk at her. The twinge of jealousy that’s seeping through my veins of her having “other types” is only covered up by the fact that this dinner is a fucking shit show. “Can we talk for a minute?” I ask her.
Before she’s able to answer, Jo interrupts, lingering in the threshold of the room with another woman. “Birdie? She’s asking if she could have a chat with you?”
Wyn’s arms cross as she observes for a moment just as the young woman with glasses sees her and holds her hand up in a shy wave. “Good to see you, Dr. Crowne.”
Who the hell is that? This house is nothing if not unpredictable.
“Birdie, I’m so sorry, I tried to call,” the girl rushes out. “I didn’t want?—”
Birdie cuts her off with a click of her tongue.
“No apologies necessary, honey. Glad you’re here now.
You can head through there, and I’ll be right behind you.
” When the woman walks down the hall that we had come in from, Birdie looks to Wyn and says, “I’d love it if you could find a few bottles for me, Wyn.
I have to chat with my friend.” Humming to herself, distracted for a moment, she then comes back to what she was saying.
“I hadn’t realized she was a student of yours. ”
“Andi is a TA for our department,” Wyn says simply.
“Ah, that makes all the more sense,” Birdie says with a nod. She glances at Lu, one of their many silent exchanges I’ve noticed just in the time I’ve sat at this table, before looking back at Wyn. “There are a few clients who I’d like to offer something very special to when they arrive.”
“Wine or whiskey?” Wyn asks.
“Something of yours might be nice. Bring it to the bar for me?” She raises her eyebrows, pulling attention to the fact that she was drugged and slept it off in the same clothes from last night.
Wyn smiles at her grandmother, stands from the table, and brushes past me and mumbles, “Let’s go.”
I push my chair back and do the same, and the sound of it gliding against the wood floor has everyone’s attention. “I’ll help,” I say.
“She’s more than capable of getting what she needs on her own,” Lu says as she sips her drink, kicking her legs up and blocking me from following Wyn. “You can stay right here.”
I stop and look down at her legs brushing up against mine. “With all due respect, ma’am?—”
“Ma’am?!” she scoffs.
“Lu, let him go,” Birdie says. And just when I think she’s going to ignore the matriarch of their family, she lets me by.
I don’t say anything more; the dynamics in this room are far too complicated for me to figure out right now.
I’d like to tell Lu to fuck right off, that I’ve done what I was asked to do, and my time is no longer their concern.
But I have a feeling it would be wasted words.
And at the end of it, she’s still Naomi’s—Wyn’s mother.
And my interest lies with her, the woman who’s hightailing it as fast as she can away from me. Fuck. She’s already out the front door and taking a path down the side of the house.
“Wyn,” leaves me as soon as my foot hits the front porch, but she’s turning the corner of the gravel pathway and moving out of my sight.
Once I make it to where she turned, the bar from last night is a mere fifty feet ahead, and Wyn hustles just past the main entrance, along the side of the building.
At dusk, this place is a helluva sight—the parking lot filling up and plenty of noise coming from the bar that was eerily quiet in those hours just before dawn. Right now, cicadas ring out almost as loudly as the music pouring from the double doors of the bar every time they open.
An entire day had come and gone, and the only thing I had to show for it were bruises around my wrists and a bandaged leg, slowing me down a bit. At least that wasn’t ignored. I’m almost certain she could’ve sliced something deep and dangerous with that fucking weapon.
Smokers take drags and blow smoke in conversation as I pass by.
Harleys and Ducatis line the sides of the building, and a party bus parked in front delivers a laughing horde of women in matching black dresses.
Two female bouncers, who look like they’ve never backed down from a fight, give me judging glances as I rush past. The Whispering Fool is already lit and loud with neon lights and plenty of people angling for a good and rowdy time.
“Wyn,” I call out, louder and deeper, but she doesn’t stop. She doesn’t even look back. “Naomi!” I yell, and that at least has her looking over her shoulder.
“Well, hello handsome,” one of the women from the bus says as I shove by. “What’s the rush? Come buy me a drink!” I hear behind me.
It takes only a few painful jogging strides to hit the edge of the gravel and down the small riverbank toward the footbridge that Wyn is nearly halfway across. “Why are you running away from me, Naomi?” I call out to her.
She doesn’t slow. “Not running, asshole, just have things to do.”
“Asshole? That’s not very nice,” I say loudly over the rushing water.
Finally, she stops when she reaches the incline of the riverbank.
“Not nice? You fucking tricked me in Montana—” She pauses like there’s more she wants to say.
“And then you drugged me, Julian,” she says, but it’s the way her voice falters and how she’s looking at me that makes me feel like I want to take it all back.
I rub along the back of my neck, knowing I can’t change what happened here, but I can apologize for it.
“I’m so sorry—” I bend so that she’ll look at me.
“If I’d known it was you last night, I never would’ve done that.
Trust me when I say that I would never hurt you, not like that—” I take a step towards her, and she takes one back, but I know she’s working through the things I’ve just said. “I mean it. I’m sorry.”
Tall grass moves with the little bit of breeze a late summer night will allow.
The last thing I want is for her to be scared of me.
And right now, it feels like she might hate me a little.
I need her to know that I’m not going to do anything to hurt her.
I shove my hands into my pockets, because what I really want to do is to feel her wrapped up in my arms again.
I stopped asking myself why I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her or why it felt so easy to be around her.
Instead, I decided that, after this job, I was going to find her.
And now that I unintentionally have, I’ve already fucked it up.
I tilt my head back, closing my eyes, thinking about all of the things I want to ask and hope to hear.
“I know,” she says in a whisper. I forget what she’s even responding to when her fingers glide along the side of my face and rake into my hair. The unexpected touch has me exhaling and hoping like hell that I’m not imagining it.
I keep my eyes closed, basking in the way it feels to be touched by her again. “Tell me something that isn’t a lie?” I say on a breath.
Her fingers fall away. “You first.”