Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
He put the truck in reverse, eyes on the backup camera, and then turned the wheel sharply as he put it in drive and headed down the road that would take them out to the highway.
She could understand that. But it also showed that he wasn’t anywhere near as unbothered as he often pretended to be. He was an enigma. A human Rubik’s cube, and she had never gotten close enough to him to try and solve the puzzle. To try and get all of his little squares to match up.
So, he remained in fragments. This man who seemed like nothing got to him, but who had flashes of hot anger beneath all of it.
This man who acted like she was inconsequential, and yet he seemed to remember everything that had happened between the two of them in school.
“Does it feel like you wanted it to?”
One thing that she couldn’t relate to was this idea of not being accepted. This idea of being seen as less. But she did understand the desire to show people.
Even though no one had ever acted like she might be like her mother, even though no one had ever been awful to her the way they had been to Walker and his siblings. Awful the way that she had been to Walker, she had still felt like she had to prove herself. It was part of marrying Alan.
This feeling that she was finally reaching safety.
That she was done with the turning out part. That question… How was she going to turn out? Like her father, like her mother? She had spent her whole life trying to show people what that answer was going to be.
He had, she supposed, been doing much the same thing, even if it had been more of a bare-knuckle fight. Scrapping to prove that he was going to turn out the way that he chose, not the way that people had decided.
He had made it.
His standard had never been to make the perfect marriage, it had simply been to prove that he might’ve been born in poverty, but he wouldn’t stay there.
That he could find the external success that no one had imagined him and his brother capable of.
“A lot less satisfying than you would think. Because you know, once everybody found out that our father was David Reynolds, then it sort of seemed like we ought to be successful, right?”
“Oh, like you inherited it. Like you’re always accusing me of.”
“Hey, with you it’s a little bit more valid. It’s not like we even grew up with that bastard who I guess is our sperm donor. We didn’t even know him. It was the shock of my life to be on the list of his beneficiaries.”
He pressed his foot down a little more firmly on the gas, the engine revving.
They were driving fast, and there was something about that, the way that his blonde hair was pushed off of his forehead, his cowboy hat sitting on the bench seat between them, his forearm resting on the steering wheel.
Something rakish and dangerous about him, the same kind of thing that she had always found compelling about him, and also repulsive.
The thing that made her want to move away from him.
And right now, the thing that made her want to stare at him.
“You never knew him?”
“No. Cody actually spent a little bit of time with him, though I wouldn’t say that it was a good or happy sort of relationship.
Just Cody being there in the end, maybe to lord his presence over him.
But I don’t know, David got what he wanted, so I’m not sure it was revenge the way that Cody wishes it was.
He did take Dad’s name off the place.” He said Dad dryly.
He looked like he wanted to say something else. But he didn’t.
Instead, he turned the radio on and turned it up as they drove into town.
It was heaving, the little side streets and the main drag all packed full of people wandering around, cars parked against the curbs, narrowing the already narrow lanes.
He had to circle twice to find a spot a couple of blocks away from La Befana, and she suddenly realized that it was the first time she would be making a public appearance.
She had realized that when she had put the dress on. She had realized it in the sense that she had thought that she needed to put on a facade. But it was so theoretical. This was more real.
She had been thinking about the girl in that viral video, the girl that she had detached herself from out of necessity.
That girl was headed into town to go to dinner. Except now, she was so deeply aware that it was her, and she was there.
Everyone would be staring.
She would be with Walker.
“Circle the block again,” she said.
“No. I just found this parking space. I’m not losing it now.”
“I think I’m actually going to have a heart attack,” she said, pressing her fingertips to her chest and pushing deeply, like that was going to give her an idea of whether or not her heart was handling this well or not.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m checking to make sure I’m not having a heart attack.”
“I don’t think you can just touch your chest to figure out whether or not you’re having a coronary episode. Also, you’re not. You have anxiety.”
“I don’t have anxiety.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “You don’t think you have anxiety?”
“No.”
She just had to make sure that everything was perfect all the time, but it generally was, and her deep, driving desire to make it so helped her get it done, as did the deep fear of what would happen to her if she failed.
Was that anxiety? She thought it was just being Type A.
Very functional. A very competent human being. That wasn’t anxiety.
Maybe she was having a little bit of anxiety now, but who could blame her?
“I’m not anxious,” she said. “Usually.”
“Okay,” he said, clearly not believing her. “If you say so.”
He pushed open the driver’s side door of the truck, and got out, and she practically reached after him as he closed it, her hands extended outward, fingers flexing. Like she could stop him.
And then a moment later he was around on her side, opening the door. “Come on,” he said.
“I don’t think I’m ready to do this.”
“And this is the exact moment that we need to do it. We can’t let any more time pass. We have to do this now. Get out of the damn car.”
He reached around her, and pressed the button on her seatbelt, his heavy, well-muscled arm resting over her lap.
And suddenly she felt like she had an entirely new problem.
Because it was like he had struck a match against her skin.
She was hot. On fire. And very aware of his presence.
She could smell his aftershave, his skin. And she could hear the sound of her own heart beating, echoing in her ears.
Like she was dying. Fading away from consciousness, from this planet.
Then he reached out, and took her hand, drawing her out of the truck cab.
Her throat was dry. And she ended up standing right there on the sidewalk, in front of him, with only a couple of inches between their bodies.
“So kind of you to join me for dinner tonight,” he said, a hint of teasing in his voice, a smile playing on his lips, but something dangerous underneath all of it.
Walker was always teasing, except she wondered if Walker was never teasing so much as pasting a facade over the top of whatever he actually meant.
He was like one of those poisonous creatures that were brightly colored and beautiful, looking like something glorious and attractive when in fact it was a warning that all that beauty could kill you.
Yeah. That was Walker.
She wondered if anybody else recognized that.
People tended to write him off. Not just because of his mother, not just because of his background, but because they thought he was that good-time boy.
Over the years, she had heard so many women in town talk about hooking up with him.
She’d heard them call him a golden retriever.
And she had treated him like one through the whole planning of her wedding.
Like he was something biddable. Friendly. A lap dog.
Walker was not a lap dog.
Walker wasn’t a dog at all.
In fact, he was holding the leash.
She had the sudden feeling he had been the entire time. It was only just now that she had become aware of it.
Then he shifted his hold on her hand, lacing his fingers through hers, and she forgot what it was to breathe.
She forgot everything.
She was about to say something, just because she thought she needed to, to do something to defuse the intensity that was growing between them, but Walker began to lead her down the sidewalk, and she looked around them, waiting to see if anybody had noticed them yet.
No one yet. But the street was crowded, and most of the people out would be tourists.
Except…
How long would it take them to recognize Walker and Addison from the video? That was the question.
The videos were filmed from enough of a distance that she didn’t know how recognizable either of them would be. But Walker had done a whole host of interviews since all of this had occurred.
But he was wearing his hat now, tilted over his face, and she looked down as well as they made their way toward the restaurant.
Not very sensible, maybe, because the whole idea was to be seen, but she found that she was having much more of a reaction to all of this than she expected to.
And her hand still in his, he opened up the door to the restaurant, and held it, letting her lead on before he melted away from the door and followed her in.
“Reservation under Grayson,” he said, looking at the woman behind the podium at the front of the restaurant.
“Oh, of course.”
But then, Addison saw the moment that the girl recognized her. And recognized him.
“Aren’t you… You were… Sorry, but you were the bride from the video.”
“Yes,” Addison said, trying to smile.
“Are you on a date with the guy that rescued you?”
It was happening. In real time.
“Yes, we are,” Walker said, smiling and wrapping his arm around Addison’s waist, pulling her close to him. “We are on a date.”
“That is so romantic,” the girl said, holding her hands in clasped fists against her chest. “Can I get a picture with you?”
“You can,” Walker said.
Then he maneuvered them around so that they were standing next to the podium girl. Then she took her phone out of her pocket and snapped a selfie.