19. “I’d rather be with you.”
“I’D RATHER BE WITH YOU.”
YASMINE
I zipped the last pocket of my camera bag and reached for my keys just as my phone buzzed.
Hale.
“Morning, darlin’.”
“Hey.”
“You want coffee with me?”
I smiled. “I’d love coffee with you, but I can’t. I’m on my way out.”
“Where’re you going?”
“A hike. I want to get some shots before the light shifts.” I tucked the phone against my shoulder and slipped into my sneakers. Shop noise filled the background, loud and constant. His life, already in motion.
“Can I come?”
“Hale.”
“Darlin’.”
“It’ll be boring,” I tried. “I stop every ten feet. Backtrack. Crouch in weird places and wait for nothing to happen. It’s not a two-person activity.”
He considered that for about a second. “I’ll drive.”
“Don’t you have work?”
“Work’s not going anywhere. I’d rather be with you. Ten minutes.”
I stopped.
It was such a Hale thing to say. Casual. Almost throwaway. He was generous like that, with his words and his attention, open enough that it should have been easy not to read too much into any one sentence.
Should have.
Instead, I stood there holding the strap of my camera bag, thumb pressed into the canvas like it might steady me.
I’d rather be with you.
“Fine,” I said. “Ten minutes.”
I hung up and caught my reflection in the dark microwave door. My cheeks were warm. Annoyingly warm.
From the living room, a spoon scraped against ceramic.
I turned.
CeeCee was on the couch with a bowl of cereal balanced on her lap, her belly so enormous I remained deeply suspicious of the doctor’s one-baby claim.
She pointed her spoon at me.
“You’re a rock,” she said, completely straight-faced. “Solid. Immovable. Tough as a Texas drought.”
“Don’t.”
“You folded like string cheese, Yaz.”
I pulled the pillow off the armchair and threw it directly at her face.
She caught it one-handed without spilling a drop of cereal. The smirk didn’t move.
I picked up my bag and my keys.
“Shut up,” I said, and walked out.
Thirty minutes later, my hand was out the window, fingers spread against the warm air as the road unspooled ahead of us.
I saw the Quik Stop sign before Hale even signaled, and my fingers curled against the air. The place sat back from the road, two pumps out front, fluorescents buzzing under the awning even in daylight.
I’d started picking up my mother’s calls again, and she’d mentioned it the other day, casual as anything.
Shaun was still working there. Doing what he could, she’d said, in the careful, polite voice she used now.
Pointed enough to remind me what she thought I should be doing instead.
Like she was leaving food out and hoping I’d come find it.
Hale put on his blinker.
I opened my mouth, then closed it. We could pay at the pump. It didn’t have to be a thing.
He pulled in and cut the engine.
I watched him in the side mirror. He took the nozzle, T-shirt pulling tight across his shoulders, started the pump, then ducked his head through the open window. “Snacks?”
“I’m fine.”
“Yaz.”
“I don’t need anything. Really.”
“Didn’t you say that last night, before you ate half my fries?”
“That was different,” I said.
“How?”
I rolled my eyes. “You offered.”
“And I’m offering now.” He held a twenty out.
I hesitated.
I could tell him. It would take thirty seconds. My brother works here. I’d rather not run into him.
Hale wouldn’t turn it into anything. He wasn’t built for drama.
I should’ve been able to tell him.
But I kept thinking about the way he looked at me, like I came without hidden corners.
I wasn’t ready for him to find one.
I took the twenty. “What do you want?”
“Those Nutella stick things.”
“Okay.”
He straightened and went back to the pump.
I stepped into the heat.
It was easier to buy chips than explain my brother.
He was at the register.
I knew before I processed his face, my body recognizing the shape of him first. The stiff set of his shoulders, the hard line of his mouth. Then my eyes caught up.
Shaun.
The old disgust was already waiting on his face, polished from use.
I gave him nothing. Not a flinch or a word.
I went to the cooler and opened the door, buying myself a few seconds in the cold wash of air. Two waters, then the snacks, because Hale had asked for Nutella sticks and because wandering gave me something to do besides stand there and be his sister.
I counted possibilities instead of breathing. A customer could walk in. His phone could ring. Someone could come through the back. The pump could click off and Hale could decide I was taking too long.
None of it happened.
I brought everything to the counter and fixed my attention just past his left ear.
“You’re bold. I’ll say that,” he said.
I lifted a brow, but left the gauntlet where he’d thrown it.
He scanned the first water. “Coming in here like shit’s normal when you got my wife locked up in your house.”
“She’s got keys, Shaun.”
“And she would be back home if it wasn’t for you.”
“That’s not on me.”
“Nothing ever is.” He leaned forward. “Except things go to shit when you get involved.”
My pulse hit my throat and stayed there. “I’m not the reason CeeCee left you, Shaun.”
“Like you weren’t the reason Dad left?”
I flinched. He’d always blamed me for that, as if I’d packed the suitcase myself and waved goodbye from the porch.
He came closer, red threading through the white of his eye. On the outside, I was flat. Controlled. Bored. Inside, I was thirteen again. Sixteen. Nineteen.
Once, he’d been the kind of big brother who counted out allowance change at corner-store counters and bought one snack for both of us. Whatever I wanted, he’d call it his favorite too, then break it in half and give me the bigger piece.
Some days I was half sure I’d made that boy up.
The door chimed.
Shaun’s gaze flicked over my shoulder.
I felt Hale before I heard him.
He stepped up beside me, shoulder near mine, and the balance of the room changed.
He gave Shaun an easy nod.
Shaun looked between us, and I watched him do the math.
“This is why you’re still in town?” He laughed. “I always knew you had low standards. But Hale Henry? The town slut?”
“Do not talk about him that way,” I snapped, the words out before I could measure them. I could take whatever he threw at me. I’d done that my whole life. But fuck him if he thought Hale was fair game.
Shaun’s brow lifted, then he smiled. It wasn’t pleasant.
Hale’s jaw flexed once. That was all. Then he took the twenty from my hand and set it on the counter. “Keep the change.”
He gathered the snacks with one hand, took mine with the other, and walked us out.
The door swung shut behind us.
I didn’t look back.