by Lexy Timms
“I understand that, but you must have known that we were going to ask you about what happened to bring you here,” I pointed out. “That’s why most people will be reading this interview, because they want to know why you and your money ended up in Kingston in the first place...”
“I doubt many people will be that interested to find out what I have to say,” he replied, shaking his head and snorting with amusement.
I grinned at him. “Then you’ve got another think coming,” I warned him. “People want to know what your deal is. They’re not going to be happy if they can’t find out.”
“It’s not something I’m comfortable talking about on the record,” he replied. It was as though he had planned this out, been ready for this question even before he had arrived here. So he must have known that we were going to ask it. Why was he acting as though this had come out of the clear blue sky with no warning? Something was up here. And I knew that Allison and the rest of the team would be relying on me to work out what the hell that was.
“Off it?” I replied, and I lifted the recorder from the table. “You can talk to me about it if you want. That way I can make sure I don’t let anything slip into the article that might allude to it...”
“I don’t want to discuss it at all,” he replied, shaking his head and sounding even more certain than he had before. I frowned. I was going to have to find a way to get around this. I had to make sure that I walked out of here with a scoop on him that nobody else had ever gotten before, and if I skipped some huge part of his past, that wasn’t going to work for me.
“Why not?” I asked, a little defensive. “You must have known that it was going to come up when you come to this interview in the first place. We were always going to ask about your past. That’s just how it works—”
“And I had hoped that this puff piece of yours would at least respect the fact that there are some things that I’d rather not discuss,” he replied. His voice was sharp, icy. I knew that I was being an ass, but I had to push just a little further—I had to find out just how much more he was hiding. We had skimmed the surface, but I was certain that there was more that he wasn’t telling me—and that the real story was hidden someone in there.
“We can end the interview now, if you want,” I replied. “I’ll mark it that you didn’t want to talk about your past, and—”
“You won’t do anything of the sort,” he snapped back sharply, and I cocked my head to the side. I was getting to him. I knew that I shouldn’t have been pleased about it, but there was some part of me that new that this was proof that I was saying the right things. Pushing the right buttons.
“So tell me what I want to know,” I replied. “On the record. Then I can include it in the article and nobody’s going to have to guess anything, are they?”
He looked up at me again, and this time, instead of the aggression that I had seen before, I saw defeat—and I felt awful. This was just a guy who had wanted to share a little of his time with the town that he had given so much to already, and here I was trying to push all his buttons and get him to tell me shit that he was clearly really uncomfortable with. I didn’t know what had happened in his past to make him feel that way, but I shouldn’t have been pushing as hard as I was. I knew that Allison or someone with her experience would have found some deft way to work around this without making a fool of themselves, but I was just coming across as a jerk, and I didn’t want him to think of me that way.
“Okay, okay, I get it,” I replied, and I put the recorder back on the table. “No comment on the subject of your past. I get it.”
“Thank you,” he replied, and he sounded genuinely relieved that I had been willing to let go of it for now. I might try again later, but I didn’t want the rest of the interview to just be him giving me these non-answers because he was angry that I had tried to push him as far as I had.
“So tell me about the last business you invested in,” I suggested as I clicked the recorder on once more and placed it on the table between us. As soon as I bought that up, he seemed to brighten, as though this was what he had been waiting for me to ask about all this time.
“Okay, so it’s a daycare,” he explained. “Specifically aimed at helping single parents...”
And like that, it was as though the tension between us had just vanished. We were back to just chatting again, like nothing had happened, like everything was fine. I knew that there had to be something that he was doing his best to keep under wraps, but still, if he didn’t want to tell me, maybe there was a good reason.
Instead, we talked about his work, about his brother’s business—I’d had no idea that he was the manager of the Rosewater, but now that he mentioned it, I was pretty sure that I could see a speck of family resemblance. He was clearly proud of his little brother, and he was all too happy to share that pride with me. It was kind of sweet, actually, hearing him talk him up—and I wondered if Tiffany knew that there was a whole other brother on the market when it came to this family.
He seemed to relax a little more as we talked, and I was glad that I hadn’t pushed things any more than I already had. I might have some explaining to do with Allison when this interview was over, but I could handle that—I didn’t like the thought of piling pressure on to someone to talk about something that they were so clearly not comfortable with. This guy did a lot of good in the community, and the last thing I wanted was for him to think for an instant that any of us didn’t appreciate it.
And besides, I liked his company, and I didn’t want to mess up what little time left I had in it before he went away again. He wasn’t wearing the leather gloves this time, obviously, so I could see his hands—they were strong, sinewy, and I still found myself curious to know how they would feel against my skin. I got the feeling that he was a controlling man when it came to the people closest to him, but when he was the one doing the control, maybe I wouldn’t mind too much.
Soon enough, the interview was wrapped up, and I had exhausted all the questions that I had put together to ask him in the first place. We had been at it for nearly an hour and, despite that little moment in the middle when he had refused to answer my questions about his past, everything had actually been pretty pleasant. As interviews went, of the few that I had done, this had to be my favorite.
I switched off the recorder and smiled at him to indicate that we were finished. For a moment, there seemed to be something else he wanted to add, but he thought better of it. Maybe he had planned, for a second, to tell me about what had happened to bring him here? Or maybe I was just being too hopeful and needed to drop it.
“Thanks so much for letting me interview you,” I told him as I extended my hand to him once more. Our fingers touched, his skin warm, and I had to pull my hand away before he saw the flush to my cheeks. I didn’t want to ruin this by doing or saying something stupid that would give away how much my heart was beating in my chest just being so close to him.
We made our way out of the room—probably the best bet, since I was getting a little too caught up in the thrill of being alone with him—and passed Allison, who was pretending to busy herself with her work, but who had likely been listening at the door the whole time.
“You should be very pleased with your new hire,” he told her as we passed. “She did a great job in there.”
“Glad to hear it,” Allison replied, and she nodded at me with approval. It was about the closest that I was ever going to come to a high-five from her, and I would take whatever I could get.
I saw him into his car, and then headed back to my desk to start formatting the article and transcribing some of the interview that I knew I wanted to use. I knew that I should have been flying high with everything that had happened, but there was this nagging doubt at the back of my mind.
Why had he refused to answer my questions about his past? What had he been hiding? I knew that it wasn’t my place to delve any deeper than I already had, but there was something that he seriously didn’t want me or any of the reader
s of the Kingston Press to know.
But what was that? What could be so bad that he wanted to keep it under wraps so carefully? I wanted to find out, but I didn’t know how the hell I was supposed to do that now that the interview was over, and I had basically let him walk out of here without giving me an answer to the question that I needed to hear.
Shit. I had totally let him play me. And I hadn’t gone as deep as I could have as a result. He had been feeling bad about my delving, and I had allowed that to dictate the way the interview went. Wasn’t that 101 stuff? You were the one in charge, not the person that you were interviewing? I needed to do better next time.
If I got a next time. Because when Allison got a look at how much was missing from this interview, I got the nasty feeling that she might not be so willing to let me take the reins ever again.
Chapter Nine
Jesse
AS I MADE MY WAY BACK home, I couldn’t stop thinking about the interview.
I should never have agreed to talk to the press. Luke had been right. I should have just kept my head down and kept doing what I was doing and hoped that it never came to catch up on me. She was right—what had I expected but for them to want to know about my past?
I couldn’t just drop out of the sky in a small town like this with more money that I knew what to do with and expect everyone to just go along with it. I had no idea why I’d thought I would be able to make it through that interview without her delving deeper than I was strictly comfortable with.
I thought that I could just get her to drop it, but it was clear that she wasn’t going to give up without a fight. Much to my annoyance. I hated the way that she seemed to push so hard for what she wanted, but I should have expected it—she didn’t work there because she was demure and willing to just let anyone talk over the top of her. But still, it had come as something of a shock to have her talk back to me so sharply, pull me up on how silly I had been to think that I could just breeze through this without anything about my history coming to light.
If anything, though, it had just made me like her even more than before. There was something about her sharpness, about the confidence of the way she carried herself, that made it hard for me to think about anything else as I headed home. I shouldn’t have allowed her so much space inside my brain, but it was hard not to when I could still see the way that her lips carved a smile on to her face in my head.
By the time that I got home, I was running through everything that I had said to her, sure that I had let something slip that would give her enough to delve into my life before Kingston. I hadn’t even had the same surname that I did now, but that might not stop her. If she was well-trained, she would know where to look, and I couldn’t be certain that she wouldn’t include that in her article.
But that would have been true of anyone that I did that interview with, and I cursed myself internally for thinking for a second that I should have done that. I was getting cocky—six years here, and I was starting to believe that I was actually just another citizen of Kingston. It wasn’t until Sarah had been sitting opposite me, telling me in no uncertain terms that I was still subject to some of the most pressing gossip in the whole town, that it had really hit me just how far I still had to go before I was part of this place for good. You could be here for fifty years and still be a newcomer, and that was without the secrecy that I was dragging around about my past.
I got back to my place, headed inside—and instantly felt that creeping dread that tended to cling to me when I’d had a bad day. Well, a day that had stirred up memories of the past that I was so anxiously trying to leave behind, at least. I knew that I shouldn’t have let it get to me, but it was hard sometimes, when it felt like everything was piling back on top of me.
I made sure that the blinds were shut, the windows were closed, and all the doors were locked. This place wasn’t big, but suddenly it seemed cavernous with only me inside of it. I cursed myself. Why did I have to be like this? Why did I still have to act as though there was bad news around every single corner? I knew that there wasn’t. It had been six years, and the world that I had been a part of was behind me. I wasn’t going to let anything ruin what I had worked so hard to build here.
I sank into my couch, the lights all off around me—it was a trick I had learned when I had been back living with Mom in the city, when I didn’t want anyone to come by and try to drag me out. I would pretend that it was just time for a movie night, so that Luke and Mom and I could hang out together without attracting attention, but I was sure that my mother was able to see straight through that and into the truth of what I was trying to hide.
Sometimes, on my worst days, I found myself wondering if the stress of it had put her in the ground faster than it might have otherwise. She might not have known the details of what I was doing, but she wasn’t stupid. To make the kind of money that I was making, she had to know that I was up to something that I should never have been involved in. She had never confronted me about it, but she didn’t have to. Sometimes I would see the look on her face when I came home late, and I would know that she didn’t need an explanation.
I poured myself a drink, trying to walk quietly through the house, as though I expected someone to leap out at me any moment. I knew I was being stupid, but I couldn’t talk myself out of it. I hated the way I got when something had pushed one of my buttons like this—I was smarter, stronger, bolder than the way that my brain insisted on working, but it was never enough to control the fear that consumed me when I was feeling this way.
I supposed that, on some level, I believed that I shouldn’t have everything that I had in my life right now. I did work that I enjoyed, my brother was safe and happy and sane, I had a home that I liked, I lived in a town full of people who, while they might have gossiped about me behind my back, mostly just left me alone. It was perfect. As perfect as I could have asked for when I had run that night six years ago.
So why couldn’t I let go and just believe that? Just enjoy it? The universe didn’t tally up the hits and misses to decide what you deserved. Some people were just lucky, and, for some reason, I happened to be one of them.
But that didn’t mean that I actually believed that I deserved it. And that didn’t mean that I actually believed that everything that had happened was behind me now. I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to truly trust this feeling of safety. I had lived too long with the grinding terror of knowing that something terrible could have been around each and every corner to let go of that so easily. I would have liked to think that I was over it now, but I never would be—not as long as I kept it to myself. And as long as I wanted to keep my status in this town, I was going to have to make sure that nothing slipped out.
Even when I was being pressed by someone like Sarah. The way she had looked at me, it was as though she could cut right through me—as though she could carve down into my soul and find out things that I didn’t want anyone to know. It had been a long time since I had been around someone like that, and I would have been lying if I’d said that it didn’t throw me for something of a loop. She was smart, she was sharp, and she seemed interested in me—a dangerous combination, given what I was trying to keep hidden from the world at large.
I took a long sip of my drink and wondered if I should call Luke. I could have done with the company, and it would make sense for me to be around someone who knew about what had happened in my past, someone who I wouldn’t have to hide it from.
But I always forgot just how little Luke knew about what had happened to me back then, and I didn’t want to burden him with it now. He had done so well establishing himself in this town, and I didn’t want the weight of what had happened with me to get in the way of that. I was proud of him, and that meant that I didn’t dump my history at his doorstep to handle when I knew he had better things to be thinking about. Better things to be focusing on.
It wouldn’t be long until that story came out in the paper, and then people would probably have even more questions for me t
han they’d had before. Questions about what I had been through, about why the story featured nothing about my past. Sarah was right—all that leaving the hole there had done was to give people more of an excuse to go delving into things I wished they would just leave the hell alone.
I sighed and rubbed a hand over my face. I needed to get out of my head. But I could feel the weight of it pressing down on me, and there was no chance that I’d be able to shake it anytime soon. I just had to accept that tonight was a write-off, get drunk, and start again tomorrow.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the couch. Okay. I could do this. Everything that had happened was years away from me now. Literally years. Nobody here knew what I had done. I didn’t have anything to worry about.
But as soon as I closed my eyes, I saw them—the faces of the people that I had hurt. Their expressions as I had been laying into them—or ending them for good. I could have spent a hundred years away from that life, and those memories would still have been burned into the inside of my head. That was just how it worked. How it was always going to work, for me. I had done so much badness in my life that getting rid of it was impossible, a stain on my soul that I would never be able to break away from. I hated that it was still so present, even after all these years.
Maybe that was my punishment. I had to carry the weight of it all with me. The weight of the shame, the guilt, the grief—all of it. I didn’t get to put it on anyone else. My penitence was knowing what I had done, every inch of it, what I had chosen to do...
I took another long sip of my drink and tried to push their faces out of my mind. I just had to keep moving onward. Forward. I had to keep putting that behind me. I had tried too hard for too long to do all of this, and I didn’t intend to let something like an interview throw me off my game for any length of time.
I just needed to keep pushing on. Keep the weight of this from getting me down. And make sure I didn’t let anything slip to pretty journalists who I should have known better than to fall for.
