She put her hands up, fighting back a grin. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I cringed. “I’m never leaving the house again.”
“Those are the shortest damn shorts I’ve seen in an age.” Mary closed the lid to the laptop. “I bet he took a good look at you out there even before you got wet. Now go dry off and cover yourself a bit more so you don’t give the old geezers any heart attacks. I’ve got a taste for hush puppies.”
“But—”
“I said go.” Mary pointed, her strict teacher face firmly in place. The one that made it clear I really had no choice in the matter.
“Yes, ma’am. Full coverage coming up,” I said, resigned to the fact that I’d basically given Easton a show as I’d run inside. And as much as I shouldn’t have wondered, as much as I should have left it alone, I couldn’t help but picture him sitting in that beast of a car. Watching me. Following me with his eyes. Wanting me.
Impossible.
CHAPTER THREE
EASTON
There was something almost wrong about watching Violet Foster walk through the rain in clothing that left not a damn thing to my imagination. Wrong, and yet I couldn’t stop myself from staring. Jesus, she’d grown up. A lot. In ways that made me want to see even more of her than I already had.
I pulled out of her grandma’s driveway and headed for the shop, my mind spinning every which way. Violet Foster had come back to Downriver. She’d always been unbelievably pretty in that wide-eyed, appealing sort of way I couldn’t resist. She’d also been one of the kindest, most open-minded chicks I’d ever met.
And the star of a salacious sex tape before graduating high school.
Nothing about her had ever quite fit. Not the crowd she’d hung out with and definitely not the scandal that had rocked the community our senior year. Of course, I hadn’t really known her then. I’d known of her—the whole damn town had known of her—but our crowds had never mixed. Not really. I’d wanted to—even gotten up the nerve to ask her to dance at our eighth-grade graduation party—but nothing more had come from that. I’d asked her out at some point that next summer, but she’d said no. Something that had broken my little teenage heart and ego. She’d been with Jace by the time we’d gone back to school, and I’d come to the conclusion that I’d missed my chance to spend time with her.
At least until one stormy night when I’d been driving around trying to get my new reality off my mind. When I’d seen a soaking wet, pre-sex-tape-release Violet walking down the side of the road. She’d been shivering, her face red and tear-stained, looking so damn small as she’d huddled in her jacket. I’d stopped the truck to pick her up, and when those sad eyes had met mine, I’d known I’d made the right decision.
Two car rides, a pizza, and some conversation were all we’d shared that night, but it was a moment I’d thought about a thousand times since, just like that dance. The next day, the rumors had begun, kids talking about Jace and Violet and a security camera at the bowling alley. The video had spread to every home, every computer, within a few days. But by then, I’d lost my father, which had left me as nothing more than a spectator to the crash and burn of one Miss Violet Foster as my own life had spun out of control in a completely different way.
“Fucking hell.” I ran a hand through my hair before dropping it to downshift easy as I came up on the tracks. Once I’d crept over the roughest railroad crossing in the area—cursing myself for driving the Hellcat when I should have just taken my truck—I revved the engine and raced down Van Horn. The car may have been impractical for about a million reasons, but I needed the speed and craved the adrenaline rush it brought me. Driving hard, racing even, usually cleared my head when things went sideways, but not this time. My fast car was no match for the swinging of Violet’s hips in soaking wet cotton. For the curves and legs and dark hair framing those light eyes. Nope, speed wasn’t even close.
Brogan stood waiting in bay one when I pulled into the lot. Watching me. Ready for a conversation I really didn’t want to have. I parked in my normal spot and took a minute to resettle myself. Brogan could wait. Besides, it wasn’t him I was planning on hunting down.
When I was ready to focus on work, I adjusted myself through my pants to hide the half hard-on torturing me. Must stop thinking about wet cotton. Must stop—
“You planning on working this afternoon?” Brogan hollered. I glared through the window before turning off the ignition. Was I planning on working… Did I do anything else? Was I ever not either at the shop or at my trailer? Shit, I hadn’t taken time off or even been on a date since we’d opened the place because I worked so much. Brogan knew this—he was usually right at my side, but that didn’t stop me from huffing an irritated breath because of his mouth.
Damn it, I needed to jerk off and take a nap, but those would both have to wait.
Ready to confront Jude, another one of the guys we’d hired to help during our busy times, I slammed the car door and stormed inside. My temper grew the more I thought about what he’d said. About him calling Violet…that name.
Brogan caught me first. “Was that really Violet Foster?”
I grunted as I walked past him, not ready to deal with his opinions. Not when I needed to straighten out Jude.
“Easton,” Brogan said, trying to sideswipe me as I headed for the office.
“Get the fuck out of the way.”
“Man, wait.” Brogan placed his hand against my chest, stopping me. I stared him down, growing more pissed with every second he held me up. “Colton dealt with it.”
I pushed his hand off with a snort. “Colton wasn’t the one watching Violet panic because of what Jude said. Where is he?”
“Yo.” Jude appeared from the office, a red rag in one hand and a half-peeled banana in the other. “What’s up, man?”
I shoved past Brogan, closing in on the man I saw as a little brother of sorts. The man I was ready to throw down with because of his mouth. “What the fuck were you thinking, calling her that name?”
“What’s the big deal?” Jude asked, his brow pulling down in confusion. “Are you honestly heated over what I said to that chick?”
“Yes, you dumbass. You upset her. Her grandmother’s a customer here, and that shit was years ago. Why’d you have to bring it up?”
Jude shrugged. “Like it matters anymore? You said it yourself. That shit was years ago. She has to be over it by now.”
I shook my head, staring up at the ceiling for a second to keep from throttling him. I’d seen Violet’s face when he’d called out that name, had practically felt the way her entire body had gone stiff before she’d started staring at the door like she’d been desperate to escape. That girl wasn’t over anything, not by a long shot.
“Easton.” Colton crept up beside Jude, putting his hands up, giving me a serious stare that meant he wasn’t screwing around. “He’s an idiot, but he meant nothing by it, man.”
“Hey—” Jude started, glaring at his cousin.
“Shut up, dumbass,” Colton replied, not looking away from me for a second. “Violet got a raw deal on that whole video thing, but Jude only meant the name as a joke. I made sure he’s aware that he is never, ever, to joke that way again.”
Jude practically fell forward as Colton smacked him on the back of the head, straightening in time to give Colton a pissed-off look. “Right. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
I let out a huge breath and clenched my hands into fists, wanting to punch something but not wanting that something to be one of my friends. Jude was younger than the rest of us and needed more guidance than discipline, but he wasn’t a bad guy, usually. Colton was an ass with a big mouth he tended to open without a lot of forethought, but he wasn’t a liar. Never had been. If the two of them claimed they’d dealt with this, then I had to believe they had.
“Just watch your mouth, yeah?” I said, giving in to Jude and Colton the same way I always did, just as I had since we’d been kids running around the trailer park. “I don’t wa
nt to lose a customer because you sometimes mistake your mouth for your asshole.”
“Understood.” Jude nodded once before the concerned expression on his face morphed into a sarcastic smile. “Want to go watch that video she made? I think I still have a copy burned on a DVD at home. Probably tucked inside an old Jenna Jameson case with a sticker that says ‘Ride me, Cowgirl.’”
“Jude,” Colton said, dropping his voice in warning.
Jude backed away, laughing. “Joking…just joking.”
But that was a joke Violet wouldn’t appreciate, which made it one I didn’t want to hear. “Joke like that again, and I’ll fire your ass.” I swung around and pounded toward the office, needing a few minutes to get my head on straight. Violet Foster had come home. I hadn’t thought it possible. She’d run so hard and so fast, I’d been sure she’d never come back. Not that I blamed her. Shit, after the way everyone had turned on her, after the bullshit had blown up with that bastard Jace, even I’d have told her to leave and never look back. In fact, I might have done just that the night I’d bought her a pizza. And I never ran from a fight.
“You okay?” Brogan stepped into the office, closing the door behind him.
I sighed, dropping into the chair behind my desk. “What the hell was he thinking?”
“He was thinking that it’s been a lot of years, and that, in his world, that shit doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It certainly seemed to matter to her.” I grabbed the stress ball I kept on the desk and squeezed, letting my mind wander. Violet Foster: cheerleader, member of the orchestra, soccer player—she’d done it all. But she hadn’t been cocky or arrogant. No, she’d been a nice girl with a pretty smile and a way of walking that had turned guys’ heads. Our crowds hadn’t mixed, our social circles had never overlapped, and she’d remained this odd sort of celebrity who’d been close and yet not.
Until the day I’d picked her up from the side of the road, soaking wet from the rain and looking completely broken. Something that had haunted me for years.
“Easton.” Brogan’s single word broke me from my thoughts. “You can’t fix her, man.”
“I’m not trying to fix her.” Those words tasted like a lie, though.
Brogan leaned against the door with his arms crossed over his chest, watching me. Inspecting. Waiting to see which way I’d take this. Violet’s fall had come just after my dad had decided he didn’t want to be in our family anymore. Those events would forever be tied together in my mind, and he knew it.
One selfish decision made by another person had thrown my world into disarray, just like one video that had gotten out when it shouldn’t had done the same to her. Different events, same conclusion. Our lives had shattered in our senior year, but I’d had Brogan and Colton to help put me back together. I’d had a mom and a younger sister who’d needed me to take over as the man of the house. I’d stayed and fought to resume what I’d seen as normal, while she’d run away as fast as she could.
Brogan would tell me to walk away from her, to ignore Violet’s sudden appearance and stay on firm ground instead of grabbing hold of that anchor and jumping into the sea. I probably should have listened to him, too. Let Violet go about whatever business she had and wave goodbye when she left town again, because she would leave. There was no way the girl would want to stick around. But the expression on her face when Jude had called her Cowgirl was already eating at my resistance, and something about the lost look in her eyes wouldn’t let me turn her away. She wasn’t over anything. She was just going through the motions to get through the days.
And damn, did I remember what that was like.
Brogan sighed, shaking his head. “I know Violet Foster has always been some sort of fantasy for you, but the reality of her won’t live up to your dreams.”
“She’s not my fantasy.”
“I call bullshit. You’ve been humping the mattress for her since middle school. Don’t try to lie to me of all people.”
I leaned back in my chair, keeping my eyes on his, trying to convince both of us. “Yeah, well… I’m not chasing after her now. We’re just fixing her grandma’s car.”
“So long as that’s all we’re fixing. She’s chaos in a tight T-shirt, man.”
Tight…wet…see-through… “Fucking chaos.”
“Exactly.”
But still, thoughts of her fear and sadness tugged at me. “Her mistake is old news.”
“Old news with a rotting smell to it that some of the locals just aren’t going to let stay buried. Fair or not, she’s a lightning rod for gossip, and you can’t fix that for her. You work eighty hours a week and find time to help your mom, do maintenance at the trailer park, and deal with everyone else’s bullshit. You don’t need another weight on your shoulders.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I don’t need the distraction.”
“Exactly,” Brogan said with a nod as if I’d agreed to his plan to distance us from Violet. “We fix her car and send her on her way.”
“Totally.” I looked him in the eye, knowing that was a lie, understanding he knew it too. Some things were irresistible. Colton couldn’t see a skirt without chasing it, Jude couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be a smartass, and I couldn’t see a mess without stepping in to clean it up. But Brogan was all of our wingman. He couldn’t watch any of us falter without swooping in to rescue us from ourselves.
Still, this wasn’t about my need to repair the broken. This was about Violet…a girl I’d secretly crushed on for most of my life. One who often starred in whatever fantasies I had running through my head, even after all these years. A girl who’d had everything going for her until one mistake had stolen it all. And just like with my dad, I hadn’t seen the fall coming in time to stop it. I’d been there at the precipice of Violet’s crash, not having any idea what was about to come, and had very likely pushed her to run away instead of fight back.
I may have pushed her to abandon her family the same way my dad had abandoned ours.
CHAPTER FOUR
VIOLET
Four days. That was how long it took for me to grow so bored that the thought of staying inside the house another minute made me want to gouge my eyes out with one of the tourist spoons Grandma had hanging in display cases in the basement. Ones from the Grand Canyon and the Smokey Mountains. Ones I’d dusted three times in two days.
Did I mention I was bored?
I couldn’t even bake. Not because I didn’t have what I needed—oh no, Grandma kept her kitchen well equipped and stocked for making just about anything basic in my repertoire. I could bake—I simply didn’t feel like it. For the first time that I could remember, I didn’t want to play with butter and sugar and flour, didn’t want to try to make the perfect cookie or the tastiest cake. The lack of interest in spending time in the kitchen left me completely unhinged. I always baked. Cookies, cakes, pies, treats of all sorts—I ran a virtual patisserie shop out of my home most days. I hadn’t baked since I’d crossed into Downriver.
It wasn’t as if I was trapped in the house, though. Oh, no. I'd gone to the store for Grandma and ran an errand or two. I wasn’t a total recluse. But being out in that town, seeing all the people I recognized from growing up there, made me want to tear off my own skin. Were they talking about me? They were definitely staring…or maybe I was just catching their eye at the wrong time. Or maybe Mary was right, and my shorts were too darn short. I felt monitored. Watched. Exposed.
And that was just the people I didn’t quite know, not the ones I’d had some sort of relationship with. When a whole town patronized the same grocery store, you tended to run into people. Every trip, every time I left the house, there was someone calling my name, turning their lips up in their fake smiles, and giving me stiff, insincere hugs. I endured all sorts of how’ve you beens and it’s good to see you home bullshit. And it was bullshit, because not a single person was actually glad to see me. But that was what this place had taught me—no one said what they really meant until you turned your back.
>
Except for maybe Jude, who’d at least had the balls—or the stupidity—to call me out to my face. To call me Cowgirl when he knew the connotation behind that word. He remembered that nickname, having never known me, likely having not seen me since the day I’d graduated, when I’d driven out of town for college on the western side of the state. He’d probably seen the Cowgirl Vee video and still believed the lies surrounding it.
Some histories simply refused to die.
I really needed to find my way back to the kitchen and bake something before I went absolutely stir-crazy.
“We should get a watermelon.”
Grandma’s odd request almost made me shake my head to bring me back to what I was supposed to be doing. Keeping her company. We were sitting in the hospital’s oncology clinic for her first chemo treatment, which was something I’d been dreading. I knew it would make her sick, but I had no idea how much. Nor did anyone else, it seemed. The nice nurse with the soft smile had warned us Grandma could be tired afterward, or she could feel fine. She could lose her hair, or she could keep it. No one knew anything except for the fact that there was something growing inside her…killing her slowly. And there was no guarantee this treatment would help her at all.
Deadly chemicals streamed into her body from her IV, and all I could do was sit and watch as I prayed that they worked. And tried to figure out why we were suddenly talking about fruit.
“You don’t like watermelon.”
She shrugged. “I do like watermelon. I don’t like how messy it sometimes is, but I think watermelon is a necessity in summer.”
“You used to tell me the seeds in the watermelon were dead bugs so I wouldn’t eat it.”
“Because I didn’t want to clean up the mess. You still ate it.”
I shrugged. “Of course I did. I like watermelon.”
“Dead bugs and all.” She sat back, closing her eyes. “But you only ate it when you got older, not when you were little.”
Pop The Clutch: A Second Gear Romance Page 4
