by Zoe Dawson
“Stop playing kissy-face and let’s get back to work, huckleberry. I thought you had shit to do.” That was Brax’s voice in the background and he didn’t sound happy about singing in church.
I walked into the house with them. I mouthed that it was Boone and they smiled and nodded.
Boone’s voice got distant and I heard tussling, then kissing noises. “Shut up, Brax.” Then he was back on the line. “Look, we’re planning a cookout tonight here at Booker’s.”
“Always my damn casa.” That was Booker’s voice complaining.
“Shut up. I’m trying to talk to Verity,” he shouted. “Sorry about that. It’s a joke about us always being here at Booker’s house. Anyway, would you like to come?”
They were so cute together. I didn’t think I could stand it. “I would love to come. Can I bring something?”
“Wow, sure, whatever you want.”
“I make a mean potato salad.”
“Let me ask the boss.” His voice got distant again. “Brax, Verity can bring potato salad.”
More tussling, then a different voice on the line. “What kind of potatoes and how are you making it?”
When Brax came on the line I could hear Boone protesting in the background. “Well, I prefer red potatoes, eggs, celery, sweet relish, garlic, mustard, and mayo.”
Aubree frowned and River Pearl looked confused as to why I was spouting potato salad ingredients.
“That sounds pretty boring—”
“You didn’t let me finish. Why don’t you hush your smart mouth for a minute?”
There was silence at the other end of the line. “Yes, ma’am,” he finally said with amusement in his voice. I bet he had one of those damn Outlaw grins on his face.
“I also add cider vinegar and a tablespoon of sugar when mixing.”
“Okay, the cider vinegar and the sugar is interesting. How much?”
“Well, maybe if you ask me real nice at the barbeque I might tell you. But, by all means, make your judgment after you taste it, not before. However, I guarantee you’ll want this recipe.”
“Confident.” He chuckled. “I like that. Okay, Miz Holy Mary.”
“Don’t call me that,” I said, something strong and decisive in my voice, a demand for him to see me, not as just the preacher’s daughter, but see me wholly as just Verity. “That’s not who I am.”
I heard a sigh, then, his voice more subdued than I’d ever heard it, he said, “Okay, Verity. I’ll pass judgment when I taste it.” I had to wonder if Brax was making an effort because of Boone, and that made my heart soften toward the toughest of the Outlaws. “Thank you, Brax.”
“It’s me again, Verity.”
“Okay, I’m cleared for the Great Potato Salad Test.”
He laughed and the sound of it only made me wish I was standing next to him so I could touch him.
“Let Aubree know, and River Pearl’s invited, too. Have fun and I’ll see you tonight.”
“What was that all about?” Aubree asked.
“Apparently, we’re all invited to your house tonight for a barbeque.”
“Really,” Aubree said, looking at her. “River Pearl, too?”
“That’s what I was told.”
“I’d love to tag along and poke at all of Brax’s buttons. Sounds like fun to me.”
We walked into the kitchen and found Aubree’s momma kissing on her handsome sheriff husband. They broke apart when they saw us. So sweet that they were so in love, especially after what Aubree’s momma had endured.
“Well, hello there, young ladies. What’s going on? Thought you were heading over to the country club with River Pearl.”
“We were, but it’s always so crowded there and you have this wonderful private pool, so we came here. You don’t mind do you, Mrs. Dalton?”
“Why River Pearl, you’re still a little charmer, aren’t you? What in tarnation have you done to your hair?” She walked over to get a closer look. The sheriff leaned back into the counter and smiled, picking up a cup of coffee and sipping.
“Oh, don’t you like it?”
“I adore it. Why the change, and what did your momma say?”
“I was tired of being a blonde. This is my natural color, and my momma wasn’t thrilled, but I have never really been a blonde and faking it gets kinda old.”
I guess I wasn’t the only one who had decided I didn’t exactly fit into the neat boxes people wanted to put me in. I was glad to see her stand up for herself with her mother.
“Well, it’s stunnin’ and you’ll look stunnin’ in your fancy modelin’ pictures.”
She hugged Aubree’s momma and we all grabbed drinks, walking through the beautiful garden that Boone had designed and onto the pool deck. He’d done an amazing job with the pool area as well. The old shed had been replaced with a cabana that mimicked the Doric columns on the front of the house. Inside was a small kitchen and fireplace, along with a bar and chairs. Very functional, but also spot on.
The pool itself was done up in a fieldstone finish that complemented the fieldstone fireplace inside. There was a hot tub at the end near the cabana, and inviting chaise lounges with soft cushions and lovely pillows.
“Boone outdid himself out here,” Aubree said. “Am I right?”
I was a little overcome with my feelings for him at the moment and I could only nod. I pulled my phone out of my bag and walked a little bit away from my friends as they started to shuck their clothes down to their suits.
I pushed call back on my phone.
“Can’t go a few hours without talking to me, darlin’?” he teased, his slow accent like smooth velvet.
“I’m standing here admirin’ Aubree’s momma’s pool deck, and I am once again blown away by you. I had to tell you. I can’t wait to see you tonight.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. I know my voice was intense, but I couldn’t help it.
“I’m inside out.”
My heart caught and I had to stand there for a moment and compose myself. “Don’t work too hard,” I said softly.
“See you tonight, darlin’…and fuck, yeah, I can’t wait either.”
I slipped the phone in my bag and shucked my clothes down to my bathing suit. It was a relief to just sit in the sun with nothing better to do than talk to my friends. With Boone still heavy on my mind, and that experience I’d had with him this morning still fresh, I said, “So, I have a question for you guys.”
“What?” They said in unison.
“Do you guys know about jock straps?”
“What about them?” River Pearl quipped, “I don’t usually wear one.”
Aubree laughed and gave me a knowing look. “Booker wears one, and let me tell you, it’s lingerie for men. But, lingerie is much too soft a word for how he looks in it. I mean, holy cow.”
“Well, from what I can tell, it’s made to ride low on the hips so that it doesn’t show above their waistband, but still support what it’s supposed to support. And black, well, it looks good on Boone.”
“You guys are making me blush,” River Pearl said. “What exactly were you doing with Boone this morning?”
“Let’s just say we worked out together in his weight room.” Now I was blushing and remembering.
“Sounds more like you worked him over,” River Pearl said, waggling her eyebrows and grinning.
“Well, I want to explore everything about Boone.”
She sighed. “I can’t blame you for that. He was already attractive in high school, but, now, with all that muscle…yeah.”
“You should see the way he does sit-ups. I simply melted. He hangs from a bar.” I pulled my phone out. “This is what I’m talking about. Look at this.”
River Pearl walked over to my chaise and grabbed my phone. “Hush my mouth. That is downright indecent and way too sexy. You weren’t kidding. Let me see the one Boone was wearing.”
I took back the phone and scrolled through the choices. “Something like this. The front is fan-worth
y, but the back….you need to cool off in a freezer afterwards.”
River Pearl looked at it and passed the phone to Aubree. She fanned herself. “Wow, too sexy,” Aubree said, wrestling her for my phone and winning. I laughed.
She scrolled through my phone. “This is what Booker usually wears.”
“See-through white mesh that leaves nothing to the imagination. That’s something. I had no idea,” River Pearl said.
“Neither did I,” After I took my phone back and saw what Aubree had pulled up, I decided to ask Boone if he had anything like this in his jock drawer.
“Verity. I need to talk to you.”
My heart jolted in my chest as I turned to see Billy Joe standing on Aubree’s pool deck. He looked tired and drawn out and a little bit scary around the eyes “We don’t have anything to talk about.”
I was through with this entire Billy Joe thing. I’d already told my daddy I wasn’t going to get involved with him and there weren’t going to be daddy-approved wedding bells in my future. He wasn’t happy about it. Had his heart set on keeping me in that box I just never did fit in. Then a chill rushed through me. “How did you know I was here? Are you following me?”
His eyes never left me and he took a step. “I just want to talk to you.”
He looked more like he wanted to throttle me and I got scared. I slipped out of the chair and backed up. “About what?”
“Your wicked ways. They have to end. You need to be cleansed.”
The hair on the back of my neck prickled.
Aubree rose and glanced towards the house. “Billy Joe, you’d better hightail it out of here. My step-daddy is the sheriff and all I have to do is go get him. He’s in the house right now.”
River Pearl rose and stepped over to him. She was almost as tall as he was, and she set her hands on her hips and leaned in to put her face close to his. “It’s best you do what Aubree says.”
He never even glanced at her, just kept up that steady, scary stare at me. “I don’t listen to Outlaw whores.”
She narrowed her eyes, her voice full of compressed anger at the insult to both Aubree and the Outlaw brothers. “I think you’re the one who needs to be cleansed, Billy Joe.” She gave him a shove and he fell back into the pool and came up sputtering.
When he climbed out, he looked at me and I shivered. “You made your choice and it was the wrong one.”
He left, and I felt totally unsettled for the rest of the day. I decided it was best that I didn’t mention this to Boone. I hoped Billy Joe finally got the message.
Chapter Fourteen
Verity
After a few more hours with River Pearl and Aubree, I went home and whipped up a batch of my potato salad. I found out that Boone had been there and then left to meet the guy at Eula Downs to discuss landscaping the racetrack and to take care of a koi pond. I wondered what that was all about.
I focused on knocking Braxton Outlaw’s socks off. Okay, so, I wanted to win over his brothers. I had a feeling that both of them thought I was nothing but trouble for Boone. They really weren’t far from the truth.
I had this burning, empty need for him now that was pure torture. I was so afraid of the future, afraid of the decisions I had to make, and what might happen after I made my choices, but I couldn’t wish away what had happened with Boone. I had been kidding myself before. I had come back for this. Exactly this. To discover the true nature of the father of the most precious little boy I had ever laid my eyes on. I walked over to my purse and pulled out the picture of him sleeping in his adoptive mother’s arms. We had an open adoption, and I could be involved in his life as much as I wanted to be. I didn’t want him growing up not knowing who his real momma was.
Tears pricked my eyes and I pressed my hand against my midriff, pressing down on that sucking black hole tearing me up.
What was I doing? What had I done? Why did everything have to be so complicated? We were just two people, a guy and a girl, and we wanted a chance. Just a chance.
“Verity?”
I stiffened at my mother’s voice and quickly tucked the picture back into my wallet. I turned to face her with no time to compose myself and not sure I really wanted to. I wanted to feel this pain and guilt. It was my due.
“What is it, sweetheart? What is putting that sad, terrible look on your face?”
I squeezed my eyes against the pain and the loneliness and the fear that swamped me. She would have understood. She would have stood by me. Why hadn’t I trusted her? She was my momma, and now that I was a mother, I realized it was just one thing out of a whole, long list of mistakes I’d made last year. I should have tried harder to find Boone. I should have made his brothers tell me where he was, but I had felt so scared and lost that I let them stonewall me. I turned and wrapped my arms around my mother and held her tight and cried against her shoulder.
She smoothed her hand over my hair and the horrible, sick swell of pain tumbled out. I choked on my tears and she let me cry and murmured that it was going to be okay.
She pulled me over to the table and sat me down. She was gone for a few a moments and came back with a box of tissues.
“Tell me, my darling.”
“Last year I was so lonely. It was so hard. It’s good to be home, but I have to tell you. I wasn’t in Kenya last year.
My momma’s eyes widened and that look came over her face again that said I had taken another step away from that little girl she saw when she looked at me.
She took a breath. “Where were you?”
“In New York City.”
“Why?”
Here was the moment when I could have unburdened myself. When I could have told her about my son and what had happened. But suddenly I just couldn’t do it. I had already told my friends, and they had already made their judgments. I knew that Aubree wasn’t happy with me, but I could only think that the next person I told my agonizing secret to should be Boone. I realized in that moment that he was the only person who mattered.
“I don’t really know how to tell you this, but I’m not exactly perfect, momma.”
“Oh, Verity.”
“I know how Ethan felt when he left and why he left. We can’t be you and Daddy. We’re your children, not clones. We live and breathe, and we have minds of our own. I love you. Both of you, and I know that you don’t approve of Boone. But, I like him. Very much.
She took a breath. “Oh, my God, you really are a young woman who knows her own mind. I have to admit, I’ve grown quite fond of Boone myself. He isn’t anything like I thought he would be. I’ve told your daddy as much, and I can see he thinks very highly of him, too. But Verity, their reputation is something that would be very hard to overcome.”
“And we should treat them different because of something they had nothing to do with? How is that fair?”
“It’s not,” she sighed. “It’s just the way things are.”
I grabbed a tissue and wiped at my eyes. “I don’t care what anyone says. I’m seeing him, Momma. That is my decision.”
She nodded as if she’d known this was coming and wasn’t sure how she felt about it. “I’ll speak to your father. He’s not going to be happy about it. He had his heart set on Billy Joe.”
“He doesn’t know Billy Joe, at all, believe me.”
“That may be so. Now, why don’t you tell me what you came home to tell me?”
I explained to her how much I wanted to be a designer, and then it was her turn to need the tissue box. She said she was proud of me for completing my mission in my own way. Also, proud of the news that I had been so successful. But, I could see in my momma’s eyes that she knew she wasn’t getting the whole story.
A story that I wasn’t sure I was ever going to tell her.
When my cell rang, I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. He sounded so good, and I just listened to him talk, listened to his voice that settled inside me like a warm, comforting blanket. He told me he’d pick me up.
In my room, I
hunted through all my clothes. I wanted to wear something that would make his eyes travel over me with appreciation. As I was searching, I noticed my body in the full length mirror. It looked fuller, curvier. I pressed my hand over my stomach and stood there remembering how it had felt to carry him. The counselor told me that, all my life, I would hold this grief in my heart. She told me that she could help me through giving up a child and the adoption, but she told me that I would never get over the pain. I just had to accept it.
Acceptance. How long would that take? For me, it felt like a never-forever.
I pulled out a dress I’d made out of this wonderful butterfly material. It was a halter top, and the skirt came to mid-thigh. It wasn’t exactly demure, but it wasn’t overtly sexual. And the different butterfly hues went well with my coloring.
I pulled out a short-sleeved, butter yellow sweater to go with it, along with a pair of red sandals. I left my hair loose. Underneath, I wore my bathing suit.
When I heard Boone’s truck pull up outside, I snagged the potato salad out of the fridge and went out to see him. Finally! It felt like it had been years.
He was lounging against the door to his truck, looking off into the bayou as I came out of the house. A black muscle shirt stretched across his chest. His thumbs hung on the belt loops of a pair of faded jeans that molded to his thighs, tight across his hips and groin, his biceps rounded, his strong neck smooth, his jaw coated in dark stubble. The wind played with his thick hair, the strands caressing his forehead. The sun was just going down, painting him in purple shadow. In profile he was so gorgeous it was almost hard to look at him, and my heart flipped and tumbled. I stopped walking, the feeling was so intense. Cold and hot at the same time.
Oh, God.
I was in love with Boone.
I didn’t know when it had happened or how. I just felt this glow inside me and knew without a doubt that it was love. Real. The grown-up kind of love, not the infatuation I’d felt for him in high school.
Slowly he turned his head and I waited for it. The moment he saw me, he gave me an irresistible half grin, flashing that patented Outlaw sex appeal and creating The Boone Swoon out of thin air.
