Wild Child: A Novel

by Molly O'Keefe

  “Thanks,” she said, folding the napkin and tucking it in her bag. “I don’t suppose you remember anything from that night?”

  “I was only five,” Sean said, running a hand through his hair. Of course he had memories of that night. The whole town did. Jackson did. There had been camera crews, coroners, jazz music fans wailing in the street for a week after the murder. “But I remember all the cops around the kitchen table the next morning. My mom freaking out. I remember Dad was covered in blood when he got home.”

  Jackson got a crippling vision of how this week would go if Monica was able to walk around asking questions. People would line up to tell her their memories of that night. And he just couldn’t have this town distracted from the vision they were trying to create—the “story” they were trying to tell, which was the polar opposite of the story she was trying to tell.

  Jackson cleared his throat, and Sean got the message.

  “That’s … that’s all I remember. Really.” He pulled himself a beer and walked back to the table. No doubt, Jackson would hear about Sean’s restraint tomorrow.

  Monica whirled to face him, her eyes shooting daggers. “What the hell, Jackson?”

  “I could say the same, Monica.” Jackson poured himself another beer. Probably a mistake, but he was kind of in the mood to make a mistake. It was Monica’s influence. “You said you’d be discreet,” he reminded her. “Walking into The Pour House on Saturday night is not discreet.”

  She twisted her lips, which he translated as a concession. “Fine,” she snapped. “Perhaps … I was not the most subtle.”

  “So, we’re both sorry.”

  “That’s a stretch.”

  He smiled, unable to help himself.

  She frowned at him, which didn’t do a single thing to kill his smile.

  “Are you going to warn the whole town to stay away from me?”

  “No. Just the ones you want to talk to in public about the murder.”

  “What about telling people to do yard work on a Saturday night?”

  “I didn’t tell them anything. Truth is, poker night is pretty much a dismal failure. Two people came in, took one look at me, and left.”

  “I can understand the inclination.” Irresistibly, she was both sweet and spicy at once. And as he was getting excited, she was relaxing, he could tell, the curve of those shoulders easing from indignant to … reserved.

  “I can’t imagine it will be a good time writing that book,” he said. Thinking of the kind of scab that would grow over a wound like that and the pain involved in ripping it off for the world to see. Or … maybe he had it wrong. Maybe she’d had years of counseling and was totally at peace with it.

  “It’s not supposed to be a good time,” she said. “It’s a job.”

  “Do you like being a writer?” He reached over and topped up her glass. Gave her a fresh lime. Maybe when he left town he’d go to Mexico, get a job on a beach somewhere as a bartender. He had a knack.

  “Sure.” She tucked her chin, her fingers tracing the grain on the wood. Her fingers were long, pretty. The nails were naked, but pink and short. Looking at them felt intimate, as if he were seeing something he shouldn’t through the crack in a door.

  Everything about her felt that way. Illicit and naughty. Forbidden.

  “Do you like being mayor?”

  He laughed once, and it burned in his chest. “No. I don’t.” Surprised at his honesty, he took a sip of beer to keep his mouth busy so he didn’t go spilling any more of his secrets.

  “Then why do it?”

  “A man’s gotta eat.” Not at all the real answer, but he’d already been more honest than he’d intended. “Why are you writing a book you aren’t excited about?” As soon as he said it, he remembered once, when he was a kid, daring Sean to touch the electrified fence around the railroad switch south of town. Sean didn’t do it; he was dumb, but not stupid. But the two of them had stood close enough to feel the current, the energy coming off the wires.

  That was how she seemed now; it was as if he’d stepped too close to the wires around her.

  “That’s hardly any of your business,” she snapped.

  “I disagree,” he snapped right back. This wasn’t what he wanted; he wanted to look at her naked fingers, try to see down her shirt, but he couldn’t stop this terrible energy. “This is my town and you’re about to go yanking our skeletons out of their closets.”

  “Why don’t you want me to write this book?” she asked, leaning in, sending his equilibrium spinning. He took another sip of beer. It was as if his friends were on the far side of the moon; it was just him and Monica. And the language of her body.

  “It’s the past,” he said, wiping his mouth. “We’re looking toward the future.”

  “We?”

  “Bishop.” Me. Me most of all. The wide-open future.

  “Right,” she said, her expression close to a sneer. “The TV show. The yard work.”

  Now he stiffened, everything set alight by her disdain. Her sarcasm fed his doubts, watered his worry.

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s very …” she pretended to mull it over “… polite.” She dropped her voice, leaned in close. “And you know how I feel about polite.”

  There was something about her smart mouth, her irreverence, that made him want to bite her. It was a fire in his blood—a swift and sudden obsession. He’d start with that small, delicate cup of skin supported by bone and sinew right there under her ear. He wanted that flesh in his mouth, the heat and softness of her. And then he’d move on to the fat center of her bottom lip, so lush, so erotic. He wanted to suck that.

  “You think it’s bullshit,” he said.

  She touched her nose, smiling.

  “You know what I think is bullshit?”

  “I can hardly wait to hear.”

  “Writing a book about a man who nearly killed his wife with his bare hands, a woman you clearly don’t like, and a past you put yourself in jeopardy to run from.”

  Like water draining slowly out of a sink, her smile faded. The color in her cheeks went white, her eyes diamond hard. Sensing the change in Monica, Reba, under the chair, started to growl. A partly bald guard dog in rhinestones.

  She pushed away from the bar and got to her feet with a little hop. “Gentlemen,” she said. “Have a good poker night.” She glanced at Sean and then back at Jackson, her eyes the kind of hard that should have taken all the heat out of his blood, yet it didn’t.

  This is what happens when you don’t have sex. Ever. You get excited by a woman who you can’t stop offending. A woman who loathes you.

  Cooler night air blew in the door as she left, and he pushed away his beer.

  “What the hell did you say?” Sean asked.

  “I’ll apologize.” He ran a hand through his hair, over his eyes. Again. Again. It’s all he ever did with her. Piss her off and apologize.

  “It’s late,” Brody said, ever the Boy Scout. “You going to let her walk home alone?”

  Jackson looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “No.”

  He left his nearly full beer and his friends and walked out into the night to chase down a woman he’d be smart to leave alone. She tampered with his locks, his rules, and distracted him from the plan. She tampered with him, opened up a side of himself he didn’t know.

  But as he stepped out the door, he was smiling.

  Chapter 5

  Monica wanted to make a proper dramatic exit, but Reba was suddenly interested in sniffing every square inch of the sidewalk. Peeing on every blade of grass, marking her territory.

  “Please,” Monica muttered. “Who are you kidding?”

  She heard footsteps behind her and yanked on Reba’s leash. Without having to look, she knew who was coming. Could tell by the whiff of superior condemnation in the air. Could tell by the way her skin rose in goose flesh, attracted and repelled in equal parts. “Go away, Jackson.”

  “It’s late,” he said. “You shou
ldn’t walk alone.”

  “Stuff it.”

  “Look, I’m sorry.”

  In the bar, he’d touched something awful, something searing and painful, and it obliterated her interior landscape, those things about herself that she’d created and honed. Her indifference, her strength, her hard-won acceptance of her past, her parents—all of it. He just stirred up a dust storm of doubt and anger. And now she was a quivering ball of pain, all over again.

  And she wanted to return the favor.

  She whirled on him. “You say that a lot, Jackson. But what exactly are you apologizing for? For treating me like a pariah one minute and a woman you want to fuck the next?”

  He flinched at her language. Good, yes. Because that was how she felt, like flinching under his attraction and his judgment.

  “Yes. For all of it. For all of it, I’m sorry.” Standing under a streetlamp, the starkness of the light did him no favors and she loved it. Look at the mayor now. Wrinkled and ravaged and guilty.

  But it wasn’t enough. She wanted him to bleed.

  “You think you’re special because you want to fuck me? Because you’re not. You’re not special. You’re a boring, judgmental ass.”

  Okay, she stopped herself. Enough. Just walk away.

  She turned, tugging on Reba’s leash, but she heard Jackson’s footsteps behind her.

  “What!” She whirled again. They were in the shadows now, between the streetlights, and he kept walking until he was close enough for her to see him clearly.

  “My poor manners aside, is it just me you don’t like, or is it any man who wants to fuck you?”

  She wasn’t going to tell him how long it had been since she’d had sex. How long it had been since she’d even noticed when a man looked at her with real interest in his eyes. And she refused, absolutely refused, to remember how nice it had been in his backyard to flirt with him. Really flirt, not this crap she did every day, this mirror she held up to the world, reflecting only what people wanted to see.

  With him, she’d been herself. As much as she was ever herself in the company of other people. And she found herself terrified by the honesty of the moment, of the honesty he seemed to require of her right now.

  “I am sorry for how I’ve acted toward you. I …” He continued after a breath. “It has been a very long time since I’ve been interested in a woman like I am in you. And it’s thrown me off. It’s made me … rude. And I am sorry.” She opened her mouth but he held up his hand. “I know how you feel about me being polite, but sometimes an apology is more about the person with regrets than the person being apologized to.”

  God, the things she knew about regret! The steam emptied out of her, leaving her rattled. “Fine. I forgive you, but I think … I think we should just stay away from each other.”

  He laughed. “It’s a small town.”

  “I know. But … we seem to bring out the worst in each other and it’s just not worth it. Nothing is ever going to happen between us.”

  The sound of his footsteps approaching was loud in the dark, a pebble skipped across cement. “I think something already has.”

  Oh, how young he seemed with his lines, his cocky assurance. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she’d seen it all before. “You know what the largest erogenous zone is for women?”

  “Your skin,” he murmured and her body responded. Amazing! Her body, which felt so little, so shallowly, felt his voice all the way down to her bones, pulsing in her womb.

  “No. My brain.”

  “Are you saying I have to seduce your brain?”

  “I’m saying you don’t stand a chance.”

  “Do you like sex?”

  “Oh my God.” She turned, stomping away. “Leave it to a man to hear a rejection and think it’s because I don’t like sex.”

  The asshole had the balls to smile as he caught up to her. “No. I’m just asking because every other woman in my life who has told me I have to convince her brain to have sex lets her brain get in the way during sex.”

  She tripped over the edge of the sidewalk. “Aren’t you a regular Dr. Ruth?”

  “Hardly.” He put a hand on her arm and it was warm and heavy. Real. She felt every callus at the base of his fingers, along his thumb. The mayor worked with his hands. And her body—weak, weak, weak—imagined him shirtless and sweaty, nailing shit together, his muscles ropy and ripped. A tool belt, some of those low jeans …

  Agh! He’d gotten to her.

  “I am a man who hasn’t had sex in two years,” he laughed, somehow so easy with this confession when every other man she’d ever known would never dream of saying such things, “and has spent endless, and I do mean endless, nights reimagining and replaying every sexual encounter I’ve ever had. The women I’ve disappointed, the way I would have done things differently, the women I’ve pleased and who have pleased me.” He pointed to his head. “It’s all right here.”

  She stared at him. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “I don’t know.” He sighed. “But I do know that I have not felt the way I feel about you in years.”

  “It’s just sexual attraction, Jackson. It’s chemistry.”

  “I know. And it’s awesome.” He nearly fist-pumped. He nearly danced with his excitement.

  She laughed, because he sounded like a kid and part of her … part of her had forgotten—if she’d ever really known—what pure chemistry felt like. She’d confused it plenty in her youth. Manufactured it. Mislabeled it. Pretended it was there when it wasn’t. Faked it.

  But what she felt for Jackson—it was real.

  “I’d like to kiss you.”

  “Jackson—”

  “Say no if you want. But I’d like to kiss you.”

  She didn’t say no and he stepped closer. Still she was silent, and he moved closer again. The hem of his tee shirt touched her shirt and she shouldn’t be able to feel that, but she did, somehow. She felt everything—the night air, his breath, the attention of his eyes. It was as if her skin had slipped away and all she had was raw sensation.

  Flirting with Jackson, kissing him—it could be a problem, she understood that. But when was this ever going to happen again? A man who didn’t expect anything from her? A man she really and truly—despite his idiotic behavior and perhaps her own idiotic behavior—wanted.

  It was so rare in her life these days. Rare enough to make her throw caution to the wind.

  If not now, when? she wondered. Time was creeping ever onward and she was more alone by the moment.

  She put a hand against his chest, over the pale blue shirt that made his eyes look like the sky on a hot August day. Beneath the cotton she felt the warmth of his skin, the tensile strength of his muscles, and beneath that, the heavy pounding of his heart.

  When he stepped forward again, their bellies touched. The most intimacy she’d had in years.

  “I don’t put on a show anymore,” she said. A warning to both of them. It was real pleasure for her or it was nothing. She was done pretending. Done manufacturing something for a man, leaving her with nothing.

  “A show?”

  “If you’re expecting—”

  “Stop.” His fingers touched her mouth, his thumb pulling the flesh of her bottom lip down, revealing the soft inside. She tasted the salt of his skin, and the taste pierced through her chest, into her belly and lower, where it started a thousand small fires, a thousand little licks of flame. “Expectations make me angry. I don’t expect anything. Did you hear the part when I said it’s been two years since I had sex?”

  “I did.”

  “So, are you of legal age?”

  “And then some.”

  “Are you willing?”

  “Getting there.”

  A part of the night, his chuckle twined around them, the purr of it reverberating in her chest until she couldn’t quite tell who was talking. “Then just … hold on tight.”

  And then he was there, his mouth against hers. His chest against hers.
His arms, long and solid, swept around her, pulling her closer, and she was up high and hard against his body.

  Despite wanting this, despite the flirting, her instinct, wild and desperate, was to push him away, put the distance back between herself and the rest of the world.

  Mistake, she thought, her hands clenching the hard muscles of his arms, you are making a mistake. This was why she didn’t flirt with men, because flirting led to this and she so rarely liked this. It was too much, too close; claustrophobia loomed over her. It reminded her painfully of that part of her life when she didn’t have enough pride to see the choices hidden in the shadows backstage.

  But then his hands, wide and smooth, slid up her back, to the neckline of her shirt, and slowly each of his fingers found its way to the edge of her shirt, and then under it. To the bare skin at the nape of her neck. Her knees melted like butter in a hot pan.

  It was torture, waiting for each of those fingers. She couldn’t breathe, and when finally the last finger slipped under her hair, she gasped, her open mouth an invitation.

  Holding the back of her head, he turned her, positioned her so when his tongue swept in, it swept in deep. She moaned in her throat, a purr, really, and she couldn’t even muster up any embarrassment. Those fingers had unlocked her, pulled her loose, and now she stood, weak in his arms. Her hands gripped around his biceps, over those sleek, deceiving muscles. Inspired, her own fingers curled under his sleeve; the smooth skin of his shoulders felt like a secret. Something so soft, just for her.

  He was right: this was chemistry and it was unbearably exciting. Because this was rare. So rare, in fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she felt liquid and fiery and floaty and dizzy and … hot. From one kiss.

  She didn’t notice the car lights coming down the street, slicing apart the darkness. She didn’t notice anything but him, until a police siren wailed once and then stopped. They jumped away from each other, putting yards between themselves, only to get hit in the face with the searing white light of a flashlight.

  “Holy shit! Mayor?”

  Jackson, beside her, swore under his breath. “Hey there, Chief.”

  The situation was so hysterical, Monica nearly laughed.