I wait for him to answer my question. When he doesn’t, I press on.
“So?” I ask.
“So what?”
“So what’s your story? Why is a guy like you single?”
I pull my legs up on the chair. His eyes whip to my legs as I draw them up. My body heats from the weight of his gaze, and I try not to melt into the chair.
He looks up at me. “Why is a girl like you single?”
“Well, to be honest, I had a boyfriend not too long ago.”
“What happened to him?”
“He left me for the woman he was engaged to before.” My insides twist as I remember the phone call when he delivered the news that he was not, in fact, coming back to Indiana. That he was staying in Wisconsin with “the love of his life.” “He loved her first, and I can’t compete with that.”
Peck walks across the room and sits across from me. The scent of his body wash caresses me as he gets situated. Every cell in my body responds, becoming fully awake at his presence.
“That guy must’ve been an idiot,” Peck says.
“I’ll agree to that.” I give him a small smile. “So I answered you. Now, you answer me.”
He leans back in the chair. His body is long and lean as he looks at me over the bundle of bananas in the center of the table.
“I don’t know, really,” he says carefully. “I guess I’ve never made it far enough with a woman to ask her to move in.”
“Does this mean you and I have made it further than you and anyone else?” I tease. “I’m so honored.”
He snorts, clearly amused at my take on the situation. “We’ll be starting a family soon.”
I think about that. “I’ve never really been dead-set on having a family.”
“Why?”
“Because my family is … a hassle. It doesn’t sound terrible to think about only having to take care of myself for a change. I sort of shunned all deep relationships for most of my life because it felt too exhausting to have to manage them.” I think about my relationship with Charlie and how I kind of forgot that for a minute. “But then I met Charlie, and it felt manageable to me for the first time. Probably because he was on the rebound, and I didn’t know it, so he was telling me all the sweet and precious things.” I laugh at myself. “And then he was on ‘a business trip’ which means a secret trip to reconcile with his ex. Then it wasn’t so manageable anymore.”
“He fucking what?” He shakes his head. “He’s an asshole, Dylan. Didn’t deserve you.”
“Yeah, well, what’s done is done.” I shrug. “And I’m tired of competing for people’s affection.”
Peck considers this. “Well, I always wanted a family of my own.”
“So why don’t you have one?”
He looks down and fiddles with his fingernail. There’s a long pause. I don’t think he’s going to answer me when he finally lifts his gaze.
“Kind of like you, I guess. I’m not sure I can manage it,” he says.
“You’re built for something like that,” I tell him. “I’ve seen you with your nana. You’re a family guy.”
He grins. “Well, that’s the thing. I am a family guy. If I were to get married, I’d be married forever. But people …” He blows out a breath. “You know, people come and go these days. They don’t commit to anything. It’s like they’re married because a big party sounds fun and then they get a wild hair up their ass, and they’re on to the next thing six months later.”
“Not if it’s love,” I say. “If you love someone, you can’t live without them. That’s what they say, anyway. That’s what I told myself when Charlie left me. He loved her first, and that’s where his love was always rooted. I can’t fight that. True love always … finds a way.”
His brows rise, and I think he’s going to laugh, but he doesn’t. Instead, he leans forward. “Does it, though? Does love always find a way? Or does it sometimes go unanswered?”
The question is fired in the tenderest of ways. It’s not a rhetorical thought; he wants an answer.
I lean forward too. Across the small square table, we look at each other. His eyes are so blue, so pure, that I could fall into them and never find my way back out.
“Can you really, truly love someone who doesn’t love you back?” I ask softly.
He raises his shoulders but doesn’t answer as if he’s expecting me to continue with my thought.
“Love should be based on mutual respect. A healthy love, anyway,” I say, thinking as I go. “I’m not sure you can be in love with someone who doesn’t open themselves up to you in the same way. Maybe you can love them, but not be in love with them. Those are two different things.”
He rises slowly, tightening his towel as he stands. I get to my feet too. We stand face to face, which is entirely too close considering he’s wearing practically nothing and looking delicious. The playfulness I usually see in his eyes vanishes, and an intensity takes its place. It steals my breath.
I want to kiss him. I want to reach up and take his stubbled face in my hands and touch my lips to his, pressing my body against his.
He steps toward me, his body angling ever so slightly to mine. I think he’s going to reach for me.
His weight shifts, his fingers flexing. At the last second, he runs a hand down his cheek.
My body falls. I exhale with more force than necessary, but the breath I’ve been holding burns.
“I’m going to head to bed,” he says. “Feel free to watch television or whatever. I sleep like a rock. It won’t bother me.”
“Thanks,” I say, forcing a swallow down my throat. I feel as though I’ve been dismissed, yet not. His stare stays on my face, not once moving down my body.
He walks by me but stops at the door. He looks at me over his shoulder, but there isn’t enough light to read his expression.
I stand in the middle of his kitchen, holding my breath. I don’t know what I want him to say, but he doesn’t say anything. He just gives me a smile and disappears into the night.
Twelve
Peck
“Went by Nana’s this morning,” Walker says. He blows across the top of his coffee.
The early morning sun floods the open bay of Crank. I turn my back to the light and try to focus on the truck in front of me. It’s futile. I know it. And by the look on Walker’s face, he knows it too.
Fucker.
“Oh, yeah?” I ask.
“Yeah. Sienna made her some blueberry muffins, so I dropped ’em off.”
“Send me any?”
His hand drops to his side. Coffee sloshes to the dirty garage floor. “For fuck’s sake, Peck.”
“But she knows I love them.”
He shoots me a glare. “Anyway, Nana said you brought your girlfriend over last night.”
The wrench I’m holding drops to the floor. It sends a pinging sound through the bay.
“So Nana’s not crazy. Got it,” Walker jokes. “Anything you wanna share?”
“There’s nothing to share. I told Nana that.” I pick up the wrench. “Can’t I just take someone by for dinner?”
“No.”
It’s my turn to glare.
I go back to the fuel filter in front of me. It’s an easy job that I’ve done ten million times in my life. But for some strange, green-eyed reason, it’s taking me a lot longer than necessary today.
This is why you think before you speak. Or act. Or invite some woman you’ve been too interested in from the moment she marched her cute little ass your way and demanded you go buy cookware to your nana’s. If you just jump into shit, you end up in the kitchen in the middle of the night ready to kiss the hell out of her.
Part of me thinks I just should’ve done it. I’m fairly certain she would’ve been receptive. But what if I’m reading her wrong? What if she’s just really thankful that I bailed her out of her situation? Besides, it’s just asking for trouble in the one place I don’t want it: home.
“So … who was it?” Walker asks.
“When did you become such a nosy bastard?”
He slurps his coffee just to annoy me.
“Dylan,” I say with a sigh.
“Okay. Wait. Dylan. Is that a girl? Or …”
“Yes, Dylan is a girl, you fucker.”
He holds his hands up. “Fine. I’d have been cool with it either way.” He takes another quieter drink. “Who is she?”
I work on the filter and don’t look up. Maybe he’ll get the hint. “Navie’s friend.”
“And …?”
“Oh, good Lord.” I blow out a breath and stand. Facing Walker, I hold my hands out to the sides. “Can we make this quick? Someone is paying me to do a bunch of shit, and it won’t matter that you’ve wasted my fucking time today, he’ll be a dick at the end of the day if I don’t get enough done.”
Walker grins. “He sounds like an asshole.”
“He is.”
“Better humor him them.”
I shake my head.
“I’m sorry that I’m a little shocked. I mean, you took a girl to Nana’s. That’s some big shit right there, Peck.”
“It’s not,” I insist, ignoring the stupid twist in my stomach. “She’s just a friend of Navie’s who needed a place to stay. So I offered her a room until she finds something—”
“She’s living with you?”
I watch the realization settle over his features. It starts as shock and ends somewhere around confusion mixed with complete and utter entertainment.
Sliding my hat around backward, I look at him. “What’s it to you?”
“Is she hot?”
“Damn it, Walker.”
“She is. She fucking is, isn’t she?” He laughs, his big ass chest shaking as he humors himself with my life.
I don’t dare tell him how hot she is. Or that I couldn’t sleep last night knowing she was in my house. Or that I had to get up extra early this morning to take care of myself in the shower so I didn’t walk around needing to jack off all damn day.
But it’s not just that. Hell, I’ve been with other women over the course of my life, and I’ve not felt this way about any of them. I want to talk to her. Hear her laugh. Listen to her tease me. Answer questions that she poses that make me uncomfortable.
What is that? What kind of voodoo bullshit is that?
“When do we get to meet her?” Walker asks.
I go back to the filter. “Whenever you run into her,” I say, cranking on the equipment a little too hard.
“So she’s not coming to Sunday dinner at Nana’s?”
“She could be gone by Sunday, Walker. She’s not living with me forever. She had a rental on Vine Street that was full of cat hair. Like piss and fur everywhere, man.”
“There’s nothing worse than cat piss,” Walker says.
“Right?And she’s really allergic. Like, very allergic. So, she’s just landing at my place until she can find a place to rent. How hard is that to understand?”
My teeth grind together as I think about the day she’ll leave. I have no idea why, but the idea already sucks balls.
“I know a place out on Longs Chapel Road,” Walker says. “You know MaryAnn that comes in here with the van that has the bad transmission?”
“Yeah.”
“She and Mike just moved. I ran into him the other day at Goodman’s gas station. He got a promotion, and they moved over to Merom. Anyway, that house they lived in out there was a rental.”
He’s being helpful. I know that. But something about that information just pisses me off.
“I’ll tell her,” I bite out.
Walker busies himself sorting a couple of deliveries. I work on the filter and what to do about Dylan.
My chest rises and falls as I think about her. She’s dangerous. I feel the fire every time I’m around her. It’s like I’ve drunk a fifth of whiskey. My insides are squeamish, my body heated, and all I want to do is enjoy myself.
That’s what she feels like. A fifth of whiskey.
While I’m all about imbibing from time to time, one thing is always true: when it wears off, you feel like absolute shit. And that’s what this will feel like too when she moves on.
Actually, I bet watching her leave feels worse than a hangover. I bet it hurts like hell.
“You know,” Walker says, his voice falling over his shoulder, “it’s okay to like her.”
I smack the wrench off the frame of the truck. “What are you talking about?”
My annoyance must be palpable because Walker drops the sheet of paper in his hand. He turns around and raises a brow.
I wipe my hands down my jeans. A trail of grease stretches down the denim, and while that usually drives me crazy because it’ll get all over everything by the end of the day, I barely notice.
“She’s staying with me,” I say. Again. “There’s nothing to get all nuts about.”
His arms cross over his chest. “That right there is you calling me a dumb fuck.”
“What?” I ask, exasperated. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You saying there’s nothing between you two is calling me a dumb fuck because I’m not fucking blind, Peck. Neither is Nana.”
“Nana just wants us all to get married and have babies so she doesn’t have to worry about us anymore.”
He considers this. “Okay. That’s probably true. But she does have some fifth sense about shit, and she says you and Dylan are together.”
“It’s sixth sense, not fifth sense, and she just likes her because she volunteered to help her rearrange her kitchen,” I say.
It’s a lie. A bald-faced fib that I hope gets Walker to back off.
But it doesn’t. That would be too easy.
Walker’s face remains blank for a long time. Then a slow smile stretches across his cheeks. “I get it.”
“You get what?”
“You feel like you’re cheating on Molly McCarter.”
What the fuck?
“I do not,” I say with a sigh. “This has nothing to do with her.”
“How could it not? You’re the one saying you’re gonna marry her one day.”
“And I would if she’d marry me.”
Walker shakes his head. “I don’t get ya.”
“Good.”
He drops his arms in a frustrated huff. “If I could knock some sense into you, I would.”
Despite his pushiness and the way he needles me, he wants the best for me. He’d never say that. He’d pretend he doesn’t care for the most part. But he does care, and that’s what this is all about.
I sigh. “Look, since we’re pretending to be a bunch of gossiping girls right now, I’ll play along so this can be over.”
“I take offense at you calling me a girl.”
“Don’t care.” I grab a rag off the wall and wipe my hands off. “Dylan is a great girl. I like her. She’s funny, and nice, and yes, she’s hot. And pretty. And she’s not living with me. I don’t even know if she’s staying in Linton for long.”
“You could ask her.”
I toss the rag in the trash. “You’re right. I could. But it’s none of my business. She wants a relationship about as bad as I do.”
“So she’s scared to like someone who might be a decent person and like her back too? Got it.”
My eyes roll so hard that I’m afraid they might get stuck.
Walker laughs. “I got it. I know what to do.”
“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this.”
“I’m going to find a hitwoman and put a mark on Molly.”
“What does Molly have to do with anything?”
He raises a brow.
I blow out a breath. “Would I marry Molly? Yes. If she loved me, I’d marry her right now. But she doesn’t love me,” I say. The words burn my throat as I say them. “She doesn’t love me like that. I’m not sure she’ll ever love someone like that. But at least I’d protect her.”
“She needs protecting from herself is what she needs.”
My jaw clen
ches again.
I turn away from my cousin and walk outside. The fresh air hits me in the face, the breeze stronger than it was when I got here an hour ago.
I inhale a large breath, and something in the air reminds me of wet paint. Just like that, my mind is taken back to a night many years ago.
Tap! Tap!
I look out the window. A little girl with messy pigtails is on the other side of the glass. Her eyes are filled with tears. Her lip is split. And as soon as I lift the window open, she starts to cry.
“Can I come inside, Peck? Please? I need to hide for a little bit.”
My chest burns as I turn around. Walker is watching me from beside the truck.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Fine.”
“Good. Old Man Jacobsen called. His tractor is sitting out by the highway. Thinks he got some bad gas. Can you go out and help him?”
I nod and start out toward my truck.
“Peck,” Walker calls out.
I grab the door handle and swing it open.
“You’re a good guy.” He grins. “And if you tell a damn soul I said that, I’ll call you a liar.”
I smirk. “I’m a good guy, huh? Is that why it bothers you so much that your girlfriend loves me?”
He throws something in his hand my way. It whizzes by my head and sails across the street.
Chuckling, I climb in the cab as he flips me off. I give him a little wave before throwing a little gravel with my tires before hitting the road.
Thirteen
Dylan
“I’m really excited to get started.” I smile at Joanie Phillips, my new boss at Linton Bank and Trust. “I’ll see you soon.”
Joanie shakes my hand. “We are so excited to have you on board. I think you’re going to be an excellent fit here.”
“Me too.”
I turn to leave the bank when Joanie calls me back.
“Oh, Dylan. There’s one more thing.” She pulls her eyeglasses to the bridge of her nose and peers at a piece of paper in her hand. “When you were hired, you didn’t have your address yet. Do you happen to have that?”
“I do. Well,” I say, “I have a temporary one. The rental I was going to use didn’t pan out, but I’m staying with a friend.”
Gibson Boys Box Set Page 107
